1994 The company changes its name to Chaos Studios, then changed its name to Blizzard Entertainment, realizing that another company had the prior name.

November 1994: Silicon & Synapse renames itself to Blizzard Entertainment and publishes its first Warcraft game, “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans,” available as a DOS CD-ROM and floppy disk for $45. The game wins PC Gamer’s Editors Choice award and best strategy game of 1994.

1994 The Death and Return of Superman is created based on the storyline of Death of Superman.

1994 Blackthorne, otherwise known as BlackHawk in European countries, is developed by Blizzard Entertainment.

December 1995: “Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness” is released and wins Game of the Year award from PC Gamer. About 50,000 copies are sold in the first weekend.

1995 Justice League Task Force is created by Blizzard. Like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, this game is in the fighting genre.

1996 Warcraft II Beyond the Dark Portal is created by Blizzard. Based on the Warcraft II Tide of Darkness, this game is an expansion pack.

December 1996: Release of action-role-playing game “Diablo” and Battle.net, one of the early forms of multiplayer gaming online. A half-million copies of Diablo sell within the first few months. Within six months, Battle.net registers 700,000.

March 1998: “StarCraft” launches, selling 1 million copies in first three months.

2000: Diablo II is released, selling 1 million copies in first two weeks. It sets the record for the fastest-selling PC game ever.

2001: An expansion to the Diablo sequel, “Diablo II: Lord of Destruction,” is released and sells more than one million copies in the first month.

July 2002: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos released, selling more than one million copies in first three weeks.

July 2003: An expansion to Warcraft III, “The Frozen Throne” is released. One million copies sold within the first month.

Nov. 23, 2004: “World of Warcraft” launches. In the US, 240,000 copies sold in first day, with 200,000 players creating online accounts within 24 hours, at $15 a month.

May 9, 2006: Plans are announced to develop a live-action “World of Warcraft” movie. Legendary Pictures, the studio behind Batman Begins and 300, will produce.

January 2007: An expansion pack to “World of Warcraft,” called “The Burning Crusade,” launches with 2.4 million copies sold in the first 24 hours .

May 19, 2007: StarCraft II is announced.

August 2007: World of Warcraft expansion pack, “Wrath of the Lich King ” is announced.

July 24, 2007: WoW subscribers surpass 9 million.

November 2007: The first comic book series based on “World of Warcraft” is released.

December 2007: Plans are announced for Activision (creator of “Guitar Hero”) and Blizzard’s parent company, France-based Vivendi, to merge as Activision-Blizzard.

December 2007: Blizzard Entertainment CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime is honored as the 11th inductee in the Hall of Fame by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences for “his role in expanding the MMOG audience beyond the hardcore.”

Jan. 22, 2008: WoW subscribers surpass 10 million – including more than 2 million in Europe, more than 2.5 million in North America and about 5.5 million in Asia.

March 7, 2008: Blizzard Entertainment is ranked No. 3 game developer in the world by Think Services’ Game Developer magazine.

After more than a year of covering Orange County’s biggest and best-known developer, we’re ending the Blizzard Blog.

But not because Blizzard Entertainment is no longer worth covering. In fact, when we wrote exclusives about the Irvine game developer, we captured fan attention big time.  We’d like to thank all the fans who checked us out, especially especially the guys at WoW.com for the great linkage.

In the last several months, Tamara Chuang (aka the Gadgetress) and I had personal and professional obligations that  severely limited the time we had to devote to this blog. In the end, our editors decided the topic was best covered from Tamara’s Gadgetress blog, where it began, rather than use the resources required for a separate blog.

So we’re moving all future coverage to a category of Tamara’s main blog at The Gadgetress (here’s a shortcut: gadgetress.com/blizzard). You’ll find a new page with links to older stories, photo slide shows, videos and all good things Blizzard.

There are still plenty of Blizzard-related events that happen – from BlizzCon to the company’s developer-attended game launches. Thanks for following us and reading the coverage that we provided, and we hope to see you all again.

Here are the most recent stories:

~ Joe Simmons, lead Blizzard blogger

“Gryphn Rider,” a 2004 print by Bill Petras. On view at Laguna Art Museum through Oct. 4. © Blizzard Entertainment.

