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BlizzCon Overview
MMORPG.com Community Manager Richard Cox attended BlizzCon over the weekend and today presents us with this overview of the event including announcements from all of your favorite Blizzard games.
As many of you who were following my blog over the weekend know, I was at BlizzCon again this year. For those of you who followed those daily reports, no fear, there will be stuff here I didn't talk about there. For those of you, who didn't, feel free to head over and check those entries out as well. Most of it will be covered here, but you never know.
First of all, I'll get all bias out of the way. I absolutely love BlizzCon. And no, it isn't because I'm a WoW fanboy, I don't even currently play WoW. Nor am I really a fanboy of any of their other games. I love the Diablo series, but come on; it's been years and years since I've played D2. Nope, none of that is the reason. I love BlizzCon because as a Community Manager, and one who has worked both IN the industry and in the press covering the industry, I recognize BlizzCon as THE standard when it comes to running a community appreciation event. I've been to most of them; DAoC's Roundtables, SOE's Fan Faires, etc, none of them even come remotely close to BlizzCon. In my opinion one of the most important things a company can do to show appreciation to their community is have a great live event with fun activities, tournaments, great swag and devs accessible to the community. Blizzard does all of this in spades with BlizzCon. So if you're in the industry and in a community relations role in said industry, and aren't attending BlizzCon to take notes when it rolls around, you're doing your community a great disservice.
;)
Now I'm not saying they do everything perfectly, no one's perfect, not even Blizzard. They could definitely be better at anticipating demand. The fact that they completely sold out their initial batch of 15,000 tickets in 15 minutes, yes, that's 1,000 tickets a minute, insane huh? That shows they left a LOT of people who wanted to attend just out of luck. I realize they've more than doubled each event, but with the next one they seriously need to plan for tripling instead of doubling, even if that means finding another venue to host it in. Also, I think they dropped the ball on the Blizzard Store setup this year. Last year they had less than half as many attendees and two stores set up, both of which always had long lines. This year, they more than double the number of attendees, but leave just two stores, which resulted in people standing in line for over five hours just to buy a BlizzCon t-shirt. There should definitely have been four stores this year. Also, I think someone going around with a t-shirt cannon or even just tossing them out the old fashion way, with the BlizzCon t-shirts would have been a great touch.
Not that the swag back every attendee got with their ticket didn't rock. Here, let me list off the rockingness of my swag back for you:
- 1 Inflatable Frostmourne Sword
- 1 WoW SwagDog.com Mouse pad with a place to insert a photo
- 1 Special Edition Vasco Blizzard Authenticator
- 1 BlizzCon '08 TokyoPop Sketchbook/Notepad
- 1 StarCraft: The Board Game Typhon Promotion
- 1 Pandaren Brewmaster Brand Beer Coozie
- 1 Pack of WoW QQ Noob Tissues
- 1 Pandaren Brewmaster Brand Bottle Opener
- 1 Inflatable 'Paladin in a Bubble Hearthing Away' beach ball
- 1 set StarCraft 2 Wristbands
- 1 canister of Zerg Creep Ooze stuff
- 1 Blue Diablo 3 Mana Stress Ball
- 1 Frostmourne Hilt Keychain
- 1 WoW: TCG Heroes of Azeroth Starter Deck
- 1 Bottle of Blizzcon '08 Hand Sanitizer with Carbineer
- 1 WoW: WotLK Light up Pen
- 1 BlizzCon 2008 Keychain
- 1 WoW 'A Bird in Hand' Quest Bookmark
- 1 WoW Action Figures Pin
- 1 Blizzard Store Merchandise Catalog
- 1 Troll Mask
- 1 Arthas Postcard
- 1 copy of the WoW Ashbringer Comic, BlizzCon Exclusive
- 1 Lich King sticker
- 1 Figure Prints Pendant
- Approximately 8-10 assorted ad/deal cards/fliers
Oh, and of course don't forget the scratch off card with the StarCraft 2 beta access and polar bear riding murloc pet, can't forget that. So yeah, when it comes to swag, it generally doesn't get much better than what you walk away from BlizzCon with. But really, who doesn't love the chance of catching a free shirt flying over their head at a convention?
