blizzcon posts

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.

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).

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

Blizzard has said that 26,000 people bought tickets for BlizzCon 2009. That means that the show, at $125 per ticket, generate $3.25 million in revenue. That's not counting the 50,000 people in 100 countries that Blizzard said bought the pay-per-view coverage on either DirecTV on via the BlizzCon's web streaming service. That means more revenue to the tune of nearly $2 million from the broadcast (at $39.99 per person).

The Anaheim Convention Center is pretty much packed to capacity for the event this year even though Blizzard limited the number of tickets sold for the event. During the BlizzCon DirecTV broadcast Blizzard' VP Paul Sams said that the reason they picked Anaheim as the location was that it was near to Blizzard''s home base of Irvine CA. As such moving such a huge event to another location would be a big task. However, Sams did say that if BlizzCon continues to grow they would have to seriously consider moving to a larger convention center.

The BlizzCon 2009 panel on "StarCraft II Lore" was in fact a sneaky way to introduce the main voice cast for Blizzard's upcoming sci-fi RTS game. Members of the voice cast were introduced and brought up to the panel one at a time but it was the last reveal that will certainly get the fanboys talking. Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer (yep, Number Six herself) will be portraying the key role of Sarah Kerrigan in the game.

As previously announced, Robert Clotworthy will return to voice the role of Jim Raynor in StarCraft II. In addition, the voice work is being directed by Andrea Romano. She is best known for the work she has done directing the voice cast for a ton of Warner Bros. animated TV shows and movies including Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League and the recent DC Comics direct-to-DVD movies. Stay tuned for more info on the panel later today.

When it was revealed that the Monk would be the new playable character class for Diablo III, our minds went to thinking about one of our favorite TV shows: Kung Fu. Yes, we had the idea that we would be playing Blizzard's version of Caine, the Eastern monk who prowled the Wild West that preached peace but pretty much could kick everyone who tried to cross him

As it turns out, that's pretty much what the Monk is like when we actually got hands-on with a new build of Diablo III at BlizzCon 2009. His character look is both buff and also more serene than the Barbarian class. But he can also handle himself quite well with his various attack and combo moves.

We played the Monk in a desert setting in the game surrounded by monsters that wandered around above ground and, in one cash, below the sand as a lizard-like creature burrows around before jumping out to escape. The Monk is pretty powerful just on its own with its melee attacks. With swinging moves, fast fists and circular combos its clear that Blizzard has achieved its goal of making the Monk more of a fighting game character than we have seen before in a Diablo game.

Check out more info after the jump:

Blizzard fans got excited when Blizzard president Mike Morhaime stated last May, ""This summer we will be opening up external beta testing," for StarCraft II. With the recent delay of the release of the sci-fi RTS game from fall 2009 to sometime in 2010, we wondered if StarCraft II would still make a summer beta multiplayer launch.

Alas, that is not to be the case. In a brief chat with Big Download at BlizzCon, StarCraft II design director Dustin Browder told us, "We won't make summer" for the beta. He told us that there were a number of reasons for the beta delay including finishing up the single player campaign, getting Battle.net up and running and more.

However Morhaime, chatting on the DirecTV pay-per-view telecast of BlizzCon, stated, "I'm confident the beta will start this year" He would not be more specific on a date.

BlizzCon 2009 is in full swing and today members of the Diablo III development team talked more about the heroes and monsters for their upcoming action-RPG. Naturally a lot of time was given to the newly revealed Monk class, the fourth playable class that has been revealed for the game.

The panel revealed that there were several reasons to make the Monk class playable. They wanted a class that was more like a fighting game character and they wanted to make a character that was more inspired by pen-and-paper RPGs. Overall they felt that the Monk was different than the first three classes in the game.

The team showed off a number of the Monk's special combat moves including one, called Way of the Hundred Fists, where a ton of fists are activated at once. Another, called the Exploding Palm happens when a palm attack results in an exploding body. Like in a fighting game, special moves can be used in combos to perform truly lethal attacks.

Check out more info after the jump:

A massive wave of Blizzard fans entered the Anaheim Convention Center at 10 am PT today, officially beginning BlizzCon 2009. We have never attended the show before and we are amazed at how huge the show actually is in terms of sheer square footage. There are a number of exhibitors here, of course, but the majority of the space is devoted to PCs networked to play Blizzard games like StarCraft II, Diablo III and World of Warcraft and the stages where all the panels and big events are being staged.

Before the big Blizzard keynote address begins we decided to do a quick once over of the exhibit hall. The result is the gallery below where you can see statues, exhibits, lines of people, huge banners and even Felicia Day. Really.
Stay tuned as the keynote address is expected to begin at 11:30 am PT.