E
Eldorian
Guest
Because I didn't get back to my hotel until midnight Sunday after the event and had to pack and leave early Monday I wasn't able to get a recap of Sunday's event until today. I'm still in the process of getting all of the videos and photos up and hope to have everything completed by the end of the week for the full coverage of the event. Anyway, here is my recap of what I did and saw on Sunday.
Started out with me arriving at the center at 9 AM, this time the crowd is much much less in the front gates, probably only 1/6th of what we saw lined up on Saturday. I arrived at the press door just a couple minutes before the doors opened and was able to head to the Blizzard store and be one of the first in line to get my swag for the day since I missed out the day before. Bought several shirts and some posters and wanted to get the Blizzard Authenticator. Unfortunately the Authenticator was sold out in the first 2 hours on Saturday, guess they underestimated the popularity!
After I got my swag I walked around and started taking pictures of the venue (which you can see in the photo gallery) - during this time I also got a chance to finally play StarCraft 2 which I have to say is an amazing game and seemed a lot more polished than Wrath of the Lich King (which I will get to later). I then vegged out and listened a bit to the Diablo 3 world lore and environment art panel.
Once that was over I headed downstairs and video taped the WoW Raids and Dungeons Panel. At that panel we got revealed 3 new dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King - The Occulus, The Halls of Stone, and Caverns of Time: The Culling of Stratholme.
For the next couple hours I walked around and checked out the area I bit more and explored. I also mingled a bit with the other fansites talking about the days festivities. Nothing too exciting really, I did notice at this time that the crowds weren't nearly as heavy as they were the day before. I did find out they had a couple Guitar Hero stations set up so you could play the new Guitar Hero 3 downloadable content "I am Murloc" which was really awesome to play, but then again I'm a huge guitar hero fan anyway.
I then ventured over to the PvP panel where we learned about the new battlground (Normandy Beach anyone?), the new Siege weapons (which I am totally excited about), and the new arenas. We also learned about Wintergrasp, the first non instanced world pvp zone which will be in Northrend. After the PvP panel I rushed down to the press conference we were having and I should have a video up of the press conference either sometime late tonight or sometime Wednesday (it is currently rendering at the moment).
I then realized that I had not played Wrath of the Lich King yet while out there. I had attempted to on Saturday but the game was down for something like 6 hours which is very unfortunate. I was able to play on Sunday and I do have to say playing the Death Knight is a lot of fun. It plays kind of like the Paladin... but actually fun. Of course holy is replaced by unholy, so you tend to kill things a lot faster which is nice. Just think of the Death Knight as an anti-paladin, which makes sense if you think of the lore behind them.
I have to say though, while I am very excited about Wrath of the Lich King and what it's going to bring, I was not overly impressed with what was shown on the floor. I thought they would have a lot more to see and do, so that leads me to believe that we may not be as close to a release date or beta release as I first thought. Then again they might be hiding some of the things from us, but it still didn't feel very polished to me. I should have some details on the Death Knights and their abilities and talents sometime later this week, I took a lot of notes while playing and still need to process them all into a legible article.
The closing ceremonies was about to begin and we got to see the Tournament winners announced... everyone was surprised that the Koreans won practically everything again (ok, not really). L70ETC had their concert and did a 5 song set (Power of the Horde, Rogues Do it from Behind, Terran Up the Night, I am Murloc, Raise Some Hell). After each song they leveled up 2 levels so by the end of the night they were now known as 780ETC. The best comment during the concert though was when Samwise made the comment about playing a song about another world, he was referring to the song Terran Up the Night. He then said the song was about the world of Starcraft... the crowd cheered. He asked how many people out there would want to play a game called World of Starcraft? The crowd cheered even louder. He responsed "Nobody? Well hell, let's cancel that game then. 4 years of development down the drain."
The night ended with Video Games Live - a special one that was Blizzard related. The symphony played all the Blizzard songs from the major cinematics while the cinematics played on the huge screen behind them Was very impressive and relaxing to watch.
I had a great time at this event, even though it was extremely tiring. The Blizzard employees treated everyone very well, and while the event seemed a bit disorganized in some instances, I still feel the European team did a great job of putting the event together and I'm sure if given the chance again they will learn from the mistakes they did make.
