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All hail Grommloc
If you were wondering what the BlizzCon 2014 pet was going to be, wonder no more, for it is Grommloc, the mightiest of murlocs. Announced via the official World of Warcraft twitter, this little guy will be available for those of us who get to attend BlizzCon this year, as well as those of us who purchase the Virtual Ticket. Personally, I find his little Gorehowl so freaking cute I can't damn well stand it. I hope he yells We will never mrrghlgrlrble slaves at some point, I really do. Oh, man, we need a lil' Pit Lord pet now for Grommloc to whack with his axe. Tiny murloc Mannoroth! You have to make this happen, Blizz.
The Queue: Creepycool
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Spiders are gross. Spider-people are awesome. What's up with that? lib.feathers asked: Pardon if this has been brought up before, but I just noticed it today. It contains minor spoilers for WoD, so fair warning... When I first got to Wor'var, Aggra says that she is expecting her second child. Now she's saying that she can't wait to get back to Orgrimmar and her "children", and then she proceeds to take part in the Grommashar quests. I'm really curious whether the WI staff thinks this is an acceptable fix for the boys' trip or not. It's not making sense to me. Why would Thrall send the mother of his children to go fight while he stays behind?
BlizzCon tickets beginning to arrive by email
If you were one of the lucky few to snag a ticket to this year's BlizzCon, you should keep an eye on your mailbox because tickets are being sent out. (If you weren't one of the lucky few, you can still pick up a virtual ticket, though!) This year's ticketing process looks to be much like last year's: you'll need to print out your ticket and have it and a photo ID in order to get your badge. Badge pick-up is at the Anaheim Convention Center -- and if you show up on Thursday, the line shouldn't be hard to spot. Pick-up hours are Thursday, November 6 from 9 am to 9 pm; Friday, November 7 and Saturday, November 8, from 8 am to 10 pm. You'll also get a code to claim your virtual goodies this year, but Blizzard says nothing is available until a rather generic "later date." See you at BlizzCon, everyone!
BlizzCon offers up virtual tickets
If you really want to check out BlizzCon but can't quite manage a flight out to California, a solution is available. Virtual tickets are now available from Blizzard for $39.99, allowing you to watch the panels, the competitions, and the events live from the comfort of your own home. Sure, you won't get to actually be packed in the convention hall, but this way no one cares whether you're wearing pants or not, so you even come out ahead. Purchasing a virtual ticket will give you access to bonus in-game goods for World of Warcraft, Diablo III, StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone, although the details are not yet available. All of the streams are also available in high definition and can be re-watched, so you needn't worry about missing something. If you've already purchased a physical ticket, you still have access to a virtual ticket as well, so you can still take advantage of the streaming. Everyone who wants to attend can at least get something like that experience.
BlizzCon Virtual Ticket on sale now
BlizzCon is only a couple of months away and the Virtual Ticket is now available for purchase. The price of the virtual pass is $39.99 and grants access to a livestream of the developer panels, exclusive interviews, live contests hosted by Chris Hardwick, the closing ceremony, and various in-game items. Additionally, you'll be able to participate in the limited-time BlizzCon merchandise sale on the Blizzard store, most of which is generally only available at the convention itself. You can acquire your virtual pass via the Blizzard Store. If you have any questions, refer to the virtual pass FAQ on Battle.net.
World of Warcraft gears up for its Arena tournament with a $250,000 prize pool
Still hoping to prove you're the best World of Warcraft PvP player around? You're in luck; qualifying rounds have just begun for the 2014 North American Arena Tournament, which will be held at BlizzCon this year. Qualifiers are open to 3v3 teams who are ranked at or above 2500 on their home realm. The best of the best will face off against seven other teams for a chance at a $250,000 prize pool, so there's certainly motivation to smash some faces. If that's not your thing, you've still got something to look forward to. A special live developer Q&A session will take place on Friday at 1:00 p.m. EDT with lead game designer Cory Stockton and lead narrative designer Dave Kosak, answering player questions on everything from world design to Garrisons. There's no prize involved there aside from information, but if that's what you're tuning in to get, you'll probably be happy with it.
