The Queue: A BlizzCon by any other name
by Michael Gray 
Mar 25th 2010 at 2:00PM
It's like there was an announcement today. About . . . I don't know. Something. Involving a lot of people who play World of Warcraft, all cramming themselves in a conference hall and talking about video games.
Oh, right. We know when BlizzCon 2010 is going to be. That's going to make this year's Halloween so much cooler, what with the convention being October 22nd and October 23rd.
In honor of this glorious announcement, we'll be focused today on Blizzard and BlizzCon related questions.
Elizer asked . . .
When's BlizzCon 2010 going to be announced?
*cough*. Today, around 11:45 Eastern Standard Time.
ZMES_Matt asked . . .
Is there a reason/meaning behind the name "Blizzard"?
Answer-meister Cataca actually found this story on our sister site Joystiq in which Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce answered exactly that question. According to Pearce, they literally made up a giant list from dictionary words, passed the ideas around, and picked the best one.
It's not exactly rocket science, but it seems to have turned out well for Blizzard.
Artandra asked . . .
What's it like at BlizzCon?
My impression of BlizzCon 2009 was a little different, since my BlizzCon schedule started the day before with the reader meetup. But after I woke up in the morning and recovered from that awesome event, I immediately made my way to the line to get in.
The line went on as far as you could see. It was amazing as it coiled from one parking lot to another, down a long walkway, and then finally to the Anaheim Convention Center. It was like looking at a little piece of the yellow brick road.
Inside the center itself, there are three main sections. These are where the panels take place. All through the floor itself, there are little booths where vendors, displays, and statues are set up. And there are rows and rows of computers for attendees to be able to play video games.
The crowd is always friendly, and everyone is very happy to be at the con. I could probably write an entire post just talking about starry-eyed experiences at BlizzCon, but I'll sum it up saying: the whole affair has a definite energy and buzz to it. It's very exciting, and a whole lot of fun.
Kalaniri asked . . .
What's the BlizzCon Store going to be like this year?
No clue yet. I'm hoping for a sweet messenger bag, though. Last year's was neat and all, but not great for day to day use. I really want to let my geek flag fly by having a great 24/7 bag.
Fox asked . . .
What are you supposed to do at a BlizzCon?
Well, if you're a diehard fan, you're going to be interested in the panels. The Dungeons and Raids Panel in 2009 gave us great previews of Icecrown Citadel and some of what we can expect for Cataclysm.
Aside from the panels, there's vendors selling a bunch of miscellaneous gaming supplies, statues, art, and about everything else you can shake a stick at. It is all obviously very Blizzard-centric, but that's fairly understandable at BlizzCon.
Kat asked . . .
Do you have any goals at BlizzCon 2010?
I'm sure I'll have a bunch. But the thing I missed out on in 2009 was getting to meet Ghostcrawler. Because of his work toward raising the sophistication of feedback and dialogue in the community, he's become a hero of mine. I'd like to shake his hand. Sure, his balancing and all is cool, I guess, but it's mostly his public leadership I admire.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
dayninator Mar 25th 2010 2:07PM
I'm wondering what's going on with the tooltips, particulary on Wowhead. For example, they now say things like, "Increases damage by x - x" instead of a single number. Here's a link to the Imp Thunder Clap tooltip: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=12666
Is this meant to clarify things for the theorycrafters?
Hollow Leviathan Mar 25th 2010 2:41PM
I assume it has to be some unintentional result from a necessity of the programming for the game, which appeared unexpectedly and percolated down to making our lives hard.
I like to think it's a much delayed *additional* issue resulting from the great 3.0.8 patch catastrophe.
BigBadGooz Mar 25th 2010 2:17PM
Blizzcon is the fetival of lights.....among the chance to see scanty clad women. The mans mantra if it has tits or tires I'm there
Slaytanic Mar 25th 2010 2:51PM
......instead of one holiday, we have eight CRAZY nights.......heh heh heh
alarmed0015 Mar 25th 2010 2:21PM
What files does wow.com keep wanting to download to my computer?
ZMES_Matt Mar 25th 2010 2:58PM
I'd like to know the same thing, it just started popping up on my browser today...
