I had a fabulous time at Blizzcon, which wasn’t a sure thing going into it since I was going alone and could very well spend the weekend sad and pathetic and lonely (like I did last year). However, this year I got to hang out with Chris Fromlett from the “Dude, Where’s My Mount” machinima videos (and his lovely girlfriend, Teresa), and it’s always better to have a buddy at an event like this.
I won 2nd place in the machinima video contest, which was a huge honor. My entry was a modified version of “Cruel, Cruel Moon“. The only difference between the contest version and the original version is that I took out the copyrighted (probably) “American Werewolf in London” pix, which made the video less funny, but more legal, and had the added benefit of allowing me to lean on a lame technicality to get the video into the contest — the contest rules say the videos need to be “unreleased”. Well, the version of “Cruel, Cruel Moon” that won 2nd place in the contest had never been released. Like I said, kind of lame, but legal.
Blizzard, of course, announced the new WoW expansion Cataclysm, and I got to play the new races in their starting areas. The worgen look hawt, and there’s no question that between them and the goblins, they’re definitely the cooler of the pair. However, I actually had more fun playing the goblins. The goblins start out shipwrecked on a jungle island, and there are quests to do things like stop the monkeys from stealing your gear by tossing them bananas, and using goblin weed-whackers to mow down the carnivorous plants. Fun stuff. The worgen starting zone, by contrast, is much darker, with a definite old-England style to it (lots of men wearing top hats) so that it feels like Jack the Ripper or Mr. Hyde could walk around the corner any minute. The undead are assaulting your town and you have to fight them off, which is a blast to do while you’re in worgen form (not sure why anyone would ever spend any time at all in human form since it’s much less cool and there’s no advantage to doing it), but it’s definitely much “heavier” than the goblin zone.
Ozzy Osbourne was amazing. We weren’t sure if he’d just shamble on stage and mumble a couple of songs or what, but that guy went all-in, leaving nothing in the locker room. It was the loudest, thrashing-est, most bad ass show I’ve seen in probably 15 years. There was apparently some fire safety gear on stage, because Ozzy picked up a fire hose at various points during the show and just sprayed the shit out of the first rows of people with fire retardant (which was awesome). And there were buckets of water that Ozzy dunked his head in and then splashed out into the audience.
When he came out for his encore, he started mumbling something completely unintelligible into the microphone that we totally couldn’t understand. Something about Japan maybe. But then a little Japanese kid, maybe ten-years-old, came out on stage wearing a guitar that was nearly as big as he was, and Ozzy started “Crazy Train”, which made everyone go nuts. But then we noticed that this little kid was shredding the lead guitar himself, which made everyone go even crazier. The kid was incredible, and Ozzy, decrepit old guy that he is, even hefted the kid up onto his shoulder a couple of times while the kid nailed the solos. It was an absolutely fabulous show.
The dance, sound-alike, and costume contests were fun this year, but they weren’t as good as previous years. There was a guy dressed up like a summoning stone, which was awesome.
I also managed to meet up with a fan — Aeonesti. That’s always so cool when someone enjoys my videos enough to want to go out of their way to say hi. Hi Aeonesti! 
This year’s experience renewed my feelings for Blizzcon. Last year was pretty boring by myself, but this year, with the contest win and the Ozzy concert, and having a buddy to hang out with, made this a completely fun experience, and I’m glad I went.