Attention gamers and art fans: The Laguna Art Museum is hosting an artists’ forum at UC Irvine from 4-6 p.m. Oct. 1. The forum will take place at UCI’s Winifred Smith Hall.

The forum will include artists featured in the museum’s current exhibition, “WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon,” as well as Blizzard Entertainment’s cinematics project lead, Jeff Chamberlain. The forum will be moderated by the associate director of UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art and Technology, David Familian.

The artists participating will be Antoinette LaFarge, Robert Nideffer and Eddo Stern.

LaFarge is an associate professor of digital media at UC Irvine. She’s a faculty member for the arts computation engineering graduate program in the studio art department, and is the director of academic computing at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Her digital print “World of World: The Adventures of Malbec and Player” is on view at the Laguna Art Museum.

Nideffer also teaches at UCI and is the director of the arts computation engineering program. He’s also director of the Game Culture and Technology Lab. His triptych, “2007 B.C.,” is currently on view at the museum, as is his flash-based game, “WTF?!,” co-curated by Alex Szeto.

Los Angeles-based artist Eddo Stern teaches game design at UCLA. He has three pieces currently on view at Laguna Art Museum: plastic, paper and electronic sculptures “MELF” and “Man Woman, Dragon,” and the animated video “Best Flame War Ever.” Stern also curated a portion of the machinama videos as well as contributed an essay to the manual that accompanies the show.

Immediately following the forum, a reception for the Beall Center’s upcoming exhibit, “Media Alchemy: Nam June Paik” (curated by Familian) will take place from 6:30-9 p.m.

“WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon” runs at the museum through Oct. 4.

Related links:

• ‘World of Warcraft’ quest leads to Laguna
• Some images from the ‘WoW’ show at Laguna
• Arts writer takes on World of Warcraft
• Check out this ‘World of Warcraft’ slide show
• The Arts Blog

But according to the OCRegister’s Irvine reporter Ian Hamilton, the school may add a gaming major as soon as next fall. This is partly due to the brand new Computer Games and Virtual Worlds Center, established this quarter. Virtual worlds? C’mon! That’s Blizzard’s specialty.

This should be a nice fit to what the Laguna College Art+Design is doing in Laguna Beach (read “Get taught by Blizzard — a perk if you attend Laguna art school“). The art school includes some Blizzard employees on faculty and last year had an exclusive art exhibit with original art from the gaming company.

Read Ian’s story, “UCI students could soon major in video games” on the Irvine business blog.

If you missed any of our coverage, check out our new photo gallery archive, at gaming.freedomblogging.com/photos, where we have put together links to all previous photo slide shows and video taken by us and the professional photographers here at the OCRegister.

So far, there’s three years of BlizzCon footage and we’re trying to track down photos from year one. Plus, we’ve added a lot of other goodies from times past.

We’ll be adding to the collection from here on and when we find time, will continue to add older coverage. Are we missing something? Ping us!

Enjoy!

We also talked with “Diablo III” Game Director Jay Wilson. While time was tight, we had a chance to go over some of the guiding principles behind the game as well as how the developers are tackling some of the thorny class issues from “Diablo II.”

One of Wilson’s goals with “Diablo III” is to expand the game’s role-playing nature. The core gameplay, he said, is still action — and our time playing the demo supports that — but Blizzard was looking to strengthen what role-playing elements, like quests and storyline elements, that help define the series.

Action-RPG dungeons often feel like “a box full of monsters” waiting to be slain by a player, Wilson said. Part of the strategy to make them feel more like foes and less like goody bags is to make the world itself more vibrant. Small touches, like adding a world map to let players know where they were as they journeyed from area to area help ground the player (as described in the “Diablo III” panel). Others include streamlining questing and diffusing the quest givers. Rather than having a central hub to which players must constantly return, players are given new goals as they proceed through the world.

The other aspect of the game’s RPG side — customization — was also undergoing a radical redesign. It’s been known for some time that, unlike previous “Diablo” titles, players won’t be able to tailor their character’s core statistics, like vitality or energy. This change, which angered many, was defended by Wilson as a way to actually advance customization.

