Project Lore

Less than 30 minutes after tickets went on sale for BlizzCon 2009 Saturday, they already were sold out. I was one of the lucky ones able to snag a pair for my husband and I. But thousands of people still were left in the ticket queue by the time they sold out. Thankfully this year, Blizzard is giving us another chance. A second batch of tickets goes up for sale in two weeks. And now we know exactly how the buying process goes.  Here's how I landed my tickets:

• About an hour before tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. PST, my husband and I both logged onto our individual Battle.net accounts and updated our payment options. The site seemed to be functioning fine as of that time. We went ahead to the Blizzard store page, which redirected us to the ticket sales page. We wanted to have the site loaded up well before the ticket sales began.
• Five minutes before the tickets went on sale, we started refreshing the  page every few seconds. My computer said 12:58 (since I'm on the east coast) when the site refreshed and went from saying "Tickets Unavailable" to "Select Quantity." You can only buy 5 tickets per mailing address.
• It took my computer about five seconds to refresh the page. By then, my husband already was in the queue at position 351. He entered the sales page almost immediately. I, on the other hand, got in the queue only seconds later and was at position 1,708, with an estimated 17-minute wait time. So those few seconds made a big difference.
• I did end up making it to the sales page around 1:15, but it didn't matter. By then, we already had our tickets.

But my time in the queue was interesting. Blizzard put a graphic on the page showing the percentage of tickets still remaining, so we could watch it drop several percentage points every minute. At 1:28 tickets for this round sold out. But by then, tens of thousands of people were waiting in the queue. So, what can we take away from this? If you're hoping to try again for tickets in the next round, get to the page early, and refresh starting a few minutes before the sale. If you get in the queue RIGHT away, you'll have a much better chance of scoring tickets. Both my husband and myself were able to get to the sales page since we entered the queue within seconds of it going up. And don't forget there's another way, too. If you want Grunty the murloc marine but can't attend, you still can watch parts of BlizzCon through pay per view. And, of course, we'll be bringing you the best of the convention here at Project Lore, too! So who else had luck with getting tickets so far? I'm curious how many others had a relatively smooth buying experience like I did. Any of you going to try for tickets on the 30th?

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Can't post images from the other games in action. :*(

At the last minute I decided to take the short ride up to New York and stick around for this year's Comic Con.  I am not a huge comic buff by any means, but with the video game industry's annual trade show being nerfed a few year's ago, the comic con circuit has changed.  The publishers of the finest video games have branched out to other venues (PAX , San Diego Comic Con, the former Leipzig Games Convention, now Gamescon, and others) to reach their adoring public.  With no ticket to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this year, I took the plunge and headed to NYC. When I arrived at the venue I wasn't exactly sure I had the correct facility.   I expected there to be a good amount of fanfare going on outside the glass-enclosed venue, yet it lacked ridiculously sized banners, a steady stream of cosplayers or huge buses with teams of satellites on top.  Turns out everything was inside, rather than spilling onto the streets. I went to the show knowing that I'd miss Blizzard's presentations - and they won't be at E3 - but enough other anticipated games, including a pair of upcoming superhero MMOGs, were still available to me.

• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (Mythic Entertainment/Electronic Arts) - Mythic Entertainment's MMOG has been hit by some hard times lately.  The company - along with numerous other internal developers - has been handed down directions from their overlords to cut costs.  This has caused over 60 people to lose their jobs , including development staff.  There really wasn't anything new shown in their hands-on area, but the panel discussion talked about their upcoming Call to Arms Live Expansion (free is good).  I also scored the spiffy, reversible poster you see above.  Regardless of the lack of new material, I was happy to see that EA is still throwing money around for WAR.
• Champions Online (Cryptic Studios/Atari) - Cryptic's newly purchased intellectual property is shaping up pretty nicely.  While it essentially looks and feels like City of Heroes 2.0, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  The developer purchased the Champions property outright, giving them free reign over the material rather than being hamstrung by licensing ties.  I played through a bit of a mini-instance - essentially a small dungeon designed to be soloed or done in a small group - complete with destructible objects and numerous mini-bosses wrapped in a comic-inspired presentation.  Champions Online is supposed to be out this Spring and is currently in closed-beta, which I scored access to.
• DC Universe Online (SOE Austin/Sony) - DCUO is still in its pre-alpha stage according to the developer.  The game looks more advanced - and less polished - than its superhero competitor above, but both are to be expected.  According to the booth manager, Sony is treating DCUO like Blizzard treats its titles, it will be done when it is done.  While it was originally announced for 2009, that can change at any moment.  PS3 play also looked surprisingly manageable. What had me most excited about the title was the licensing agreement that is in place.  Rather than SOE having have all aspect of the title approved, DC is apparently working with them at every level.  The comic company is helping and/or developing the overall story arcs, quests and encounters as a team with SOE, with Jim Lee at the helm of the creative side.  From what I was told, players that manage to stand-out from the run of the mill MMO gamer may even have an opportunity to have their character brought into the larger DCU, such as a limited comic appearance!

It may be my deep appreciation for the arcade days gone by, or my fascination with all things of B quality, but the title that stole the show for me was the latest entry in the House of the Dead franchise.  The campy series has longed needed a reboot - HotD 2 was the last good one - and the first game to launch on a console will honor us with just what the franchise needed.  House of the Dead: Overkill looks fantastic (for a Wii title) and plays very well.  The release is tomorrow and I am slated to review it elsewhere, hopefully we find out why G was bleeding. Did anyone else manage to swing by the con?

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