Obviously with Blizzcon, I didn’t get much of a chance to talk about the patch arriving today. Hopefully the servers will be up within a couple hours, but I’m ever doubtful. At this point, I think it’s rather pointless to say too much about it. With the new talent trees designed for Wrath and level 80 characters, both PvE and PvP balance will inevitably be broken at level 70. So arenas and raiding through the end of TBC will work as a collective comedy. Hopefully the humor will have me roiling in laughter.

I know I am probably going to get stomped in arenas as a druid at 70. I’ll have no feral charge without sacrificing tons of restoration talents. I’ll have only 70% pushback resistance on my crowd control abilities. I’ll have a lifebloom that heals for much less than it did previously. And I’ll have a 51-point talent that is all but worthless in arena. Meanwhile some classes and specs are getting large increases to their burst potential. Oh, and improved tree of life is great, so long as I never face a warlock. With all of this in mind, I’m tempted to go feral. And I just might!

Then comes the headache of reworking my UI. Not only am I faced with the possibility that many of my mods will break, but also that I have procrastinated on reworking my UI to include: more comprehensive and noticeable cooldown tracking, better HoT timers, a less intrusive raid frame, and cleaner unitframes. Pretty much everything.

Oh, and I never finished farming herbs to level inscrption on an alt. Whoops!

More WoW Blizzcon Information

So you have my recap and review of Blizzcon in the three entries prior to this one. However, my entries don’t provide information of every detail from every panel and event. Because of this, I’d like to make some recommendations:

• MMO Champion. They have recaps of each day as well as an overview, and I noticed they were the quickest to provide accurate, detailed and aggregated information.
• WoW Insider has some unique articles from various different people.
• For further information concerning the 3v3 tournament, I recommend watching the replays on the the official Blizzcon site.

The nice thing about Blizzcon, in comparison, is that Blizzard owns all of the floor space for the convention. They can easily allot certain areas for specific events and demos, without worrying about competition for booth space. If they think one demo is going to be hugely popular, they can simply expand its size.

At the start of this year’s Blizzcon, it seemed to me there would be too many people. The line to get into the convention was massive. And, knowing Blizzard had decided to sell more tickets as consolation for the technical problems that overwhelmed their ticket processing system, I feared the entire convention would be overly packed and that I would not enjoy myself as a result. However, the convention’s attendance was very frontloaded. After the opening ceremony, the number of people slowly dwindled over the course of its two days.

The opening ceremony was perhaps a little too generic for my liking. Mike Morhaime as president of the company is perhaps a natural choice for helping to kick off the convention, but he plays the role much as a businessman would. He has a genuine appreciation for Blizzard’s customers, and I can respect him for it, but his delivery is too bland to keynote such a great convention for a company that has influenced PC gaming so profoundly. He definitely should speak during the opening ceremony, but someone with more flair and flavor should set the tone for the event.

I feel it would be unfair of me to speak poorly of the WoW panels. Wrath is, afterall, close to completion and most of its information has already been discussed by developers on the beta forums. However, it would be nice if something eye-opening could be included in each major panel. For example, the art panel included a screen shot of the new Dalaran rooted in the ground at its old location. While I’m not sure this will make it into the game at any point, it’s nice to see examples of things the teams have been working on. In this regard, I wished the class team had covered some ideas that have been too awkward to put into the game in its current state.

As far as the WoW tournament goes, I am rather content with it as a spectacle. You have two teams playing on one stage alongside the announcers, underneath large screens showing three different angles of the action. However, a practical tournament it is not. The teams can hear everything the announcers are saying, being right next to them and out in the open. In some ways, this can be played as an advantage, if something is announced that could aid a team. However, if the announcers make an error on something, it could also become a disadvantage. Either way, the setup has a major effect on the tournament’s results. As one idea, you could have each team in a soundproof booth, as is done for Starcraft. However, with the teams concealed in sonic isolation, the amount of spectacle involved would be diminished.

