Blizzcon 2015: Esports, Community, and Passion
This first week of November 2015 I ventured out to Anaheim, California to attend one of the largest gathering places of gamers, industry professionals, and die-hard fans alike that could aptly be described as a Mecca for the video game industry. Blizzcon, in it’s 9th incarnation once again drew fans from all corners of the globe for a weekend of major announcements, competition in various forms, and experiences wholly unique to the event. For myself Blizzcon started on the 5th, a day before the event proper to pick up my attendee badge and pursue the various wares at the famous Blizzard store, with it’s infamously long lines of course. Even as an industry professional I still can’t help being a huge sucker when it comes to exclusive gear. Though the line chugged along, Blizzard’s logistics were able to hold down Hall E and keep things running smoothly overall.
Day 1 at any major function such as E3, CES, or LDI is always a bit of a mad house, and Blizzcon is no exception. I and thousands of other eager convention goers flooded the front courtyard and walkways leading up to the Anaheim convention center, most of us waiting hours to get inside, passing the time by discussing various aspects of the gaming community as a whole as well as predictions for major announcements. Finally after what felt like an eternity the gates finally opened as we were all ushered into the main lobby. Media crews and camera equipment was scattered all around the stair cases as well as the escalators. After a short delay the main doors swung open and the march commenced, with most patrons, myself included making a b-line for the main stage over in Hall D. It’s here that a massive stage utilizing rear projection and massive up-lights and fog stretched on awaiting eager fans anxious for the morning announcements.
Among those announcements was the full trailer for the much-anticipated Warcraft movie that will be hitting cinemas in June next year and a new Hearthstone adventure known as The League of Explorers. New playable characters in Heroes of the Storm were announced alongside new battlefields to wage war as well as an all new Arena map that seems laser-targeted at a crazy but fun casual experience. Cho’gall, a 2-headed Ogre that will be playable in Heroes that is meant to be controlled simultaneously by 2 players will be exclusive to Blizzcon physical and virtual ticket holders as well as a few select others on battle.net. However Cho’gall can be acquired through co-op play, spreading like a virus when you play him with someone who already owns him. These changes suggest that Blizzard is trying to strengthen the casual foundation and encourage players to stay active, providing major incentives to not just play but to play with others. The full cinematic for the Warcraft: Legion trailer also made an appearance along with a summer 2016 release window. While I do not have extensive experience with MMOs, I can say that many fans were let down by Warlords, the most recent WoW expansion, and they hope Legion can make up for a lot of what made Draenor lackluster. While I could never get into the game proper, I have always loved the Warcraft lore, and the Burning Legion returning yet again has my curiosity. Only time will tell how well received it will be by the larger WoW community.
Overwatch also received a spring 2016 release window and multiple version announcements with price points to follow, as well as PS4 and Xbox One versions though lacking platform cross play. Having been teased for some time now online, Blizzard finally announced 3 new playable characters for the game which is still in closed beta. This brings the total hero count up to 21 at launch, adding D. Va, Mei, and Genji. However online a shadow loomed over the game’s launch announcement; with the announcement of a standard retail model including all 21 heroes, the obvious follow-up question would be if Blizzard intends to add more heroes later down the line and if they are going to charge for them. Blizzard specifically said all 21 heroes will be playable at launch, but made no mention of future heroes. Eurogamer asked this question in an interview ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRlQ9orX964) with Bill Petras and Scott Mercer, Art Director and Principal Designer for Overwatch respectively and could not get a straight answer. PC Gamer also could not get a straight answer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAHaQxUsf_A&t=8m36s) As seen in many games, splitting a multiplayer community by walling off content behind a pay wall is a terrible idea, this proves especially true for multiplayer only games. What I have played of the Overwatch beta tells me everyone needs access to the full roster for the game to remain competitive. Blizzard’s marketing and PR has typically been laser accurate and it’s extremely uncharacteristic for them to evade a very important question after their monetization systems are in place and publicly announced. To be blunt they shouldn’t be wishy-washy on this at all if they expect people to throw down cash on a pre-order.
Moving on, the main draw for Blizzcon attendance is the panels and various community interactions, as well as the flagship events for Blizzard’s Esports series. Starting with Esports, the individual stages are both creative and unique with their own feel providing suitable settings for the ensuing combat. Hearthstone’s stage is spacious with a large staircases leading up to a central sound-proof chamber complete with a fireplace surrounded by a tavern bar setting flanked on either side by 2 massive video screens. While the lack of a center screen does make some viewing angle closer to the front awkward it would impact the otherwise phenomenal look of the stage. Heroes of the Storm’s stage is set up for 5v5 and pulls double duty for World of Warcraft. A large center screen with 2 desks on either side serves as Hall B’s battlefield. Screens also flank either side of the stage with vertical flat screens behind each player showing their hero of choice. The desks as well as the center screen are adorned with LED panels providing some much-needed flair, with either side of the stage being lighted up in either Red or Blue.
