[Cairenn]

Rest of the con

I had planned on attending the battle grounds panel… but hunger made me choose otherwise. I returned for the 7pm contests and mixer. The contests were a mix of brilliance, and pain… which is normal. The mixer afterwards was awkward and poorly planned. The designers and coders did not stand out versus the normal blizzard employees, and it was very hard to figure out who was who.

Overall the first day of Blizzcon felt more professional, but less friendly and inviting than the Anime cons I had attended in the past. This is not a bad thing, but mainly an observation.


Day two at Blizzcon

The day started a little differently from the previous day. The line, as normal, formed early. A local friend met me at the line into the convention. He was unable to buy tickets, the convention was sold out. As a favor, I let him borrow my badge for an hour (my first panel was at 11AM, the doors opened at 10AM) so he could buy some of the limited items for sale there and do a quick look around.

I ended up hanging out in front of the convention hall, in the area that apparently is the smoking area. I saw a person with “M” on the badge, and struck up a conversation. It was one of the German community managers from Europe. I did not get the name, my notepad was not out, I did feel like formally interviewing anybody. After a while, one of the English language reps for Europe arrived. It was fun talking to them, about the looks from the inside, the crap they go through, the fun, the all of being the “voices”. The largest group of native language players in Europe is the Germans it seams. More people play the English version, but that includes Spain, Italy, and the rest. The largest population of native speakers is the Germans.

We spoke about UI mods a bit… nothing specific or things I want to quote, but it was interesting. Localizations were brought up, and the difficulty of a fan (me) to get things translated… people want to use it in the languages… but its rare for people to want to do the work… or do it for more than one version… meh.

One of the press people from WoW Europe came by. A short American woman… she was “married to a Frenchie” so lived in Europe, and got a job there. She was very cool, and we talked a little bit about the convention, and the notes from the panels. Apparently WoW Europe is based in France, since Vivendi was able to get the better facilities there, or something along those lines.

Overall, the European community managers were very “accessible and human”… but they also were not as stressed out as the American ones where. I watched Caydiem (the only one I know by looks) run up and down stairs, bounce between moderating panels and dealing with “con crap”. I don’t know if the Euro CMs had as many responsibilities… but after the con (Sunday) I ran into Eyonix and Caydiem relaxing in front of the center… so I think that it was the stress of the con that rendered previously accessible and friendly CMs friendly.

I think something that might have helped referencing which Cms where who would be making shirts with the forum icons they use on the back. For any of the people who post on the forums maybe like block also? It might have been a lot of work, but it would then have given instant visibility to the people we interact with on a daily basis, and who we tend to crucify and blame for stuff out of their hands… on second thought I can see why they would not… ^_^

The realm meet up times for Sunday were later in the day, during the panels I reported on… so I never ended up making it to them. They fixed the “mixed up” meet up of the tables from the previous day… but alas… I missed today’s also.