Blizzcon Debriefing

I got back from Blizzcon yesterday. It was my first time there, and generally a great time. I tweeted occasional things that happened, but I'll try to remember a few highlights.

The big draws for me were socializing and watching the Starcraft. I don't think I did too much that was specifically WoW-related. As people who know me at all can probably imagine, I knew I'd find the Q&A sessions to be frustratingly inane, and there was little hope of substantial new information with Cataclysm basically public already. The only presentation I spent some time was the Cinematics one, which was pretty interesting. I did go back and watch a some video of the class Q&A, and while my prediction about the quality of questions asked was borne out, some of the designers on that panel were good about giving straightforward and accurate answers which were nice to listen to.

Socializing:
I met many people from both my guild and the EJ community whom I'd never met before (and many whom I'd had). That was great--the only downside is how little time there was to talk to everyone. There was the usual restaurant/bar gathering all 3 evenings. Juggernaut had a big guild dinner on Friday--around 22 people at the Ruth's Chris near the convention center. Amusingly, Premonition was having a guild dinner at the same time right next to us. Xaviera has taken some picture of both, which are on the BB for those who read it. The traditional EJB flex pic is there as well, it looks like there are around 80 of us in it.

Starcraft 2:
I've watching a lot of Starcraft 2 since the summer, mostly online, once live (IEM at New York Comiccon), but this was really something else. I estimated around 1000 seats by the Starcraft stage [edit: people are telling me it was actually much more than this], and for the bigger matches there were people sitting in the aisles. And the crowd was seriously enthusiastic during the games, giving all kinds of cheering and applause as various things happened. It's hard to compare it to any other SC-watching experience because the atmosphere was so electric. A big part of it was the casting. The trio of the most famous SC2 casters (Day9/Tasteless/Artosis) are getting continually better at making the games accessible and entertaining, and a huge event like this should be a big step forward in making Starcraft as a sport more popular in the West.

Miscellaneous nerdism:
--I got an SC2 poster autographed by Day9, Tasteless, Artosis, TheLittleOne, NEXGenius, and a bunch of voice actors. Including the actor who played Deckard Cain, who, though not related to StarCraft, was the coolest one for me.
--The picture with NEXGenius (Korean SC pro and winner of the Blizzcon tournament) was amusing. My girlfriend and I were wandering around during the closing ceremony (didn't care that much about the concert, and it sounded much better over the feed than in the actual room anyway). She spotted a guy walking toward the exit with an oversize novelty check, and chased him down and accosted him. If not for her, he'd have gotten away from the con right then, but he wound up having to do around of autographs/photos with a little group of people that gathered right there.
--Speaking of autographs, I have to mention it made my weekend pretty awesome that someone asked for mine. A friend later pointed out that I probably could have gotten it to happen more often if I'd made myself a t-shirt of something that identified myself. As it stands, only EJB people really knew who I was, but there was one enthusiastic Druid at the flex pic who asked. (And since you're probably reading this right now <3, I remember you were a bit sheepish when asking, so hopefully you feel better when seeing how fanboyish I can be about Starcraft players!). The only problem is that I was so unprepared for this occurrence that I was quite incoherent in both what I said at the time and what I wrote.
--As far as SC celebrities go, you couldn't really get close enough to Boxer for a posed picture, but it still neat to watch him play from just outside the booth. The murmurs through the crowd when he was escorted up to his booth were pretty funny. There were Korean TV reporters with him as well, and some woman who I think was his wife that went to sit in the front row right outside his booth.
--As far as SC celebrities of a different sort, I briefly ran into Day9 and Tasteless's mother after one match. Someone next to me said "thank you for having your sons," which I though was an amusing compliment.
--Even though it makes no sense, I personally thanked Tasteless for GOMTV's having more matches at 1PM Korean/12AM EST.
--I ran into Ghostcrawler at a hotel bar late on Friday. I've talked to him occasionally via email, so meeting him in person was nice. I think I took a picture too (over the course of the weekend, I really got into the habit of spamming pictures of everything). We chatted briefly, but it wasn't really the time to talk about WoW.
--I did play some Diablo 3. It was . . . Diablo. I do look forward to when it comes out, but I think I may have outgrown being able to play a Diablo game the way I played Diablo 1 in middle school.

A few pictures:
--Boxer in his booth:
http://imgur.com/ptQbB.jpg
--FruitDealer in his:
http://imgur.com/A6Or6.jpg
--The SC2 caster trifecta:
http://imgur.com/8LQ9y.jpg
--SC2/WC3 championship rings:
http://imgur.com/gdhx3.jpg
--Replica of the Orc statue from Blizzard HQ:
http://imgur.com/8VA6g.jpg
--Piece of art from the charity auction. This one was at $3700 when I walked by:
http://imgur.com/iMF3l.jpg
--Main SC2 stage:
http://imgur.com/3XZKT.jpg
--NEXGenius being shown his ring by the trifecta:
http://imgur.com/KDcyH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/6I6PU.jpg
--Poster signing:
http://i.imgur.com/TMEWk.jpg

--Some cosplayers. There are better picture galleries of these around, but I occasionally grabbed a picture when I ran across one.
http://imgur.com/G4YHV.jpg (Lady Deathwhisper, I believe?)
D3 Monk, she won the costume contest:
http://imgur.com/bxbhH.jpg
One of my favorites, a Dark Templar (Selendis?):
http://imgur.com/mUZlw.jpg
I thought this Tree was pretty awesome:
http://imgur.com/xqPDO.jpg
--I couldn't entirely figure out who this was, but I figured I'd analyze the picture later:
http://imgur.com/1aRNi.jpg
Somehow I really liked this Draenei who was hanging out near the flex pic. Forgot to ask how she did the hooves:
http://imgur.com/GIPmV.jpg