Orange County had a great showing at this past weekend’s regional qualifiers for the World Cyber Games, also known as the Olympics for the video-game world.

Eight locals won a spot in the U.S. finals, which will take place in October during the E for All game convention in Los Angeles. The OC folks will compete against finalists from the eastern, northern and southern regional competitions.

The winners of the finals will represent Team USA at Cologne, Germany in November.

Orange County has done all right in past years. Back in 2005, Dennis “Shortround_” Chan from Seal Beach came in second in the world for Warcraft III.

The international event,  in its ninth year, scours the planet for the best gamers in several different games, including Warcraft III, Halo 3, StarCraft: Brood War and Guitar Hero. Teams from nearly 80 countries are expected to show up this year for the finals. There are also 12 games in the competition, plus two online titles. Click chart below to see its growth:

Interesting factoid: For the most part all the people who participated in the Western Regional in Mission Viejo over the weekend were between 17 and 28 with three exceptions:

1st place Need for Speed (Patrick Wyrick) is 39 years young
2nd place Need for Speed (Trent Pleasant) is 10 years old
2nd place Guitar Hero 3 (Blake Peebles) is 16 years old

Local winners are:

Project Gotham Racing 4
Mark “driftmaster” Kagagiri, Irvine, 2nd place

Counter Strike 1.6
1st place team includes Noah “Striker” Alvarado from Santa Ana; and Ryan “Pham” Pham and Shaun “Hostile” Catron, both from Fountain Valley.
2nd place team includes Jaron “Cooper” Cooper from Santa Ana

Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath
1st – Michael “judgepowr” Esmaeili from Tustin

FIFA ‘08
1st – Bardia “Barmoa” Moayedi from Laguna Niguel

Need For Speed: ProStreet
1st – Patrick “Indigo Ferret” Wyrick from Aliso Viejo

Complete list of winners below:

Read the rest of this entry »

Blizzard Entertainment just released details on how to snag one of 3,000 extra tickets to its upcoming BlizzCon fan fest this October in Anaheim.

As mentioned last week following the ticketing mess, the remaining tickets will be sold by a lottery.  To be eligible, you needed to have an active Blizzard account (to the store, not to games like World of Warcraft) on or before 9 p.m. last Tuesday, Aug. 12, when the 12,000 tickets officially sold out (Read “Blizzard speaks: BlizzCon mess might have been avoided.”) You also must be an adult in your country and not yet have purchased a ticket for this year’s event.

Just before the drawing, Blizzard will hold an opt-in period so you can enter eligible Blizzard accounts into a drawing for the chance to purchase two BlizzCon 2008 tickets. According to Blizzard:

 Once the opt-in period begins (on a date to be determined), you’ll see an opt-in feature when you log in to Blizzard Account Management. The opt-in period will last for several days. We will announce the date that the opt-in period will begin, along with the duration of the opt-in period, in advance on our websites. Please check back regularly.

After the opt-in period ends, we will randomly select 1,500 eligible Blizzard Accounts from the opt-in pool to receive the opportunity to purchase up to two BlizzCon 2008 tickets. If selected, you will be notified via email with further information about how to purchase the tickets.

Prior to the end of the opt-in period, please ensure the contact information (both email address and phone number) associated with the Blizzard Account is accurate and up to date, so that we may contact you if you are selected. To check and update your information, log in to Blizzard Account Management.

More details at: BlizzCon 2008 Ticket Drawing FAQ.

Catch up on the BlizzCon 2008 ticket mishap:

• Blizzard speaks: BlizzCon mess might have been avoided
• 3,000 more BlizzCon tickets and a Blizzard apology
• Will fans forgive Blizzard? (OC Register)
• How Blizzard mishandled the BlizzCon ticket situation (WoW Insider)
• UPDATE: Blizzard tries again to sell tickets to BlizzCon (Tuesday)
• UPDATE: BlizzCon tickets on sale today (Monday)
  

The World Cyber Games is holding its two-day western regional qualifiers at Howie’s Game Shack in Mission Viejo starting Saturday.

Anyone who thinks they are that good can enter the competition. The ultimate prize: A trip to Cologne, Germany to represent Team USA for the worldwide finals in November. Lots of other cash prizes and game equipment as well.

Check in time is 10:30 a.m. and the competition starts at 11 a.m.

Winners of the qualifiers then move on to the U.S. finals, which will take place in October during the E for All game convention in Los Angeles.

