BlizzCon 2007 Announced!
Two years after the first venture into the convention world, Blizzard Entertainment has put the plans in motion to bring together all fans of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. The event will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center in sunny Anaheim, California on August 3rd and 4th.
We were gratified by the response to our first BlizzCon in 2005 and have been looking for an opportunity to hold a follow-up event ever since, stated Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment®. With BlizzCon 2007, we plan to deliver another entertaining and informative experience for the attendees, and we look forward to meeting all of them again this year.
The first BlizzCon was indeed very fun, from playing through the Blood Elf starting are in the Burning Crusade, to the fallen Starcraft: Ghost demo to watching insane Starcraft and Warcraft 3 professional players. This year one can expect a similar variety of activities:
Discussion panels with Blizzard developers
Artist and developer signings
Competitive and casual tournaments for players to showcase their talents
World of Warcraft® Trading Card Game tournaments and demos
Costume, machinima, and character sound-alike contests with great prizes
Commemorative merchandise and other products based on the Blizzard franchises
A silent auction
Live orchestral performances of music from Blizzard games
More exciting activities to be announced
With four months to go, better start planning that costume (I know what I'm going as!) and start saving those pennies. Tickets will go on sale in the next few months at a cost of $100 a head. Let's hope they give out an adorable in game pet like Murky again or better yet, maybe announce a new Starcraft? or maybe Diablo?
Paid Character Transfers At Last?
There's been a lot of speculation about paid character transfers coming to World of Warcraft: mainly gossip and conjecture about cost, logistics, and--oddly enough--a lot of chatter about how it's somehow a very stupid decision on Blizzard's part. Last night, in the forums of all places, word spread about a leaked (but not really) internal FAQ document from Vivendi Universal Games Australia. Set to be published this morning, June 22nd, at 8am, the document claims that while the transfers are imminent, they will not be available across all reams. Yet. Blame load balancing issues. I just beg that Deathwing is included!
At a cost of only $25 per transfer, a figure much below other competing MMOs, Blizzard will surely be plating their gold--with gold.
On numerous occasions, I've seen the whimpering of multiple account owner players begging to be given the chance to transfer their characters to the same account, and now, with paid character transfer, you can.
Transfers between accounts are only allowed between accounts where you are the subscriber. To initiate an "account to account" transfer, you will have to answer the 'secret question' for each account, and the last name of each account holder must match.
The transfer process will take approximately 10 days to complete, during which you will not be able to play the character in question.
And to those wondering, no, you cannot transfer from a PvE server to a PvP server. However, for those hating the ganked life in STV, transfers from PvP to PvE are allowed.
No official date has been released.