Blizzard has finally made a public announcement of the upcoming Bliz Irvine press event we’ve been talking about all month. Here’s the tweet:
[blue]We’ve invited press to Blizzard HQ to help us make some important announcements on August 1st. What features do you hope/think we’ll reveal? –Diablo[/blue]
It’s not an entirely fair question, since we already know they’re going to show off (some? all?) the [wiki]Battle.net[/wiki] aspects of Diablo III, plus give the attendees hands-on with a playable version of the [wiki]Diablo 3 beta[/wiki] build. What Battle.net features will be revealed, though? Just seeing the interface and learning about how the chat channels, game creation, matchmaking, friends list, and other stuff works will be interesting. We should also see something about the trading system/Auction House, and perhaps some new details about the [wiki]Arena[/wiki], or tournaments, ladders, B.net [wiki]achievements[/wiki] for [wiki]E-peen[/wiki] satisfaction… and more?
Sadly, we’re not a fawnsite, so I wasn’t invited to this event. That’s sad primarily since Blizzard will be releasing all sorts of official info and screenshots and interviews on the Battle.net stuff, but probably not much new stuff about changes to the game itself. We’ll be dependent upon the attendees for that info.
You can compare it to Blizzcon; Blizzard reveals major features, releases a gameplay movie plus screenshots and artwork, hosts panels, schedules interviews, etc… but all that info is available to anyone, whether you attend the show or not. The real reason to attend Blizzcon, and the reason I’ve gone the last 3 years, is to get hands-on time with the game. That’s where the best info comes from, and it’s what allowed me to write the mega-reports you guys found so useful. Just last year I produced huge articles on Wizard, Witch Doctor, Monk, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Quests, and Battle Arena.
As far as I know, no one else, on any website on the entire Internet, wrote anything like that about their D3 play experience at Blizzcon, and I fear that will again hold true for this upcoming Blizzard event. Happily, we’ve got interviews lined up with at least 2 of the attendees, so I’ll do what I can to crack open their brains and pour out all the hot, juicy, delicious info.
I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course. *cough*