The organization is looking for the best players in:

• Halo 3
• StarCraft: Brood War
• Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne
• Command & Conquer 3
• Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties
• FIFA Soccer 08
• Need for Speed
• Carom 3D
• Project Gotham Racing 4
• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
• Virtua Fighter 5
• ProStreet
• Half-Life: Counter Strike 1.6

**details**

What: Western U.S. Qualifier for World Cyber Games
Where: Howie’s Game Shack, 27741 Crown Valley Pkwy in Mission Viejo. Phone: 949-367-0019, E-mail:  missionviejo at howies.com

When: Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 16, 17. Registration starts 10:30 a.m. Competition starts at 11 a.m.

If Blizzard could start this week over, the Irvine game company tells me it probably would. Blizzard’s online ticketing meltdown still has fans steamed that they went through two tortuous days trying to buy a $100 ticket to BlizzCon, the fan fest happening in October in Anaheim. (Read the background on this HERE.)

Blizzard has finally responded to questions I originally asked Wednesday. Shon Damron, Blizzard’s PR manager, responded to my questions (UPDATE: Shon later told me these are responses were from the man himself: Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s CEO and co-founder):

Q: Can you, meaning Blizzard, be specific as to what technically happened and why do you think the system broke down? Was it outsourced?

Blizzard: The issues that people faced were due to an incredible rush to purchase tickets. Last year we sold about two tickets per minute, selling out in 72 hours, and this year, with 50% more tickets available, we sold out in a combined total of 15 minutes. This meant that thousands of people were trying to purchase tickets at the same time, so some people were not able to get all the way through the purchase process before the tickets had been sold out.

Q: Any idea how many requests you were hit with to bring the system down?

Blizzard: We don’t have an exact number, but it’s safe to assume that it was well into the thousands.

Q: Last year, it took 3 days to sell out of 8,000 tickets. Sounds like many, many more fans wanted tickets this year. What was the difference this year? More out-of-state, international fans?

Blizzard: Most likely it has to do with the fact that we currently have more announced games in development than ever before. The 2nd World of Warcraft expansion is in beta testing, StarCraft II is well into development, and we recently announced Diablo III at our Worldwide Invitational event in Paris. Our goal was to address additional demand by adding another convention hall and 50% more tickets, but clearly that was not enough. We’re continuing to review the entire process in order to better address these issues for future Blizzard events.

Q: Lots of complaints from frustrated fans who stayed up for two days refreshing their screens, getting tickets into their carts and then nothing. Will they have any recourse?

Blizzard: We plan to make 3000 more tickets available for purchase via a drawing. We will have more details on that soon, but it’s important to note that only people who created a Blizzard Account for the Online Store by the time the Sold Out message was posted on Tuesday (9:00PM PDT) will be eligible to purchase any of the tickets available in the drawing. Having a drawing will help us avoid the rush to buy tickets that resulted in people not being able to get all the way through the purchase process.

Q: If Blizzard could rewind time and go back to Monday, what would/could you do differently?

Blizzard: Having seen the level of demand we had for tickets this year, we believe that the drawing we’ll use for selling the additional 3000 tickets would have helped avoid the complications that players experienced this week.

Q: Does BlizzCon need to be bigger?

Blizzard: It’s clear that we needed to accommodate even more people for BlizzCon this year. By offering 3000 more tickets, on top of the 4000 we had already added compared to last year, this year’s show will be approximately 90% bigger. As with our games, we want to ensure that BlizzCon attendees have a high-quality entertainment experience at the show, so we have to be careful about how many tickets we sell. That said, we’ll continue to evaluate all the options available to us for future shows.

Related:

• Will fans forgive Blizzard? (OC Register)
• How Blizzard mishandled the BlizzCon ticket situation (WoW Insider)
• UPDATE: Blizzard tries again to sell tickets to BlizzCon (Tuesday)
• UPDATE: BlizzCon tickets on sale today (Monday)
  

At least five times today, I spoke to or heard from Blizzard’s PR manager who told me that the company would be responding to several questions I asked. So, I patiently waited, while interviewing other sources who might offer insight into what happened on Monday and Tuesday.

Unfortunately, Blizzard did not come through even as the day’s last communication at 5:37 p.m. promised an update in 30 minutes.

This is the first time Blizzard has not responded to my request for an interview.  However, I should mention, I usually give them more than a day. So I turned in my story, “Will fans forgive Blizzard?“

But as I typed this up, I noticed that Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime has posted an apology. (Whoa! And 3,000 more tickets will be made available via lottery!)

