Or 1.5 Million Reasons
You'll Play a Blizzard Game

15,000 people paid $100 to enter BlizzCON 2008. 14,000 of them lined up
for over an hour to buy something from the Blizzard store. In a
nutshell, this is how fanatical fans of Blizzard Entertainment have
become.

We love you, no matter what.

I haven't seen such an outpouring of unconditional love since
I watched my neighbour's dog hump the leg of his sofa. Imagine if you
will, 15,000 gamers humping the leg of an enormous sofa, one that is
made out of $100 bills with the word Blizzard embroidered on the back.

The old King is dead. Long live the King.

BlizzCon stretches the full height, width and depth of the
game fanaticism spectrum. 15,000 tickets at $100 each is 1.5 million
dollars. The convention center, the setup staff, the equipment all the
staff hours spent planning surely don't equate to that much, or do
they? Perhaps they do, but even so, one astute fan who stood in line at
the store for over two and a half hours deduced that if each person
rolling through the store spent $100 that Blizz was receiving
approximately $30,000 an hour from souvenir sales. This is wild
speculation, making it perfect for an article that I have been given to
write. Remember me? I'm the one unshackled by facts and grammar. Let's
assume that our mathematician fan is correct. There are two stores and
the venue is open for 12 hours (a bit more on Friday) per day.

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Blizzard may be the only company in the world that can charge three times as much for a product and still receive cheers.

Could any other company put on such a show? 12,000 tickets
sold-out in 15 minutes. For those of you keeping track at home, that is
$1.2 million in 15 minutes or $80,000 a minute. Astonishing!

More astonishing is how this group welcomed bad news with
cheers, applause and general euphoria. Rob Pardo made what had to be
one of the more difficult announcements of his career during the
Starcraft II panel; a panel designed brilliantly to deliver the somber
news. It went something like this,

• Rob Pardo discusses the incredible single-player Terran
  campaign for 40 minutes.
• He then proclaims that because this campaign is so
  incredible, in fact it is three times the size of a normal campaign
  that the game itself was going to take a very long time to complete.
• Three options are given to the audience, i) cut back on the
  cool stuff, ii) split the game into three parts based on race, each
  shipping independently or iii) delay the game indefinitely
• The audience is asked which one they like the best. Given
  that two of the options are absolutely atrocious the crowd cheers for
  splitting the game into three parts.

Essentially, you will get more single-player content in
Starcraft II than in other Blizzard real-time-strategy titles, but you
will also pay for it three times. I didn't mind the content in the
other Blizzard titles. Did anyone complain that the original Starcraft
didn't have a great single-player campaign?

This was an unexpected announcement, but not as shocking as
the one that I had been expecting.

The announcement that I expected never came. I waited,
patiently for Rob Pardo to tell me that Universe of DiabloCraft, the
first-person-shooter was in production. Who wouldn't want to headshot
an enemy with a magic missle, giggling as their loot exploded out of
them in red and blue vials? It's an idea that is full of win, alas, no
announcement.

Like last year, the crowd is a varied group, cut from not one
cloth, but many, though all of the cloth is black. Young and old, tall
and short, slim and not-so-slim, lining up together to spend their
money, try out games and get free stuff. Put that picture in your mind,
lock it down and you have BlizzCON.

If you prefer facts then hit these links.

target="_blank">Diablo III Exclusive Video Dev Q&A:
New D3 Questions

target="_blank">BlizzCon 2008: WoW Classes Panel

target="_blank">BlizzCon 2008: Exclusive WotLK Q&A
Video with Jeff Kaplan

target="_blank">BlizzCon 2008: 10 Best WoW Questions Video

target="_blank">BlizzCon 2008: Hands-On with StarCraft II

target="_blank">BlizzCon 2008: WoW Dungeons and Raids Panel

target="_blank">BlizzCon 2008: Diablo III Hands-On Preview

--John Hoskin,
TenTonhammer.com

Ten Ton Hammer would like to thank Blizzard for
inviting us to their event. We don't expect John to be invited back
next year.