Sunday, November 8, 2015

Blizzcon Day 2

Sitting at the airport waiting for our flight back to cold dark November reality (as I type it is 28 deg F back home), trying to wrap my thoughts and feelings around what we just experienced.

I am running on 3-4 hrs of sleep and the Starbucks is only marginally helping so don't expect any long winded dissertations just yet.

I will say that I am leaving happy. WoW's evolution is swinging back to my preferred play style, with more emphasis on real world content and questing instead of instances. Things that I said wow needed years ago are now being implemented. It's not all love and hugs for wow, but I feel vindicated in many ways.

The past 4 days have been so full and so busy that I feel like we've been gone for two weeks instead of a few days.  We turned in the rental car this morning and it hit me that our arrival at LAX on Wednesday feels so very long ago.

I did want to correct something from yesterday (or whenever).  Our last trip to Blizzcon was in 2008 and according to Wikipedia had 15,000 attendees.  More recent years, and presumably 2015 included, are listed at 25,000 attendees. I kept saying the event felt bigger, and I was right. ;).

That many people requires a different approach or bad things happen. The biggest shift we noticed was that instead of Blizzcon being a homegrown house party of an event, it has gotten serious. Gone are the Blizzard staff "volunteers" running everything. In their place are hired security and professional temporary workers manning all posts. Staff were good with supervisors magically appearing anywhere there were issues. All staff we encountered knew their schiznit and had well rehearsed answers. When changes like this happen, often the result can be a very "corporate" feel, but the overall event retained most of its charm. When we weren't looking, Blizzcon became a professionally run event, and for the $$ we're forking out, it had to.

We are done travelling for awhile and I am thankful. After the past few weeks I am looking forward to the relative calm of the holidays. (Which is saying a lot, as our holidays are always too busy to truly enjoy).

More later on this topic... // Aba

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