PAX Prime 2014: Hearthstone eyes an expansion
The PAX Prime Blizzard booth was one of the larger and more populated venues on the show floor this year. A slow-moving line wrapped around it as players waited eagerly to try out Warlords of Draenor or to see Heroes of the Storm for the first time. Yet it was Hearthstone -- a free-to-play game available to anyone at anytime -- that was winning gamers over. I talked with Game Director Eric Dodds about how this small project at Blizzard blew up into a great success story. He said that when the team noticed that Twitch livestreams of Hearthstone were drawing in thousands and tens of thousands of viewers is when the studio knew that it had a hit on its hands.
Tom Chilton: "We are already in progress with our next expansion"
According to an interview with gameplanet.co.nz Blizzard isn't just working on Warlords of Draenor right now - they're in fact working hard on the next expansion, and have ideas for six or more future expansions they could do. We are already in progress with our next expansion. We already have zones in production for it. Our next expansion after that, we have a couple of different options that we'll be choosing between over the next several months. Beyond that, there are about six or seven different ideas for expansions that we can take elements of and say, 'You know what? Let's take that and put it in this one for our next expansion after the next one.' Or we might shift the timelines around from what we originally envisioned. There's easily 10 years worth of stuff that we can draw from – more, really. When I first heard that Warlords of Draenor will be coming out on November 13th, I wondered if that meant it would be all that Blizzard had to talk about at BlizzCon this year. Now that I've read this, I wonder if they'll have the fortitude to announce a new expansion before Warlords even comes out. As crazy as that sounds, if they're working six expansions deep, even if just conceptually, it's definitely a possibility.
The Queue: Time
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today is one part serious, one part silly. Brace yourselves. antiganon asked: Did anyone else have a Queue to log in to the battle.net app on Sunday night?
The 2014 North American WoW arena tournament
BlizzCon 2014 is on the horizon, getting steadily closer every day, and thus so is the 2014 World of Warcraft Arena Invitational World Championship. If you're a player on the North American servers--which include North America, Oceania, parts of Southeast Asia, and South America--your chance to qualify for the tournament is coming up in the next few weeks. In order to be eligible for the North American Arena Tournament your 3v3 team must have a minimum rating of 2500 by August 25, 2014. The tournament will be a double-elimination with teams competing in a best of five match format. At the end of the tournament, the top three teams from North America will be invited to BlizzCon to compete against five additional teams from around the world for the championship title. Think you have what it takes to compete at BlizzCon for a piece of the $250,000 purse? Time to get your teams ready and push for that 2500 rating by August 25th. Good luck to all the competitors!
World of Warcraft posts details on the Arena Invitational World Championships
This year's BlizzCon will feature a no-holds-barred fight to the finish. Sadly, that doesn't mean that an official MMA tournament event will be taking place; it just means that the World of Warcraft Arena Invitational World Championships will be going down, pitting teams against one another for glory, honor, and the satisfaction of taking home up to $120,000 dollars. Who wouldn't like that? The eight teams selected for play will be fighting in a best-of-seven format, starting with the Nagrand Arena and moving on to other maps at the selection of the losing team. The matches will last until elimination or until 15 minutes have passed, whichever happens first. Those unable to attend BlizzCon on November 7th and 8th will be able to stream the matches online, although no details on doing so are yet available. If you are attending, though, get ready to watch the best of the best mix it up in the arenas.
Is BlizzCon bad for World of Warcraft?
