Day One:
We arrived at the aneheim convention center at about 9:00am. The Con didn’t open until 10:00am, but there were a couple members of our party that didn’t have tickets yet, so we went early to see if we could get tickets for them (partially through press connections I have). When we got there, there were already two long lines (about 1/4 mile each). One was the line to pick up tickets (good thing we got ours yesterday). The convention was awesome! They had StarCraft Ghost playable. They had World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade (The just now announced expansion to World of WarCraft) playable. They gathered the best StarCraft and WarCraft III players from around the globe to compete here. They had an art gallery, Blackrock Spire to climb, a sponsor area complete with Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade, and a huge store, with an always long line. Not to mention the panels and FMVs they were showing the entire time.
What? You wanted more? Well, you’ll get more!
StarCraft: Ghost
When I arrived at the Con, while they told us that they’d have StarCraft: Ghost playable, I was expecting to sit down, and command Nova (the name of the starring female ghost in the game) for a bit. What they delivered at BlizzCon was a lot more. When I sat down in front of the approximately 24″ television (each of us had our own), and picked up an X-Box controller, a multi-player match started! It was an 8 vs 8 match. To make things even cooler, I was playing a Zergling! That’s right, it was a Terran vs Zerg map. At first it seemed very much like Halo. And I was sitting in front of an X-Box, so it’s very hard for me to think it’s far from that, but quickly I realized it’s so much more. It was a node control map (much like Battlefield 2, or Arathi Basin). The controls were very similar to Halo, so I still suck at it, but it was way fun. Nothing beats running up to a marine, and slashing at him with your zerg pincers until he falls dead. After making a few kills or helping the take over of a couple nodes, I was able to upgrade my guy into a Hydralisk, an Infested Marine, and eventually a Mutalisk. The other characters are relatively self explanatory, but the coolest thing about the Mutalisk is the ability to swoop down, and pick up an enemy unit. Way cool.
But wait, there’s more! There’s another SC:G map that I got to play. This was another 8 vs 8 map, but this time both sides were Terran. It was basically a king of the hill map, but instead of a hill, there’s a mobile command structure that you move around, and both sides try to control this mobile structure. I was playing a firebat the whole time, mainly because it was simple, but it was way fun to just send marines and infantrymen ablaze.
World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade
While I didn’t get a chance to play, I did get to see the demo, watch other people play, and hear the developers talking about it. So far, all we really know is that they have a new race, the Blood Elves, and new areas. They showed the new instance in Silithus too. I’ll surely get my hands on it tomorrow. We’re planning on organizing a raid to really see the new content. So more on this tomorrow.
So, I’ve got a bunch of pictures, and I’m not entirely sure how to use them all yet, but you’ll see them here as soon as I can figure out how to get them posted.
Thanks for playin’
McKay