Posts with tag launch-event

In the World of Warcraft: What's Next panel, Cory Stockton, Lead Content Designer, announced that Warlords of Draenor will have a substantial pre-launch event to introduce players to the story of Warlords of Draenor. Pre-launch events sort of fell by the wayside with Cataclysm and Mists. The last time we had a really involved one was with Wrath of the Lich King's scourge invasion and zombie plague. This event will be a very "guided" experience similar to the death knight class introduction. This will be more than a simple quest.

It will begin in the Blasted Lands when something strange happens with the Dark Portal, causing it to turn red. Players are sent on on a suicide mission through the Dark Portal (yes, before the expansion even launches) to help prepare for the real journey into Draenor when the expansion launches. Those of you who played before BC will remember when the demons started pouring through the portal in the days leading up to launch. It sounds like it will be like that, except we actually get to venture into the portal ahead of time.

I've always missed the pre-launch events and was extremely excited to hear this news. The question is will there be any "gameplay disrupting" events like the zombie plague, or will it be isolated to the events surrounding the portal itself?

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WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

This Monday, WoW fans will line up at stores around the world to buy the game's fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria. For Blizzard, the past eight years have been an incredible run, setting records for sales and building one of the largest virtual communities on Earth.

Let's look back at the game's original launch, when Blizzard wasn't quite as prepared as they are today for the game's overwhelming popularity.

A moonlit walk

Blizzard's chief operating officer Paul Sams couldn't wrap his head around what he was seeing. Just after 11 p.m. on November 22, 2004, he was sitting in deadlock traffic on a freeway offramp in Fountain Valley, California. He looked over at the Fry's Electronics outlet not far from the road. The store had been surrounded by some sort of dark, seething mass.

Caught in traffic, Sams was in danger of missing the game's launch event at Fry's. Rather than fight his way through the jumble of cars, he decided to park some distance away. It was still unclear to him what was happening. The electronics store was only minutes from Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine. He thought he had left the office with plenty of time to spare. He never imagined that getting to the store would be difficult this late at night.

So Cataclysm is coming and Kisirani is already working on an in-game launch event. It's gotta mean something right? Now don't get me wrong, even with my self-confessed zombiephobia, I loved last November's zombie invasion (though, at times, it got really frustrating). So now Kisirani is officially hard at work planning a new event to herald the beginning of an Azerothian cataclysm, I can't help but wonder what she has up her sleeves for us.

Is anyone else excited? I certainly am and it gives us something to focus on during the inevitable wait. To be fair, at least Cataclysm's not scheduled for 2012! We don't have that long to wait, we could be rolling Worgen and Goblins in just under/over a year's time. That just about makes it bearable. But it also leaves us with time to think about what Blizzard will do to introduce players to this brave new world.

Hit the jump to find out what we think could well happen prior to the launch of Cataclysm.

From the "duh, but still cool" news department comes confirmation that there will be an in-game launch event for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, WoW's third expansion.

Kisirani, your friendly neighborhood world designer, replied to a comment in the general forms today where a player said he'd be disappointed if there wasn't a Cataclysm launch event. Kisirani replied:

*rolls up her sleeves and idly kicks the crates from last launch event under her desk*

We're on it.

That's confirmation in Blizzard speak.

Will it be as badass as the Lich King launching his forces into Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and the rest of Azeroth? My guess is that it'll be at least 37 times as badass.

It's that time of the week again, and even though Wrath is out and we're all playing up a storm, we'll be taking some time out of our schedule to put out our weekly podcast, the WoW Insider Show, and you should come join us. We'll be live on Ustream tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern (time zone calculator), and this week, we'll welcome the site's other co-lead blogger, Dan O'Halloran on with us -- he was live on the scene in Anaheim with Blizzard and about a thousand fans during the launch, and he got to talk to Tom Chilton, so we'll get him to tell us all about that. And Chase Christian, who writes the Encrypted Text rogue column, will be joining us as well to talk about his experiences from 70-72 so far. Additionally, we'll be chatting about Blizzard issues with server downtime and how they've fared post-launch so far (very well, I think, queues notwithstanding), and we'll talk about that first to 80 player and all of our other experiences in Northrend over the past few days.

Should be a terrific show, definitely tune in on Ustream, or just come right back to this post, as we've embedded the stream after the break. If you've got a question for the show or something you'd like us to talk about, just drop a note: our email address is the show AT wowinsider dot com. And of course we'll be on for our usual aftershow -- after the show ends, we turn off the recording and chat directly with the people in the channel, so if you haven't listened live before, there's a great reason to tune in tomorrow. See you there!