The Kyle Smyth

Blizzcon 2009 – An Epic Adventure – Day 0

So I attended Blizzcon 2009. This is a story about how it happened and how. I went with my good friend Josh Speerbrecker and we had the time of our lives and accomplished everything we wanted to do and more.

It all started with the decision to go to a convention in the United States. At first we really wanted to go to Blizzcon but we made this decision a long time after the first batch of tickets were sold. The convention sold out in under a minute, all 20,000 tickets. We then headed to eBay to look for some scalpers but unfortunatley this was after the time period that you were allowed to change the name of the ticket holders. At this point the only possible way to get a blizzcon ticket was to meet one of these scalpers outside of the convention on the day of the event and pretend to have the same name as his/her friend. REALLY sketchy, especially having to fork out an entire flight from the middle of Canada.

Our hopes of going to Blizzcon were crushed, so we thought about going to the next best thing: Quakecon! Quakecon was not sold out so we attempted to purchase tickets, but wait… another roadblock: Quakecon was the SAME weekend as my final paintball tournament in Edmonton, this was something I could not miss. So we settled to hit up these conventions in 2010, and that was that.

But wait! Upon signing up for the Starcraft 2 beta several weeks before, I also entered myself in a Battle.NET contest to win a chance to buy tickets to Blizzcon. Three weeks until Blizzcon I received an email from the Laguna Art Museum titled: “Blizzard/Laguna Art Museum VIP Dinner!!”. So I opened it up and the first line read, “Congratulations! You have won the chance to purchase up to two (2) tickets to the Laguna Art Museum VIP Benefit Dinner sponsored by Blizzard Entertainment and LagunaArt Museum.” I had 48 hours to purchase these tickets, which included a Blizzcon ticket, so I got on the phone with Josh, explained the situation and agreed that if he could get the time off work, we would be spending the weekend of August 20-23 in Anaheim, CA. After struggles with his boss, Josh gave me the go ahead to purchase the tickets. His boss also had a change of heart and hooked us up with his travel agent friend who got us a killer deal on WestJet flights and hotel stay.

The benefit dinner tickets cost us $500 a peice. Before the event we lied to our friends/family/strangers on the airplane about winning tickets, because actually we just won the chance to purchase tickets. We were really emabarassed about forking $500 to go to a gaming convention, especially when the tickets were originally $125. The $500 was a donation to the museum, it came with a Blizzcon ticket, a peice of artwork signed by a Blizzard arist and the chance to mingle, eat and drink with the Blizzard art/cinematic department. It was well worth the $500.

We left Regina on thursday morning at around 5AM. On our connecting flight to Calgary were the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Josh and I ended up being split up and had to sit in the middle of them. I was lucky and got to sit between one of the coaching members and a manager, smaller guys compared to the linebackers Josh was squished between. We had a boring 3hour layover in Calgary but closer to the flight we noticed passengers waiting for the flight to L.A. in Blizzard/WoW tshirts. To pass time we connected our laptops together with a cross-over cable and played a few rounds of Starcraft.

Once we landed at LAX (which really isn’t as bad as people claim it to be) we boarded a pre-booked Super Shuttle that picked us up and drove us the 40 minute drive to Anaheim for a measly $16 USD. All 8 passengers in the shuttle were Canadians attending Blizzcon, three from Edmonton, two from Regina (us), three from Winnepeg and one guy who didnt really talk at all, but he arrived from the Air Canada terminal. Two of the guys from Edmonton were Starcraft players like us so we talked GOM/Proleague, fantasized about meeting Tasteless and had a mini LAN party on the ride, nerdy yeah we know.

We got to our hotel, which pretty much was a castle, being nextdoor to Disneyland may have influenced the theme. If we would of had more time we would of liked to hit up Disneyland but unfortunatly we had a flight back Sunday afternoon and had no time. We walked around the convention center and saw the lineup to get the badges (which are used to get inside), it was huge but since we were VIP guests we would be getting our badge and goody bag at the dinner.  We decided to stop at Subway for lunch (since it was really the only cheap restaurant in the area. As I am standing in line this guy walks in and is staring me down, our eyes meet for a few seconds and he says “Hey, are you from Regina?”. Turns out he recognised us from the Regina airport and me from when I did improv in highschool. I cannot remember his name, if anyone knows a “Mitch” (i think?) that went to high school at Miller who attended Blizzcon let me know! He said he was down here with two other Regina guys and saw our post on the WoW forums about flying from Canada and wondered who else would be going from Regina. Small world.

