by Smrtnik » Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:58 pm
So I had a 1 day pass. The Blizzard booth was centralized, and was the first place I went. They had a separate queue for WoD, a queue for Heroes of the Storm, a queue for Hearthstone, a queue for PS4 Diablo, and a queue for getting a signature from that motorcycle thing they are doing. Each queue had a maximum floor length (because of the other exhibits). The Heroes queue had the longest floor length, but I never saw it full. The WoD queue was always full. A full queue took no more people, and an Enforcer would tell people to go walk around and check later, and one had to luck into a spot as it opened up. Or if it happened that you were inquiring into how it works that a spot opens up well you were in. If the Enforcer saw you standing nearby watching the queue, they wouldn't let you in when you walked over (I tried).
So I found the shortest booth circle and kept doing laps. Nonetheless, about 20+ people got in "before me". Took about 30-45 minutes to get in the queue. Then another hour and a half in the queue. When it was 6 people remaining in front of me the a Blizzard employee pulled us forward and gave us the ground rules:
- This build doesn't have the alliance zone, only the horde one, so you will play horde. All class are available. Some races have the graphics revamp some do not.
- Earlier in the day it was 15 minute sessions, but due to demand it's 8 minute seesions. So set up race/class/customization/talents/keybinds/whatever quickly.
- I went with a goblin rogue. Assassination. Start off in what I am guessing first horde town after some quests are already completed. Each quest I picked up also had bonus objectives you could do, but I only had time to do one quest with no bonuses (was some friggin NPC escort ugh!)
- We still have redirect as a spell... but my combo points were automatically redirecting to new targets (in or out of combat) even without using it and no cooldown, so I'm guessing it's just that they hadn't pruned it yet this build
- Crimson tempest was actually worth using
- There was a talent that made your kidney shot also apply a strong bleed
- Did not at all notice the smaller numbers, stuff died at about the same rate as mobs on the island with Celestials and Ordos
- All the environmental graphics looked very sharp, if you have a good machine you should see a boost from current
As Thrall and his dad were being chatty Cathys The Blizzard guy said our time is over, gave a single WoD key, said while we can enter it now to our accounts the beta is not playable yet but will be soon.
Then on our way out, a different Blizzard guy gave us a Hearthstone pin and a poster of Wrynn and some random Orc (new leader?) on a motorcycle.
I picked up a giant mousepad with a 1500s era world map on it from Paradox Games, and a code for a free download of some Europa Universalis 4 DLC. Picked up a whole bag of swag from the central location. Had lunch at a nearby bar. Went to a couple of panels, one about parenting as a gamer, and another about gamer psychological counseling (my fiancee does student guidance and counseling for work). Then we wend to the board game area and played some sushi card game, Munchkin, a game called "we didn't playtest this at all", and watched some people play D&D. Then went up to the handheld lounge and picked up like 200 streetpasses for my 3DS. Watched a bunch of people being friggin' awesome at Dance Dance Revolution (or some game like it) with a Kinect on a stage. Checked out console freeplay, couldn't figure out how to get Pong working on the ancient TV they had it hooked up to. Then we left home.
Was a lot of fun, and I'll post some keys in here later once I unpack.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.