busy weekend
I went to Blizzcon this weekend.
Thursday afternoon, I flew out of Austin and arrived in Anaheim, CA for Blizzcon. Well, I was *supposed* to fly out Thursday afternoon. The plane was delayed two hours, so I ended up flying out Thursday night. Arrived in Long Beach and waited for my ride to come get me. Originally, I was to arrive first, wait for them, then all of us go to the Anaheim convention center together to get our attendance badges. Instead, they arrived, went to get badges (before they shut down for the night), then came back for me. Dinner at Denny's because it was next to the hotel, then bed.
The Alamo Inn and Suites on Katella near the convention center, by the way, I do not recommend unless you really do need an absolute bottom-dollar room that's within walking distance of the convention center. The room smelled overpoweringly like baby powder, the door was difficult to open (it very inconsistently read the access cards, and even then you had to jiggle the handle just right), the bath linens could be used as the *perfect* illustration for an encyclopedia entry on "coarse cloth" or perhaps "400-grit sandpaper," and the beds were only marginally softer than the floor. Should I return to this convention in the future, I'm going to try and get back into the Portofino where I stayed last year. Not much more expensive, but significantly nicer.
Got up on Friday with a brilliant idea based on the previous year's experience: The doors open at 9am and the first panel, with the big announcements, starts at 10am. So, we should plan to get in line around 9:00, since the line will already be moving, and we'll be bale to just go in with little wait. Brilliant! In the meantime, we can all go eat breakfast after picking up our badges (there were a few of us, myself included, that arrived too late to get the the night before).
I, Don and Brandon went to Registration to get badges. A large, cavernous room that could easily hold 5,000 people was nearly completely empty aside from a few dozen workers and a hundred or so people picking up badges. 5 minutes, start to finish. Excellent! Breakfast!
As we walked to get breakfast, we saw the line wrapping in front of the convention center and the arena and stretching back to where the Parking Lot of Doom was last year, but wasn't beign used. A good sign. We went to Coco's for breakfast and met up with Marinna. Good food, and we headed over to get in line. Except that the line wasn't moving yet. In fact, the Parking Lot of Doom was even more full than last year. In *fact* there was a second line to get *into* the Parking Lot of Doom. A line that stretched back toward the arena and convention center and wrapped around the already existing line. Effectively, there was a line to get in line.
Somewhere out there was a mouse commiserating with me over the failed brilliance of my plan.
We got in line, and slowly, slowly moved forward until we could get into the parking lot. Then we wound back and forth in the parking lot, all the while attempting to spread the rumor that we'd seen Rick Astley. After spending nearly two hours in line, we got inside, right as Cataclysm was announced. We'd gotten in line a hair after 9, and got inside a hair before 11. We watched the announcements of the new expansion, the new races, the new profession, and then we went to find Cool Stuff.
We sat on several panels which discussed major changes to the game. Things like the way stats work, changes to core abilities of classes (soul shards being heavily changed for warlocks, and hunters no longer needing mana, for example), and new race/class combinations (Tauren paladins and Gnome priests, woo!). We played the Cataclysm preview. I played a worgen, and their starting area is awesome. The things they are doing with the phasing technology they brought in with Wrath is *wonderful*. Eventually we got to the contests. Like always, some participants were better than others, but the woman who won the costume contest fully and completely deserved to win (as a Mistress of Pain from Diablo), as did the gentleman who won the dance contest (Dwarven female dance, and he did it *well* .... imagine jspurlin 6' tall and dancing like Riverdance, and you know exactly what the guy looked like.)
After the convention, we all went to Lazy Dog cafe for dinner. Great food, great service. Sleep followed.
Up the next morning and off to the convention. Significantly less line this time. Only a 20 minute wait, mostly in shade. Which was good, since I'd gotten sunburned the day before. The big goal for the morning was, for me, to see the Systems Panel, which would give us more information about several of the major changes announced the previous day. For everyone else who was with me, they wanted to do a scavenger hunt contest thing that was, basically, standing in line for two hours. I found a stretch of seats and staked out a place for us. Thankfully Devin showed up shortly after to help save them. Trying to single-handedly save 8 seats is... hard. Seats were saved, others arrived (including Marinna, her mom and her mom's fiance), and we learned about the Path of the Titans, guild leveling and several other nifty things.
Then it was time for lunch. We went over to a nearby cafe called Tiffy's which had the most wonderful sandwich: a BLT with turkey and avocado. Man, that was delicious. After lunch, it was time for the realm meetup for Dragonmaw. As a bit of background, Dragonmaw had about 25 people or so show up in 2008. Large group. When we got there, there were 5 or 6 others already present. Eventually, the Dragonmaw meeting grew so big that we were crowding out several other realms around us, so we took the group out to the smoking lounge area where there was plenty of room. Best guess, I think we had nearly 50 people there from our realm, if not more. Several of them I recognized from last year. A couple even remembered me from last year, too, so that was neat.
After the realm meetup, more wandering. During this round of wandering, I played the Starcraft 2 single-player demo. I've never really been a big Starcraft fan. I never got past the first few tutorial missions in SC1. Playing the demo for SC2, though, it was hard to *not* get excited about the game. It's a beautifully rendered game, and the controls felt much more refined than SC1. Easier to select and control units, for example. A little more wandering, and we went to get seats for the closing ceremonies.
The closing ceremonies is really very simple: A short video recap of cool stuff from the convention (highlights from the contests and such), one of the Blizzard VIPs doing a rah-rah pep rally type speech about how awesome Blizzard and Blizzcon are, and then a concert. The concert opened with Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan, the Blizzard house band (founder Mike Morhaim plays bass for them) just as it has every year. Unlike previous years, though, they did not have any new material. Also, their lead singer (Blizzard's Art Director Samwise Didier) seemed a little lethargic this year. He didn't seem as excited to be there as he has in years past. After they played their set, Ozzy Osborne performed.
It's official: I am too old, because Ozzy was too loud.
Marinna and I ducked out of the concert to wander the rest of the convention a bit to wait for the others. As a side note, Ozzy sounded *much* better from the other areas of the convention than he did in the main hall itself. Giving th emusic a chance to blend really, really helped. We looked at some of the display booths we hadn't had time to get to yet, such as the Razer booth. Their new mouse, the Naga, is a mouse that has a 12-button keypad under where your thumb sits for a total of 17 buttons. Problem is, the mouse itself is a bit small. Folks with larger hands will get a cramp using it for long periods of time, I think. We played the Diablo 3 demo as well. Man, it is a *very* pretty game. It feel just like the first two: click on stuff until it dies, and eventually you get story progression. I suspect that D3 will be eating into my WoW-playing time once it's released. We went by and subscribed to the World of Warcraft magazine. My main reason for doing so (since I doubt they will have much in print that I won't already know online) is simply to try and help support a fledgling print-industry magazine that's about a game I love.
Eventually Ozzy and his perpetually startled appearance finished their concert, and we met up with the rest of the crew to go eat. We decided to eat at a nearby P.F. Chang, since it was within walking distance. We did call ahead and get a reservation, though, since there were 11 of us. Good thing we did, too. When I arrived and told them we were there, a guy asked for a table for 8 and was told it would be an hour and a half wait to be seated. Fortunately for us, we'd arrived about 5 minutes ahead of our reservation time, and got seated only a couple minutes after it. Dinner was great, with much good conversation. Afterward, though, time for sleep.
Sunday (today) was pretty boring, really. Marinna showed up at the hotel to pick me up, and she, Devin and I went to the Long Beach airport. I spoke with a nice lady named Sandy about a fanny pack Devin had left on his plane on Thursday about which he had me inquire while I was waiting on him and Marinna to pick me up. They'd found it on Friday night, so we were able to get that returned to him in one piece with all of its contents present. Security was a breeze. Long Beach Airport and Austin's Bergstrom Airport are two of my favorite airports about security. The lines are never that long, and they move very quickly.
The departing gate got changed, but that was no big deal at all. They don't have jetways there. They have paths you walk along out on the tarmac to a boarding ramp. Changing the gate really just changed what path you took. While the flight in had a few empty seats (including the one next to me), the flight back was packed full, including four or five children under the age of 4. Mostly, they were well behaved, but occasionally one would squall a bit, preventing me from napping. I watched Food Network instead. About 30 minutes before we landed, we had some quite bad turbulence. First time in a very long time that I've been in turbulence bad enough to prevent the flight attendants from making their last trip through the isles to collect trash and make sure all the chairs and tray tables were up.
Landing was smooth, disembarking was quick, trip out to my car in the long-term parking was painless. Small trouble getting out of the airport, though. Tried using the wrong lane to exit, so I had to back up and go to the right one. Oops. Turned the wrong way to exit the airport proper, thanks to a hard-to-read sign. After that, though, it was a regular, boring ride back home.
Called my mom to check on my dad. He's hurt his had pretty badly, and has a broken finger. Called Emily and chatted with her after talking to Mom a while. Got home and just zoned out for a few hours. Played a little WoW a bit ago and watched Kiki's Delivery Service and decided to write this post to let you all know what I've been up to. I have pictures. I'll try to put them up at some point. Probably on Facebook.
Now it's time for bed. The students are back, which means it's time for work to be crazy.
