Blizzcon 2016 Trip - Day 3 (BLIZZCON DAY 1)

It's easy to panic when you see there are crowds and you're not in the line. That is what Exray, Aza and Ultra and Ultra's brother felt when they saw the lines outside Blizzcon and had a bit of a freak out. However, after having done the whole "camp early" experience and still not getting a good seat because it's about how fast you can run not how early you camped, we knew that it didn't matter how close you sat to the main stage but how good a view you had of one of the huge TV screens. And, there are tons of screens around the room so you could get a good view from much further back.

So we wandered over at the leisurely time of 830am in anticipation of the doors opening at 930am. Arvash is also a Blizzcon veteran and he also wasn't worried about the time we get in.

The crowds were impressive but there would be more crowds to come. I even got kitted up with my Frostwolf leader look!

After we secured our seats on the far side, Shab, Sev and I went to go watch some arena games. Talbadar was casting this year with Venruki and Lore, and it was amusing to see Shab fanboying over Venruki.

We watched a couple of games and then we had to high tail it back to the main stage to watch the opening ceremony.

It's always exciting to listen to the opening ceremony and the big news was the announcement of Overwatch League. There were other small announcements too including:

• Another Hearthstone expansion (there is one EVERY Blizzcon) - The Streets of Gadgetzan
  
• Diablo's 20th anniversary announcement was the addition of a Necromancer for Diablo 3 (and also putting Diablo 1 in D3 as a playable dungeon)
  
• Heroes of the Storm welcome Varian and Ragnaros to the mix (I did have a laugh and say nobody truly dies in World of Warcraft - they just come back in HoTS)
  
• A new hero for Overwatch - Sombra
  
• WoW had a new pet coming in December as part of the Make-a-Wish charity - a Fel Kitten!
  
  

I didn't think there would be any big new announcements for WoW since we just had a patch, and expansion was released a few months ago, but they didn't leave us hanging in the dark.

In the What's Next WoW panel they talked about patch 7.15 (a small patch) and patch 7.2 (a big patch) which would bring a number of new changes.

In Patch 7.15 we would see

• Mists of Pandaria timewalking dungeons - more toys to collect!
• Microholidays (which are like one day silly event things which are more for fun, like easter eggs than full of achievements and loot). I was amused when they said Ahn'Qiraj remembrance day (which @Watcher said jokingly that the servers crashed on Medivh, the first server to open the gates so in celebration they would take all the serves down) as well as Volunteer Guard Day (where you can be a guard in Orgrimmar/Stormwind for a day)
• Brawler's guild comes back with new bosses!

In Patch 7.2 we will be getting

• Flying!
• Class specific mounts! Some of these are cooler than others. I am not so sure about the flat faced owl flight form for druids (or the mage disc), but the rogue raven and the shaman air elemental look really amazing.
• Tomb of Sargeras raid and the Cathedral of Eternal night dungeon
• PvP is going to have "brawls" like hearthstone where rules are a little bit different for a week! One example was 15v15 in one of the arena maps, or snow covered Arathi Basin, or no gravity in Eye of the Storm. It sounds wacky but fun! 
• Solo scenario hidden artifact appearance. The bear one looks rather cool, I must admit!

Watcher also said that in the future we will be heading to Argus! Eradicating demons once and for all? Now that will be interesting!

We had a late lunch grabbing food from the food trucks outside Blizzcon - queues were so terrible that Sev skipped lunch - and then back inside where Shab, Sev, HK and I queued up to play HoTs so that we could try Varian and Ragnaros. We had a random 5th added with us and we battled another team. Sev and I went with our familiar toons - Abathur and Li Li - and Shab went with Li Ming. HK was trying Varian and the random guy played Ragnaros. We were getting smashed early - probably coz HK, Sev and I were super rusty. We saw Sev hearthing a lot instead of mounting, and I kept forgetting to mount and HK had no idea how to play. We thought we were going to lose before we hit level 10!

Wandered upstairs and was just in time to see Samwise and Greg Weisman signing books, but I was bummed that I forgot my Traveller book! Got them both to sign my colouring book (which Sam did do) and took a pic too!

But we managed to turn the game around somehow when we wiped them and also when we captured an objective - they were 39/40 and we wiped them and managed to get it back - and somehow clawed to victory! But it was a long game, and afterwards we went to the Legion What's next, and afterwards headed out to see Xarek who had just arrived. We chatted to him for a bit then headed back for the Contests. The winner of the Talent contest was great - the song was very cute and everyone loved her murloc partner soing goofy things - and the Cosplay was much more impressive this year than the previous time I went.

Afterwards we went to Morton's for dinner and stuffed ourselves full of meat and potatoes! It was a guild dinner and Neri and Disco and Xarek came making a grand total of 10 Frostwolves (and Ultra's brother made 11). It was a bit pricey but it was worth it!

Then it was bedtime. OMG Blizzcon is half over already!