The logic goes this way: In “Diablo II,” build balance wasn’t very good. There were just a handful of competitive builds — that is, builds that could actually finish all three difficulty modes of the game. There were quite a few average builds and many, many bad builds. This was compounded by unintuitive character building choices. In terms of statistics, vitality, which measured how tough a character was, far outshined every other choice for every class, Wilson said. The nature of the system actually decreased viable choices and customization because the only real choice was to build to minimum strength and dexterity values and then to maximize vitality.

The end result is that many players built characters that simply couldn’t compete because they made intuitive choices. In “Diablo III,” the goal is to make it hard to build a bad character, while still making designing a good character a challenge. To look at it another way, “Diablo III” designers hope to have more good builds than “Diablo II” did and fewer terrible builds.

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Know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

If you want a BlizzCon goody bag, make sure to register with the Web site and leave a comment on any of BlizzCon coverage. We’ll randomly select winners from anyone that’s said something on the coverage — it’s that simple!

Coverage so far:

We got a chance to talk to some Blizzard designers and executives who talked about what they got out of BlizzCon and how the convention impacts their games — including “Cataclysm” and “Diablo III,” straight from the mouths of lead designers like Tom Chilton and Jay Wilson.

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Know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Blizzard had a contest among its artistic employees to design their own Noobz. Several were worthy but the top three were produced as action figures that BlizzCon attendees could purchase for $30. You could also buy your own at the show and design it yourself.

Lots of crazy designs, including a Hello Kitty Noobz. I’m hoping the company will auction them off for a worthy cause because I wouldn’t mind owning a few.

If you missed the show’s art exhibit, here’s our own photo slide show of the employee Noobz:

Lots of photos after the jump:

Click images to enlarge:

Know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? You could win one. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Chilton was able to give us some clarifications on “Cataclysm.”

The biggest is that the revamp of 1-60 content is coming to all WoW players, whether or not they buy the expansion. This change wasn’t difficult to divine, given the unwieldy options for the small percentage of players who would go without the expansion pack, but welcome to hear.

The other big shake-up, new class-race combinations, may not be available without purchasing the expansion, though. Chilton said he and his team were still discussing their options on that issue. (Speaking of, the current total of class-race combinations we confirmed, with information from Chilton and press releases, is nine: troll druids, blood elf warriors, orc mages and tauren paladins on Horde side; night elf mages, human hunters, dwarf mages, dwarf shamans and gnome priests for Alliance. No new classes will be offered for the draenei.)

However, aspirants to Insane or Exalted titles may want to put their efforts into higher gear. Chilton said that many old world factions will be adjusted and updated to the post-”Cataclysm” world,  but that there was a chance that some would simply disappear, swallowed up by earthquakes and tsunamis. He wouldn’t say who was being examined and who was up on the chopping block, but the Shen’dralar faction — the highborne elves in Dire Maul — came up as an example of the kind of factions that were likely to see a change. (Aspiring Loremasters have much less to worry about — all completed quests, even they’re removed from the game, will still count toward the total.)

What was confirmed was that the VanCleef and Arugal quest lines — the chief villains in the Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep dungeons — will be totally revamped to lead into the new level-85 versions of these dungeons. (The VanCleef quest line is especially in need of an overhaul — it tied into the kidnapping of Varian Wrynn, the leader of Stormwind, an event that was told in the comic book series and resolved in game almost a year ago.)

In addition to these lore updates are the additions, for the first time, of the elemental planes. These prisons for the ancient rulers of Azeroth haven’t really been touched upon in any of the WarCraft games, but were a heavy influence in some of the World of Warcraft pen-and-paper role playing books. Chilton said that much of the information in that game stands to be overridden with what’s in this new expansion, noting that WoW lore head honcho Chris Metzen was intimately involved in the creation of “Cataclysm.”

They were chatting with readers of their fan sites – SCLegacy.com, StarCraft2forum.org and StarCraft.org. Many couldn’t make it to the show, a 2-day fan convention for Irvine game maker Blizzard Entertainment that ended Saturday. By the end of the live-blogging session, they were astounded by the number of readers who participated in the Q&A.

“250 readers,” whooped Ryan “LordofAscension” Tower, who runs SCLegacy.com, one of the oldest fan sites dedicated to the 1998 game from Irvine game developer Blizzard Entertainment.

“Really?” said Jonathan “Joneagle_X” Tietz, administrator of StarCraft2forum. “No way!”

