Project Lore

Blizzard's got excitement coming at us from all angles this week. First, we got Patch 3.2 much sooner than many expected (although Heartborne let us all know his suspicions before the fact). And starting today, we get a short preview of sorts of BlizzCon through a special pre-sale of convention goodies. Blizz sent out this message to ticket holders Monday:

Heading to BlizzCon 2009? Planning to purchase some souvenirs at the show? We wanted to send you one last reminder that for the first time ever, you'll be able to shop for items from the BlizzCon 2009 store BEFORE the event during our limited-time-only, online BlizzCon 48-Hour Sale!

Starting today at 10:01 a.m. Pacific Time (which equates to 1:01 p.m. for me on the east coast), BlizzCon ticket buyers will be able to shop online for select convention merchandise. This will be my first time attending BlizzCon, but I've heard nightmarish stories of store lines at the show in years past (though I bet the crazyness doesn't quite compete with the trouble we go through just to score tickets). Hopefully, buying goodies online will be a bit less stressful, and I'm hopeful that it might even cut down the lines at the actual event since many will have already bought their souvenirs. But I'm not holding my breath. I know that I, for one, will still want to visit the actual store at the event. But that doesn't simmer my excitement for the upcoming 48-hour sale. I don't have a ton of WoW-related merchandise. A couple books and manga here, a figurine there, but that's about it. So I am eager to mark the occasion of my first BlizzCon with plenty of loot. Now if they just have any of those plushy murlocs in stock, I will be a happy (ecstatic) camper. If not, I may settle for a nice poster, calendar or something along those lines. Hmm, on second thought, maybe a T-shirt or some buttons would be nice. Or hair accessories? Oh, the possibilities (If only, right ladies?)! For those of you who were lucky enough to score tickets, here's Blizz's instructions for how to participate:

• Between 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time on August 5 and 10:00 a.m. on August 7, log in to the online Blizzard Store (www.blizzard.com/store) using the Battle.net account you used to purchase your BlizzCon 2009 tickets.
• Click the special "BlizzCon Sale" button in the lower-right corner of your screen.
• Browse new BlizzCon 2009 items created especially for attendees, add them to your cart, and then proceed to check out.
• Items will be shipped directly to your home.
• Enjoy the show!

Take note that you have to be an original ticket buyer to participate (which likely means we'll soon see more BlizzCon goodies on eBay from those who bought tickets to resell them). Regardless... what goodies are you hoping to score?

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It's been more than a week since Blizzard's deadline to personalize your Blizzcon 2009 tickets has passed, yet there's still a whole bunch of ticket holders trying to sell off their spares on eBay. Earlier this month was the last date for ticket holders to make changes to the names for Blizzcon tickets. Here's the process they required, as detailed on the official events FAQ:

You will have up until Saturday, June 13 at 5 p.m. Pacific Time to make any changes to attendee badge information in Battle.net Account Management. After this point, no further changes can be made. If you have not entered any information by this time, all attendee names will default to the full name of the Battle.net account holder. If you do not know the names of the guests you are bringing to BlizzCon and will not know by June 13, put all of the badges under your own name. Bring *all* of the printed bar-code emails, along with your photo ID, to BlizzCon, and you will be able to pick those up all of the badges yourself and distribute them to your guests. Photo ID will only be checked at the time of badge pick-up... In order to receive a badge, the name on the bar-code e-mail *must* match the name on your photo ID.

So how, exactly, are the ticket scalpers getting away with it if they can no longer update the names of the ticket holders? Some say they will show up at the convention center to pick up the tickets, then distribute them to auction winners. And I'm sure there will be some who will honor that promise (as long as you show up on time and in the pre-arranged location). I'm betting a handful won't. Other sellers say the tickets will remain under the auction seller's name, but say something shady like "Your badges will show my husband's name (or if you're a female, my name) but you will be able to get in and out without a problem." I'd rather not take chances with hundreds of dollars with that guarantee. And some sellers make no mention whatsoever that the June 13 deadline has passed. Now I'm sure that not everyone has evil intentions when they sell their tickets, but I do question the nature of sellers who want to sell their tickets for a crazy profit. Even a whole bunch of official fansite contests I've seen this month have all ended (as far as I can find out of the ones listed in the official forums). However, if you want some WoW-related entertainment, take a look at some of the WoW limericks submitted for WoWWiki's contest. Some are good, plenty are bad. But you'll definitely find some hilarity in there. But back on topic - there's not too many options left for those of us still without tickets. That only furthers my over all recommendation: Buyer beware! What's one to do? Well, first off, don't freak out. You, of course, should check back regularly here at Project Lore for news from the convention. If you want to live through Blizzcon without attending, check out the Directv offer to watch the event from home - murloc included. So, we have a little more than 8 weeks to go before the big event. I know there were a lot of you who didn't have luck with getting a ticket on the official sale dates. Did anyone try their hands at a contest, and perhaps even win some tickets? Anyone taking your chances with a ticket auction? How many of you are opting to watch from home?