Needless to say, the style of tournament seen at large events and conventions is much different than those of the smaller scale tournaments that have a mind for the proximity of teams to each other and the announcers. That said, the announcers, vhell and TooGood, did a great job. Some people say they were too soft on Hafu, but I guess they weren’t paying attention when the announcers related how they felt she had played poorly. Surely, they were shaky for a few of the matches, but I don’t think anyone could announce each match with utter perfection.

Starcraft 2 proved to be incredible in its first tournament. However, it’s left to be seen how open the final product is to rush strategies. This early in its development of competitive play, it’s difficult to say if it’s immune to such strategies or if people simply haven’t figured them out, yet. This was the first tournament and the game hasn’t even gone into beta, afterall.

Diablo 3 showed itself to still be early in the development stage. However, its showing at the convention was impressive. With environmental interaction, smoother graphics than its predecessor, a much more comprehensive skill tree, and an expanding amount of lore, it holds great promise. However, it’s left to be seen if its replayability is higher than that of Diablo 2. This is something I don’t think anyone will know until after release, far into the future.

The closing ceremony was what I expected. Though having two comedians I think is pushing it. I always thought comedy was best done for television or in front of smaller, more intimate audiences. One thing I think the closing ceremony was lacking was that last big revelation–perhaps a cinematic no one has seen, or a small clip hinting at what is to be fully announced in the future. This would have given the convention the truly dramatic close it deserved. Not to steal from the thunder of Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan, or Video Games Live, but novelty doesn’t provide the biggest bang.

Perhaps my biggest complaint about the event was the way things were scheduled. Various matches of the WoW tournament coincided with WoW panels. And the same happened for Starcraft’s tournament and panels. This meant you’d be missing panels for a game if you wanted to attend various matches of its tournament. I’d hope next year the panel and tournament schedules could accommodate each other. But it seems almost impossible to manage without adding a third day to the convention.

Overall, however, Blizzcon is one of the best conventions I’ve ever been to. And, living in Silicon Valley, believe me when I say I’ve been to many. For one, Blizzcon’s focus is small enough that a person attending can feel as though they’ve come away with a broad experience encompassing all of the products highlighted at the convention, or at least the product(s) of interest to the person. For another, Blizzard doesn’t use the convention merely as a glorified store to sell its products, but also as a stage on which to celebrate them. For all my criticisms, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had at an industry show and I will definitely attend next year.

–Lume

Again, I’d like to note I am not a member of the press. I did not feel obligated to cover Blizzcon in an informative manner. I had originally planned to attend every panel and report new and relevant information, but knowing it would be broadcast on DirectTV and WCRadio, I decided not to sacrifice my individual enjoyment of the convention. Furthermore, after day one, I realized there was hardly anything new to be said of WoW given how close Wrath is to being released.

Day Two of Blizzcon

Having realized there was hardly anything new to be said of WoW in the panels, other than small tidbits like Dalaran’s placement in Hillsbrad during the art panel, I decided I would catch the rest of the 3v3 tournament. A guildie, his friend and a I got there early to get front row seats. We also managed to talk to the announcers of the tournament, vhell (Jared Coulston) and TooGood (James Harding). vhell talked a bit about his raiding experience with Nurfed and why he swore it off. Then we talked about some of the matches from day one. While I found TooGood shaky for the selective queuers and Council of Mages match, they were both fairly strong during the rest of the tournament. Also, when talking retrospectively, they showed a better understanding outside the course of casting the matches. It’s gotta be a tough job to accurately depict what’s going on as it happens.

TooGood expressed how he was relieved to have so much time between a couple of the matches. He went to play Diablo 3 and said he was hopefully going to be able to skip the line with an exclamation to the staff of “Don’t you know who I am!?” When he got back to announce the next event, he made a joke in his introduction about how they didn’t let him “jump the queue.”

The first round I attended was the lower bracket final between fnatic Orz and selective queuers (SQ). This was a war/lock/druid (WLD) mirror match. Orz was clearly playing better than they did the day before, but they were still playing poorly. SQ was really aggressive going straight into combat at the start, which is abnormal for WLD mirrors. Normally, the two locks sit back and dance LOSing and DoTing. But Gumbot (SQ’s lock) just went in aggressively, forcing the warriors into the battle.