There were more than enough various contests, tournaments and fun of all types to keep everyone happy. Tournaments took place in the original StarCraft, WarCraft 3, WoW Arena 3v3s, and even the first ever StarCraft 2 tournament. All told over $200,000 in prizes were given out and some of the matches were a blast to watch. The contests took place over in the main hall on Friday night, the best easily being the costume contest. Watching that contest made me realize how little free time and money I have on my hands compared to some of these people. Some of the costumes were just insanely well done. While I was unable to get pictures of all the entrants, I got several, including shots of the five finalists and the winner. I want my own Speedy the Turtle... The /silly contest had its funny moments but drew a lot of moans, groans and outright boos from the crowd. The dance contest was funny, in a sometimes painful, sort of way. Jay Mohr did an excellent job in my opinion of MCing the contests, even though there were obviously times that didn't go according to schedule or plan and he had to ad lib a lot. Saturday night's closing festivities included the stand up antics of the lumberjack looking Kyle Kinane (which was unannounced and a surprise, at least to me) and (announced and known about) Patton Oswalt. Both were quite funny and seemed to win over the crowd, especially compared to when Jay Mohr tried to do his act last year before the concert. Mental note: don't go commando in corduroy pants. And then the night ended with a concert featuring 'Level 80 ETC' and 'Video Games Live' as it did last year, but they never get old.
;)
So all that aside, I know why you're really here, the meat and gravy of the convention, what did I learn about the various Blizzard games. To make things easier, I'll break it all down by product, starting with the only game of the three that we actually cover here on the site, World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, WoW had the least news to report on, as the show was definitely mostly focused on Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2, so I'll cover them a bit as well.
World of Warcraft:
As stated above, there wasn't a whole lot of stuff we didn't already know talked about in regards to WoW at BlizzCon. With Wrath's release right around the corner, just about everything that could be talked about concerning the expansion has already been talked about. The two big items to come out of the convention concerning WoW were: In the first patch after the expansions launch, mounts will gain the ability to swim, meaning far less time spent having to stop to resummon your mount after crossing a body of water. And there was some vague talk/rumoring of being able to change your character's appearance, face and hair, for a fee in the future.
The WoW class panel talked a lot about how the existing classes in WoW would change with the launch of the expansion. I'll run through the list rapid-fire style listing off the changes I managed to get into my notes and remember off the top of my head:
- Druids: Druids are getting a fairly major overhaul to their talent trees, across the board. It will be a lot harder to really split your spec across multiple trees in the future. With the feral tree you'll REALLY need to decide on either cat or bear. Resto druids will be getting some love with some new heals and tangling roots will work indoors now, adding more crowd control to the class.
- Hunters: Hunter changes seem mostly focused around making the class easier to play. Pets are being changed around to be easier to manage and new stable slots being added. Shot rotations are being looked at and they'll receive a new shot, Freezing Shot.
- Mages: Their changes seem primarily focused on the DPS side of the house.
- Paladins: Not much change here damage wise, most of the Paladin changes seemed to be centered on available gear and some work on the seals and judgments. They will also get some love when it comes to their healing and how it works in PvP.
- Priests: Shadow priests should be getting a significant boost in the DPS area as well as healing priests being helped, mostly due to the new 'spell power' attribute on gear boosting all spells across the board rather than being limited to certain spell lines. They're also getting a new damage ability.
- Rogues: Rogue changes will help them out against multiple targets with a new ability. Sap is getting a boost.
- Shaman: Shamans will be getting all kinds-a new toys to play with; a new crowd control, totem consolidation, a new damage spell AND even a new healing spell.
- Warlocks: A couple new skills here and a lot of "we want to..." concerning demon selection and making affliction better.
- Warriors: They seem to want to make warriors more fun overall. Some talent juggling going on, a new ability for Fury warriors to allow dual wielding 2-handed weapons and a couple new talents.
Continued on Page Two
/ninja
you need a link there buddy
Takes a few seconds for me to get that linked in after making the page :) patience. :)
patience is a virtue young grasshopper!
unfortunately i feel old today...so you get the upptiy old man
Hello,
Thank you for your review of the event. I was there with a friend both days. Although I am a casual game player, I have to admit I found this event some what fun for what it was. I was hoping for something that was more community driven though. Very little of what they did at this show brought the community together. It was a show rather than a gathering. Sure the opening ceremony was nice, we got to listen to the president of Blizzard give his hype about the company and the Con. I found some of the panels interesting. And the closing was very nice with all of the music and comedy.
The only parts of this show that I felt tried to bring the community together were the stage contests... Costume, Dance and /Silly contests.
