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Other – My BlizzCon
Adventure
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My
BlizzCon Adventure
Hello
friends! Although BlizzCon has gone and past, I wanted to share some
thoughts and photos of my adventure with you all. So here we go:
BlizzCon was
a fun little shindig – imagine if all of the nerds from Warcraft who have
spammed Barrens Chat are jammed into one place to be together to celebrate
their favorite game, and that’s the people you meet up with. Now, I must
say everyone was really cool and friendly and not just the internet nerds
you would have thought (but yes, there were nerds and jerks there).
Outside of the halls, waiting to get in to the
convention
In the hall,
waiting for Major Announcement for a new game.
Mike Morhaime announces Wrath of the Lich King
expansion.
As you entered the floor, you saw a
statue of Illidan made for E3. You were not prepared.
As you
entered from the lobby, there were two major floors you could grace. The
main floor, pictured above, is the Main Hall where they had panels and big
discussions concerning WoW and Starcraft II. The other Hall, separated by a
small connector where the sponsors and booths were, was connected to the
second Hall where all the gaming exhibits were for the expansion and
Starcraft II. My first stop was the BlizzCon Store to pick up all my swag
(including an awesome Starcraft II poster).
The BlizzCon
store – the holy mecca for new Blizzard products.
After that, I treaded over to the
Machinima booth and found Terran Gregory, famous for Return and Billy Maclure.
If you are a machinimator or just a fan, you should say hello to him – he is
an incredibly nice guy. I hope to see him again in the future.
Jo from
Blizzard, Me and Terran Gregory.
Before I
even came to BlizzCon, I knew one of the only reasons I wanted to go was to
try Starcraft II – so I went there next.
Concept
picture of Jim Raynor.
The
computers that you could play Starcraft II on.
A Protoss creating
a lot of Phase Cannons to destroy the noobs.
So I waited
in line for Starcraft for a little bit and finally got my hands on this
puppy. Here we go with my mini review:
Starcraft II
was amazing. For those of you out there who have had any experience with
Warcraft III, you will find the User Interface to be incredibly similar.
But plenty of new knick knacks have been added to make micromanagement
easier and simple. For example, you don’t have to Shift click buildings any
longer, as a Probe/SCV automatically follows your instructions from start
to finish. Also, when you create a Grouping, it adds the group to the top
of the interface panel. You also have everything from Warcraft III that
makes the User Interface amazing.
As far as everything looks, the graphics
are amazing. It runs incredibly smooth and is very polished for being so
early in the works. Both the Terrans and the Protoss feel very close to
their original play style in regular Starcraft and all the same units are
now amazing in 3D. All the new units are great for the Protoss (the
Colossus rock both in style and in game mechanics) and the Terrans feel
very intuitive (it is kind of unfortunate that some of it looks like
Warhammer 40K, but I still think it is cool).
All in all, I can’t wait to play in the
Beta or wait till retail. This game is going to rock your socks (Oh yes, I
want to try some Machinima for it too).
Back to
BlizzCon: I treaded around, stayed around for the music panel, ate some
crappy lunch that costs a major buck, ran into Oxhorn and said hello to him
before getting a call from Xfire to do a live chat with them.
They didn’t have a booth, so they resorted to
taking a space in the quiet lobby.
Jason Choi,
Jun Falkenstein and her actor for Snacky’s
Journal, Sam Pierce, Red Sky Foundry’s John and Ryan Ebenger sat down
and used some laptops to answer questions about Machinima and the future we
had in store for each of our projects. If you have been on my forum, you didn’t
miss anything incredibly different. If I get my hands on the transcript, I
will post it up.
Matt Gilman, Jun Falkenstein, and Snacky
John and
Ryan Ebenger
Overview of the Live chat
It was very
entertaining to see the viewer’s response for their Machinima love and I
was happy to give them answers to questions. I believe one of the questions
was the presence of Arthas in ASV series: my response was a positive “yes.”
After that, I was invited to hang out with Xfire, Jason Choi, and Red Sky
Foundry for dinner. Jason, John, and Ryan haven’t been working on major
Machinima lately because they have been spring boarded into real work from
their old Machinima works, but I still enjoyed talking to them and learning
of their exploits in the real gaming industry. Then I came back to the Con,
saw the Winning contest movies, the Costume contest, then jetted home.
Then I came
back the next day later in the day and saw the Legendary Pictures/Warcraft
movie discussion. It looks exciting, but by this picture, you can judge for
yourself:
World Tree?
Then I ran
into Myndflame, who was showing off some of Illegal Danish 2. They are also
very funny guys and really want to make Machinima a main stream video
function. They were sad that I wasn’t present at a party the previous
night, so I went ahead and decided I would hang out with all the
Machimators later. Anyways, I ended up running into Jun Falkenstein again
and the guys from WarcraftMovies. Jun and I had a long chat about
Machinima, Snacky’s Journal, ASV, and the film industry – she is awesome
and is incredibly knowledgeable about all things machinima and animation
(what can I say, she directed the freaking Tigger Movie!). After that, I
went to the Starcraft II booth two more times, then went to the concert.
The concert was good, Jay Mohr was entertaining (except the heckling by
stupid attendees), and the Level 70 ETC part was good. After that, I
stepped out, grabbed some more crappy food, then headed to grab some Murloc
figures from the store, and then, once again, back to the Starcraft II
booth. I just couldn’t get enough of that game!
Then I
waited for the concert to end and headed off to a little party with all of
the Machinimators. It was a grand ole time, as I caught up with Myndflame,
Warcraft Movies, Drewbie from Oblivious Films, “Rurikar” Rob, Oxhorn, Jun
Falkenstein, and Terran Gregory. Talk about a great way to end the Con; I
can’t wait to see them all again. Here is a picture below of all of us:
Front (L to
R): Johnnytrio, Jo from Blizzard, Ian Beckman, random guy that I saw sneak
in.
Second (L to R): Ryan from Red Foundry (Brothers Tauren), Terran from Rufus
Cubed (The Return) and now Blizzard, D.W.
from Myndflame, Oxhorn, Bragerminer (the voice of
Mr. Teeth).
Third (L to R): Brandon from Blizzard, Ezra from Rufus Cubed, Uzbeki from
WCM's, Gedan from WCM's, Poae, and Amanda
Peters (Rasi from Myndflame).
Fourth (L to R): Guy from Dead Worker's Party,
Clint (Gobbler from Myndflame), guy from WCM's, Jun
from Stone Falcon (Snacky), Rob from Witty Wizard (Time Gnomes), Matt from
Xfire, and the one and only Leeroy Jenkins with the glass in his hand.
Back (L to R): Not sure but I think a Blizzard guy, the guy from the
Blizzard DVD department on whom the villian in the South Park episode is
based, Me, Drew from Oblivious Films, Kris
Haughey (Basutei from Myndflame), Ben Bullock from Myndflame (Kiljoy).
Descriptions
provided by Poae and Gobbler from Myndflame, but the picture is mine.
And then I
went home because I was parked at Disneyland and it was 1 AM. All in all,
since it was my first convention, it was very entertaining. Blizzard needs
to start working on the next one because I can’t wait to go. HURRY UP! See
you at the next one because I can assure you I will be there.
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