And I post this two months or so later. Oh well. Long story short, BlizzCon, our self anniversary gift to each other was fun. So fun that we both started up WoW again after a 4 month absence, then kind of stopped playing again when Skyrim came out a month later. I kind of haven't logged in for patch 4.3 yet and I swear that I will one day if I can make it past the pile of games yet to be played. Speaking of which, it's probably already too late to buy it but the Humble Indie Bundle #4 is a fantastic deal.

I think I like the idea of playing WoW on a more casual basis. Should I decide to log on consistently, it would be nice to raid again at some point, though I am not sure that I am interested in another fixed weekly raiding schedule. I'll give Looking For Raid a try at some point. By the way, the cross-server Real ID friends dungeon running thing is a great feature. Being able to instance with my friends is again is pretty sweet, huzzah.

So the con: We ended up watching quite a few of the StarCraft 2 matches more than any other particular activity at the convention. Being able to attend the GSL finals was a real treat by the way ( both the main hall ad the RTS stages were packed). I really really wanted to stay until the end but since I was falling asleep in my chair, we ditched out at around midnight.

Here are a couple of photos. I suck at taking pictures by the way :/.

Success! It looks like we are actually going be able to go this year! I was number 700 in queue, a marked improvement over last year's position at 5k. The maximum number of tickets allowed per transaction was reduced from 5 to 4 this year, which probably helped a little bit as well as the Internet Gods being extraordinarily kind to me this morning. Also, I am sure that having literally only Google Chrome open with absolutely no one else and no other application sucking bandwidth out of the networked helped as well. We were all on Vent and WoW when tickets went on sale last year.

I really wish that the ticket price wouldn't keep creeping up, but whatever. Looking forward to meeting up with folks and what not in late October :D.

Guess what I will be doing this Saturday morning? I was #5,808 in line and I clicked the very second that it popped. Well, slightly less than the very second (had to select '2' from the dropdown menu). Some of you have fast fingers.

Round 2:

Ah well, it was a nice try. Sold out when I was at abouh 1.8k in line. Keybound the cache clear refresh to a keyboard macro, coordinated on Vent, started refreshing a couple of minutes early, ignored the ticket quantity. Still got about the same position in like 5.8k-ish. Maybe next year!

Continued from Tuesday's entry. This post is more about my opinions regarding the expansion than about the convention I guess.

I am interested in seeing how Tauren Paladins, Gnome Priests and Troll Druids will come about lore wise. Most of the other new class combos either exist in the game as NPCs or aren't all that far fetched. Dwarven Shaman for example, exist in the Wildhammer Clan and Blood Elf Warriors were stated as a balance decision instead of a lore issue. A blue stated earlier on the General Forums that the official lore name for the cowadins would be Sunwalker, which I assume will tie into their sun worship. I guess the gnomes were too busy focusing on the holy light instead of focusing on say, retaking their city.

The removal is this level of content in a game, particularly for an MMO strikes me as odd. I wonder if it is going to be even more odd for the folks who start playing post-Cataclysm. But that said, I think that the revamping of Azeroth is a fantastic idea and quite frankly, well overdue. The Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor have had more than their fair share of use over the past 5 years. At the moment, they feel out of date in terms of leveling flow and types of quests available. Consequently, I find it very hard returning to the old world to level my lowbies alts, even with the boost in experience.

The Burning Crusade introduced a smoother quest flow and more natural zone progression, eliminating the need to mob grind experience and to run across multiple continents and zones to quest. It also introduced a few new mechanics to increase the quest quality; The bombing runs for example. But as a whole, I felt that the story lines felt disconnected from the rest of the lore. I don't know if this was intentional or not, given that the Outlands well, is an alien planet. I just didn't feel as connected to the WoW story as I had originally in vanilla WoW.

Wrath on the Lich King on the other hand, was all about story progression. Using the new phasing mechanic and the intertwining of the lore into the quests in such an interactive and visual manner really pulled me into the expansion. So much so that I had actually leveled my hunter to 80 shortly after Keiya (anyone in guild knows that this is an incredible feat given my track with alts). It heralded the return and continuation of story lines from familiar faces that we've seen in the old world; NPC's whom we have invested quite a bit of time with like Tirion Fordring, Bolvar Fordragon, etc.

Wrath retained the Burning Crusade's smooth progression without feeling disconnected. The Lich King looms over you throughout your journey to level 80 and is introduced very early on in the expansion. Blizzard also did an exceptional job of rehashing key events from Warcraft III for the folks who either are not familiar with the strategy games or who might not have remembered what occurred. By contrast, Illidan, though mentioned quite often in quest text, did not feel like an active part of the Burning Crusade, at least to me. He just sort of popped into play when the Black Temple patch went live. I think that this point illustrates how important the doing things is in a gaming environment. I wonder how different the first expansion might have been if he was played out early in the game like Arthas?

I am really looking forward to seeing the new quest mechanics and the lore interactivity in the  old world when Cataclysm hits. I am actually looking forward to rolling and leveling a low level alt again! According to the WoW panels, they are going to be able to phase areas even more. The terrain will change significantly as you progress in certain areas (the presentation had screenshots). The developers also mentioned that they are working out phasing kinks. We supposedly, might be able to share a phase with party members. You can probably already guess at some of the changes based off of old world gripes regarding certain areas (too large, too boring, too large and too boring, etc).

