I have a confession to make: I’ve never been to BlizzCon. And I’m pretty much okay with that.
I bought virtual tickets for BlizzCon 2010 and 2011 and that suited me just fine. I was really excited for the 2011 convention and actually got trapped in Twitter Timeout for an hour or whatever because I tweeted way too much about the announcement of Mists of Pandaria.
I haven’t played World of Warcraft for the last almost-year. November 10th marks the anniversary of my account expiring. (Exception: 30 minutes on a trial account, trying to figure out which Horde race can get to Trade Chat soonest. Tip: It’s the Tauren.)
And yet, I bought myself the virtual ticket this year. I won’t even be able to watch live on Friday, due to some pesky Real-Life things, but you can bet I’ll come home and watch the What’s Next session for World of Warcraft. Despite not having played in a year, despite all the issues I have with the game, which caused me to stop playing, I still care about the game. Weird, isn’t it? (Yes, yes it is.)
Anyhow, I’m sure I’ll be posting Friday or Saturday about BlizzCon and what’s next for WoW. As of yet, I’m undecided between the new expansion being The Dark Below or Warlords of Draenor or something else entirely. I don’t know if we’ll go to 95 or 100 for the level cap. I don’t know if we’ll have a new class or new race or new class/race combinations. I don’t know if there will be a new profession.
It’s a little strange to be so calm and sort of blasé about BlizzCon. For years, it’s been this treasure trove of information that I, generally, cannot wait to hear. And this year… I’ll see the panels when I get home from my real-life stuff on Friday evening. I’m going to try to stay spoiler-free until I do get home. For once, I will not be scrounging for every little morsel of information possible. It’s kind of nice, to be honest.
However, between you and me, I kind of hope that whatever they announce for WoW is something that’s really exciting to me. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to playing as much as I used to, I don’t think I’ll ever do organized, heroic-mode raiding again, but I’m sure I’ll take another crack at server-first skinning come the expansion (assuming professions aren’t completely reworked to the point where such achievements no longer exist!) and it’d be nice to dip my toes into WoW again. But none of this will likely happen before the new year. (And if I end up getting this one job that I really, really, really want, it might not happen until much closer to the launch of the expansion.) It’ll happen, though, even if it’s just for a month to see what’s happening in the game.
With BlizzCon happening, this is a busy weekend for me because I’m sure I’ll have to update Module 5 of my Kick-Ass GM Guide, which is all about expansion planning. So that’s going to be interesting. :) Check back here later this weekend (or on Twitter, or Facebook) because I will certainly have some BlizzCon-related stuff and sales going on at Kurn’s Guides!
Oh, and speaking of weekends, next weekend, Majik and his wife JD are coming up to Montreal and those two, plus my brother Fog, Fog’s wife (I) and myself are all going up to my parents’ cottage for a fun weekend of chilling out (literally), hanging out, doing some outdoorsy stuff if it’s not too cold and probably playing a ton of board games. It’s gonna be fun. And I may try to get Majik to sing for the Blessing of Frost listeners, at long last.
Anyhow, I hope that all those heading to (or already at) BlizzCon have a truly awesome time and that those who feel left out feel better by knowing that they are almost certainly not going to get “con crud”. ;)
Happy BlizzCon, everyone. Enjoy yourselves, no matter how you’re spending this weekend. :)