World of Warcraft Wednesday – Blizzcon ‘09, Day 2
So, the actual day of Blizzcon. Here’s a tip for future Blizzcon goers: Get there EARLY. Like, two hours before you want to get up early. I rolled up to the Convention Hall at about 8, thinking two hours should be plenty of time to meet up with my friend Johan and get to a good spot in line. Yeah, we ended up on the wrong end of a line that wrapped around the building and through the parking lot. On the plus side, I broke my water bottle.
This was, however, a good chance to check out all the costumes. There were the usual suspects in the crowd: Goku of the Kirin Tor, Guys in paper Thrall and Arthas masks and three piece suits, the dude with Giant skulls on his shoulders, people in gigantic costumes that obviously weren’t expecting to wait two hours in line.
This guy and girl were in line next to us, and it’s honestly a little disturbing to see a night elf talking on his cellphone.
We got in around 10:15, the line moved really quickly once they’d opened up the doors.
To my great shock, we got seats. 50 miles from the stage, mind you, but nonetheless, it was pretty incredible considering the amount of people standing around chairless seconds later.
So, as most of these things go, it starts off with the company patting itself on the back. Blizzard is the awesomest, most diverse, player friendly company in the whole world, some smug looking guy says. Everybody loves us! In fact, we have video here of everybody loving us! Thanks for coming! This is that smug guy:
Then, some younger, somehow even *more* smug guy comes out and insults the crowd by calling them all nerds, and spouts the same numbers and rhetoric as the last guy, but he does it while pacing more and louder. This is that guy:
Then they rolled out the big gun, Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s creative head and all around smuggest guy. If you ever have a gripe about how any of Blizzard’s games are made, he’s the one to gripe about. He also looks like how you might imagine Tony Stark if Tony Stark played video games all day instead of being Iron Man.
Most Blizzcon attendees, myself included, love Metzen for what he is. Though this image kind of makes him look like a creepy dictator.
They played a video hyping up the Monk class for Diablo III, which was pretty well done. But I don’t really care about Diablo III, and I couldn’t get any decent pictures of the screen, anyway. Then, after about a million lame “Cataclysm” puns and a shamed frown when he talked about the Internet leaks in the weeks leading up to Blizzcon, they finally rolled out the Cataclysm trailer, which I posted on the site a couple weeks back.
Needless to say, things don’t look to well for Azeroth.
In fact, they look downright Cataclysmic! (Sorry)
And there are Goblins
And Worgen:
And a goofy looking Deathwing.
We were invited to stay around for more info on the expansion after they got done wiping the smug off the stage.
So we did. And shockingly, we ended up moving up about fifty rows until we were practically sitting in the media section. A good portion of the crowd decided to mill around the exhibits rather than stay for the panel.
That Worgen art behind that guy’s head, by the way, was barely used after this panel. It’s in the program we got after the panel, but almost all the posters and media around Blizzcon were of the Goblin there.
This is apparently Chris Metzen’s favorite Warcraft Art. It’s a little hard to see shrunk down like this, but it’s Thrall and Cairne Bloodhoof saving a bunch of Horde babies. Which is sad considering that neither is going to be doing much any longer (Spoiler)
Here’s a feature list for the new expansion. Essentially, the idea is that people liked how zoning went in Northrend so much, that they could get away with doing a whole new expansion with minimal content additions. Of course, the whole old world is going to be phased out, so it’s not like it’s there’s going to be nothing to do.
But still…I’m going to miss Southshore. They also introduced the new races a little more. I’m sort of sad that I didn’t get a better picture of this, because the Worgen are dapper as fuck. It’s a little confusing, because they seem to have evolved into a 1920s Steampunk novel by removing themselves from society, whereas everyone else is still stuck in the dark ages.
And here’s their mount. Some sort of…pig dog.
Goblins, of course, we’ve already seen.
But their mount? Go-Karts? AWESOME. Look at Chris Metzen’s smug ass. He knows how cool this is.
Here’s a little look at how the world will be rezoned:
And a look more specifically at Uldum, the currently inaccessible southern part of Tanaris.
Even more specifically, here’s the loading screen for one of Uldum’s instances. Note the Egyptian vibe here. Uldum is basically Egypt, and the new NPC race that you can gain faction with are stone cat people.
Then there’s Deepholme, a place that doesn’t technically exist on Azeroth, but is accessible via a rift in the elemental plane caused by Deathwing. It’s the questing hub for all the new expansion content, kind of like Dalaran or Shattrath, but without the peace treaties.
Here’s a look at the map of Deepholme, which, by the way, will be WoW’s first fully subterranean zone.
And it’s location on the normal map. It’s awfully close to Stormwind.
One of the other questing zones that we’ll get to besides Uldum is Vashj’ir, a former Night Elf (now Naga) city that was home to Lady Vashj before the Sundering. It’s locate right near the Maelstrom, and thus might be a good place for an Azshara raid. It is also, by the way, WoW’s first fully underwater zone (which will have its own mounts).