• In the first match, Rhaegyn (Orz’s war) dropped early by a charge and bash from Wojo (SQ’s druid) onto Hafu (Orz’s druid) after early pressure. SQ went up 1-0.
• In the second match, all three from Orz were pressured early, but Hafu managed to escape and top them entirely. From there, they pushed Yog (SQ’s war) hard while Wojo was in a cyclone and took him down for the win, bringing it to 1-1.
• In the third match, Hafu was pushed hard again at the start, but all players from both teams managed to get away and essentially reset the match. Hafu also managed to find the time to top her mana to full, leaving Wojo (SQ’s druid) with a disadvantage. But the match was pretty even for a few minutes after the reset and eventually SQ caught Hafu off-guard out in the open with nightfall up. SQ went up 2-1.
• In the fourth match, Orz pushed Wojo with Glickz putting up DoTs and Rhaegyn switching to him with full rage early and burned him down quickly. Once he was down, Hafu charged and bashed for the kill, meaning Orz tied it up 2-2.
• In the fifth match, Hafu was feared into a corner of the Nagrand map which allowed SQ to switch to her and push her down hard, giving SQ the match and the round at 3-2.

After the Orz and SQ match, I then attended the grand finals of Nihilum Plasma against SQ. I expected SQ to come away with the first round, given the momentum they had coming out of the lower bracket finals. However, SQ lost their focus in the last match. With the pressure of $75,000 sitting on each team’s shoulders, it was really a matter of who could play with more composure, and Nihilum proved that in the last match. The round was again a WLD mirror.

• In the first match, SQ pushed Carekoala (Nihilum’s druid) down hard for the win. So SQ went up 0-1. This was a testament to the momentum SQ had coming into the final and why I thought they’d win the first round.
• In the second match, Nihilum pushed Wojo hard for almost a kill. But Wojo managed to LOS a cyclone from Koala. SQ then retaliated with a push that killed Inflame (Nihilum’s lock). So SQ then went up 0-2.
• But Nihilum shook off the rust in the third match and played evenly with SQ. In the end, Gumbot was pushed hard and taken down after a long match. So the round was now 1-2 in SQ’s favor.
• In the fourth match, SQ managed to survive a hard push on both Yog (SQ’s war) and Wojo. This forced Wojo to try to top both him and Yog, which gave SQ an opportunity to switch their focus to Gumbot and taken him down while Wojo was focusing his HoTs elsewhere. So Nihilum evened up the round to 2-all.
• In the final match, SQ pushed Koala early, but Wojo had a resisted or LOS’d cyclone that ruined their push. Following this, Wojo was burned hard and taken down, giving Nihilum the win and crowning them the 2008 Blizzcon champions.

Of interesting note, SQ went into the finals unsponsored. They made a good run at the championship on a difficult stage. With the way Blizzcon is set up, there are a lot of distractions. For one, the announcers sit right next to the players and they can clearly hear the announcers’ vocal perspective of the action. As vhell and TooGood said in conversation with my guildie and I between matches, it would be ideal for the teams to play in soundproof booths, like they do for StarCraft, but this has not been the case for the WoW tournament. So even though SQ went into the tournament unsponsored, they should come out of it with some offers.

After the final, I walked the floor for a while and then came back for the China versus Nihilum exhibition match. World Elite (WE) was the team sent in from China. However, apparently, there was a visa issue with their normal mage and they had to recruit someone who could come to the U.S. That said, I would have expected them to find a decent mage. But it quickly became evident that they were outclassed by Nihilum. Nihilum went so far as to even play three different comps against them.

• In the first match, WE played RMP with the mage in PvE gear and the rogue specced mutilate. Nihilum played their usual WLD. Nihilum forced an early ice block from Arthess of WE. Once the block was up, they switched to Yay, the priest, and took him down quickly.
• In the second match, Nihilum switched to playing war/mage/druid, with Inflame playing the warrior and Paperkat (Nihilum’s normal war) playing the mage. WE pressured Inflame early, who kited around in defensive stance to avoid getting burned by the shatter combo. Once the shatter was avoided they then pressured Suky (WE’s rogue) and brought him down.
• In the third match, Nihilum switched to playing double war/druid. They first pressured Arthess and then feared him and the elemental to mitigate some of the shatter combo. They then forced him to block by pressuring him slowly. They had their shields out for spell reflects and to mitigate any possible damage while the mage’s cooldowns were still up. Once they had forced the CD’s from the mage and polymorph was on DR, they then switched to Yay and took him down.