Combined, the three sites get a few thousand visitors a month. They produce in-depth analyses, interviews and battle reports. In return, there’s some money from ads, “but not enough to live on,” said Tower, a 22-year-old tax accountant from Michigan.

But passion like that doesn’t go unnoticed. These are official Blizzard fan sites. They agreed to provide certain details to Blizzard certain things in exchange for some perks. One perk: A free airline ticket to BlizzCon, which Tower gave to Ben Barrett, a staff member in Scotland.

“I’m 18. This is probably my most important thing on my CD (resume),” said Barrett, who can’t believe he snagged a free ticket to BlizzCon. “If someone told me two years ago that I’d be in a hotel being interviewed like this and in the U.S., I wouldn’t have believed them.”

Blizzard has a “couple hundred” official fan sites out of the thousands that exist, said Paul Sams, the company’s chief operating officer. Official sites must publish weekly and must give Blizzard monthly reports on site traffic, key stories and any other pertinent details. They also agree not to violate the games’ terms of service and be supportive of the game and the company.

“There are certain fan sites that go so far above and beyond and you just want to give them greater access,” Sams said. “We (Blizzard) can only go so far. We need more help. If something challenging comes up, they’re calling the army and spreading the word.”

Official sites get a link on Blizzard’s Web site and, every now and then, an exclusive. And then there are the free trips – to Korea, Paris and Anaheim. One person from each official fan site got free airfare to BlizzCon. They also got press credentials, which get them access to the press room’s free food and game play. The travel budget for BlizzCon this year was “in the five digits,” Sams said.

“They give us coverage (opportunities) that we just couldn’t get,” said Tietz, 21, from Gainesville, Fla.

But, added Barrett, “If we did something they didn’t like, or didn’t do our monthly reports, they would take it away.”

Not every fan site wants to be official for that reason. WoW.com, which attracts millions of visitors a month, isn’t official. Previously called WoWInsider, the site doesn’t want to report back to Blizzard, said Mike Schramm, a senior editor.

“You have to agree with them that fan sites are by fans and fans are supportive of Blizzard. But we’re fans,” said Schramm, who is based in Chicago. “We just want the freedom to say they’re wrong.”

A good example was coverage of last year’s bungled BlizzCon ticket sales, which left fans frustrated. Schramm wrote a lengthy report criticizing Blizzard.

“I don’t want to take credit for it (ticket sales) being better this year, but it was better,” Schramm said.

WoW.com does have more freedom than typical fan sites in a big way: It’s part of AOL’s Weblogs Inc. The corporation pays the bills for at least 6 full-time staffers. An additional 25 writers are piece meal. While AOL usually sends a large number of WoW staffers to BlizzCon, this year, the company paid for a preshow meet-up with fans of its fan site. They had expected 200 or 300 to show up. About 1,250 attended the gathering.

“Our stated site purpose is to cover their game. Even if Blizzard never talked to us, we’d still cover their game,” Schramm said. “It’s in their best interest to sit down and talk to us.”

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Know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Hello Kitty Noobz, designed by Mark Choy, a level designer.

The only other time I remember Hello Kitty mixing with Blizzard was a past “The Simpsons” episode, where Bart Simpson was playing in a ‘World of Warcraft’-like game and mother Marge had redecorated his online dungeon with Hello Kitty.

We’ll post a gallery of all the other Noobz displayed at some point. Stay tuned. And don’t forget to leave a comment if you want a chance to win one of the official BlizzCon goody bags.

The “Mistress of Pain,” pictured on right, won first place for best costume during the BlizzCon costume contest, sponsored by Nvidia. What an outfit! Can you imagine walking the packed halls in that ensemble?

Check out some of the entrants this year in her photo slide show.

Blizzard has posted photos as well via its Twitter page.

Know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? You could win one.  Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Couples who play together...

I’ve heard of couples that meet in World of Warcraft, but what about a couple that chooses to celebrate their first wedding anniversary at BlizzCon?

Meet the Mathews who traveled from Lawton, Okla. for the 2-day show.

Ashley, 22, shrieked during the exclusive “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” trailer during the keynote speech. She’s really into WoW. No wonder she hunted down BlizzCon tickets on eBay and paid $200 each. It was a surprise for husband Steve on their first anniversary (awww…)

Their friends don’t think they’re strange. They play WoW too.

