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This is Part 2 of The Blizzcon Dairies.
If don’t know what this is, find out here with part 1!

7 – The panels

The opening ceremony is about to start. I make my way to the front row… May I see your pass please? Well of course you may, good sir. I look for a good spot, thankfully there’s a lot more seats than there are journalists. Here’s Kathleen Sanders and the guys from the one up show “Hey, it’s Mini! Love the show!” “Thanks!” Mini’s owner smiles back. I sit down, the ceremony starts. Morhaime on stage, giving numbers. Then Starcraft 2 and Wrath of the Lich King, we already knew all of that… Still cool, but a little bit underwhelming. “Damn you, Interwebs!” I hear Chilton screaming inside his head.

The ceremony’s over, and… The horror. Regular people are ok, but “ze journalists” enter a stage of panic that I’m no stranger to. Quick, update our pages we must! Blog and post and announce we have to! Well, the cool ones are sitting and chatting, cause they already live updated everything from their palm-treo-PDA thingies. Curse you technology savvy professionals!
I run and plug in and start typing. Maybe some kind of PHP script would have been a good idea, instead of actually coding the page and formatting the pictures by hand… And maybe this could have occurred to me, oh I don’t know, TWO WEEKS AGO?!

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In august 2007 I was lucky enough to be at Blizzcon. Randy, from The Instance, asked me for a few words about the trip and the experience. Even though I didn’t intend to, I ended up writing a little essay which was never really published. I figured that with Blizzcon 2008 coming up, some people might enjoy reading this monster of an article.
So here it is: The Blizzcon Dairies.
Hope you enjoy it!

1 – The departure

Early morning, I get up in my usual haze and grab the clothes I carefully folded the day before. T-shirt, check. Pants, check. Socks, check. Sexy underwear, ch… Errr no wait, that’s from yesterday. Regular underwear, check. Ok, no need to waste time opening closets, having breakfast or taking showers, I’m going to Blizzcon, yay!

Bus ride to the airport. I’m on time, the stars must have aligned.
Let’s head to the check in counter. Not this one, not this one, not this one… Wait… I think… Yup, that’s it. Great, it’s the one with thirty seven thousand people in front of it. Typical. Ok, no worries, I’ll just wait in line. And take a couple of pictures so I can laugh about it later. Nothing can bring me down, I’m going to Blizzcon, Yay!

10 minutes.
I’m smiling. Everything’s nice. The girl next to me is smiling back and even laughing at my stupid joke about the on line check in thing, and it wasn’t even funny. It’s probably because going to Blizzcon is giving me a sexy glow.

20 minutes.
Still smiling, the airport security people are checking you’re in the right lane and looking at the passpo… OH MY GOD, MY PASSPORT! I DIDN’T CHECK FOR MY PASSPO oh here it is, here you go miss. “Everything is in order, go ahead”. Of course everything is in order, what did you think?! “Thanks, have a great day!”

30 minutes.
Ok, this is getting a bit long, and the kids next to me are beginning to get on my nerves. Control your damn spawns, agents of parenthood hell!

40 minutes.
Counter in sight! I have to go through one of those automated thingies… Nice girl is coming to help me, cause apparently 20 years of using computers isn’t enough to know how to operate these damn things. She’s smiling. I can go in straight cause I don’t have any luggage to check in, cool. Ok. She’s smiling. Err, let’s punch in that number again. Ok. Hmmm, wait.

– “Is there a problem?”
– “No no, it’s fine”. But she’s not smiling anymore.

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