Drakkenfyre Mar 25th 2010 3:14PM
That would be a rogue antivirus. Which tries to trick you into installing it, then it will claim your system is infected with viruses, and the only way to "clean" them will be by paying the company to "activate" the software.
It will also probably lock you down from running anything else, and will pop up continously when you do anything, like browsing a web site. It is like a virus, and is a pain in the ass to get rid off unless you use Malwarebytes.
Have I seen the pop-up? No, but I have seen it plenty of times before. It comes from advertisers not screening their ad purchasers more thoroughly. It's a Flash exploit.
Jason Mar 25th 2010 2:21PM
Oh no... All the gallery links are coming back in full force!! :P
galestrom Mar 25th 2010 2:24PM
So, you guys seem to have an intrinsic ability to see things from all sides. Can you tell us your thoughts as to why we can't kick anyone from a random dungeon group for 15 minutes? I can't see the logic here, as failure doesn't typically take 15 minutes to identify.
Literaltruth Mar 25th 2010 10:40PM
Because people can be asses. There was a concern when the DF was announced that asshole player would grief others by setting up groups and constantly kicking anyone that joined just to grief them. It may sound stupid, but think along the same lines as people who hang around low level towns of the opposing faction and constantly kill flight masters and quest givers.
In addition it stops the kind of gear score elitism that goes along with raids - heroics are designed to allow people to gear up. If you could boot anyone straight away, fresh 80s who need heroics to get badges and gear to replace their quest rewards would be in danger of getting booted from every group they join by highly geared characters wanting to have a super-fast frost emblem run. With the 15m wait to be able to boot someone, it makes it counter-productive to boot low-geared players (the kind who Heroics are actually designed for) since you could just get the dungeon done with the low-geared members in tow in the time it would take to wait out the boot cooldown.
nick Mar 25th 2010 4:46PM
I really think it's because Blizzard doesn't want people kicked for being undergeared, or for lacking knowledge -as much as both of those things make you want to kick someone. I think Blizzard wants the vote-kick option to be used for AFK or Disconnected people. They would rather you help the person gain the knowledge they need. And besides, if they weren't trying to get geared, they wouldn't be in the heroic in the first place.
galestrom Mar 25th 2010 2:43PM
I'm afraid neither of these scenarios make much sense. Rampant teams of trolls are a statistical improbability compared to the chance of getting that one person in group who either refuses to participate, or is hell bent on being a troll.
Gear score elitism is also an unlikely reason logically speaking. Vote-kick requires the majority to agree, and it seems to me that most people understand that any information conveyed by gearscore alone is generally useless.
Hollow Leviathan Mar 25th 2010 2:44PM
If being kicked does not give you the delay in queueing for another random, then those chain-kicking griefer-wanna-bes aren't really accomplishing much. /ignore one or all of them, never have that issue again. Now, people going AFK at the start of dungeons while we can do diddly to remove or cope with them, that's a real problem. Which is likely why they changed it.
Elofax Mar 25th 2010 4:43PM
You don't play dps, do you, Hollow Leviathan? We have MUCH longer queue times than healers and tanks, and being immediately kicked by griefers and having to requeue again would tick off a LOT of dpsers who'd just spent so long waiting for the queue to pop.
galestrom Mar 25th 2010 5:06PM
There hasn't been a change to this that I'm aware of; it still takes 15 minutes to remove a player from the group.
Q.Q: The system as setup now seems to empower the trolls or inattentive among us, and penalize the responsible players left to deal with their behavior. I'm wondering if there's a side to it I'm not seeing here, as it doesn't make much sense to me. =)
thebl4ckd0g Mar 25th 2010 2:26PM
Like the pic of you with Felica Day. :)
RogueJedi86 Mar 25th 2010 2:48PM
The pic's filename is "580felicia-zach.jpg", so I assume it's Felicia and Zach Yonson, not Michael Gray (the writer of today's Queue).
Catacomb Kid Mar 25th 2010 3:25PM
dope sleuthing
Vogie Mar 25th 2010 3:44PM
Oh Felicia... /sigh
Prinnygod Mar 25th 2010 2:26PM
Will any of you WoW.com people be participating in Earth Hour?