Okay, I'm sure with a headline like "Is BlizzCon bad for World of Warcraft?" you're already thinking this is it. Rossi has finally snapped. But hear me out for a second. We've had BlizzCons since 2005, before The Burning Crusade was even released. While they haven't happened every year (there was no BlizzCon 2006 and no BlizzCon 2012) it's been fairly regular since its introduction. Last year, Warlords of Draenor was previewed at BlizzCon 2013 - for many of us it's the source of pretty much every opinion we have on the expansion. That, in fact, is exactly what got me thinking that it's possible that BlizzCon itself is bad for the game, for the game community at large, and for the future of the franchise. BlizzCon, by its very nature, is a hype machine. It's where we learn details about the expansion - its name, its features, its setting and goals - before they are even close to being ready for players. People play demos. Developers give talks about the games. In many ways it's very exciting. I've never been myself, but most of my coworkers and a lot of my in-game friends have. So my argument isn't that BlizzCon itself is bad. But looking over the past year or so, in terms of Warlords of Draenor and player interaction with it, I start to wonder if having the big reveal at the convention does more harm than good, overall. Expectations are set at the convention - looking at the recent player reaction to the news that Karabor and Bladespire wouldn't be capital cities in Draenor, the issue can in part be traced back to the fact that we were told they would be at BlizzCon. Players (like myself) had months to get excited about the idea of Karabor as a capital city. Then, suddenly, we were told (almost as an afterthought) that no, the capitals were moved to Ashran.
Perfect Ten: Why the second half of 2014 will be awesome for MMOs
In the midst of mid-summer doldrums, it's easy to fall into a mild depression thinking that everything cool that was going to happen this year already has -- especially in gaming. The spring launch blitz is now officially over, with two highly anticipated MMOs launched, and now some people might be wondering if the rest of 2014 will be all downhill. Spoiler: It will not be. We started talking the other day in the Massively office about just how much there's coming for the latter half of this year and why we're excited to see what the fall and winter months bring. There's so much to look forward to, in fact, that it was incredibly difficult to narrow it down to a mere 10 entries. But that's my job, and that's what I did. Here's why the second half of 2014 will be awesome.
The BlizzCon Meeting Stone is no more
Last year's BlizzCon introduced a real-world version of the Meeting Stone to provide a central place on the show floor to arrange meetups and find your friends. But while basking in the presence of a giant, Meeting Stone was pretty fantastic, the dark, noisy convention floor wasn't a great place to have conversations. This year, Blizzard is nixing the Meeting Stone idea altogether and encouraging attendees to set up their own meetups when and where they like. On one hand, you're freed from the tyranny of organized meetups... but on the other hand, this year's BlizzCon won't have any central meeting space to find your friends. You'll still be able to find members of the community team at the Community Booth and you can arrange your own meetups (if you're into that kind of thing) on the BlizzCon Meet-up forum. But the worst part of this news is that the Meeting Stone itself isn't slated to be on the show floor. How are we ever going to summon everyone without it?
BlizzCon 2014 Talent Contest now open for submissions
The sign-up page for the BlizzCon 2014 Talent Contest is now open and taking entries. For the Talent Contest, entries should be a 2-minute video of a Blizzard-themed performance. This year, Blizzard has obtained the rights to several different songs that can be used during the performances, either as a backing track, or even as a Blizzard-themed derivative version -- in other words, parody tracks using the approved songs are completely fine. The full list is available on the official announcement post. Semi-Finalists in the Talent Contest will receive $500. Four Finalist acts will be chosen and provided with airfare, tickets and hotel accommodations to BlizzCon 2014, where they will perform their acts for the judges, who will then decide the winners. The Fourth Place winner will receive $800, Third Place will receive $1,250, Second Place will receive $2,000, and First Place will receive a whopping $3,000. But if you want to throw your hat in the ring, you better get moving -- all entries must be received by 11:59PM PDT on August 5. As a reminder, those looking to enter the Blizzcon 2014 Art and Movie contests only have a few days left to enter -- submissions will be closed on July 7. Good luck to all who enter!