“We try to stay close to friends who play,” Mathews said.

We’ve just posted our BlizzCon story that will be in tomorrow’s paper. Take a peek yourself and see the latest photo slide show, shot by a professional photographer not by us bloggers with crappy point and shoots.

Know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Like “The Burning Crusade” or “Wrath of the Lich King,” the new expansion will add new dungeons, zones and raids; it will increase the leveling cap; and it furthers the game’s storyline.

Unlike previous expansions, it will completely revamp Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor, remaking all the 1-60 content. Designers at the “World of Warcraft” panel said that zones will be broken up to make quest flow feel more natural, old-world quest items will be changed to be better and new race/class combinations will open up.

The premise is simple: Deathwing, a dragon villain originally introduced in “WarCraft II,” returns to Azeroth. His return causes an upheaval in the old world; tsunamis and earthquakes change the whole face  of the world. The dragon’s goals? To dominate the other dragons and to crush the mortal races beneath his claw.

The upheaval also rends openings into the elemental planes, allowing elementals — Azeroth’s original masters — to flood into Azeroth.

As far as new races and race/class combinations:

• The Alliance will get worgen, the faction’s “wolverines.” Right now, they’ve got a spring-like ability called “Dark Flight” and can be any class except paladin or priest.
• Horde’s goblins can become rogues (other classes weren’t announced). They also get a rocket belt that they can use to shoot forward, like a reverse hunter’s disengage; they can also use the rockets to deal damage to a foe at range.
• Gnome priests, dwarf shamans and tuaren paladins were all announced. (Speaking of — the completely revamped 1-6o content should make leveling these new classes up a joy, rather than a chore.)

The level cap was raised to 85. No new talents will be added; players will get five additional talent points. The new paths of progression include:

• The Paths of the Titans. These paths, which all classes have equal access to — that is, there won’t be class- or race-specific paths — are accessed through items uncovered by the archaeology secondary skill.
• Mastery system will be class-specific. Not much information was given, but this progression system will augment the existing talent system.
• A pruned and streamlined talent system. Designers say they wanted easier-to-use talents; the mastery system will be used to inject some of that complexity back into character design.
• Guild levels. Guilds who raid or participate in battlegrounds will be able to level up. A guild talent tree will include perks like cheaper repair costs, lower durability loss and mass ressurections.

Seven brand-new zones:

• Mt. Hyjal. Ragnaros has invaded the home of the former World Tree; players will work to put out fires and battle fire elementals.
• The Sunken City of Vashj’ir. This is the city Lady Vashj came from; this will be underwater and boasts the Abyssal Maw,  an opening to the elemental plane of water.
• Uldum. This part of Tanaris, once hidden by Titan machines, is now open for exploration.
• Lost Isles. The islands are the home of the new Horde goblins.
• Gilneas. This Alliance city-state will finally reopen and unleash the worgen.
• Twilight Highalnds. This new area in Eastern Kingdoms will feature Grim Batol.
• Deepholm. This is the new major leveling zone; this pit is where Deathwing erupted from the earth and ravaged Azeroth.

Phased terrain, like what was used in the Death Knight starting zones and in the Ebon Blade faction quests, will be used heavily to create an immersive environment. Additionally, all the zones will allow flying mounts. Some of the confirmed changes:

• Barrens: The notoriously long zone will be split in two. At least a portion of the zone will also become overgrown with new foliage.
• Desolace: The cataclysm forced new inroads for water. Forests have filled this once-gray zone.
• Darkshore. Auberdine was totally destroyed. The Alliance regrouped in the north; the Horde, now in control of Ashenvale, has taken the southern Zoram Strand.
• Stonetalon Mountains: Goblins have carved a path where the cave to Ashenvale once stood; the Charred Vale was even further torched.
• Azshara: Changed to a level-20 goblin zone, complete with a brand-new quarry leveling mountains in the zone.
• Undercity, Stormwind and every other capital city revamped to allow for flying mounts.

Images from the newly announced “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” expansion:

Earth-shattering? Try Azeroth-shattering.

“World of Warcraft” heads to the maelstrom in the next expansion set, “Cataclysm.”