From what I am told most of the games were fairly entertaining and competitive, however on day 2 serious technical problems relating to audio issues delayed the tournament for 45 minutes to an hour or more which combined with some slightly longer than usual set times caused the World of Warcraft finals to run late into the night after the closing ceremony. The Starcraft 2 WCS Global Finals were once again hosted inside the convention center’s circular arena with one the most technically impressive stage setups in Esports I have seen so far. A massive vertical projection surface with walkways leading up to 2 player booths inside the structure itself featuring 3 projection surfaces, one center and the others for player POV. The entire surface has been digitally projection mapped with well over 30 projectors edge-blended together to create a unified image in addition to LED panels near the bottom of the stage. The technical team took full advantage of the tools at hand, creating dynamic animations for maps, player introductions, and player victories as well as various other effects and small touches that bring the entire stage together.
Disclaimer – Spoilers for the Starcraft 2 WCS Global Finals start here.
The round of 8 was a who’s who of top-level pros well-known in the scene who had battled their way through Heart of the Swarm’s last WCS season all the way to the penultimate event. Our Protoss warriors were Song “HerO” Hyeon Deok, Kim “Classic” Doh Woo, WCS 2013 Champion Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin, and Jung “Rain” Yoon Jong, while the Zerg swarm was led by Shin “Hydra” Dong Won, Lee “Rouge” Byung Ryul, and 2014 WCS Champion Lee “Life” Seung Hyun, with Lee “Innovation” Shin Hyung standing as the sole Terran representative after Choi “Polt” Seong Hun, Cho “Dream” Joong Hyuk and others were taking out in the round of 16. Innovation vs Life was the most popular match of day 1 with eager Terran’s hoping to see their lone star achieve victory. In game 1 Innovation opened with reapers but was not able to inflict any economic damage against Life’s micro. Innovation’s hellion harassment was ineffective and shut down, though he continued to tech to mech as Life produced roaches and pushed towards burrow attacks. Ultimately Innovations siege tanks, vikings, and thors would decimate Life’s forces after his Roach harassment proved to be ineffective at delaying the Terran aggression. However Life would take down Innovation 3-1 winning the next 3 games decisively. While the games were enjoyable, all of them were fairly one-sided with the exception of Life vs Classic where Classic would take Games 1 and 3 only to fall to Life later in the set.
Also an exception where the grand finals between Life and sOs. In game 1 Life opened with a super greedy 3 hatch before pool build that sOs would punish with an 11 gate zealot push and a cannon rush at Life’s 3rd. Even though Life was able to sneak some zerglings into sOs’s base the Protoss’s micro proved too good, and Life would eventually be exhausted. Life would take game 2 after causing quite a bit of economic damage un-powering the cybercore and delaying warpgate tech with early zerglings. Sniping a Warp Prism, a slight tactical error by his opponent would allow Life to overwhelm sOs after his 3rd base was decimated. I could go on but ultimately Life would be taken down by sOs 4-3 and would wrest the crown back from life as the global champion for 2015. Lastly at the end of the first day there were 2 exhibition matches for the new Archon mode, which allows 2 players to take control of a single race to share the workload, and the blame should something go wrong. Blizzard brought on some truly legendary talent in the forms of the Emperor himself, Lim “BoxeR” Yo Hwan and Hong “Yellow” Jin Ho to take part and team up with Jung “MVP” Jong Hyun and Lim “NesTea” Jae Duk respectively.
While the matches ended in a quick 2-0 Terran victory, the highlight of the event was seeing these almost mythic warriors on stage once again, as I personally hadn’t seen BoxeR since an MLG Anaheim event a few years ago. Also of great interest were the interviews from the players as well as often hilarious conversations from the analyst couch. The follow-up show match featured well-known pros Chris “Huk” Loranger and Jang “MC” Min Chul (Protoss) teaming up against Jens “Snute” Aasgaard and Dario “TLO” Wünsch (Zerg). Although I could not stay for these matches in person, the online VODs did allow me to catch up after the event. Huk/MC would take game 1 in the best of 5 only for Snute and TLO to switch to Terran for game 2 only for Huk to sit out and leave MC standing alone. It was obvious these are in no way serious matches, with Huk standing behind the other team while MC single handily defeated them. Huk would literally sit back into the commander’s chair for a ZvZ in game 3 to secure the victory. On the technical side the event mostly went off without a hitch besides player POVs going dark and a redundant feed being switched to during some matches. Overall the Blizzard team put on an amazing production throughout WCS and the rest of Blizzcon. A big thanks to the WCS casters, analysts, hosts, and observers Geoff “iNcontrol” Robinson, Dario “TLO” Wünsch, Sean “Day[9]” Plott, Nathan “Nathanias” Fabrikant, Dan “Artosis” Stemkoski, Nicholas “Nick” Plott, Shaun “Apollo” Clark, Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi, Alexandre “FunKa” Verrier, Florence “flo” yao, James “Kaelaris” Carrol, Yoan “ToD” Merio, Andrew “mOOnGLaDe” Pender, and Leigh “Maynarde” Mandalov.
