Thursday, November 10, 2016

[Off Topic]: BlizzCon 2016!

     So, this isn't a post about Rift, but about World of Warcraft. Or rather, Blizzard Entertainment! Because I just got back from BlizzCon the day before yesterday and I couldn't NOT write about my 4th wonderful time in Anaheim, California!! It was so much fun reuniting with all my friends from previous years as well as meeting bran new friends, taking all new fun pictures, and cosplaying in an all new costume! There were some disappointments to be sure, and some frustration, and I barely got any sleep last week, but I wasn't really expecting to anyway lol! It feels like the con goes by so darn fast that I barely even remember anything specific about it! I was actually pretty bummed that for the first few days I was under the weather from a severe bout of motion sickness that left me feeling dizzy and nauseous when I arrived. Note to self, please eat before getting on the plane when you know you have motion sickness problems! Jeez Dark, you'd think you'd learn from previous years!!!! I went to a fun cosplay breakfast and got to meet a lot of the cosplayers I've been following all year, and watched the costume contest! So many amazing and talented peeps every year! I missed opening ceremony because...uhh...I literally can't remember why. But I did watch it online, and I'm really super excited for the new heroes introduced in Heroes of the Storm, as well as the new Necromancer class in Diablo. Also looking forward to the really cool new class mounts and quests in WoW in the newest patch! The priest mount in particular looks awesome. Now I'll have to lvl up my priest, because I need to have that glowing white owl in my life! I'm not into Overwatch so I kinda skipped their new stuff, but I do know that the much anticipated Sombra was announced. Everyone's been dying for Sombra for a while now.

     I also went to Disneyland again for the 4th time in a row, on Sunday following the con. BlizzCon is only Friday and Saturday so I had Sunday free to do whatever I wanted and I flew out of LAX on Monday in the afternoon. But after doing Disney again, I realized that the hype and excitement of Disney wore off after the second go, and it's just not worth the cost. I paid 170$ US for the "park hopper" which allowed me to do both sides of the park, and honestly for how long the lines are, and how motion sickness prevents me from experiencing a lot of the things, it just wasn't worth the cost for me. So next year I shall pass on that, and maybe if I'm lucky I'll be able to hit up Universal Studios instead. I'd really like to explore the Harry Potter section of it! I did get my traditional Disney pin though! Picked Zootopia this year since I really love that movie. Also met my Rift friend for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory since he lives in California and has no interest in Blizzard games. We had an amazing night of catching up on Rift and the past year, and we went to see Doctor Strange in theater at Disney. I also got to meet Christie Golden, who is the author of many Warcraft novels that I own! I didn't know ahead of time that she would be there, so unfortunately I didn't have a book for her to sign so I awkwardly bought a book by a different author and asked her to sign that instead lol. She is an amazing author and so incredibly sweet and friendly! She signed my book and even gave me a hug, even though I was in costume! And she was so sweet enough to allow a picture with her! I literally fangirled all over her, and she was so chill and amazing! One of my favorite authors right there, folks! Life goal complete! :) I am also kinda depressed over the fact that I missed out on the capsule critters from this year, the tiny 1$ items you can buy in the hopes of getting a special item. I like to collect the little characters, and have a set from the 2 previous years. By the time I was able to get up to the 3rd floor to get mine, they were all completely sold out, so I was kinda bummed by that. Also didn't get my pop figure of Tyrande, who is one of my favorite WoW and HotS characters and a character I've previously cosplayed as. I did get her as a pin though for my pin collection. I'm not a pin hoarder or an avid "I MUST HAVE THEM ALL" collector, but I do appreciate having all the pins I want, and I will definitely go out of my way to find the ones I'm interested in. This year I was mostly just interested in Tyrande, and a kind nerd was happy to take my cash in exchange for her! I'm still hoping that I can come across someone with Tyrande at some point either online or at next BlizzCon and I can buy her because I really want her in my collection of figures.

    I got plenty of "epic loot" from this con! Lots of free things as well as purchased things. I do collect posters as well and proudly display them on my wall so I was happy to find some posters I liked at the con! One thing I learned that I have already fixed by buying one online is that I really need a portable phone charger while at the con. Like seriously bad! My phone died many, many times throughout my visit and it was so frustrating to be in the middle of responding to a text or message and have my phone die. Especially when I wasn't near an outlet so I could plug it in. As soon as I got back home, I purchased a portable charger for next year. I think it's because the wifi around the convention center is so heavily used by other congoers, even the hotels and areas, that my phone uses up so much battery power just trying to connect and maintain a strong connection with the wifi signal. And each time I left that area and entered another wifi area that had I had saved on my phone, it would take time to connect and verify and log into that other wifi, which was just using up so much battery life. I was very frustrated by that because the only thing I brought to take pictures with was my phone and since it was dead most of the time, I barely got any pictures of either myself or others! Such a let down, that was! Next year I plan on purchasing an actual official Canon camera so I can take some nice quality pictures of things!

     Also I was sad that I didn't have enough room to bring my laptop with me and since Rift did a presale on Starfall Prophecy, they were giving out daily fragments of Starfall. You need to log in each individual day to claim your Starfall fragment up until the date that the expac is released, and I lost about 5 of the fragments because I couldn't log into Rift during the time I was at the con. I'm pretty sad about that, but I know from previous experience that Trion will just tell me tough luck on it lol. I'm trying so hard to make sure I can get all the things I want to get from the promotional vendor that sells things for fragments! Right now I have 70 fragments so not enough to get Opie (the tiny squirrel mount) on 2 characters, which kinda sucks, but I'm hoping I can gather enough to buy one of each item! We shall see. They haven't released any date or timeline info on Starfall yet except for the fact that it's only recently went into beta, so here's hoping it's sometime in December instead!

    Well that's my conclusion of my trip to BlizzCon 2016 and I'm already looking forward to and planning a costume for BlizzCon 2017! I love the con mostly for the experience of my friends, being surrounded completely by nerds who "get me" and can have the coolest, most fun conversation with a complete stranger and have them understand what I'm talking about when I say "it's so frustrating healing a raid when the dps won't listen and the tank is squishy, and then you don't even get the loot that you want." Most of my friends here at home just give me a confused look and think I'm weird and need to get out of my video game. I love the gaming community in general, I love cosplayers, and I love going to conventions, specifically BlizzCon! Now if Trion (Rift) ever did their own convention, even if it was just a tiny one, I would definitely sign myself up for that too! I see how they say they are visible at other cons and expos like PAX and it makes me wish so badly I could go, but since I live all the way over in Canada, it's just way too expensive and long of a trip just to see Trion. We can wish though, right? :)

       Dark out.

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