This was a laugher to say the least. I hope it’s not the best China has to offer. However, I do understand that they are fairly isolated from the style of competition that goes on in the EU and American tournaments and brackets. Either way, it’s not a great first showing from China. Paperkat went so far as to joke about it saying, “I heard Chinese people were really good at video games.”

After the match, I rushed over to the second class discussion, knowing it would be absolutely packed. I only went in hopes that the Q&A would be more intelligent than the previous day, and that I would get a chance to ask a question. The panel itself was pretty much exactly the same. They added a few more details here and there about some of their decisions, however. For example, they explained why they changed rune carving and implemented death runes (which are universal runes triggered as talents). They simply didn’t want people carving only one rune type and using only a couple abilities tied to those runes. So they made the runes static and implemented death runes as an alternative.

They also explained why they made some buffs redundant. To quote Greg Street, he said they didn’t want the rogue to “go home if he has no windfury.” Which is certainly an admirable intention, and there are some buffs and abilities that definitely needed toning down. But I’ll hold my judgment and wait until I see how it all plays out in 3.0 and Wrath itself. I definitely have my doubts, many of which I have explained in previous blog entries.

The Q&A for this panel was much more interesting. However, I was a little miffed. For all the other panels I attended in room 204, the Q&A line was down the center aisle. However, for this panel, it was off to the right side of the audience. So I ran to the middle aisle and then had to double back. The Q&A session ended with me standing third in line. (Argh!) Alas, I will have to make my case for nourish being too similar to regrowth in my blog. That said, the questions were much more intelligent than they were during the first day’s class panel. Perhaps this was because the diehard fans made sure to find their way to this one early.

After the class panel, I made may way down to the store to buy some items for a guildie. From there, I watched Nihilum play the winner of Blizzard’s in-house tournament (their European team). Blizzard actually played resto shaman, warrior and retadin (a strange comp for tournaments). The first two matches went to Nihilum no contest, with them playing rogue/lock/mage for the first match and burning down Blizzard’s warrior in about a second. In the second match, Nihilum played double warrior/mage and took down Blizzard’s shaman quickly. TooGood then convinced Nihilum to play 2v3 (war/druid) against Blizzard, which Blizzard ended up winning after a few minutes (Koala actually managed to live through a bloodlust). After that, the last match went back to 3v3 with Nihilum playing war/mage/druid. Nihilum was dominating, but Koala left the arena when Blizzard’s war went down and Inflame left once Blizzard’s shaman went down, prompted by TooGood to make it interesting. So it was left to a duel between Paperkat’s mage and Blizzard’s retadin. The paladin almost had Paperkat, and would have if he hadn’t used bubble earlier. Of course, however, Nihilum came away with the win. An amusing round, nonetheless.

Finally, I went to the closing ceremony. Kyle Kinane was the opening comedian. His humor is very dry and I’m not a fan of it. Patton Oswalt’s material was much more fitting for the crowd at Blizzcon. Even though he doesn’t play any of Blizzard’s games, he was able to make jokes about people in the crowd and about geekdom in general. Beware the great punishment disk in the sky! On top of this, he went with some of his usual material, which works well for any audience. So it turned out well. After the comedy, Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan (Blizzard’s in-house band) played. Being a metal band, I’m not a big fan. Their music is essentially a cheeky novelty for those who play Blizzard’s games, especially since Mike Morhaime (Blizzard’s president) and Samwise (Blizzard’s art director) themselves are in the band. So it definitely works, but I can’t stand metal, so I headed over to the WoW tournament stage to prepare plans for dinner. I did want to see Video Games Live, but that would mean having a two-hour wait for dinner after the convention and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to meet again with some of the guildies I had never met in person before the con.