Disclaimer – Spoilers for the Starcraft 2 WCS Global Finals end here.
The only significant problem with the way Blizzard is currently handling Esports at Blizzcon is that all of the events run simultaneously. Every single attendee I talked to shared my opinion; it sucks not being able to see more than one of the competitions if you want to catch-all the action. In my recent interview with Patrick Walker of EEDAR, we discussed how certain games will pull viewership off of other properties on Twitch. The same happens on the ground in my experience, and the fact that the panels for Hearthstone, Heroes, and Starcraft often run concurrently with their global finals doesn’t help. I missed a best of 3 at WCS to check out the SC2 competitive multiplayer panel along with a less then stellar turnout. The problem is the individuals most interested in these rare community interactions are more often than not going to be watching the best in the world play. Unlike last year, as far as I am aware you could not by a separate pass for the SC2 arena, you would need the full $200 Blizzcon ticket. During the Global Finals security was actively turning away those who did not have seats already secure and directing them towards the upper levels. The fire marshal was on hand to ensure the safety of the event should something catastrophic happen, working events as long as I have I can tell you the number one priority should always be the safety of your patrons and crew full stop, but the event did reach towards it’s maximum capacity.
My personal recommendation as far as logistics are concerned are thus: Make Blizzcon a 3-day event with day 3 exclusively reserved for Esports, each event running one after the other, and sell Day-3 only Esports tickets to cover operating costs. Now it’s nowhere near that simple, and without looking at Blizzard’s internal data it’s impossible for me to determine if that idea is even economically feasible for them but I do think it’s a starting point for some much-needed discussion. Overall the event’s extreme logistical work load was handled incredibly well as things considered, though I do believe there is more that can be done to improve the experience, there always is.
Moving onto Hearthstone, the demo I played for the new explorer expansion was top-notch. In the demo instead of facing off against a boss, your goal is too simply survive a set number of turns with random encounters and some player choices affecting actions. The gameplay was complimented by the humorous banter of characters who’s exploits the expansion is based on. As for the new cards, they are what we have come to expect: some fairly benign, and some crazy ridiculous effects. Hearthstone has always been interesting to me since it embraces RNG and the zaniness that can be a taboo subject among TCG and other competitive enthusiasts. Hearthstone is the Mario Party of card games in my opinion, and while random elements will always draw the ire of some, Hearthstone is perfectly content with itself and the direction it’s heading. The inability to completely predict the outcome of any match based on skill gives Hearthstone some special characteristics that both costs and draws in more fans.
Closing out the con this year was none other than Linkin Park, putting on an excellent performance on the main stage. The experience of a rock concert is hard to describe, with lots of people bobbing their heads, thrusting the universal symbol of metal, the horns, jumping as the front man continually hypes the crowd, and a general feel of energy as the bass roars through the venue and your body. It’s one of those experiences you have to know firsthand to truly understand it in my opinion. My participation ended around 45 mins into the set as 4 days of walking around Anaheim and the convention center had taken its toll, and I’m not one to sit down for concerts, though the amazing performance still echoed throughout the entire convention as it was being simulcast. The SC2 team took advantage to play around with the stages projection mapping to produce some trippy effects. This was my second Blizzcon, and I’m always thrilled to see the thousands of fans who passionately share my hobby, and in some cases my profession. It’s a setting where debates and topics considered too nerdy for regular conversation are the norm. The sheer scale of attendance at Blizzcon is living proof of the passion that envelopes the gaming community as a whole, and the unity we share, and I only wish more people could experience this feeling. That’s all for now but I’ll be back next week (hopefully) covering the Overwatch beta, it’s future in Esports, and where Stacraft is heading into the future.
Disclaimer – In the interest of transparency, it is necessary to disclose that I maintain personal relationships with current and former Blizzard employees. I attended Blizzcon as an individual with a paid ticket, and was not granted special privileges.