The only bad deal I had the whole time out there was returning to the States and going through customs. They opened up my bag and took out my Nintendo DS and a few other items. As I was on my plane back to KC I noticed my Nintendo DS was never put back in my bag and that's pretty upsetting. Guess they needed my Nintendo DS to protect America /sarcasm.
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Started out with me arriving at the center at 9 AM, this time the crowd is much much less in the front gates, probably only 1/6th of what we saw lined up on Saturday. I arrived at the press door just a couple minutes before the doors opened and was able to head to the Blizzard store and be one of the first in line to get my swag for the day since I missed out the day before. Bought several shirts and some posters and wanted to get the Blizzard Authenticator. Unfortunately the Authenticator was sold out in the first 2 hours on Saturday, guess they underestimated the popularity!
After I got my swag I walked around and started taking pictures of the venue (which you can see in the photo gallery) - during this time I also got a chance to finally play StarCraft 2 which I have to say is an amazing game and seemed a lot more polished than Wrath of the Lich King (which I will get to later). I then vegged out and listened a bit to the Diablo 3 world lore and environment art panel.
Once that was over I headed downstairs and video taped the WoW Raids and Dungeons Panel. At that panel we got revealed 3 new dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King - The Occulus, The Halls of Stone, and Caverns of Time: The Culling of Stratholme.
For the next couple hours I walked around and checked out the area I bit more and explored. I also mingled a bit with the other fansites talking about the days festivities. Nothing too exciting really, I did notice at this time that the crowds weren't nearly as heavy as they were the day before. I did find out they had a couple Guitar Hero stations set up so you could play the new Guitar Hero 3 downloadable content "I am Murloc" which was really awesome to play, but then again I'm a huge guitar hero fan anyway.
I then ventured over to the PvP panel where we learned about the new battlground (Normandy Beach anyone?), the new Siege weapons (which I am totally excited about), and the new arenas. We also learned about Wintergrasp, the first non instanced world pvp zone which will be in Northrend. After the PvP panel I rushed down to the press conference we were having and I should have a video up of the press conference either sometime late tonight or sometime Wednesday (it is currently rendering at the moment).
I then realized that I had not played Wrath of the Lich King yet while out there. I had attempted to on Saturday but the game was down for something like 6 hours which is very unfortunate. I was able to play on Sunday and I do have to say playing the Death Knight is a lot of fun. It plays kind of like the Paladin... but actually fun. Of course holy is replaced by unholy, so you tend to kill things a lot faster which is nice. Just think of the Death Knight as an anti-paladin, which makes sense if you think of the lore behind them.
I have to say though, while I am very excited about Wrath of the Lich King and what it's going to bring, I was not overly impressed with what was shown on the floor. I thought they would have a lot more to see and do, so that leads me to believe that we may not be as close to a release date or beta release as I first thought. Then again they might be hiding some of the things from us, but it still didn't feel very polished to me. I should have some details on the Death Knights and their abilities and talents sometime later this week, I took a lot of notes while playing and still need to process them all into a legible article.
The closing ceremonies was about to begin and we got to see the Tournament winners announced... everyone was surprised that the Koreans won practically everything again (ok, not really). L70ETC had their concert and did a 5 song set (Power of the Horde, Rogues Do it from Behind, Terran Up the Night, I am Murloc, Raise Some Hell). After each song they leveled up 2 levels so by the end of the night they were now known as 780ETC. The best comment during the concert though was when Samwise made the comment about playing a song about another world, he was referring to the song Terran Up the Night. He then said the song was about the world of Starcraft... the crowd cheered. He asked how many people out there would want to play a game called World of Starcraft? The crowd cheered even louder. He responsed "Nobody? Well hell, let's cancel that game then. 4 years of development down the drain."
The night ended with Video Games Live - a special one that was Blizzard related. The symphony played all the Blizzard songs from the major cinematics while the cinematics played on the huge screen behind them Was very impressive and relaxing to watch.
I had a great time at this event, even though it was extremely tiring. The Blizzard employees treated everyone very well, and while the event seemed a bit disorganized in some instances, I still feel the European team did a great job of putting the event together and I'm sure if given the chance again they will learn from the mistakes they did make.
The only bad deal I had the whole time out there was returning to the States and going through customs. They opened up my bag and took out my Nintendo DS and a few other items. As I was on my plane back to KC I noticed my Nintendo DS was never put back in my bag and that's pretty upsetting. Guess they needed my Nintendo DS to protect America /sarcasm.
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