The premise — while the war against the Lich King grinds on, Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will be “torn asunder” as an ancient evil awakens.

Goblins are driven out of the South Seas, where they are joined by the Horde. Gilneas’ Greymane Wall is shattered, allowing the worgen to run free, where they team up with the Alliance against the Forsaken.

That’s right. Horde goblins. Alliance worgen.

Level cap goes to 85, Archaeology will be a new second tradeskill, guild leveling will be added, a new character progression — “The Path of the Titans” — and the return of Deathwing, the black dragon aspect.

Whew.

More information, from the press kit:
Confirmed class-race combinations include gnome priests and blood elf warriors.
New battleground will be Tol Barad Island, a “new Wintergrasp-like zone.”
Rated battlegrounds are announced as a part of this expansion.
Flying mounts confirmed for old world.
Confirmed new zones: Uldum, Grim Batol and “the Sunken City of Vashj’ir.”

No word on what guild leveling or the Path of the Titans are.

Scenes from the keynote:

Lots more images after the jump:

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And you know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Vice president of creative development Chris Metzen — perhaps better known for his “WarCraft” artwork — announced the addition during the keynote speech. It’s based, like the other Diablo classes, in “old-school fantasy,” brought up to speed to a modern sensibility, he said.

In a brief video, the monk’s shown uisng open hands and weapons to decimate demons, including a scene in which he deflects a magical, fiery blast.

An in-game video shows the character crushing multiple creatures at once, reflecting magical attacks and literally exploding unfortunate baddies.

———————————————————————-

And you know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Doors opened at 10 a.m. so the lines are moving. But, ya, it’s crazy here at the Anaheim Convention Center.

And you know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

Let BlizzCon begin!

As the BlizzCon Eve parties get started, we finally are getting the photos in from Register photographer Rose Palmisano, who battled the masses to get inside the Anaheim Convention Center this afternoon. No luck. She didn’t have a press badge. She had to get in line like the rest of us.

But she got some good shots of the lines, so take a look at our first slide show by clicking image on right.

If you’re not one of the 20,000 fans who managed to get a ticket, you should be glad. Really! Thousands showed up today by 4 p.m. to get their pass for tomorrow.  They waited in line for hours.

And if they weren’t staying at a nearby hotel and could walk over, they joined me in forking over $10 for parking at the Anaheim Convention Center. This is my fourth BlizzCon and the first one where I remember having to pay to park on the day before the big show. Those Anaheim Convention Center folks know suckers when they see them.

Blizzard officials are super strict this year about passes. So if you’re hoping to sneak in, good luck with that. Also, any hint of camera flashes got an immediate bark by security, “No photos today.”

I remember my second BlizzCon. The company let me peek inside the convention hall on the day before as they set up the show. Mike Morhaime happened to be there, which was great timing, since I needed to interview him. That ended up in a story titled, “How Blizzard got so big.”

CLICK FOR SLIDE SHOW: Day before BlizzCon 2007	CLICK FOR SLIDE SHOW: Day before BlizzCon 2008

Today, the convention center walkway did offer fans something to look at: A small exhibit of Blizzard art work. Inside the grand convention halls, however, few were admitted. No official cameras, of course. But I noticed a few tweets on Twitter with photos: Like this one and this one. Rumor is there is a lot to hide today and a lot to announce tomorrow.

We’ll have more coverage tomorrow and Saturday so bookmark this blog!

And you know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Coverage so far:

People can continue to pick up their badges at the convention center until 10 tonight.

As for the goody bag contents?

Fresh from Tamara’s phone, there’s the Jim Raynor Noobz figurine’s box, the authenticator, some literature and hand sanitizer.

(We’re sure the sanitizer is there  strictly for your safety when using keyboards at the demo stations.)

And the Jim Raynor piece itself?

It’s so cute! It’ll go wonderfully with the new murloc marine pet, also included in the goodie bag, for all those “World of Warcraft” players.

And you know those fancy goody bags Blizzard is giving out? We can’t keep ours so we’re going to give them away to readers. Leave a comment on any of our BlizzCon 2009 posts and when it’s all over, we’ll put all the names in a digital hat and pick some winners. Good luck!

Crowds at 7:30 p.m.

Coverage so far: