BlizzCon™ 2008 Tickets on Sale August 11
Unprecedented event coverage also available exclusively on DIRECTV

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that tickets for its third BlizzCon™ gaming convention will go on sale August 11 and that live coverage of the event will be available as an exclusive DIRECTV pay per view event. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment®’s Warcraft®, Diablo®, and StarCraft® game universes. The event will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11.

“Meeting and interacting with our players at BlizzCon is always a great experience for us,” stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re also pleased to be working with DIRECTV this year to bring the show, for the first time, to those players who are unable to attend.”

In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, BlizzCon will offer an array of activities, including discussion panels, hands-on playtime with upcoming games, tournaments, contests, and more. Tickets to the convention will be priced at $100 USD each, and will be available for purchase directly from the official BlizzCon website at www.blizzcon.com.

The pay per view event will deliver a minimum of eight hours of live HD coverage from the show floor on each day of the convention, including exclusive interviews, demos, and more. Beginning in August, DIRECTV will run a promotion offering the BlizzCon pay per view event free to new DIRECTV subscribers. Pricing for existing DIRECTV customers and programming details will be available in the coming weeks from Blizzard Entertainment and DIRECTV.

“BlizzCon is one of the most highly anticipated gaming conventions of the year, and we are excited to partner with Blizzard Entertainment to deliver coverage of the show to gamers nationwide,” said Steven Roberts, senior vice president, new media and business development, DIRECTV. “With our BlizzCon pay per view package, members of Blizzard’s gaming communities who are not attending the event can now experience it in crystal-clear HD.”

As the event draws closer, further details will be announced at www.blizzcon.com.


Source: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080729005505&newsLang=en

The event where the WOTLK trailer is released & the release date is announced.... betcha

Here's hoping for November release

Sadly, I'm betting 2009. When I have to stand outside in the freezing cold and wait for the doors to open...again.

BlizzCon(TM) 2008 Tickets On Sale Now
Last update: 9:08 a.m. EDT Aug. 11, 2008

IRVINE, Calif., Aug 11, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that tickets for its third BlizzCon(TM) gaming convention are now on sale. Tickets are priced at USD $100 each and can be purchased through the company's event website at www.blizzcon.com.
BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment(R)'s Warcraft(R), StarCraft(R), and Diablo(R) game universes.

The event will take place October 10-11 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, and will feature an array of activities, including developer panels, contests, tournaments, hands-on gameplay with upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games, and more.


For US-based players unable to attend BlizzCon in person, DIRECTV(R) will offer an exclusive pay per view package of HD event coverage that will include a minimum of eight hours of content for each day of the show, with interviews, demos, and more. The pay per view package will also provide a code for an exclusive World of Warcraft(R) in-game polar bear mount otherwise only available in goody bags at the convention.

DIRECTV will also offer this package free as a promotion for new DIRECTV customers who sign up for the service online via a link that will be posted at Blizzard Entertainment's BlizzCon website ( www.blizzcon.com/dtv). Current DIRECTV customers will be able to purchase the BlizzCon pay per view package for USD $39.95.

Please visit the official BlizzCon website, www.blizzcon.com, to purchase BlizzCon tickets and to learn more about the show. In addition, further details on DIRECTV's BlizzCon pay per view event, including ordering information, will be posted there by September 1, 2008.

What in the World of Warcraft is Blizzcon?
What is so Special About Blizzcon?
By saul relative, published Aug 11, 2008

Blizzard Entertainment has announced the dates of its upcoming Blizzcon 2008 gaming convention in Anaheim, California, at the Anaheim Convention Center. The makers of World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo have planned a two-day event to be held on October 10th and 11th. Tickets, which are $100, went on sale on August 11.

According to Kotaku.com, the run on tickets created errors on the Blizzard.com website where the tickets are being sold. Tickets for the convention are expected to sell quickly.

Why Is There Such A Demand For Blizzcon 2008 Tickets?

In the gaming world, not many franchises come even close to being compared to World of Warcraft. The popular game boasts the largest online gaming community, estimated in the millions, in the world. For gaming fans and experts, conventions like Blizzcon 2008 are a way to mingle with other gamers, cosplayers, and game creators. Conventions are also where game companies try out their developing wares, show off their best products, and often announce and/or debut their next big thing.

Blizzcon is no different. This year's convention, Macworld.com tells us, will have costume contests (for those into dressing like their favorite characters from World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games), a songwriting competition, a dance contest, a motivational poster contest, a diorama contest, and gaming competitions for Warcraft III and World of Warcraft players. Top prize in the latter will be $25,000 per player.

Everyone who attends Blizzcon 2008 will also receive a goodie bag, which usually contains some pretty valuable merchandise. At last year's Blizzcon, the goodie bag held a plastic key that Blizzard Entertainment revealed (ten months later, in July 2008) was a beta key to the forthcoming Wrath of the Lich King, the latest installment of the World of Warcraft saga.

So, for those who are into gaming, Blizzcon 2008 tickets can turn out to be quite valuable indeed.



Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/946779/what_in_the_world_of_warcraft_is_blizzcon.html

August 12, 2008 12:37 PM PDT
Blizzcon ticket sales hits a snafu with unexpected demand
Posted by Nicole Lee
This error page from the Blizzcon ticket store has been nicknamed "Failoc" by fans.



As a big World of Warcraft fan, I was extremely excited that Blizzard was once again having its annual Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, Calif., this October. Blizzcon is a two-day event and celebration of all of Blizzard's properties, which include Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. It typically contains Q&A panels, social events for players and developers, and hands-on gameplay of the latest Blizzard games. Think of it as a mini-E3 just for Blizzard fanatics.

So I woke up early Monday morning to purchase tickets for the show, which were set to go on sale August 11 via the Blizzard Store. The log-in page loaded like molasses, and when it finally loaded, I found out I had to create an account before I could buy tickets. Which I then tried to do, but it kept giving me errors and kept pushing me back to the first page. I finally gave up in frustration and left to go to the office.

It turns out, I wasn't the only one to suffer from Blizzcon ticket snafu. Comments from Wowinsider as well as Blizzard's General Discussion forums indicate that Blizzard had been suffering from ticket store problems all morning. Even after they took the store down for maintenance in the afternoon and placed it back up, site errors and traffic problems continued to plague the ticket store. The murloc on the Error Page has even gained a nickname, dubbed "Failoc", perhaps in reference to the Twitter "Fail Whale." From comments and forum posts, it seems like only a handful of people managed to buy tickets Monday.


A yellow SCV unit warns you that the site is down for maintenance.

According to Blizzard, the errors are because of extreme demand for tickets, and are working on optimizing the store to handle the load requests. Last night, Blizzard took down the ticket store entirely for maintenance, promising to have it up after 12 p.m. PT today. It's currently 12:15 p.m. as I write this, and the site is still under maintenance (with a huge yellow SCV unit from Starcraft blocking the way, it seems).



Players are understandably upset. A brief glance through the forums indicate many threads and posts complaining about the site errors, while a few people are angry that their credit cards were charged without receiving confirmation e-mails (I have not investigated further into this claim, however). As players typically come from all over the world for Blizzcon, a delay in ticket sales also results in a delay in travel plans for many people.

Blizzcon 2008 is expected to draw record crowds because of the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft and the pending release of Diablo 3. It seems to me that Blizzard should have anticipated such a high traffic demand, but here's hoping they're able to fix the ticket store errors soon.

Update: As of 12:45 p.m. PDT, the ticket store is back up and is fully functional. I was able to buy two tickets. How about you?

Update: The ticket store was up for about 10 minutes until it was reportedly "sold out" by around 1:00 p.m. PDT. After around 15 minutes, tickets were available again. It was then "sold out" a few minutes later, and reemerged again hours after that. Apparently this is a way for them to handle the load of ticket orders coming in.

Update: This is a forum post by a Blizzard employee: "The bulk of the BlizzCon tickets we had available were sold out within minutes of ticket sales going live again this afternoon. We have a small reserve of tickets left -- to make these available to some of you who might not have had a chance to purchase yet, we will be releasing the remaining reserve tickets for sale tonight, August 12, at 8:00 PM PDT (Ed. Emphasis added). We appreciate the enthusiasm everyone has shown, and wish we were able to accommodate even more attendees at this year's BlizzCon." So if you still haven't gotten your tickets, try again at around 8 p.m. PDT.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10015586-1.html?hhTest=1

Quote by Isadoriana

Sadly, I'm betting 2009. When I have to stand outside in the freezing cold and wait for the doors to open...again.

Me too! I hate it when it gets down to 65 in the winter here. I'll need to find some mittens or something.

I'm kind of rethinking my 2009 prediction because of something the Fune said.

Maybe we will see it this year instead.

I was at gamestop the other day to pick up a game and they saw my drood shirt and asked me if I wanted to reserve a copy of WotLK and they told me the release date was November 11th , but of course i'm sure we'll see it sometime around christmas or early 2009

i tried all day yesterday to get tickets to blizzcon and the site was down all day...then, when it finally came back up...fucking sold out...what kind of bullshit is that...i was non-stop clicking and refreshing...there is no way they could have sold out, cause the fucking site was down.

lame

fuck blizzard

Well the neysayes may say what they will, but here's something to consider....

http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/activision-faq.html

From Blizz's own press release. The creative Guru's at Blizz have a bit more of a leash on them now, as they now report to a corporate board & thus to a group of public shareholders. While this probably won't change the corporate culture too much, it will change a few things. The development team now has to report & comply with the direction of the the corporate board over the publicly traded company. While some of these are no doubt former board members of blizz's private board, most are going to be from the board of Activision and are all approved by the shareholders general meeting.

So basically all this to say their "it's ready when it's ready" attitude might not fly w/ the new boss.

Quote by bichi

i tried all day yesterday to get tickets to blizzcon and the site was down all day...then, when it finally came back up...fucking sold out...what kind of bullshit is that...i was non-stop clicking and refreshing...there is no way they could have sold out, cause the fucking site was down.

That sucks! I'd be upset too. They really should make a better way of doing tickets somehow. I think last year it was a "grab fest" too.

Quote

Blizzard Posts Details About BlizzCon 2008 Peter Cohen, Macworld.com Blizzard Entertainment, makers of World of Warcraft, have posted details of their forthcoming BlizzCon 2008 event, taking place on October 10 - 11, 2008 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif. BlizzCon is Blizzard's now-annual gathering of gaming enthusiasts to celebrate Blizzard's popular games. Blizzard is the developer of the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo game series. The company is developing new games or expansion packs for all three franchises, and they're developing them all for the Mac as well. Tickets to BlizzCon 2008 cost US$100 each. BlizzCon features tournaments for players who want to test their skills against others in Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. The top prize is $25,000 per player, and players and teams will be venturing forth from North America, Europe, Korea and Taiwan. There will also be a StarCraft Invitational. Other events planned for BlizzCon 2008 include a costume contest for cosplayers who want to dress up like their favorite Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo characters, a diorama contest, original song contest, motivational poster contest, BlizzCon dance contest, "silly contest" and more. Attendees will also get a "goody bag" filled with exclusive stuff. Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/149814/blizzard_posts_details_about_blizzcon_2008.html

All stuff we know already, but it's new news on Blizzcon so I posted it.

Well, good news is you can still get them for ~$400 on ebay. Why didn't I think of doring that? Supply and demand gets you every time!

A little additional news on the DIRECTV story:

Get DIRECTV, Watch BlizzCon Free
Posted by: Frost| 9-19-08

"DIRECTV's BlizzCon package features over 16 hours of live HD coverage of the event, including exclusive interviews and commentary. New DIRECTV subscribers in the US who sign up for DIRECTV by September 30 through www.blizzard.directv.com or 800-728-9375 will receive the BlizzCon pay per view package for free, while existing DIRECTV customers will be able to order it for $39.95 beginning on September 28. The package also includes the BlizzCon-exclusive World of Warcraft in-game polar bear mount. For full details head over to the BlizzCon site. "

Source: From the WoW Blizzard site.

/target bichipriest
/point
/laugh

I'm still very sad that DishNetwork didn't do this. I don't have DirecTv and wouldn't be able to get it in enough time for this event. If anyone finds Blizzcon links and news and videos: post up I'd like to see what's there this year

And Jay Mohr was hilarious last year. Hopefully he has new material this year so it's not the same jokes from last year. I'll be looking for Youtube and other videos too.

Has anyone from DA decided to go this year for real? I know there were ticket snaffu's. Just not sure who might actually be going.