Blizzcon 2009

September 1st, 2009

Blizzcon is the gaming event of the year, attracting Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft 2 fans by the thousands. Compared to last year, Blizzard was sufficiently prepared to deal with the surge of fans competing for tickets on their servers. An additional 5 000 tickets were released in comparison to the 15 000 allotted for last year’s event, and a queue was set up to prevent the servers from crashing. The tickets were sold out in less than a minute, reaffirming the enormous popularity of Blizzcon within the gaming community.

True to form, Blizzard’s gaming presentations and the array of interesting costumes worn by fans made for an exciting weekend. Interviews with Blizzard staff stimulated some interesting points of discussion amongst Starcraft 2 fans, especially the comments that addressed Blizzard’s controversial decision not to include offline local area network play in the sequel.

Blizzard’s decision not to include LAN in Starcraft 2 has been the cause of mutinous outcry and numerous petitions within the gaming community. Executive Vice President of game design Rob Pardo addressed questions concerning the lack of LAN. Pardo insists it’s not a big deal, stating that he believes people won’t really notice that the LAN feature is missing when the game comes out.

Battle.net is being presented as the answer to multiplayer concerns. The Blizzard staff members have said that this will prevent piracy and give gamers a better quality multiplayer experience. At Blizzcon, Pardo brushed off the uncertainties of some who claim they won’t have access to the internet, saying that these cases are very rare. He also made mention of the fact that a few legitimate cases for LAN were being considered, like location-based tournaments.

We still believe that the decision to not include LAN in Starcraft 2 is a bad one. It would’ve been great if Blizzard could have found another way to address piracy concerns. Hopefully Battle.net will include features that are able to replicate or emulate the LAN-option.

One great piece of Starcraft 2 news to come out of Blizzcon is the fact that it will let modders create and sell their custom maps. Rob Pardo said that mod-makers will be given the opportunity to sell their maps via an official marketplace which is under active development at Blizzard. This has come after the measurable impact that mods like Defense of the Ancients have had on the game industry.

As yet, there is no indication of when the paid marketplace will come into being. The release date of Starcraft 2 has recently been pushed back again to sometime in 2010, but Pardo said that Blizzard wants to give prospective designers a heads-up so that they can prepare to create some awesome maps.

In addition to the comments made concerning LAN and the prospects for modders, some cool new screenshots were revealed. Blizzcon also saw the Blizzard CEO provide confirmation that the beta will happen sometime this year, giving us some hands on time to look forward to – if we are lucky.