Blizzcon 2009 Wrap-Up

So Blizzard Entertainment held the 4th annual Blizzcon this weekend. The convention featured panels, tournaments, and interviews, regarding the 3 big Blizzard game franchises; Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo.

They started the festivities off on Friday morning at the opening ceremony, where all of the big figures at Blizzard, including Mike Morheim and Chris Metzen. They started the show by unveiling the new Monk class for Diablo 3, of which they showed an in game cinematic, and gameplay. But that wasn't the big announcement at the ceremony for most of us now what it?

That's right, i'm talking about World of Warcraft:Cataclysm, the third expansion to the game we all know and love. They showed an in-game trailer, showcasing many of the expansions new features, which include:

-New Horde Race:Goblins
-New Alliance Race:Worgen
-Azeroth re purposed and completely redesigned(both in a visual, and a gameplay way)
-Level cap raised to 85
-Completely new zones, 7 in total. There will be 2 new starting zones for each of the new races, plus 5 other new zones, most of which are for high level players to explore and quest in.
-Hundreds of new quests and items.
-New dungeons and raids.
-2 original dungeons reworked as 5 man heroics for level 85 players. These instances will be Shadowfang Keep, and Deadmines. (Yes that does in deed mean a Heroic version of VanCleef)
-New Battlegrounds, and a new Wintergrasp like zone, Tol Barad.
-Guild Leveling
-New Secondary Profession: Archeology
-Path of the Titans, a new talent system for players levels 80-85
-plenty of class changes, new racials,mounts, and much much more.

Apart from all the awesome Warcraft news, there was also quite a few panels going on during the 2 days of the show. These included a Diablo 3, Heroes and Monsters panel, a Starcraft 2 Lore Panel, and a panel devoted to the Battle.net initiative, which is looking excellent. Not to mention the tournaments for Warcraft 3, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft Arena. Some highlights from these panels are as follows:

-Starcraft 2 Beta to start this year
-Diablo 3 to have 5 classes in all, Blizzard is not sure of what the 5th class will be however, so we are probably looking at a 2011, possibly even a 2012 release.
-Battle.net to have a store/community for maps and mods for Starcraft 2, allowing people to use the games engine to create new art assests and maps for the game. In fact, the new tools for mod makers will allow you to essentialy make mods that resemble brand new games, even allow you to change things like point of view, and basic game mechanics. Blizzard themselves showed a demo of a 3D action game which was created using these tools that will be available to everybody when the game releases next year.

There was a costume contest, dance competition, and sound alike contest, in which many people showed off their skills and proved that, people seem to really like this Blizzard company(who knew?).

And finally, wrapping up the show, was the closing ceremony, earlier tonight, in which Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain rocked the house, followed by the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy freaking Ozzbourne!!!

All in all, it was an excellent event; in which over 26,000 fans got together to rejoice over the awesomness that is gaming, and more importantly, Blizzard Entertainment. While many of us couldn't make it, we were able to enjoy the whole thing via Blizzard's Direct TV and HD Internet Stream.That does it for now, oh I forgot to mention, Felicia Day and the Guild also were in attendance, in fact they had their own panel on Friday afternoon, with much success.Best wishes to everyone involved with The Guild, keep up the awesome work guys! Well I guess that wraps things up untill next year's Blizzcon, which I plan to attend:) Later all!