I am also cautiously optimistic about the new stat streamlining. Some stats are redundant: Spirit and MP5 for example, while some stats like Armor Penetration just never worked out. It is one of those stats that very few people understand and is either awesome for certain classes and otter crap for others. There's a pretty high level of redundancy on gear that makes it difficult for certain class and spec combinations to determine if an item is an upgrade without consulting an Excel spreadsheet. Several of the changes should make gear less ambiguous: No more spirit on mage gear, no more AP on leather (no more rogueadins lol).

Oh one more thing: Battlenet 2.0 will allow you to talk with friends across Blizzard games and across WoW servers/factions. I have IRL friends strewn across various servers, so I'm looking forward to being able to chat with them all in game without having to log over or poke Facebook/Gtalk.

Note: The image effects aren't loading for some pictures, I don't know why. Also, I have more pictures up in the BlizzCon gallery. I'll finish labeling and adding descriptions to them all later.

TL;DR: BlizzCon was a lot of fun, if you have the means and time I highly recommend it! Greatly looking forward to Cataclysm, Diablo III and Starcraft II. I'll split this post up into two parts since it got kind of long. I'll go over the convention in general today and then post general opinions on the Cataclysm tomorrow. I was going to do a rundown of all of the announcements, but I'm sure that has been done a hundred times over on all of the big WoW blogs.

I am fortunate that I have family in the area willing to lend me their couch for an evening. In the future, I think that I will just go get a room Thursday through Sunday evenings at one of the hotels walking distance from the convention center. The place that I was staying was only 15 minutes away at most, but it would have been more convenient to have in-and-out privileges. Between not being able to come and go (without paying for parking again) as well as a generally busy con schedule (so much to do!), I ended up missing a few opportunities to meet-up with some good buddies in the area.

Parking wasn't a problem at all. It was $10 at the Buzz Lightyear lot across from the Anaheim Convention Center on the eastern side of Harbor Boulevard (I detest parking structures). It was a little farther than theACC parking structure, about a 5 minute walk at most, but I didn't have any problems getting caught in exiting traffic. There's ample parking in the area so that's not a big deal.

Everyone must have picked up their badge and goodie bag on Thursday or earlier on Friday morning because by the time I parked and arrived, at about 8:30am to 8:45am-ish, I pretty much just walked right up to the badge registration. The line into the convention center on the other hand was long, it wrapped around and snaked to the back service parking lot, where I stood in the sun for about an hour until the doors opened. (Note to self, get there earlier >_>).

WoW: Cataclysm and the Diablo III Monk class were announced at the opening ceremonies, which I ended up watching on the monitors in the gift line instead of the main hall. I rushed to the store as soon as I got into the convention center. Some friends told me that last year, unless you got into the line early, it was 4 to 6 hours long and they sold out of t-shirt sizes and popular items. Oh, nice dude with the German accent who I talked with in line the entire time: I should have gotten your email or something, I feel bad for leaving youhangin' at the store.

I attended the World of Warcraft Preview Panel, half of the World of Warcraft Art Panel (and half of the Diablo III Heroes and Monsters Panel), the Guild Panel and the World of Warcraft Discussion Panel on the first day. On the second day I attended the WoW Q&A, WoWPvP Discussion, WoW Dungeons & Raids and the WoW Class Discussion (much of this one was recap, but I needed to sit and eat).

I did around half of the goodie bag promotional events (and won a T-shirt at the Razor booth. So so close to winning a new mouse). I probably should have, but didn't bother standing in any of the demo lines for Cataclysm,Diablo III or StarCraft II; I figure that since I am 100% sure that I am pre -ordering each and every one of these, it's no big deal. Well, that and the fact that I have a general dislike for unnecessary lines. I also had a chance to meet-up with a guild mate, server mate as well as a good friend whom I haven't seen in years!

Unfortunately, I didn't get to attend my realm meet-up. Bloodlust was scheduled to meet on Friday at 7pm, but the costume contest began at 6pm. I had a decent seat and didn't want to miss anything (we were also having trouble reserving seats, the main hall was packed). I also figured that many people would also probably skip the meet-up to watch. The costumes were great, some of the contestants must have spent months working on them.

Lessons learned: Go out to eat, don't get the convention food unless you want a $7 ham and cheese sandwich. Bring water: Con water costs $3. Also, if you open your water bottle in line, there's a chance that the security people at the door will make you throw it away. It depends on who I guess. Snacks are good to have, I brought snack packets of fruits and nuts from Trader Joe's. Also, half of my messenger bag on Friday was taken up by a light jacket that I ended up not using. The building was comfortably air conditioned but not freezing cold.

I bought a pack of earplugs for the closing ceremony but didn't use them because I wanted to chat with people. I am thinking that was kind of a mistake.../half deaf afterward. I'm not all that familiar with Ozzy's discography, but I thought that both he and L80ETC were very good. Hung out afterward until closing time and then drove back home. Overall, BlizzCon was an absolute blast.