This year Blizzcon had the usual competitions as well as some new ones.  The sound alike contest was removed for /silly.  Personally i thought the latter was better.  There was also a making your own original song contest and a diorama contest.  However we can not forget the ever popular dance contest. 

Here are some highlights

Dance Contest Winner

Machinima Drama Action Finalist

Costume Contest Winner with Jay Mohr

All in All Blizzcon fans are quite candid about what they like and dont like.  But everone was energetic and had lots of fun.

By Angie Quidim

The developers at Blizzcon held a panel describing the evolution of the character classes of class system of Diablo III and what goals they were looking to accomplish.  They wanted the wizard to have the nuking capabilities but allow the customization of skills. End result?

The wizard is the risktaker, the rebellious one in magic school who believes his/her teachers are holding him/her back.  The four spells the developers demonstrated at the paner were magic missle, electrocute, slow time, and disentegrate.  These spells are all base drops that one can learn but can be customized over time by rune drops and the assignment of skill points.

Here is a sample of some of the spell effects

The wizard class will have a male or female gender and starts out with basic spells.  More will be revealed in the weeks to come.

By Angie Qudim

At the keynote today Blizzard began the festivities with a couple of announcements that fans would look forward to in the hours ahead.   

Once again Blizzard’s president apologized about the unfortunate event of the mismanaged Blizzcon sales.  Approximately 15,000 tickets were sold in a matter of 15 minutes.  That is about double the attendance of last year . Statistics show that fans from over 27 countries have traveled abroad to participate.  The first Blizzcon took 3 weeks for the event tickets to sell out.  In its third year the event has become more exclusive.  This was also the first year that Blizzcon was offered to the general public as a pay-per-view or direct tv event.  Those who were not lucky enough to get tickets can view tournaments, panels and other exciting things that happen.  This Blizzcon would also  be the first for the fans to view a playable demo of the long awaited Diablo 3. Players will be able to explore sanctuary as well as defend themselves against an old foe.   A new class, the wizard, was added to the game to bring back the explosive special effects most associated with the Sorceress character from the Diablo universe. 

Starcraft players will also get a special treat as the first Starcraft 2 tourney was announced where people who have passed the qualifiers from other Blizzard events will have a shot to win a $200,000 grand prize.   

The keynote ended with some good vibes and we hope to hear and see more today as we spend our time here. 

 

3 more days till the offical event.

The keynote is 11am on friday and we will have coverage all week on the event.

Below is an interactive floorplan and schedule of what will be waiting at the 2008 Blizzcon.

Floorplans

Schedule

If you are attending let us know we would love to hear from you!

By Angie Quidim

So today the official cinematic trailer for the WotLK was released and I have to say it was so cool to see the Arthas fully articulate.  Blizzard cinematics have always been great and this one is no less than stellar.

Check out the footage here

So if you were lucky enough to get tickets then you will be looking forward to the 2 days of revelry and fandom that is Blizzcon. 

Below is a list of the panels to expect at this con

• World of Warcraft Class Design
• World of Warcraft PvP
• World of Warcraft Art
• World of Warcraft Dungeons & Raids
• World of Warcraft UI and Mods
• Blizzard Cinematics
• Blizzard Sound and Music
• Diablo III Class Design
• Diablo III Game Design
• Diablo III – Lore and Art
• StarCraft II Gameplay
• StarCraft Lore
• StarCraft II Art

Not to mention they will have playables of Starcraft II and WOW: WoTLK.  Maybe of Diablo III.  One can only hope. We will post the contests and Tournament highlights and whatever we can get our hands on.  Will there be enough to see and do with this $100 ticket?  If not we will make stuff happen!!

Blizzard is offering DirectTV to the exclusive convention so that you can see what other people are doing.  Please refer to the Blizzcon Site for more information.  Rather than spending the money on this they should have bought more space.

So Blizzard says that tickets are sold out baased on the notes on the Blizzard Store.

Yet in the forums or if you talk to the sales reps they are still holding on to a small portion of tickets.

WHICH IS IT!!!

Can you imagine peoples emotions after long days and nights on waiting for site maintenence only to end thier journey at a sold out message? Many of us only through an elaborate network of phone calls and IMs were able to score our tickets.  To those who can’t imagine the chaos, picture this. World of Warcraft has generated over 10 million subscribers.  you can imagine at least a million fans are trying to funnel through the site’s menus of registration and name entries as well as purchasing procedures. DOH!  This is the 3rd Blizzcon.  Please allow fans to worship and throw more money!!

But seriously keep trying people.  We are going to be there so let us know if you were one of the lucky few.

The bulk of the BlizzCon tickets we had available were sold out within minutes of ticket sales going live again this afternoon. We have a small reserve of tickets left — to make these available to some of you who might not have had a chance to purchase yet, we will be releasing the remaining reserve tickets for sale tonight, August 12, at 8:00 PM PDT. We appreciate the enthusiasm everyone has shown, and wish we were able to accommodate even more attendees at this year’s BlizzCon.

5:07pm: A few people are saying that sales reps on the phone are claiming that Blizzard is selling tickets in phases, and that there’ll be a period of sales today until all the tickets are gone. Note that this is all rumor, and we won’t have confirmation of anything until we hear from Blizzard themselves. Even if it is true that they’re selling tickets in phases, we don’t see how that helps, especially since people are getting cut off in the middle of their purchase every time the “sold out” flag comes up.

 

 

5:43pm: Aylii from Shamanistic Rage says she chatted with a Blizzard service rep, and he said that only 10% of the tickets have been sold so far — 1200 out of 12,000. That lines up with what we know already — that they sold 8000 tickets last year and opened up a third hall besides the two last year. So all hope is not yet lost.

However, she also heard that there would be a five minute period between ticket phases, and it’s definitely been five minutes since the last phase ended. Still no word from Blizzard, though we have no idea why.

6:30pm: Here’s another pretty believeable thread, supposedly with info from Blizzard’s phone sales support staff. They won’t confirm or deny batch sales, but they do say that they’ve told the CMs and blue posting staff to get communication running between players and Blizzard. The fact that we haven’t heard anything official from Blizzard for the last couple of hours is very frustrating. Not wanting to tell your customers anything unless you’re sure of it is one thing, but completely ignoring them, especially when they’re so frustrated, is something else completely.

 

So it is 8:47 PM and the Blizzcon store is taken down again.  Much like the rest of you wowheads out there you must be pretty frustrated.  In desperation to stay awake I had tested the whole line of Vitamin Water’s new energy waters.  I think I am wired for the next couple of hours.

Here is an interesting video I found on last year’s Blizzcon.  People got there EARLY!!