Blizzcon, the annual festival of all things Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Diablo, etc…) was recently held in Southern California.  Rather than send some boring old grown-up to do the reporting, Gaming With Children went an entirely other direction – we sent a boy (and his mom).  Since they’re both avid World of Warcraft players, it seemed a natural fit.  Here’s his report!

Hi, I’m Aiden. On Friday, August 21, 2009, I was given the opportunity to go to Blizzcon as a reporter, thanks to the great guys at Gaming With Children. It was amazing! It was so big that the $175 tickets sold out in about a minute. If you weren’t in the queue to buy a ticket in the first thirty-seconds after they were available to the public, you didn’t get a ticket. However, I got to go for free as a Gaming with Children reporter! Blizzcon was held in four halls of the Anaheim Convention Center. Each hall had a different focus: World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, and the Performance hall.

The World of Warcraft hall had a demo of the new expansion, Cataclysm, as well as a tournament stage, professional gamer area, realm meetings area, and community tournaments area. It also had the Blizzard store, and booths for 3 Point Entertainment, Dell, Steel series, and Vasco. The coolest thing was a Frozen throne picture station and a big statue of Illidan.

Blizzard is releasing the third expansion to World of Warcraft called Cataclysm soon and they were allowing you to demo the new races: Worgan (like werewolf), and Goblin. Worgan is Alliance and Goblin is Horde. Our press passes let us come in through the exit and be immediately seated for the demo, I had to go twice because it was so much fun! They also had one of the booths do a demo of World of Warcraft, in 3-D! I liked playing Cataclysm because these kinds of games are a lot of fun and I liked what Blizzard did with the new expansion.

The next hall was Starcraft. The Starcraft hall had a game demo for the new game, Starcraft 2, a tournament stage, pro gamer and concessions areas, a Gyroscope ride, a statue of the Kerrigan, an information booth, an artist/developer signing area, a retro arcade, a noobz craft area, and booths for Intel, Nvidia, Razer, Epic prints, Future plus, Pocket books, Tokyo pop, DC comics, and Jinx. Starcraft 2 was a lot of fun to demo! I even got to destroy my mom in an online game! The Retro arcade had games from the SNES, NES, and computers that were playing old games like Diablo, rock and roll racing, Warcraft, and more. I had a lot of fun playing Starcraft 2 because I really like RTS games like Starcraft and Warcraft.

The third hall was Diablo. The Diablo hall had a game demo for the new game, Diablo 3, a DirectTV Broadcasting stage, a Panel discussion stage, concessions, an art gallery, a charity auction, Caricature art, temporary tattoos, face painting, an information booth and a Blizzard recruiting booth, an orc and wolf statue, and a dwarf statue, a drawing wall, and booths for Brady games, Fantasy Flight, Upper deck, Asus, Figure prints, Swag dog, Epic weapons, Kingston, Creative labs, and “The Guild”. Diablo 3 plays a lot like World of Warcraft, except that it isn’t MMO so you can’t play with 30,000 people but you can play with a few. One of the new features is a new class, The Monk. The Monk uses speed and fire to defeat his foes. Diablo 3 was a lot of fun because I have played many games like it and they were a lot of fun so I had some experience and I am looking forward to getting it.

The last hall was the performance hall. It had the main stage, concessions, and a Blizzard store. This was where the opening and closing ceremonies and costume and dance contests were held. During opening ceremonies they had the trailers for the two new games and the expansion! In closing ceremonies it was where Ozzy Osborne performed live (though I wasn’t able to see the performance). They also had raffles, giveaways, and games to win things like books, cards, games, and special items! They also had demos for other games like the Starcraft and World of Warcraft board games, World of Warcraft card game and Minis game, and the World of Warcraft adventure game. My Dad runs our local Warcraft Battleground and we play the card game together every week. It is a lot of fun to play as a family.

The press had a special room upstairs called the press room where Blizzard handed out press packets to the press. They also had snacks, lunch, dinner, and drinks for the press. It was really good food too! In the giant bag o’ swag there was a bookmark with a quest on it. The quest was to go to 5 different booths that are on a special map, and claim 5 fishing lures, and then get a prize. But, sadly I didn’t get to do the quest because I didn’t look at the time-frame for it and missed out. The drawing wall was for signing your World of Warcraft character’s name. I got to sign for my character Darkaiden!

I’m looking forward to getting all of the new games shown at Blizzcon! I had a lot of fun! I would like to thank Blizzard, for letting me go to Blizzcon, and Gaming with Children, for the press passes to Blizzcon. I would also like to thank my Mom for being my escort at Blizzcon. Thank You!

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