Thursday afternoon, I flew out of Austin and arrived in Anaheim, CA for Blizzcon. Well, I was *supposed* to fly out Thursday afternoon. The plane was delayed two hours, so I ended up flying out Thursday night. Arrived in Long Beach and waited for my ride to come get me. Originally, I was to arrive first, wait for them, then all of us go to the Anaheim convention center together to get our attendance badges. Instead, they arrived, went to get badges (before they shut down for the night), then came back for me. Dinner at Denny's because it was next to the hotel, then bed.
The Alamo Inn and Suites on Katella near the convention center, by the way, I do not recommend unless you really do need an absolute bottom-dollar room that's within walking distance of the convention center. The room smelled overpoweringly like baby powder, the door was difficult to open (it very inconsistently read the access cards, and even then you had to jiggle the handle just right), the bath linens could be used as the *perfect* illustration for an encyclopedia entry on "coarse cloth" or perhaps "400-grit sandpaper," and the beds were only marginally softer than the floor. Should I return to this convention in the future, I'm going to try and get back into the Portofino where I stayed last year. Not much more expensive, but significantly nicer.
Got up on Friday with a brilliant idea based on the previous year's experience: The doors open at 9am and the first panel, with the big announcements, starts at 10am. So, we should plan to get in line around 9:00, since the line will already be moving, and we'll be bale to just go in with little wait. Brilliant! In the meantime, we can all go eat breakfast after picking up our badges (there were a few of us, myself included, that arrived too late to get the the night before).
I, Don and Brandon went to Registration to get badges. A large, cavernous room that could easily hold 5,000 people was nearly completely empty aside from a few dozen workers and a hundred or so people picking up badges. 5 minutes, start to finish. Excellent! Breakfast!
As we walked to get breakfast, we saw the line wrapping in front of the convention center and the arena and stretching back to where the Parking Lot of Doom was last year, but wasn't beign used. A good sign. We went to Coco's for breakfast and met up with Marinna. Good food, and we headed over to get in line. Except that the line wasn't moving yet. In fact, the Parking Lot of Doom was even more full than last year. In *fact* there was a second line to get *into* the Parking Lot of Doom. A line that stretched back toward the arena and convention center and wrapped around the already existing line. Effectively, there was a line to get in line.
Somewhere out there was a mouse commiserating with me over the failed brilliance of my plan.
We got in line, and slowly, slowly moved forward until we could get into the parking lot. Then we wound back and forth in the parking lot, all the while attempting to spread the rumor that we'd seen Rick Astley. After spending nearly two hours in line, we got inside, right as Cataclysm was announced. We'd gotten in line a hair after 9, and got inside a hair before 11. We watched the announcements of the new expansion, the new races, the new profession, and then we went to find Cool Stuff.
We sat on several panels which discussed major changes to the game. Things like the way stats work, changes to core abilities of classes (soul shards being heavily changed for warlocks, and hunters no longer needing mana, for example), and new race/class combinations (Tauren paladins and Gnome priests, woo!). We played the Cataclysm preview. I played a worgen, and their starting area is awesome. The things they are doing with the phasing technology they brought in with Wrath is *wonderful*. Eventually we got to the contests. Like always, some participants were better than others, but the woman who won the costume contest fully and completely deserved to win (as a Mistress of Pain from Diablo), as did the gentleman who won the dance contest (Dwarven female dance, and he did it *well* .... imagine jspurlin 6' tall and dancing like Riverdance, and you know exactly what the guy looked like.)
After the convention, we all went to Lazy Dog cafe for dinner. Great food, great service. Sleep followed.
Up the next morning and off to the convention. Significantly less line this time. Only a 20 minute wait, mostly in shade. Which was good, since I'd gotten sunburned the day before. The big goal for the morning was, for me, to see the Systems Panel, which would give us more information about several of the major changes announced the previous day. For everyone else who was with me, they wanted to do a scavenger hunt contest thing that was, basically, standing in line for two hours. I found a stretch of seats and staked out a place for us. Thankfully Devin showed up shortly after to help save them. Trying to single-handedly save 8 seats is... hard. Seats were saved, others arrived (including Marinna, her mom and her mom's fiance), and we learned about the Path of the Titans, guild leveling and several other nifty things.
Then it was time for lunch. We went over to a nearby cafe called Tiffy's which had the most wonderful sandwich: a BLT with turkey and avocado. Man, that was delicious. After lunch, it was time for the realm meetup for Dragonmaw. As a bit of background, Dragonmaw had about 25 people or so show up in 2008. Large group. When we got there, there were 5 or 6 others already present. Eventually, the Dragonmaw meeting grew so big that we were crowding out several other realms around us, so we took the group out to the smoking lounge area where there was plenty of room. Best guess, I think we had nearly 50 people there from our realm, if not more. Several of them I recognized from last year. A couple even remembered me from last year, too, so that was neat.
After the realm meetup, more wandering. During this round of wandering, I played the Starcraft 2 single-player demo. I've never really been a big Starcraft fan. I never got past the first few tutorial missions in SC1. Playing the demo for SC2, though, it was hard to *not* get excited about the game. It's a beautifully rendered game, and the controls felt much more refined than SC1. Easier to select and control units, for example. A little more wandering, and we went to get seats for the closing ceremonies.
The closing ceremonies is really very simple: A short video recap of cool stuff from the convention (highlights from the contests and such), one of the Blizzard VIPs doing a rah-rah pep rally type speech about how awesome Blizzard and Blizzcon are, and then a concert. The concert opened with Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan, the Blizzard house band (founder Mike Morhaim plays bass for them) just as it has every year. Unlike previous years, though, they did not have any new material. Also, their lead singer (Blizzard's Art Director Samwise Didier) seemed a little lethargic this year. He didn't seem as excited to be there as he has in years past. After they played their set, Ozzy Osborne performed.
It's official: I am too old, because Ozzy was too loud.
Marinna and I ducked out of the concert to wander the rest of the convention a bit to wait for the others. As a side note, Ozzy sounded *much* better from the other areas of the convention than he did in the main hall itself. Giving th emusic a chance to blend really, really helped. We looked at some of the display booths we hadn't had time to get to yet, such as the Razer booth. Their new mouse, the Naga, is a mouse that has a 12-button keypad under where your thumb sits for a total of 17 buttons. Problem is, the mouse itself is a bit small. Folks with larger hands will get a cramp using it for long periods of time, I think. We played the Diablo 3 demo as well. Man, it is a *very* pretty game. It feel just like the first two: click on stuff until it dies, and eventually you get story progression. I suspect that D3 will be eating into my WoW-playing time once it's released. We went by and subscribed to the World of Warcraft magazine. My main reason for doing so (since I doubt they will have much in print that I won't already know online) is simply to try and help support a fledgling print-industry magazine that's about a game I love.
Eventually Ozzy and his perpetually startled appearance finished their concert, and we met up with the rest of the crew to go eat. We decided to eat at a nearby P.F. Chang, since it was within walking distance. We did call ahead and get a reservation, though, since there were 11 of us. Good thing we did, too. When I arrived and told them we were there, a guy asked for a table for 8 and was told it would be an hour and a half wait to be seated. Fortunately for us, we'd arrived about 5 minutes ahead of our reservation time, and got seated only a couple minutes after it. Dinner was great, with much good conversation. Afterward, though, time for sleep.
Sunday (today) was pretty boring, really. Marinna showed up at the hotel to pick me up, and she, Devin and I went to the Long Beach airport. I spoke with a nice lady named Sandy about a fanny pack Devin had left on his plane on Thursday about which he had me inquire while I was waiting on him and Marinna to pick me up. They'd found it on Friday night, so we were able to get that returned to him in one piece with all of its contents present. Security was a breeze. Long Beach Airport and Austin's Bergstrom Airport are two of my favorite airports about security. The lines are never that long, and they move very quickly.
The departing gate got changed, but that was no big deal at all. They don't have jetways there. They have paths you walk along out on the tarmac to a boarding ramp. Changing the gate really just changed what path you took. While the flight in had a few empty seats (including the one next to me), the flight back was packed full, including four or five children under the age of 4. Mostly, they were well behaved, but occasionally one would squall a bit, preventing me from napping. I watched Food Network instead. About 30 minutes before we landed, we had some quite bad turbulence. First time in a very long time that I've been in turbulence bad enough to prevent the flight attendants from making their last trip through the isles to collect trash and make sure all the chairs and tray tables were up.
Landing was smooth, disembarking was quick, trip out to my car in the long-term parking was painless. Small trouble getting out of the airport, though. Tried using the wrong lane to exit, so I had to back up and go to the right one. Oops. Turned the wrong way to exit the airport proper, thanks to a hard-to-read sign. After that, though, it was a regular, boring ride back home.
Called my mom to check on my dad. He's hurt his had pretty badly, and has a broken finger. Called Emily and chatted with her after talking to Mom a while. Got home and just zoned out for a few hours. Played a little WoW a bit ago and watched Kiki's Delivery Service and decided to write this post to let you all know what I've been up to. I have pictures. I'll try to put them up at some point. Probably on Facebook.
Now it's time for bed. The students are back, which means it's time for work to be crazy.