On Thursday, it was time to pick up my BlizzCon badge. I knew this might take a bit of time so I went to lineup pretty early on Thursday. I think I lined up at around 8:00 am, the lineup wasn't too long at that time. I managed to pick up my badge fairly quickly and lined up for the BlizzCon store. They were selling lots of cool stuff (most of which I bought beforehand like the Murloc slippers, and the Diablo desk mat). I bought two t-shirts (one of Diablo and one of Overwatch), a BlizzCon magnet and a Funko Pop golden Soldier 76. By the time I was finished with the badge pickup and the BlizzCon store, it was around 10:30 am so it wasn't as bad as last year when I ended up finishing around noon time. Once I dropped off my stuff at my hotel, I had lots of free time so I went to Outlets at Orange, which was big outlet mall with many different outlet shops. There lots of cheap stuff that the stores were selling. I went to the Asics sporting goods store and picked up a t-shirt for $12 (wow!). I also bought some soap for my mom at Bath & Body Works for $3. One of the stores that I was really interested in was the Nike store. They were selling lots of cheap shoes there. I really wanted to buy a pair of running shoes but I knew if I did, it wouldn't fit in my luggage. I came back to my hotel at like 4pm and ate dinner at Clancy's.
Friday was the start of BlizzCon and I wanted to arrive there early to get a good seat for the opening ceremonies. I lined up for BlizzCon at around 7:30 am and the lineup seemed pretty long already. Usually when I lineup of the start of BlizzCon, I can get to the base of the fountain that is located outside the convention center. This time when I arrived, I was already several feet further away from the fountain. At the time, it seemed as though the lineup was super long already but what I didn't know was that the event center was doing something different this year. Normally, the bag checks would be just inside the convention center leading up to the second set of doors to the convention. This time around, the bag checks were outside the convention center, meaning that the lineup was being pushed farther than it had been previously. I think this was a better change but at the time, I was worried that I wouldn't get a good seat for the opening ceremony. I managed to get a good seat, it was about 2 sections back from the main stage, real close to the center of the stage. It was hard to see the main stage but fortunately I had a real good view of the video monitors. The opening ceremony was really cool this year. There weren't lots of news concerning WoW or StarCraft. Overwatch announced Sombra with a cool animation, some new maps and the Overwatch e-sports league. Hearthstone announced it's next card expansion and Heroes of the Storm announced 2 new heroes (Varian Wrynn and Ragnoros). The best announcement by far was for Diablo 3. They announced their 20 year anniversary event, which features going back to original Diablo game, the armory, which will help you switch to different builds more easily and the new character, the Necromancer!
After the opening ceremony, I wanted to play Diablo with new Necromancer but there was already a big lineup there. So instead I went around the convention getting signatures and some cool posters. Diablo 3 had lightning talks at 1:30pm so I went to that. It was really cool hearing about various tools and development strategies the Diablo dev team were using to make their game. After that I played Diablo 3 Necromancer, played Hearthstone (beat a little kid - sorry!) and also played Overwatch. At 5:00pm, Diablo 3 had their main presentation in Hall D. There were showing lots of cool new features coming to the game. One of the most exciting things were the new crafting materials page. They also showed a bit more of the Necromancer and how it might be played. After the Diablo panel, BlizzPro was meeting up so I went to that. I got to meet Neinball and Leviathan from the Westmarch Workshop again (I also met with Dreadsythe, Miss Cheetah and Lala). After that, I ate dinner at one of the food trucks outside. I didn't want to spend my time outside for Blizzard's anniversary event so I went to get my picture taken at the Gif booth and bought some toy capsules at the toy capsule depot.
On Saturday, one of the first things that I did was visit the Jinx booth. The Jinx booth was really cool this year. They had set up two games you could do (2 versus 2). One was where you had to push a button that had the same name that was on the screen. Another game was you had to throw bean bags into a hole. I ended up winning twice, got some Jinx logo pins and some lanyards. After that I got some signatures for my Book of Cain (people like Nevalistas and Christie Golden). At 12:30pm, there were some more Diablo lightning talks. After that, I ate lunch at the Porko Rico food truck (they had a very good pulled pork burger). Once I ate lunch, I played Hearthstone again where I ended up winning again. At 4:00pm, the Diablo 3 dev talk and Q&A was in Hall A. They went through challenge rifts and took questions from the fans. After the Diablo 3 panel, I went to eat dinner and came back to the convention center. I played another round of Overwatch and then went to play some Diablo 2. After that, I met with Neinball and Leviathan again. They were talking to some of Diablo 3 developers and I just listened in. I ended up following the Westmarch Workshops guys and listened in on Wyatt's story time (I also ended up meeting Rhykker there as well). That was pretty much it for BlizzCon 2016.
BlizzCon 2016 was really fun. I ended up doing most of things that I wanted to do there. I was real worried that there weren't going to be any news for Diablo 3 but I was really pleasantly surprised. I will cover more of my thoughts about the Diablo news in a different blog post. One of the things that I kind of missed at BlizzCon this year was all the e-sport events. I normally like to watch the e-sport events but I really didn't have the time to watch any of it. I only managed to watch the final game of the StarCraft 2 tournament. I was more concerned about Diablo and any news concerning that game. Maybe next time, there will be a better chance I can catch some e-sport action. I also missed watching the costume contest and the closing ceremony but hopefully with the virtual ticket, I can watch those events later. That is it for now, see you later.
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