
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:
Well, my left is the ‘power button.’
D’oh! Long day, I guess… — G
Um… without reading any other articles, shouldn’t this story provide details about what the problem was in the first place. The flow of this article deals with the reactions of an event without providing the information on the event itself. Geez, I learned this back in High School.
This was in Orange /County Register today –
Any luck for you guys yet?
Hope you can get some tickets – just keep trying
Good Luck
mom