There’s still time for Blizzard to respond to my questions. This is the Internet, after all, where history changes with the click of a right left-mouse button.

But it seems that seething fans may already be letting it pass. I spoke to Mike Schramm at WowInsider (who offered a detailed overview of how this all went down). His two main gripes with Blizzard is that the lack of communication to fans and that Blizzard let this drag on, forcing people to hover near their computers for two days. But, as Schramm told me, “I think a lot of people understand that Blizzard is a company that makes video games and not a company who sells tickets.”

The background: Tickets to the Irvine game company’s BlizzCon fan convention went on sale Monday. Huge demand broke the system, which was in a continuous state of maintenance till evening. Blizzard said it would try again at the ’start of business’ Tuesday morning. So again, fans flooded Blizzard’s system on Tuesday and the site kept its ‘under maintenance‘ page up. It later said tickets would go on sale 12:50 p.m. By 1 p.m., a sign said tickets were sold out but more tickets would go on sale again at 8 p.m. Those sold out quickly. The aggravation for many fans was not that tickets sold out so quickly, that was expected. Rather, they were upset about the numerous hours they wasted waiting around because Blizzard was unprepared. Late Wednesday night, Blizzard apologized and said it will offer 3,000 more tickets via a lottery.

Past coverage:

• UPDATE: Blizzard tries again to sell tickets to BlizzCon (Tuesday)
• UPDATE: BlizzCon tickets on sale today (Monday)
  

**Update: 1 p.m. Blizzard says tickets are for sale again, as of 12:50 p.m. But 10 minutes later and they’re sold out! Really, Blizzard, really? Or are these technical difficulties?** 

**Update: 12:11 p.m.: Nope, BlizzCon ticketing site doesn’t appear to be  working. Keep checking Blizzard’s site for updates **

**Update, 10:35 a.m.: Blizzard has posted its own update as of 10:30 a.m. It estimates that tickets will be available for purchase at noon, California time, today! **

Blizzard can handle 10 million people playing World of Warcraft online. But sell a few thousand tickets to fans for the upcoming BlizzCon fan convention?

Ha! After major outages Monday due to an overloaded system, few fans actually bought a ticket yesterday. Blizzard wound up postponing ticket sales last night while it fixed its equipment. Lots of ridicule against the Irvine company for the annoyance.

Tickets are supposed to go on sale at the start of business day this morning. But there’s no mention of who’s business day that is. As of 8:30 a.m., BlizzCon tickets still are not for sale and if you try to buy one, you’ll still get this page.

Shon Damron, a Blizzard media guy, messaged me back last night saying:

We had some technical difficulties with the site due to the volume of purchase requests that have been coming through, but we’ve made some optimizations to help manage the load. If/when tickets sell out, we’ll definitely let everyone know.

Sigh. Blizzard advises that fans check its site and forums for updates.

“Final Fantasy IV” is a faithful remake — perhaps too faithful. The age of the gameplay is really underlined when it’s juxtaposed with the brand-new graphics, new full-motion video and remastered music. The title’s somewhat salvaged by boss tweaks and new abilities that change the dynamics of some of the timeworn dungeons and encounters, but it would be nice to see the development team bend its talents toward a new game instead of a remake.

“Final Fantasy IV” has a special place in my heart. It was the first game I’d played that let players do something other than hop and shoot fireballs — I love hopping, and I love fireballs, but there’s only so much of both a body can do.

It is also the game that, in my opinion, helped push console-based RPG games forward and kept the genre alive in the long term — it’s entirely possible that the RPG market in this country only exists today because of this game. In that sense, it’s a shame that this new version of “Final Fantasy IV” is so incredibly similar to the original release. Rather than looking to the future of RPGs, it rehashes gameplay and mechanics that are very outdated. Read the rest of this entry »

Is ‘Madden NFL ‘09′ a game that people are so heavily anticipating that they must get it during the first minute of  Tuesday morning?

Show up at the Best Buy store in Westminster tonight to find out. The electronics retailer will open its doors at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 12, to sell the $59.99 game to fans (a limited edition $89.99 version is also for sale). Best Buy stores in Rancho Cucamonga and San Bernardino also plan to open at midnight.

Better yet,  Best Buy will let you start lining up at 10:30 tonight. Have fun kids.

Don’t forget to check out