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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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Blizzard just put out a press release detailing the ticket sales for this year's BlizzCon. Tickets will be more expensive than 2008, at $125 instead of the $100 they were last year, and they will go on sale in two seperate blocks on the Blizzard Store. The first sale will start on Saturday, May 16. The second will start two weeks later, on May 30. Those who can't afford or who are unable to get their tickets due to say, technical difficulties, will be able to catch the event both on DIRECTV and via an internet stream. Both will be priced at $39.95 and will include the exclusive in-game item that comes in the swag bag. Last year it was the Blizzard Bear with a murloc on top. What murloc themed item might it be this year? Nobody knows. The press release also cites improvements to the Blizzard Store with a queuing system, but only time will tell how much those improvements will help with the high demand on the check-out servers. BlizzCon 2009 will be held, once again, in the Anaheim Convention Center and will take place on August 21 and 22. One other thing of note is that the press release states that signing up for a Battle.net account will help streamline the ordering process, so you may want to do that before tickets go on sale to make it as easy as possible to get those tickets. We hope to see you guys there once again this year!

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Blizzard just announced on the World of Warcraft site that they have selected the 'winners' of the BlizzCon opt-in ticket drawing. These lucky 1500 people now have the chance to buy two tickets to BlizzCon for $100 each. If anyone who was selected doesn't purchase both tickets, another round of selections will be made. For those of us patiently waiting for BlizzCon tickets, it's a big moment. This is likely one of the last chances for Blizzard fans to get tickets to the show, although who really knows how good those odds were, since we don't know the number of people who actually opted in. This drawing, of course, was the result of a failure on Blizzard's part to ensure that their online store would be able to handle the amount of people wanting tickets when they went on sale a while back. It was a good enough solution for this year, but in the future, more and more people are likely going to want to get tickets to BlizzCon. They've got to come up with something that will allow tickets to be distributed fairly. I'd love to hear all of your thoughts on the subject, too. How do you think this whole debacle was handled? What are your thoughts on a solution for the future? A bigger venue? More expensive tickets? Fewer swag items? Also, how many of you guys opted in to get tickets, and did any of you get that email letting you know you could purchase them?

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I was on vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina until August 10th. Yes, the day before BlizzCon tickets went on sale. I actually cut that vacation two days short so I could get home to a solid internet connection. I knew that I would need one to scoop up the two tickets I wanted to purchase. There I was, August 11th, stuck in the epic "fail Murloc" and XML error cycle like thousands of other users. F5, F5, F5, still the murloc haunts me. After Blizzard Poster Nethaera said the tickets had been sold out, I thought all hope was lost and began looking at eBay. Don't look at eBay. It is simply heart-breaking. Yes I saw that there would also be a small reserve of tickets to be sold at 8PM but that is PST time, and I was going to be unavailable then. My BlizzCon hopes were dashed. Just two days later, Mike Morhaime, the big cheese at Blizzard, pulled some strings and reworked the show's floor to allow room for 3,000 more people. To top it off they decided that these tickets would only be made available via a lottery system for those with an active Blizzard account (meaning their Online Store) as of August 12th. Huzzah, less chance that the last batch will be placed on eBay! The details on the lottery came out yesterday and will include an opt-in period much like the Wrath Beta. After that time frame elapses - still unknown - Blizzard will select 1,500 lucky members and allow them to purchase two tickets each. Should there be any tickets left, there will be another drawing and so on until all remaining tickets are sold. I have been fairly lucky at bingo in my life so I hope that luck carries over into this process. I really, really, want to snag that BlizzCon Polar Bear mount. Should anyone want to feel my pain, I invite you to play BlizzCon 08 - The Game. You can learn more about the lottery system via the BlizzCon Drawing FAQ. Good luck.

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BlizzCon tickets go on sale tomorrow. According to a blue post, it will happen sometime after the work day starts. So you won't have to stay up late tonight in order to guarantee yourself a spot. Last year, tickets sold out in days. Earlier this year, World Wide Invitational tickets sold out quickly, went back on sale, then sold out quickly again. So apparently, people like WoW and want exclusive swag. If you want to go to BlizzCon, you'd better check that official BlizzCon website often on Monday, so you don't get left high and dry. I know at least a few of you are anxious to get your hands on tickets to the convention. Many people seem to already have made plans, travel arrangements, and hotel reservations. Who of you are among them? How many of you have made up your minds about getting that polar bear mount, winning the costume contest, or making your to class designers about nerfing warlocks? The show isn't going to be far from where I live, so who knows, I may just have to show my face there. Or maybe I'll dress up in a murloc suit.

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Blizzard sent out a press release today announcing that tickets for their BlizzCon Gaming Convention will be available for purchase on the official BlizzCon website on August 11, 2008. Those of you lucky enough to get in on the tickets will have to pony up $100 per person to attend the event on October 10 and 11. BlizzCon is going to be held in Anaheim, CA in the Anaheim Convention Center and should have tons of interesting content for fans of WoW, Diablo, and Starcraft. These include hands-on demos of upcoming games, discussion panels with developers, gaming tournaments, contests, commemorative merchandise, and a silent auction. Attendees of previous Blizzard events have also received beta keys, exclusive in-game items, and other great swag. Just remember, if you want to go, buy tickets fast! Last year they sold out very quickly, and this year tickets will probably go even faster. If you can’t make it or don’t get tickets, you can also check out the in depth coverage that will be happening on DIRECTV Pay Per View, if that's your thing.

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