blizzcon-2009 posts

On Wednesday night the first of two batches of tickets for Blizzard's annual fan event BlizzCon 2010 sold out in less than half an hour. If you waited for your chance to get your ticket a few days ago but couldn't get past the online queue today is the last chance to get your hands on the $150 tickets.

The final batch of tickets for the October 22-23 event in Anaheim, California will go on sale at 1 pm Eastern time today (10 am Pacific time). Remember there's a limit of five tickets per mailing address and the tickets should quickly sell out like they did a few days ago.

Blizzard's big fan event BlizzCon is about to sell the first of two batches of tickets to the October 22-23 event in Anaheim, California to the general public. The $150 tickets will go on sale later today at 10 pm Eastern time (that's 7 pm Pacific time) for BlizzCon 2010. Up to five tickets per mailing address can be bought.

Even at the event's high price it's expected that the BlizzCon tickets will sell out almost immediately. Blizzard plans to sell its second and final batch of BlizzCon 2010 tickets on Saturday beginning at 1 pm Eastern time (10 am Pacific time).

During out BlizzCon 2009 coverage last week we checked out the Pocket Books booth where they were showing off their previous and upcoming novels based on Blizzard's games. Among the books featured was StarCraft: Heaven's Devils, an upcoming hardcover prose novel from author William C Dietz.

Now Pocket Books has posted up an except from that novel on its web site. Designed to be a prequel to StarCraft II, the novel will be tell the story of the first meeting between Jim Raynor (hero of the first StarCraft game) and Tychus Findlay (the space marine that's the subject of the first StarCraft II CGI trailer). The novel is due in stores in mid-December.

BlizzCon 2009 happened less than a week ago, but the announcements still resonate among fans. Big premieres included revealing that the Monk class would be included in Diablo III. Longtime players or the series might recall that there was a Monk class included in the Hellfire expansion for the original Diablo. However, that wasn't a Blizzard-made expansion, and is therefore not included in the game's official canon or lore.

The new class will be a fast-paced melee fighter that can chain together moves into devastating combos. There's still no word on when fans can expect the game to release, but we're hoping it will come out sometime in 2010. You can see the Monk in action in the Diablo III gameplay video shown after the jump.

Download HD Diablo III Monk Trailer (64 MB)
Download HD Diablo III Monk Gameplay Video (354 MB)
Check out all Diablo III downloads

When we got a chance to go hands-on with the newly revealed Diablo III Monk character at BlizzCon this weekend, we go to see blood. Lots of blood. Blood in extraordinary quantities (to quote Alan Moore). Yes, the action-RPG sequel will indeed be a showcase for developer Blizzard to see lots of creatures blow up a lot of the red stuff.

But what about countries where the red stuff in games is frowned upon? Over at Wired, Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson states, " Definitely for regions like Germany and Australia, we will have to change blood if we're going to sell there." And its looking like the game may not be sold in China at all with Wilson saying, "Because a lot of the restrictions there are really... we may not be able to do them. It may not be possible." Wilson also says that Diablo III will have parental controls that will allow anyone to tone down the blood and change its color.

If you, for one reason or another, you haven't had a chance to try out the Crusader Coliseum introduced in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King 3.2 update, this gameplay video shown at BlizzCon 2009 lets you know what you're missing.

Download HD WoW: Wrath of the Lich King BlizzCon 2009 Gameplay Video (110 MB)

Well, BlizzCon 2009 is winding down for this year and Big Download has been very impressed with how Blizzard has handled the event. Having 26,000 Blizzard fans gather in one place but everything seemed to run like clockwork. All the panels and events started on time, the lines were full to play the new and upcoming games from the company and lots of unique stuff was sold at the Blizzard story, with lots of sell-outs of items

We have some pictures we took from today's events at BlizzCon to show you and that will in fact be our concluding port directly from the event. Make sure you check out WoW.com's continuing coverage of BlizzCon 2009 (including photos from Sharon Osbourne's husband's concert).

Blizzard's final StarCraft II panel at BlizzCon 2009 was on gameplay. Here are just some of the highlights:

StarCraft II's single player campaign will feature more story and go deeper into the characters than previous Blizzard RTS games. There will also be more choices in terms of which missions to take on and what upgrades and weapons you can take with you. There will also be more unique missions with different kinds of goals and challenges.

Mine Your Own Business is the name of one of these missions, set on a volanic and hostile planet. The map will have some of the new features of the game's engine and map tools such as two distinct cliff types, some new water tools (used to rise lava levels) and new lighting tools to make the map look more realistic.

Check out the jump for more info on the panel:

Many folks thought that Blizzard might reveal the details about their next MMO at BlizzCon 2009. Unfortunately, Blizzard "only" announced the next World of Warcraft expansion pack. However Blizzard's Rob Pardo gave some tiny hints about their process for making their next MMO in chatting today on the DirectTV BlizzCon pay-per-view broadcast.

Pardo, the head of Blizzard's game design, stated that they started their process on the next MMO by having meetings on what ideas the team might have for the game. He admitted that they discussed ideas like StarCraft-like MMO or a Diablo-like MMO as well as ideas like an MMO RTS game or an MMO FPS game. Eventually Pardo said that as a result of these meetings they leaned toward ideas that everyone involved agreed would be best for their next MMO. Pardo said that they are now past the technology and art stage and are now developing actual game prototypes for the MMO. Naturally there's no word on when Blizzard will reveal any concrete details for the game, much less a release date.

As we reported earlier, today's BlizzCon's so-called "StarCraft II Lore panel" was actually a StarCraft II voice actor panel, where it was revealed that Tricia Helfer will voice Sarah Kerrigan in the sequel. Robert Clotworthy was also on the panel talking about returning to the role of Jim Raynor after voicing the role in the original StarCraft over 10 years ago. Chris Metzen, Blizzard's VP of creative development, moderated the panel.

Other actors on the panel include Fred Tatasciore, a veteran voice actor who plays two roles in StarCraft II (Zeratul and Swann). Next on the voice actor panel was Neil Kaplan, the gravely voice behind Tychus Findlay in the game. Dave Fennoy was up next; he plays the new character role of Gabriel Tosh. Finally James Harper, a veteran of the original game, returns for StarCraft II in the role of Arcturus Meigsk. As we previously reported, well known Warner Bros. Animation voice director Andrea Romano has those duties for StarCraft II

Check out the jump for more on the panel