An unfortunately grainy look at the Vashj’ir map.
Then there’s everybody’s favorite place to (now finally legally) visit: Mount Hyjal. For a place that was so important to lore, it’s nice to finally see them visit it. Also, Darkwhisper Gorge is apparently no longer a good place to farm Mithril.
What’s that? Malfurian’s back? And so is Ragnaros? Neat! Here’s a look at the map for Hyjal. Note that some places cannot be accessed by the ground and have to be flown to. Floating platforms, perhaps?
Last is the Twilight Highlands, home of what used to be Grim Batol, Deathwing’s old stronghold. They didn’t really drop that much info on it though.
Just that there would be a couple of instances in the city of Grim Batol itself.
There will also be a PvP zone like Wintergrasp, that will serve as a questing hub for whatever faction holds that zone. And, before you can even get accustomed to it, they’re taking Gilneas away from Worgen that have leveled out, and making it a battleground.
Of course that doesn’t really touch on the changes to all the old zones.
So forget what you remember about leveling your alts through the old world, because the pathing is going to be completely different this time around. Note that WPL is now a 30ish zone, and that there’s still nothing to do in Alterac, apparently.
Here’s a view of part of Kalimdor. The mobs in Thousand Needles have really been leveling up.
Auberdine 
I happened to bump into Chris Metzen on my way out of the Hall, and despite what this picture might tell you, he’s a really cool dude. Some people may have mixed feelings about what he’s doing in Cataclysm, but I like the guy.
I also ran into some blue ladies, that were paid to stand around the Hall entrance and take pictures with people. I think we caught that one mid sneeze. Sorry, blue lady.
I was NOT PREPARED for the giant statue of Illidan in the WoW Hall.
I was also not prepared for the level of junk going on here. For all the cool panels, little shops, and community tournaments, there was wall to wall crap on the floors. Most of the booths were worthless tech demos of graphics cards I wouldn’t buy or complicated WoW-based board games. It was pretty much what I expected, but still the low amount of swag being given away was a bit disappointing.
The most popular swag booth? The Upper Deck Elemental Game. Where they shot a bunch of pieces of paper at you, and if you caught the one that said “Spectral Tiger” you got a code to redeem the mount in the game. Of course there were allegations all weekend of cheating going both ways, the booth runners saying that players were picking up the cards before the game started and hiding them, the players saying that they were getting shafted out of their free mounts because the Upper Deck people were being tight wads. I didn’t get to play because the line for that thing was two hours long, minimum, every time I even got near it.
So instead I went to “The Guild” panel. I like “The Guild” just fine, and Felicia Day is pretty, but the panel was just kind of there. Almost every question was directed towards Ms. Day, so we got a lot of her answering the same question nine times while the other panelists fell asleep. Not really surprising, but what can you do? Somebody did ask her if her curtains matched her drapes, and alarmingly, she didn’t even know what that meant until someone explained it to her. The second most popular booth, by the way? The Guild Booth, where the cast gave out autographs all weekend. Once again, I didn’t bother.
Despite many warnings, I had lunch at the cafeteria there, and was actually pretty impressed at the prices. $8 for a chicken sandwich, fries and a drink might seem a bit much, but it’s about half of what I would’ve had to pay for the same meal at the airport, and probably twice as good.
Not many other places in the world you can run into this guy and not be phased.
This statue of Thrall riding a dog was *everywhere,* and apparently is Blizzard’s mascot statuary. I think it’s a fine statue, but in the end, it’s still just Thrall riding a dog.
I was able to catch the tail end of the new Class Panel that was running in the main conference Hall. The basic message? We’re getting rid of almost all the secondary stats. It’s a fine idea, but it kind of puts people who’ve been prepping their characters with stats in mind out on their ass. I mean, I play a pally tank a lot, and I’ve been stacking defense since God knows when. We get rid of defense, and suddenly, I’m just stacking stamina like everybody else.
We did get another look at some of the new class combos though. The Dwarf Shaman is the best.
After that, it was the costume contest, hosted by Jay Mohr. Jay started off the night pretty good, except for a weird stuttering monologue about his mom. As the night wore on though, I think he just started getting tired, and midway through the dance contest he kind of just said “Fuck it.” Three hours onstage trying to make a fat old guy doing Peon grunts in the sound contest will do that to you, I guess. DirectTV even stopped carrying it after the first hour or so.
Anyway, I took some pictures of the costume contest, but I was way in back again, so the pictures don’t really do it justice. Just look it up on YouTube. I will say that the Mistress of Pain costume was pretty amazing. I saw her out in the concourse too, and that thing was even badass up close.
I don’t even remember who won the sound alike contest, that’s the impact it had on me. But a guy doing Riverdance won the dance contest, so that’s all you need to know about that.
Next Week: The Grand Finale including a not so grand finale from Ozzy Ozborne.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Thank you for this post, I have learned a lot more now about WoW! Your book was an huge aid. I hope you will show more of your guides!.