PAX wrapped up over the weekend in Seattle, and from what we've heard of
our friends' experiences over at Joystiq, it was a wild, wild time.
Blizzard was there as expected, and it sounds like the setup was pretty awesome. They had all three playable demos up from
BlizzCon, including the
Starcraft II singleplayer game, the
Diablo III monk class, and of course the
Cataclysm Worgen and Goblin race starting areas. We hear that Blizzard had their GMs in attendance as well, and reader Aveiceae (whose pictures you can see in the gallery below) reports that she saw both Drysc and Bornakk there. She also says that Blizzard gave away some of
their famous hand sanitizer throughout the show -- very important, especially at a gaming convention during swine flu season.
Tisoi also has
a report over on WoW LJ, including a few pictures of the setup on the convention floor, as well as a few (sneaky) screenshots of the Worgen and Goblin areas. He also got to meet Jeff "Vork" Lewis and Sandeep "Zaboo" Parikh of The Guild. Felicia Day wasn't there (she spent the weekend at
Dragon*Con, where there was other
WoW-related shenanigans going on), but as Sandeep reported on his Twitter,
she wasn't needed, thanks to cosplayers. Sounds like a great time was had by all. Next year, PAX is
headed out east -- we'll have to keep an eye out and see if Blizzard is going there as well.
Tags: blizzard, bornakk, demo, diablo, dragoncon, drysc, gms, goblin, monk, pax-2009, play, starcraft-2, starting-areas, worgen
Filed under: Events, Fan stuff, WoW Social Conventions, Virtual selves, Blizzard, News items, Cataclysm, Worgen, Goblin
Sep 8th 2009 at 1:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Agerath Sep 8th 2009 1:05PM
"Swine flu season".
Lol, what a joke.
aveiceae Sep 8th 2009 2:58PM
PAX just posted this on their twitter: "Just heard of our first test-confirmed swine flu case at the show. PLEASE if you feel symptoms (fever, etc) go to the doctor. #pax"
http://twitter.com/Official_PAX
great..
Agerath Sep 9th 2009 12:02AM
@avec:
To date, swine flu has killed fewer people than toasters.
Seasonal flu kills around 450,000 people every year; swine flu hasn't even killed 1/1000 of that amount!
Swine flu is a joke. The only people getting any benefit out of the scaremongering are the news agencies and GSK.
JLocke Sep 8th 2009 1:09PM
is Bornakk in one of these pictures? heard he's quite elusive :)
aveiceae Sep 8th 2009 3:22PM
http://www.wow.com/gallery/pax-2009-pictures-by-aveiceae/2264004/ and yeah, he was pretty elusive :)
mtsadowski Sep 8th 2009 1:33PM
I'm amazed at how popular Penny Arcade is. To think that they are so popular that they can have a huge convention is insane! I hear that it's a blast, too. Would love to go to PAX and/or Blizzcon one day.
Mecer Sep 8th 2009 1:53PM
A correction is needed here (being a PAX attendee):
PAX is splitting into two cons, PAXeast in March (Boston), and PAXwest in September (Seattle). Its not moving so much as they are spreading the love so more people can attend (and for me travel alot less).
So in recap, 2010 will have TWO PAX conventions. One could say it is the PAXIS of Evil.
mtsadowski Sep 8th 2009 2:23PM
As a Bostonian, I for one welcome our new PAX overlords and will buy a ticket ASAP!
perderedeus Sep 8th 2009 2:04PM
Blizz may look to do the same thing (East and West coasts), either in 2010 or 2011. With more titles launching (D3 and SC2) they'll want to have more panels, more activities, and they'll have more attendees. The Anaheim Convention Center can only hold so many people. BlizzCon 09 had all 4 halls used up, and things were still very tight.
I know their argument all along has been "much of the con is run by employees, who are coming from the Orange County area," but they're Blizzard for crying out loud. Start flying staffers out to the east coast. :P
Evi Sep 8th 2009 3:02PM
Hear hear! I would love to see the formation of Blizzcon East.
skippy1372 Sep 8th 2009 2:08PM
a nitpick: Drysk and Bornakk are CM's, not GM's.
basicPrototype Sep 8th 2009 2:09PM
Gah, I meant Drysc.
Aryc Ogre Sep 8th 2009 3:13PM
I was working a retail booth at PAX this year and got a few chances to chat it up with (formerly) Drysc and Zarhym; didn't know Bornakk was there. The first day they didn't have any giveaway stuff, but it looks like they had some stuff overnighted and on the second day they were handing out hand sanitizer and authenticators.
It looked like some of the landscape textures had been beefed up and Drysc mentioned that system requirements may be going up for this expansion as well. I had also noticed when playing both Worgen and Goblin that there were a lot of green drops on top of the green quest rewards and both Zarhym and Drysc commented that they while the items in the demo were certainly placeholders it was their intention to hand out some good stuff early on in the game and that this will carry over to the rest of the starting areas as well.
An interesting note, the last pre-private E3 had 60k attendees (they measure this officially across conventions by "turnstile" so not necessarily by actual person count). When E3 went public again this last year they had 40k. Dragoncon had 35k this year. Last year PAX had 58k, and this year they had 75,000 attendees.
And yes, I did get sick as well (even though I was using sanitizer like crazy) but not with Swine flu. The hypochondriac in me worried for a bit, but I confirmed I did not get the piggy flu. Check with your doctor to be on the safe side, but also remember to take a fever reducer like Tylenol, Aspirin or Ibuprofen. I was running at 102.4 for a while, but within 45 minutes of taking some Ibuprofen my fever started to break (which btw, will cause you to sweat like a maniac).
Olathe Sep 8th 2009 8:29PM
I got to play the Cataclysm demo. Was pretty sweet!
Physis Sep 9th 2009 1:28AM
Me too! I stood in one of the corners and played the Worgen demo from start to finish. It was easier to do that than try Diablo III or SC II, both of which had a mob of people crowding the stations. I cannot believe how beautiful the expansion is looking. Also, walking out of a farm basement after an earthquake and seeing half of the land you were just questing on disappear was one of the most impressive feelings in the game.
tisoi Sep 9th 2009 12:25AM
lolomg. I feel so famous for being mentioned on WoW insider. ;-P