Blizzcon Unscripted – The Day Before the Day Before Blizzcon

I have never been to Blizzcon before. I haven’t even been to any “con” before so this will be an entirely new experience for me. I’ve seen pictures and talked to some people about what the did and what they saw and I lived vicariously through a lot of other anecdotes, but I haven’t really read something that conveys what it feels like to be there. There’s a difference between seeing the content and experiencing it – one of the biggest reasons why the virtual pass never interested me. And given that this is entirely new, maybe I can add some perspective that will feel fresh. So that’s my plan. I am going to write down my thoughts and feelings about my first Blizzcon here as it progresses through the weekend.

The Day Before the Day Before Blizzcon

Here I am sitting in bed in my Brother’s guest room (he’s near the airport) getting this written down and losing sleep doing it. The weeks and months leading up to this has drawn on longer than I was expecting. Most Blizzcons have come and gone without even me realizing they happened. Two years ago though with the annoucement of Classic WoW something definitely changed. It was the point where there was a for-real reason to look and plan to play WoW again in any meaningful capacity. It’s been a long two years since then and also a long couple of months. Has Classic been out only a couple months? How the time flies.

Last year’s Blizzcon I watched a lot more highlights. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot to see that was classic related although the demo I’m sure would have been fun to play (no virtual ticket remember). It was good to see the devs taking the game seriously and listening to player feedback. By that point we had released the earliest version of ClassicWoW.live and were having quite the time working on everything for that. With Blizzcon happening we made a pact that we wanted to all get together by the next Blizzcon to meet up officially so here we are.

Now it’s the day before the day before Blizzcon. My excitement has been ramping up daily. I’ve been scouring /r/blizzcon and reading the blizzcon discord religously, been trying to see about leaks and looking at the merch store and the schedule. What are the bands? As of writing this, no idea. My wife has already given me the ultimatum of the general swag that is expected from me as a present for this trip so I’ll probably be trying out the Blink store to cut through the lines (just learned about this feature from reading reddit).

Tomorrow will be a morning flight followed by a quick drive to our AirBNB house where we are going to all hang out. I think there’s only going to be one key though so that is going to be a real logistical challenge. After we get at least most of our group to the hotel we will get our badges and then eventually make our way over to the Con Before the Storm where Defcamp, Melderon, and Ayle will all be on the Classic panel. Quite the showing for the CWL team! I will be stuck behind the camera as usual and hopefully will get some good footage that we can put on the site. It’ll be a busy day and not even the first day of the festival. I know already that I’m going to have to be powered by caffeine to get through this but it’ll be worth it.

The checklist for me of what I want to see is: the opening and closing ceremony, the cosplay and community event sections, and the WoW Q&A panel. I am curious to see what the demos feels like. Demos in a crowded area sounds off-putting but maybe it’s more fun than it sounds. Hopefully too I will be able to meet some druid bros and brodettes so if anyone out there wants to say hi let me know on discord. I don’t have any scheduled meetups besides the basics so far. Apart from what I want to see, the experience of Blizzcon is an unknown to me. I don’t know what to expect so I’m probably excited to see what that will feel like the most.