Other community events I've been to, they've had banquet halls where everyone attending would have the chance to sit down and have dinner with each other while listening to the stage act. They had server gatherings, real live quests (not just visiting shops and standing in hour long lines) and contests (not just for the people that were pre-qualified). And t-shirt was given to each and every one of the guests as well as a bag of swag.
Yes, I know that doing these types of things for the mass amount of people WOW attracts would be very difficult to pull off but I feel there could have been so much more for the community rather than the show we got. Heck, I would have paid an extra $100 for a dinner and a night at Disneyland.
Blizzcon to me felt like a scaled down version of E3 rather than the community event it should have been. Would I go again? Probably, like I said before, I found some parts of it interesting.
~V
What, no mention of the WoW movie? no preview they said could be in this year's blizzcon? no info on even when a preview could be seen? well, another reason Blizzard annoys me of late, saying things are coming, but taking their grand ole time getting it done. The word stagnant comes to mind when it comes to World of Warcraft and this supposed movie. It's why I left and why I'm not coming back until they fix the lack of content over such a length of time.
Oh I definitely agree, some of the other events definitely have a more "community togetherness" feel to them, but that's a lot easier to do when, take the DAoC Roundtable for example, you "sell out" of tickets at around 350 people instead of 15,000. Or even a couple thousand like SOE's events it's still doable, but once you've gotten to the numbers that BlizzCon attracts, you're pretty much forced to let the community come up with their own. I saw lots of big groups of people who met up in the 'Realm Meet-Up' areas who went from there. I will say though, having experience working on that side of the fence, setting up community events, it is very hard to balance the level of community related events versus just free time and options to do stuff. Lotsa people who come out to these things don't necessarily want the entire event to be planned out and scheduled for them, they prefer the looser approach with just optional events and panels. I couldn't imagine trying to do it at this level.
There was one very brief mention of the movie, in the Q&A panel someone asked about it, and was given a very vague "It's going to be amazing!" answer, or something along those lines. But that was it really.
Hey Richard did you hear the Buzz going around that there was some pretty Big Changes to the whole Battle.net Forum system (Including WoWs ) in the works? One guy brought it up...and there was a quick no comment and the music started blaring again...did you hear about any of this?
Nice review.
One question: Did you ask (or was there any mention) of the new secret MMO Blizzard is working on? If it's a fantasy title, I will be especially interested.
WOW is great, but after four years, I'm ready for a new MMO world to adventure in.
Monetizing BNet? Starcraft 2 released as three seperate games?
Apparently Blizzard does not have enough money so they need to milk these games as much as they can. Sad.
There was one very brief mention of the movie, in the Q&A panel someone asked about it, and was given a very vague "It's going to be amazing!" answer, or something along those lines. But that was it really.
I just want to offer to write the final scene in the movie. Our hero gets to level 70, you hear this loud "DING", then music starts to play and the credits begin to roll.
Perhaps the final credits appear something like this:
Girl in Tavern... Lisa So-and-So
Orc #1, Orc #2, Orc #3... The Watson brothers
Gnome in Auction House ... Jimmy LePeters
Shaman Trainer ... William Shatner
Etc..., you get the idea.
Nope, the only thing I heard of regarding BNet is them trying to come up with ways to make money off of it... That may or may not include the forums, who knows. But I will say I don't know how much credibility I put in that report, cause I've never really had anyone from Blizzard so blatantly dodge one of my questions like that. Sure, it may very well be something they can't talk about, but I've never gotten the 'no comment' brush off...
Oh trust me I asked, as futile as I knew asking would be. This is Blizzard we're talking about here, they won't be talking about that project at all for quite a while to come I'm surem specially with all the attention they can milk out of D3 and SC2 for the time being, saving the new MMO for after the hype on those 2 die down is a fairly smart PR move.
The con was a blast, better then last years, better goody bag =P. They did better at having enough merchandise to sell, lots of cool booths, loved the AMD one, those PMS clan ladies are crazy heh.
The concert was amazing, was cool seeing all their games being able to play, they even had a retro gaming area for their old games.
the beta code we got is for starcraft 2 woot! no really big news from them except the new class for diablo. there was just way more to see and do, the year before you could pretty much do everything in one day, this year was much better, the lines to get in seemed huge but it started moving quick.
I'll go everytime they have one, well worth the 100 i spent.