Overall, though, the last day was great fun.

First and foremost, I’ll note I am not a member of the press. I did not feel obligated to cover Blizzcon in an informative manner. I had originally planned to attend every panel and report new and relevant information, but knowing it would be broadcast on DirectTV and WCRadio, I decided not to sacrifice my individual enjoyment of the convention for the sake of information that would already be accessible before I could even provide it.

I do, however, want to provide an account and opinion of the overall experience from the perspective of a blogger who probably knows more about WoW than most people.

Day One of Blizzcon

The convention was only about a twenty-minute drive away from where I was staying at a guildie’s place in Irvine. I decided we should get there around nine, an hour before Blizzcon was scheduled to open. We made the mistake of standing in line, even though pretty much anyone could simply walk in through one of a hundred doors leading into the convention. The line was very impressive to see, however. I called it “the line to get into the line for the Line Ride.”

The first event I attended was the opening ceremony. A guildie of mine saved me a seat. Because the seats were all on the same level of ground, it was incredibly difficult to see the stage unless you were close up. But the huge screens were able to clearly display the mild demeanor of Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s president.

Morhaime began by recounting the history of Blizzcon. The first Blizzcon, in 2005 had around 8,000 attendees. By comparison, this one had 15,000 from 27 different countries. However, a Blizzard employee told me the number of actual attendees was probably more likely to be around 18,000 people.

Some general information concerning the upcoming events of the convention was also covered. Starcraft 2 was going to have its first official tournament. The game wasn’t ready for beta, but every Blizzcon attendee will have access to the beta once it begins. For Diablo 3, the announcements were more profound. It was noted that we would come up against an old familiar foe from the original Diablo: King Leoric. The Wizard class was also revealed.

There was nothing new about Wrath announced during the opening ceremony. With Wrath and SC2 already having had their times in the limelight, I imagine Blizzard wanted to use its stage to highlight Diablo 3. Understandably so, considering how good the game looks this early in development.

After the opening ceremony, I attended the UI panel. This was probably a mistake on my part, as there was nothing interesting of note other than an explanation of the design process behind various elements of the user interface. However, it was pretty amusing to reminisce about the changes made to the DK character portrait throughout the alpha and beta.

Next, I attended the class discussion. This was presented by Tom Chilton (Kalgan) and Greg Street (Ghostcrawler). There was really nothing new announced during this panel and much of what was addressed had already been explained on the beta forums. However, they did note how they wanted to change talent trees to emphasize “style” instead of “role.” Also, they justified the changes to threat saying they wanted to make healing and coordination more important than threat. This is why threat scales so well now in the beta.

Much more interesting than both the class and the UI panels was the art panel. Their presentation included humorous slides and videos, as well as teasers for potential content. Most notably, they showed a picture of Dalaran planted in the ground. During the Q&A, when someone asked if the picture was indicative of the possibility that we could see Dalaran as part of an instance in the Caverns of Time, someone on the art team replied “maybe.” Whether or not that means there are actual plans for such, I don’t know. Also intriguing was seeing the design process and artistic progress of various zones, mobs, and instances.

After the art panel, there was nothing left on the WoW schedule for day one. While I do plan to get Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 when they are released, I decided to skip their respective panels in favor of WoW’s 3v3 tournament. The loser bracket semi-final between selective queuers (SQ) and Council of Mages (CoM) was the first match I attended. Being the champions of the 2008 Worldwide Invitational and the top Korean team, people expected great things from CoM. However, SQ swept them with ease. While others would say the matches were close, I disagree. SQ was put into a couple dangerous situations, but these were nothing a rogue/lock/druid (RLD) comp couldn’t work their way out of with smart play. To put it bluntly, I think CoM got stomped, leaving only Europeans and Americans as the real contenders.