It was soon 5pm and as we are getting ready for the dinner, Josh realized he has forgotten his business-casual attire so he wore my blue Lacoste polo. The dinner was on the Sunset deck of the Hilton hotel (giant) and was more of a buffet style theme with free drinks. Not being 21 we settled with water and sat down for several minutes. At first we were thinking “why did we even come, we don’t know anyone, this is really awkward, we should probably get our goody bag and go” that was until I manned up and pronounced, “Ok, we need to meet some people”. I turned to my immediate right and approached two guys older than us and said “Hey guys, how’s it going?” this was the TSN-turning point of the event and entire weekend.

We met the coolest guys you could ever meet at Blizzcon. Nick, from Ohio who was a hailstorm chaser (I fully don’t understand this job but it involved car repair/insurance) and Matt, also from Ohio was a network admin/it guy/programmer like myself. We talked about why we were at Blizzcon, what we wanted to do, people we wanted to meet and so on. They were WoW players and wanted to check out some of the new content, arena tournament and of course Diablo 3.

Nick and Matt from Ohio

About a half hour of talking to these guys, one of the Blizzard employees approached us, introduced himself and asked us who we wanted to meet from Blizzard (I can’t remember his name). Matt told him he was a programmer and wouldn’t mind meeting a developer, I agreed with this, so he goes off and we ponder about who he might bring back. Since this was an Art museum benefit, which was showcasing Blizzard’s World of Warcraft art at their current exhibit, the employees that were attending this dinner were mainly art/cinematics and managers probably no developers. The guy comes back and says “I have found you a programmer!”, and the mysterious man claims “I havn’t programmed in a very long time, but I can probably answer most of your questions”. This was Mike Morhaime, CEO, President and Co-Founder of Blizzard Entertainment.  We couldn’t believe our eyes. We were about to have a conversation with one of the founders of a multimillion in revenue per year company who produces games that almost every person has heard of who was hosting an event that us and 25,000 other people were attending. So Mike just places his plate and wine glass on the table we were standing at and asks us “Hey guys, I’m Mike where are you from”.

Josh and I with Mike Morhaime (CEO/President/Co-Founder) and Nick Carpenter (Cinematic Creative Director) of Blizzard Entertainment

We talked to Mike for about half-an-hour before he bid us adieu and we took a moment to announce our excitement to each other. We learned from him that he started Lost Vikings in his undergraduate year at UCLA studying electrical engineering and I of course asked him about student positions.

When we conversed about how awesome it was to meet Mike, we noticed the smiley face stickers on our badges. If the smiley face was happy then you were allowed to order drinks, if it was sad, you were not. So after a quick trip to the bathroom I turned my frown upside down and enjoyed free beverages. I don’t really consider this illegal because in Canada the legal drinking age is 18 and 19 (depending on the province), in the states it is 21 where as I am 20. It is really depressing given the privilege of being able to do something and then have it taken away.

The next blizzard employees we talked to were Noel Wolfman, Senior Cinematic Producer and Scott Abetya, Cinematic Producer. They talked to us about the cinematics they have done, the time it takes to render a scene and if any new epic cinematics were coming out. There are a few memorable cinematics in Starcraft 1 that Scott had made and they explained that sometimes it can take weeks to render a trailer, but sadly there would not be any new cinematics unveiled at Blizzcon.

Shortly after meeting these two producers, Joeyray Hall, Manager of Video Production, joined the conversation. Joeyray is the guy who does all of the machinima at Blizzard. Remember that cutscene in WoW:WOTLK about the giant gate? Joeyray did that. Remember all of the WoW footage the South Park episode “Make love not Warcraft”? Joeyray did that. He was the inspiration for the bad guy in the South Park episode, he looks almost exactly like him.

We then had a very long conversation with Frank Pearce, co-founder, vice-president and executive producer of World of Warcraft. He had some very interesting stories about crazy things fans do. One of the memorable stories was one about a guy who wore a full suit in 100+ degree weather and stood outside the Blizzard office with a yellow exclamation point on his head. After several hours Frank sent out a public relations person to see what he wanted, the guy gave the PR person his resume, and just stood there for the rest of the day.

Our final conversation of the night was with Cinematic Executive Producer, Matt Samia. Matt was one of the first members of the “cinematic” department and gave us some insight on what it was like to work on games like Diablo 1 and Starcraft.

After several free drinks, we picked up our goody bags and complimentary digital print. We stumbled back to our hotels and couldn’t believe the incredible time we had. At this point if we had got on a plane to go back home, we would have been satisfied and Blizzcon hadn’t started yet.