warcraft-anniversary
Latest
BlizzCon 2014 on the way?
Sharp eyes over at MMO-Champion discovered a small change to a page on the official BlizzCon site yesterday. The Terms and Conditions section of the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket page has been updated to read BlizzCon 2014 on the header title. At this time, there doesn't appear to be any other adjustments made to any page on the site -- not even in the Terms and Conditions itself, which still lists the year as 2013. While this is by no means any kind of a definite confirmation that we'll be seeing another BlizzCon this year, it's the first sign we've seen of another event happening. Statements made at a panel at BlizzCon 2013 indicated that Blizzard very clearly didn't want to take another year off from the event. This year marks not only the tenth anniversary of World of Warcraft, but the twentieth of the Warcraft franchise -- which is more than enough reason to throw another convention, even beyond the multiple games being released this year. Although we don't have any real confirmation, information about BlizzCon is usually released in the spring -- so we might just be hearing more about the event soon.
What's taking the Battlecry mosaic so long?
When the World of Warcraft Anniversary mini-site was unveiled last November, one of its features was a photo-mosaic dubbed the Battlecry which would unlock little art goodies each time a certain milestone was reached. The Battlecry mosaic called for player submissions to submit their pictures with a logo of their favored faction, with a modest goal of 20,000 player-submitted pictures in order to reveal the final artwork created specially for the event. It's come along rather smoothly, and some really cool player pictures have been submitted, with the seeming abundance of Horde-aligned pictures prompting us to ask where the Alliance pride was. But what really surprises me is how long the whole project is taking. When the site was launched, one of the first questions that actually ran through my head was how long it would take to fill up the whole mosaic. With over ten million active players, you'd think getting to 20,000 would be easy. Out of ten million, that's like a drop in a bucket. But after almost two months of the site being active, we're still only at 32% of the goal. Why?
Blizzard unveils anniversary minisite
Monday wasn't only the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft, it also kicked off the 15th anniversary of the Warcraft property at large (which makes sense -- you might remember that the original WoW intro started off with "Ten Years of Warcraft"). And so Blizzard has created a brand new minisite to commemorate the occasion -- they've got a full video interview with many of the staff members (no women, though, Blizzard -- what's the deal there?), and there are other Blizzard and community interviews coming as well. They've also got a feature called the "Battlecry Mosaic," in which they're inviting fans to take pictures of themselves showing Horde or Alliance pride with printable logos, which will then be assembled into a mosaic of up to 20,000 pictures. That should be a sight to see -- it'll eventually all be posted online, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something like it at the next BlizzCon also. Neth also says that whoever reaches set limits on pictures will get a faction exclusive piece of art revealed. Sounds fun. I thought for a moment that this was what the Warcraft twitter account was referring to the other day, but they specifically said whatever they were talking about would be revealed on 11/25, and obviously that's still in the future. So we'll have to see what else appears this week. Still, the minisite is an excellent homepage for Blizzard's look back at their first and biggest franchise. Especially if you're a Warcraft fan, it's a must-see.