• All matches were CoM playing rogue/mage/priest (RMP) versus SQ’s RLD. SQ normally plays war/lock/druid (WLD) and decided RLD was a better comp against RMP.
• In match 1, SQ pressured Snowstorm (CoM’s mage) hard and forced two quick blocks before he was taken down after several minutes. While a long match, it doesn’t necessarily mean CoM was ever in control.
• In match 2, SQ pressured Snowstorm again. However, they found him a little more difficult to take down as CoM had adapted their strategy. He managed to survive with a bandage and a heal after both blocks had been used, but was still taken down.
• In match 3, SQ changed their strategy and focused Student (CoM’s rogue). I suppose this was to prevent further adaptation by CoM. In any case, it worked and SQ swept.

After SQ v. CoM came the upper bracket final between Orz and Nihilum Plasma. This was a WLD mirror match. I expected it to be a good round, but I was proven wrong. Nihilum easily took out Orz 3-1, though Orz did put up a fight in the last two matches.

• In the first match, Hafu (Orz’s druid) ran out of mana and Rhaegyn (Orz’s warrior) was dropped by Nihilum in that time. Nihilum almost won early pressuring Hafu, but she managed to escape a few times. Nihilum almost lost when the pressure was put onto Paperkat, but he managed to escape behind a pillar with Carekoala (Nihilum’s druid).
• In the second match, Rhaegyn got out of position for a while and this caused him to drop relatively early, giving Nihilum the win.
• In the third match, Inflame (Nihilum’s warlock) was caught out of position and taken down quickly by Orz.
• The fourth match was rather long. Nihilum pressured Hafu ferociously, but Glickz (Orz’s warlock) and Rhaegyn helped her peel a few times. However, the damage was done and she died after running out of mana, giving Nihilum the win and guaranteeing them a slot in the finals.

This was the end of day one for me, though I did get a chance to play Diablo 3 before it was over. I went out to eat with guildies after the events had finished and then rested up for day two.

In any case, here’s a quick recap of my day two experience:

• Attended the loser bracket finals of WoW arena tournament. Orz vs. Selective Queuers.
  • SQ won 3-2.
• Attended the finals. Nihilum Plasma vs. Selective Queuers. Plasma needed one round to win. SQ two.
  • Nihilum won 3-2.
• Attended the China vs. Nihilum match. Nothing to say. World Elite (the Chinese team) ran RMP (rogue, mage, priest). Nihilum stomped all over them in three matches with three different comps, including a double war and druid comp.
• Attended the second class panel. It was essentially the same as the main panel from day one. I was going to try to ask a question, but I was third in line when they called it
  • More intelligent questions today, but only one unexpected answer, really. Devs responded to a question sounding like they’d consider making the excorcism glyph effect usable on players (as an interrupt).
• Watched Nihilum vs. winners of the Blizzard internal tournament.
  • Nihilum stomped on them the first two games. Then went 2v3 and lost. But came back to win the last.
• Then attended the closing ceremony. Nothing new, again. Comedians. L80ETC and Video Games Live. Fairly generic. (But fun.)

These notes lack details. Some interesting. Some frivolous. I won’t be able to post a full assessment of the event (from my perspective) until tomorrow or Monday, depending on when I get back home.

• The line to get in grew to an enormous size.

• Opening ceremony was fairly generic, but entertaining. Wizard class for D3 announced.
• UI panel was extremely simple.
  • Talked about progression of achievement interface design.
  • Went through the alpha and beta iterations of DK potrait pane.
  • Changed the menu bar for more flexibility.
• Class discussion covered nothing new that hasn’t been reported on World of Raids.
  • But re-confirmation that dual speccing will be implemented in the near future.
  • Brief talk about how sharing too many abilities across classes is bad (in the context of tanks, in reference to druids getting a last stand-like ability, but not SW).
• Art panel was interesting.
  • They showed a picture of Dalaran in the ground. When someone asked if it would possibly by a CoT instance in the future, someone on the team paused and replied, “Maybe.”
• 3v3 tournaments were awesome to watch. But I think the announcer was really shaky for the Selective Queuers v. Council of Mages matches.
• D3 plays like Diablo should. Didn’t get much time to try it out.
• My camera’s batteries suck, so pictures of the first day are lacking.

More tomorrow. Sorry this doesn’t say much. I will do a more extensive write-up of the experience on Monday (I hope Monday, at least). Nothing really new to talk about, anyway. But I was hoping to get more pictures.