In order to understand the complete blizzcon experience I received, I will start my story the night before our flight to Cali. The first place I stopped off at was Las Vegas and the night before we flew, I attended a friend’s b’day.
Las vegas as I found out is evil beyond the conventional sense. After a night of drinking, dancing, getting titty slapped and my *** pinched by random girls, I got on the plane to Cali with no sleep, a hang over and a feeling of total ikkyness.
I can say that the first day (registration day) was spent in a whirl of stupor. There were several memories which I’m not sure if it happened and there were several instances where my mage instincts kicked in and I seem to teleport between places. Since we arrived fairly early, we did not get caught up in the line to get our toys. We did however manage to find the pre-wow party happening at the Hilton (across the road from where we were staying) and join in with the geekiness. It was here that I first met a red head who were hell bent on winning the costume contest in an elf costume and I was sure she was under the influence of something as she kept screaming that she needed roofies (still no idea what that is).
What I noticed and what will continue to be a trend during my stay is that the Horde and Alliance characters mostly stuck to themselves. We had a dude come up to us during the party and asked if we were horde or alliance. When we said alliance, he looked upon us with pity, tsked, shock his head and walk away. He made me /sad panda.
It was when we left the party and decided to grab a wink where I teleported and found myself awake (due to hunger) 5 hours later in my hotel room. So after actually pulling my still drowsy weight into the shower, we went out for food and that was where I met the german couple (the girl in the druid outfit in the pic) at the restaurant. They stayed at the Hilton so we half followed them back and went back to the ‘party’. For the next 4 hours or so, tanking strats were discussed, pally dps were knocked on, and the hitting on of the previously mentioned (and now somewhat sober) redhead were witnessed. Most important of all much geeky glee were had by me who have never participated in public discussion of wow and its greatness.
Day 2 (first day of blizzcon)
I was informed that I am a rock when I’m really tired and only the threat of throwing ice on me got my butt out of bed. However due to the slow escalation of threats, by then we were only 2 hours away from the opening of doors. (2 hours after the planned time of waking) So make-up-less and tossing the first thing I saw in my suitcase we started off towards ‘the line’. I was informed at this point withdrawing was not an option, especially after I witnessed the extent of ‘the line’. 4 hours under the sun and even my aussie sun accustomed skin managed to escape and peal.
Since the first half of the day was spent in ‘the line’, I was actually pleasantly surprised that we got started talking to some old EQ players. They were game developers (can’t remember the game they were developing) and we got on discussing the differences between EQ and wow. I guess the dedicated-ness of EQ players never ceases to amaze as they continued to sprout names of the days gone by and I find a reminiscent smile start to creep onto my lips. From the common land touches to the bazaar, the long boat trips and forgetting to bind, the attacking of PoD, the epics and their weighted meanings, we took a trip down memory lane which helped make the time in ‘the line’ memorable. Along the way we also saw some very interesting costumes, like the 3 cows from the secret cow level that mooed at us as we walked past, the meeting stone which casually glided past us and a shaman carrying lantern totems.
Once inside we became intimately acquainted with ‘the line’. As much as I appreciated blizzard’s attempt at providing the most number of computers for Blizzcon so far, each line were still around 30 minute wait. This coupled with the 15-20 minutes you got on the computer meant playing any games were an hour affair. As I wanted to attend many of the wow seminars given on the first day, I only got to play the Sc2 and D3 once each on the first day. (I will post reviews of games and the changes proposed separately)
I was also very disappointed that the Blizz shop were sold out of many things by the time we got around to it (around 2pm). I really wanted the wow book and the backpack, but apparently they were sold out in the first 30 minutes and blizzard had no intention of restocking for the next day.
So at the normally am Not a sleep time of 10pm, I dragged my tired self back into my hotel room and knocked out cold.
(Will update later.)
|
