So after picking up my badge from the previous day, today is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Of course if you’re even slightly interested at anything Blizzard, you would have already heard about the next WoW expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) already.
Instead of giving a full blow-by-blow of the day (other sites like WoW Insider does a better job at this than I can), here’s how my day turned out.
11:10 am
Arrived at the convention center. Yes I’m a lazy bum. 
There was also traffic on the way to the convention center.
Right as I was stepping into the main convention area, I see a bunch of people leaving. I guess I just missed the opening ceremony. 
Instead there’s just a sea of empty seats.
11:30 am
Using my experience from Tech Ed, I decided to buy my souvenirs early instead of waiting. However, this is what I found:
This line was so long, it puts Disneyland lines (which by the way is just a few blocks away) to shame! They should have seriously put a “60 minutes from this point” sign. Now someone correct my understanding: I paid to get into a promotional convention, to wait in line for an hour and half, to give them more of my money? Hm… something doesn’t add up. In any case, here’s what I was able to get:
Just a couple of T-shirts and some posters.
1:00 pm
I’m very close to the counter now
But the next demo is about to start and the topic is WotLK!
1:15 pm
Finally got my stuff and watching the WotLK demo now. As an avid WoW player, you would think this announcement would be really exciting. However, I have quite the opposite reaction. Once they announced the “new” features in the next expansion, I felt the urge to quit. The thought of another 10 levels, does not feel appealing. Haven’t they learned from the mistakes of what happened from raising level caps from 60 to 70 in BC? Everything in the “old world” becomes deserted.
And the announcement of the new hero class: Death Knight. Sure that sounds exciting, but in order to “unlock” the new class, you’ll have to do yet another series of quests. Just sounds too painful rather than fun.
2:00 pm
After the end of the WotLK demo, I decided to go check out the booths the sponsors had setup. I’m still not sure how PayPal fits with Blizzard but they’re a sponsor so they also had a booth. I think everyone was also wondering the same thing as there was nothing (and no one) there besides a few laptops showing some pages on PayPal’s site and a “win a segway” contest.
Intel’s booth was really cool. They had a trailer jam packed with computers and plasma screens showing off their computers playing WoW. WoW isn’t exactly an intensive game though, but oh well, they’re at a Blizzard convention.
Next, I went to check out some of the play locations. Both the Starcraft II and WoW: WotLK play locations were jam packed with a huge line waiting to get in. Oh well, guess I’ll go try playing them tomorrow.
Finally the last location of the convention center was the contest area. This where they were showing Warcraft III/Starcraft and WoW Arena 2v2 matches.
3:30 pm
Decided to call it a day. Since I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, I figure I’ll leave early to get some food and attempt to beat the LA traffic.
Looking around the convention floor, I realized Blizzard is really a design company. All the awesome art everywhere just looks stunning. As a technology company, they’re really not cutting edge as some other gaming companies out there. I believe this is why Blizzard games are so successful and why WoW is so successful compared to other MMORPG’s: it’s not about the technology, but it’s about giving the gamer the full experience through art and story.
Well that’s it for Day 1 of my Blizzcon experience. For tomorrow, I’ll need to:
- Try out Starcraft 2
- Try out WoW: WotLK
- Learn how to play WoW: TCG
