Just a few short weeks ago, we sent our kid reporter on the scene (well, teenager now) to make his annual pilgrimage to BlizzCon (with his mom, of course).  Here’s what he thought of the action…

On October 21-22, 2011, Anaheim, California was flooded with Blizzard fanatics from around the world, there to see Blizzard’s world renowned convention: BlizzCon! Every year thousands of people around the globe gather in the Anaheim Convention Center for a sneak peak at what Blizzard is engaged in at the time, complete with panels, demos, and free stuff. I was among the crowd, weaving my way through the masses, toward the convention center, speculating about the new World of Warcraft expansion that I had heard nothing about yet.

As it turned out, the Warcraft expansion came as a complete surprise to me, (I had no idea what I was expecting).  The new expansion is called the Mists of Pandaria, and they took up half of an entire hall in the convention center with the demo for it. Blizzard’s Pandaria demo was a pre-alpha version of the first 11 levels of the new panda race: Pandaren, WoW’s first neutral race, and with it came the new class: Monk. I thought it was really cool to be able to choose your faction after level 10, and the description of the two factions was hilarious! The new monk class was also really cool. The monk is a martial-artist type character. It had a very Kung-Fu style feel and was a blast to play!

Blizzard also set up demos for Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. The Starcraft 2 demo featured both a multiplayer PVP mode, and a campaign mode that is part of the story. I found the campaign demo to be a lot of fun, being a big RTS fan, and had an invigorating story-line along with it, (and as a bonus I got to obliterate my mom in multiplayer).

The Diablo 3 demo was a short segment of the campaign that included the release of the female version of the Monk and the male version of the Demon Hunter classes. The story took place in a small town being invaded by the living dead, fun! The campaign was fun and absorbing, you felt really there as you played.

The other half of the convention was occupied by various booths for Blizzard sponsors. Blizzard has licensed Mega Blocks to do WoW building sets and they had a life-size model of Thrall. Cryptozoic had a card battle contest. Intel, Razor, Steelseries, Vasco, Nvidia and Antec were demoing their hardware. LG had a big booth for a 3D TV system and had free 3D demos going. Brady Games had their guides for sale. The Simon & Schuster’s booth had book signings with 3 different authors of Blizzard books there. Epic Weapons was showing their new L.A.R.P. battle hammer, J!nx had a lot of cool apparel. The Guild was there, signing autographs. Antec had a big raffle for a gaming PC.

Blizzard had no shortage of free stuff they were giving away. In addition to the swag bag, the Pandaria demo also had a contest that gave out a WoW Mists of Pandaria poster, and the Blizzard Store gave free stuff for completing a survey.

Blizzcon 2011 was my favorite convention of the last three years, and to top it all off, I got to see the Foo Fighters in LIVE concert! (and I got to go with my mom, but the concert was awesome). I would like to thank Blizzard as well as Gaming with Children for the opportunity to experience such an awesome event and for publishing my articles for the last five years.

Tags: Misc, Reader Reviews!