Olibith's Blizzard WWI illustrated
Well now time for the answers, going back to Paris was as weird as I thought. Feeling like home but at the same time so many thing changed since I used to live there. I arrived at 2pm on saturday an missed the Diablo 3 presentation and the opening ceremony. :(
I was like two tramway stations away from the WWI when I saw people wearing a Blizzard T-shirts with a pass on the chest. And as I was getting closer to the event, there was more and more of them !
This saturday afternoon was a total madness, so many people queuing hours for everything the WWI had to offer. I did not queue because I was supposed to meet Daghorn and Romain from Blizzard France at the costume contest booth. I can tell you that everyone at Blizzard was under pressure, working very hard for this event.
Daghorn and Romain were both totally cool making me feel confortable instantly.
The first quest they gave me at 3 pm was to be right here at 6 pm to get instructions about the award ceremony because I was one of the machinima contest winner... ! That sure was a good thing to hear.
So I decided to take a walk inside the crowd but after a few meters, I realize that it was maybe not the best time of the week end to enjoy the place and I've been in a bar.
Yeah, I told you before, the question was will I be able to understand people speaking english to me if I am drunk enough to talk to them ?
But the true question was : How many beers do I need to feel fine with the idea of talking to 5000 gamers dressed as an ogre ?
No impossible, I lost my thong in the train while showing my costume.
I wont tell you how many liters it took but I remember this magic glass of beer that made everything look so easy. I don't drink usually, like never, and I can't figure out why because it's damn fun cheap and legal.
At 6pm I was at the rendez vous point, surrounded by people in costumes looking all so great. There was so many ideas and time in each of those costumes that I felt pretty sad that only 3 of them would win the contest.
Beer you know.
And there was Daghorn ! telling me that my next quest would be to make a hardcore porn machinima with motion capture. No he did not told me that, he told me to make sure to be right here at 7pm, that was my new quest.
I started thinking about this magic beer nostalgicaly, so I decided to have a last one before the show. Yep, I was feeling quite anguished by all this, focusing on this enormous crowd more than anything else.
Came the time of the dance and costume contests. Man, this is great, really and the audience really enjoy that. Costumes were great and dancers were very fun to see. And Bang ! was time to run to the backstage, fan art and machinima winners. My beer shield was working just fine, not enough to change the way I walked but enough to forget about the crowd for good.
Joeyray Hall gave me the Best Editing Award !!! I also knew that he was the president of the machinima jury for this contest. To keep it short, I was really honored. I received this glass cube with a 3d murloc curved inside... Legendary loot !
I had to say something in the microphone, just in front of me was Mike Morhaime, I said something like :
"Thanks Blizzard for letting us having fun and play your game the way we like to and, thanks to leave many doors opened in your future games so we can get in to make movies."
I don't think I need beer to sound cheesy you already know that.
Handshakes then backstages with a wide wide smile on my face.
Next thing I know, a crew member grabed me and told me to go back on stage, he also told me this : This was a good idea he had walking through the wood... Wich you'll understand once you The Bountiful Chest is released. That was a very funny and cheering thing to say !^^
And then again, on stage !!
A bit stunned, winning this time the Best Movie Award...man... Another glass murloc this time twice bigger than the first !
A legendary loot in each hand !!! From there it was kinda blurry with light and happiness.
And who was waiting for me outside ? The Baron, Dopefish, Gedan and Uzbeki from WCM !!!
That's when I had to speak english :) We decided fist, to check if there was any T8 epic private party we can join then the guys asked me for a cool place to eat something with bars around.
I decided that Bastille would be a nice place to go. That's about when my headache started.
They wanted to eat french, we ended in a mexican bar because we refused to wait 90 minutes for snails and frogs boiled in red wine.
Dopefish and the Baron are both crazy with a true personnal touch, I guess that's our connection.
We had a great time but you'll not see any photos of them here, I do it for readers to stay as long as possible on this page. But I'm sure the masochist in you will look every blogs of the community.^^
Gedan and Uzbeki are very cool guys, it was a real pleasure to meet them all.
I had to leave them at midnight. Very long day, very heavy trophies, my feet were starting to glow red and I wanted to catch last subway.
I spent last day with them, doing what people are supposed to do in such an event : have fun and hang around, drink sodas. It maybe was a good thing that my pay wasn't wired yet to my account, lots of tentations there.
This first price HP Dragon laptop is amazing, I saw it in the HP booth and I've been reading about it whenever I had 5 minutes to today. Every tests says that the only problem with this laptop would be the price :) I can't wait to check this monster ! Maybe next week !
It will take me a few day more to realize, the release of the movie will soon help.
The Gnome is very very very happy.