Brains!

Yesterday I attended the first day of Blizzcon in Anaheim.
Again why would I place myself in a location where my addiction to World of Warcraft is tempted! Mostly I like to think I was a victim of others addictions to it. But really when I first played its likely I was addicted, but that was so many years ago, and I did quit cold turkey for a few months. The second time I came back, I used it as a means to spend time with Jordan when I couldn't actually spend time with him due to being so far away. I also know for certain that the way I approached playing was totally different, first off not being a 'raider' helped. But I was definitely casual and WoW came second to "RL" (real life). This sounds so "serious business", as WoWers might say, and I'm sure I'm boring any crowd who has no idea about the nuances of the World of Warcraft lifestyle. If you don't want to know anymore I suggest you stop reading haha.

More about Blizzcon:
Comiccon which I attended earlier this summer in San Diego was sooo much better. But I mean Blizzard can only supply their own products, since it is a Blizzard Entertainment convention. Comiccon which is ginormous and the home to such diverse content can only appeal on so many levels. Anyways the major purpose of this convention was to get players revved up for the release of World of Warcrafts third expansion pack Wrath of the Lich King (Due this Nov), Diablo III (very popular game long time coming MMORPG) and Starcraft II (another popular real time strategy game). I could get really detailed about these three games differences, but again in order to not bore the general crowd, if I even have one, I would rather talk about what the people were like who attended this.

First of all World of Warcraft has between 5-9million players world wide, each longging onto their specfic realms to play characters. (So that means I've played with people from Singapore, Australia, France, England, Hawaii etc.) That in itself is a pretty unique opportunity. Not only do I have to hold conversations with people, I have to learn to work with them together to accomplish a goal in the game, a very important lesson these days!

At the convention there were approximately 15,000 of these millions of players, some from faraway, most from Southern California. Examining the composition of the people who play WoW in real life is very interesting. There were fat, tall, skinny, ugly, pretty, hot, sexy, funny, creepy, nerdy, cool, emo, skater, scensters, old, young, gay, any faction of life you could imagine represented. Although most were white. In fact the average WoW player is between the ages of 15-35 male and white. And since coming to Anaheim for a $100 ticket, from across the world isn't really an option most of the "minority" (if you have to call them that) players didn't attended. We got to listen to panels about game designers, and how they even create a mmorpg in the first place, which made me really appreciate the work they put in to making these universes. We walked around vendor booths for WoW products, took pictures, and did normal convention things.

My favorite things from the convention included:
The costume contest, the top prize being a women from Washington D.C. dressed as a Draeni in Tier 6 riding a top a mechanical turtle she had built.
The ability to play beta copies of all three games to be released before the general public, this means I got to play WoWs expansion for 15 minutes.
Watching the worlds highest ranking PvP teams (player vs player) who happen to be European, competeing live against each other. Lets just say they are really fucking good.


After having gone, and played the damn expansion for those 15 minutes, I am considering going back to playing. But I have to examine the risks involved. Its been such a bane of my relationships. Jordans opinion is that I should just level to 80, and then decide, at least that way I will play all the new content without any actual goals of carrying on afterwards. We shall see. Maybe the excitement will wear off over time, I have till November when they officially release it to get over it.