BlizzCon costume contest sign-ups open
It's official, BlizzCon 2014's costume contest has opened up its sign-ups. Just like the earlier opening of sign-ups for the Art and Movie contests, there are some interesting prizes here - the top prize is $3500, or $2500 and a 'tribute' in an upcoming Blizzard product. What does that mean? A tribute could include taking the form of having an NPC, weapon, etc. named after the first place winner. In addition to that there's $2250 for second place finish, $1500 for third place, $1000 for fourth, and a $250 for secondary winners. Considering how much time and effort people put into their costumes, it's nice to see the possibility of a few people at least getting a little compensation for that. If you're interested in entering this year, head to the official site now.
BlizzCon 2014 Art and Movie contest submissions now open
If you're an artist or a movie maker with a penchant for all things Blizzard, now's your chance to show off your talents and win some prizes. The Art and Movie contests for BlizzCon 2014 are now officially taking submissions, and there's a sweet list of prizes to be had. For the BlizzCon Movie Contest, third place will receive $850, second place will receive $1,300, and first place will receive $2,000 and an Oswald Statue. Prizes for the BlizzCon Art Contest are $700 for third place, $1,000 for second place, and $1,500 to the first place winner ... but that's not all. Each winner for both the Art and Movie contests will also receive either a ticket to BlizzCon 2014, or an additional $175 cash. Keep in mind that the submissions for these contests don't necessarily have to be Warcraft related -- you can take your inspiration for your artwork or film from any of the Blizzard franchises. But if you want to enter, you might want to get a move on -- the deadline for submissions is 11:59PM PST on July 7. For more information, official rules, and submission guidelines, head to the official site.
How to update your BlizzCon badge information
June 6th is the last day you'll be able to change the name attached to any BlizzCon tickets you've bought -- which is important, because the name on the badge needs to match the photo ID of whoever picks it up. So if you've bought tickets for guildmates or friends, but haven't updated your information, it's important to do so before it's too late. Fortunately, the process is pretty simple: Log on to Eventbrite. (If you didn't already have an Eventbrite account, it should have been created for you during checkout. Just log on using the email address you used to buy the tickets.) Select BlizzCon under Current Orders at the top of the page. (If you regularly buy tickets through Eventbrite, you may need to click All Orders to see BlizzCon on the list.) If the information listed isn't correct, click Edit details and then enter the correct information. Each attendee needs a first name, last name, and email address listed. Click Save -- you're done! Nearer to the show, each attendee will get an email with a barcode they'll have to bring to BlizzCon to pick up their ticket -- so be sure to print out your barcode and have a photo ID!
Warcraft movie is a wrap
A little over four months after it began, and filming for the Warcraft movie has officially wrapped, according to a tweet made by Director Duncan Jones yesterday. Of course this is really just the beginning, as the film is slated for an incredibly long bout -- 20 months or so -- of post production, in which visual effects will be added and the film fine-tuned. The release date is still set for March 11, 2016, so they have plenty of time to get it polished. Final day on Warcraft now officially... wrapped!! Off to bed for 3 hours before a meeting in the AM. Goodnight/good morning twitter!- Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) May 23, 2014 With filming coming to a close, one has to wonder if we'll be seeing trailers or footage any time soon. Comic-Con International will be hitting San Diego in late July, and given that last year's convention saw some teaser footage before filming even began, it seems like more footage this year is a distinct possibility. And we'd be silly to think that this year's BlizzCon won't contain at least one panel regarding the film. I have to say, given exactly how long people have been talking about the possibility of a Warcraft film, it seems a little surreal that one actually exists now. Are you looking forward to seeing the finished product?
Hearthstone World Championships to award $250K to top players
Blizzard will award $250,000 in prizes to the winners of its upcoming Hearthstone World Championships, including a $100,000 prize reserved for the top overall player. Blizzard will choose 16 players worldwide to square off in the final round of its competitive card game tournament, with four competitors each hailing from the Americas, Europe, China, and Korea/Taiwan. Finalists in the Americas and Europe will be chosen among top Ranked Play Seasons players who win regional qualifying tournaments, while competitors from other regions will be determined through leagues and other location-specific events. The Hearthstone World Championships will be held at BlizzCon 2014, which kicks off on November 7 in Anaheim, California. [Image: Blizzard]
