Written by: OmegaBob

Saturday 8/22 – Day Four

Today was mainly filled with panels that I wanted to attend. Discussion about the various changes they are finalizing that stood out to me included: changing most of the stats, the new guild leveling/achievement system, new dungeons & battlegrounds and finally an overhaul of the Warlock’s soul shard system (YES!).

Although there seemed to be less people initially, I soon realized why the lines for the various metagames were as long as the lines for the BlizzCon/Jinx stores were last year. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to wait in a three-hour line to basically play carnival games when your chance at winning is extremely low, but I guess that a lot of them just didn’t have better things to do. Then again, my buddy waited for two and a half hours to get a 25 second chance to grab a WoW Upper Deck loot card in one of those booths with the swirling confetti, and he won one!

Blizzard should note for next year that when they hold any WoW panel, they should just schedule it in the main hall as there always ended up being standing room only for them in the smaller halls. While attending one panel in the standing area, I got fed up (probably because I was also hungry), so I headed over to the main hall where a Diablo 3 panel was in progress with only a smattering of people attending. As the panel was in the process of wrapping up, people quickly started to filter in and soon the lower half of the hall was packed. Why were they grabbing seats? A WoW panel was scheduled next. Side note: while listening to the D3 panel, I discovered a Chinese food store located there which served huge amounts of food for $9 (yes, that’s a lot, but considering I paid $7 for tacos the day before that were crap, this was very satisfying. If the con is held in Anaheim again, I recommend this place in Hall D. Just remember to go when there is a lackluster panel as huge lines will form otherwise).

Now, those that know me know that I am an equal opportunity hater: I hate everyone until they prove their worth, (or are cute) so you might be shocked to know that I decided to attend my realm’s scheduled meet-up. Last year’s was successful as I met two gals from that were cool and that I still talk to, so I decided to pop-in on the meet & greet to see who showed up. It was scheduled to start at 1pm, but because of the line at the restroom, I didn’t get there until almost 1:05pm and by then it seemed like it was breaking up. Last year, no one showed up for the first 20-30 minutes, and when people did show, there were like 8 or 10 total while, other realms had HUGE turn outs. So this year, I was surprised to see that there were more than 10! Like 15-20 actually showed up (throughout the course of the meet). Like I said, it seemed like it was breaking up but as it turns out, I ended up meeting two folks that I raided with once before. Of course, they tried to recruit the mighty Crazybob (main WoW character’s name) to their guild as I am guildless at present (see above about me hating all people). Honestly, that was freakin cool! I also exchanged character names with others I met there so hopefully we will all look each other up online.

I’m Alliance (shock) and after my new found Alliance buddies left, I was standing alone at a table whilst all the Hordies that showed up for the meeting, stood in a circle. Damn exclusive Horde jerks! Grrrr! Meanwhile, a group of rogues (well, they rambled something about rogues) from a different server came over and plopped their realm sign on top of mine and started to chat me up. OK, Crazybob isn’t stupid and he knows all the tricks, so I began to question why they came. They were very loud and obnoxious (think: typical drunken college frat boys) and started to sympathize with me about the Horde excluding me. They yelled, “Why you gotta treat him like that?” and other similar things, but it was all a ruse, as their primary mission was to distract me and steal the sign. I noticed immediately that it was gone and asked one of them as they filtered back to their table in the center if he had seen the sign. The answer was, “No, man. I dunno.” So then I asked my Horde and they… well… were the P word as they just shrugged and continued to chat in their exclusive Horde club. Well, I started to look for the ring leaders of the raid, and noticed them holding our sign up in the air and cheering loudly. Screw that! I ran over and got the sign back (Punks!), and then guarded it for the rest of the meet and claimed it as my own. Death to the Hordie and death to that other realm! Grrr, I hate people!

Three interesting observations that I made about the con overall:

1. Unless I missed something, there were no release dates for any of the properties demo’d or discussed this year. The Monk class was announced for Diablo 3 and there should be one more class to be revealed, but other than that, no release date. The same holds true for StarCraft; although I believe they released a vague time frame of sometime during the second quarter of 2010. As for WoW: C, all I got was “we aren’t ready to release that information at this time”.
2. There wasn’t any mention of the ‘other’ MMO that Blizzard is working on.
3. I heard it implied a few times that there will be a BlizzCon next year, but when one of the big-wigs was asked the question about holding a BlizzCon on the East Coast, it was clear that they’re not planning on traveling too far from home, though there was a hint that they’ve outgrown the current venue.

Oh, want to hear about Ozzy? He rocked!!!

Sadly, my magical adventure to BlizzCon is at an end. Because of a mad dash to get my luggage packed after the con, I am now composing this final blog entry on the first stage of my flight back home and finishing it up at the Dallas airport. It’s been fun reflecting and reminiscing on the past week I that I was in Orange County, Venice Beach, Hollywood, Disneyland and, of course, BlizzCon for Avault.com. Thanks for reading!

Is it even possible to top the time I’ve had here this week? But of course: at next year’s BlizzCon!

OmegaBob is a long time Avault reader and forums contributor that has volunteered to cover all things BlizzCon for us this week.