The Day After BlizzCon 2010

BlizzCon 2010 has come and gone, and many many things have happened. As for day 2, not as much in terms of exploration but definitely a lot on the after-party front. I spent most of the morning at the Hilton, either still waking up from Friday night's antics, getting some breakfast in while the line outside got into BlizzCon, and talking World of Warcraft with a random person I don't even remember the name of.

Anyway, good long post post-jump.

You can see my name there, with the Japanese "あ" -
didn't mean for the n and the i to look like a Hiragana character though.

Day 2 pretty much was the do-everything-you-can day, or grill Blizzard employees about details they might not be able to go into about day - depending on what you wanted to do that day. Me? Play Diablo 3 multiple times, a play or two at the StarCraft 2 machines, and not even looking at the WoW machines.

There was still plenty of things to explore, though at the end of Day 2, I was pretty much throughly done exploring BlizzCon.

The afterparty was quite interesting. I met and chilled out with random people - including various cosplayers such as the two who were the Witch Doctors the day before, some of the Hilton After-party council members, and such. Other highlights include:

• Seeing Samwise at the Hilton Elevator - I asked him why there was no L80ETC performance this year, and pretty much the other band members not named Samwise and Mike Mordahime were not even in town and were working on projects on SC2. 
• Talking to Mike Mordahime - and begging for a L80ETC iTunes album.
• Hearing about 2 random dudes at the Hilton After-Party on the upper floors - one pressed his nude body to the window and the other masturbated to the crowd. Glad I missed those two idiots.
• Seeing the couple who gave a great show to everyone at the after-party by having sex with their room's blinds open. 
• Getting Metzen's brother through the retarded Hilton security.
• Mike Mordahime grand entrance to the pool party (and everyone rolling their eyes at Hilton security).
• Samwise making his entrance to the pool party, and his subsequent retreat after only going 10 feet.
• Chris Metzen's grand entrance - and rallying the party despite being at 1/5th memory capacity and making everyone just about go into nerdgasms. Him doing Thrall's rally call was the best part of the night (except maybe for the afore-mentioned couple). I also fulfilled my promise that I would see him at BlizzCon after meeting him for the first time back at Comic-Con.
• Getting booted from the pool - hanging out shortly at the lobby area for a bit, and coming back to my hotel room that reeked of puke. 

BTW - These two were the Witch Doctor cosplays from Day 1.

BlizzCon was a blast. Part of the magic of going to a convention like this is that it's not just about seeing the latest and greatest things coming out of Blizzard - if that's all you are there for, you end up like some of the people I saw who left Saturday morning and went home. BlizzCon is about the effect Blizzard has in bringing people who wouldn't otherwise even acknowledge each other's presence with a place to meet, greet, talk, chill, kiss, propose, bang, hug, punch, fall, get angry with or have fun with. I didn't get to see any of Blizzard's Community Managers, which was a shame - though I think I saw Neth in passing (she's the lady with the candle on her head right? She blew by me like she was escaping the Lich King in Halls of Reflection.) Seeing all the awesome costumes this year was a blast - and I appreciate that the only people who turned me down for photos were Blizzard hired-booth babes - and only because I caught them at leaving the Hilton for the con instead of at the con itself. 

My friends swear we will have better planning and will be doing things more grand in scale next BlizzCon. I just look forward to just meeting everyone again at the next BlizzCon.

(BTW - if you are expecting pictures of the afterparty - I didn't bring my camera. Something about being drunk and being scared of smashing my $400 DSLR.)

My photo gallery from BlizzCon 2010 is located here.