Corsair Blog

FOR THE HORDE!

Some people go on a cruise for their vacation, or perhaps take a trip to Hawaii or some other tropical paradise. But not me! For me, paradise was in Anaheim, California, in late October, at Blizzcon 2011!

This year’s BlizzCon was a blast and will be my first pick for this year’s best game convention. If you are a fan of any Blizzard’s games then you should’ve been at this year’s event! BlizzCon is Blizzard Entertainments annual celebration of their major franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. Fans can play the latest version as well as participate in community contests and tournaments. Blizzard also revealed a lot of interesting things about their upcoming games, including the long-awaited and highly-anticipated game, Diablo III. The event was full of surprises and the crowd was just awesome.

Blizzard has kept MMORPG and RTS genre games as interesting as possible for the past decade. They have managed to keep their players loyal to their favorite game. A living testament is WoW (For the Horde!), by far the longest running game and the largest MMORPG ever known to gamers, with a stunning 11 million players to date. In short, Blizzard knows how to keep their customers happy.

First, Blizzard announced the new StarCraft II units which will be a part of the next StarCraft II called “Heart of the Swarm” in addition to the single-player content focusing on the Zerg Faction. This is where we got to test the new content of the game, and I have to say this is going to be an interesting RTS.

Jim Raynor was also there to check out some new game updates at Blizzcon 2011. The detail on his armor is crazy and the statue is amazing in person.

Everyone got excited when Blizzard announced the Word of Warcraft new expansion, "The Mists of Pandaria". This expansion will be a full-fledged WOW expansion, which means a new talent system, revamps on some old dungeons and a very surprising concept... pet combat! Finally, our pets will now have a role in the game that will allow players to utilize them. The expansion will introduce a new class, new race, and new continent. New big thing about this expansion is the new class, Monk. The Monks will be able to play all three types of roles — tanking, DPS, and healing. This will be interesting, as we all know there is only one class can play all three roles — a Paladin. With the Monk being added, it will make stiff competition to all three roles when raiding and running dungeons.

Blizzard kept us in the dark as far as the release date of this expansion. Regardless, the heroes of Azeroth will surely jump on this expansion once it’s been released and I will be one of them.

We also came across some Blood Elves from Silvermoon and of course Prince Kael’thas Suntrider of Quel’ Thalas stalking them.

Also seen was the game that a lot of people have been waiting for, Diablo III. It’s been 10 years since Diablo II and it’s expansion Diablo II: Lord of Destruction dominated the action-RPG gaming genre, but now it’s back with a vengeance. You will be able to choose from 5 classes; Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor, and Wizard. Each class will play a very specific and interesting role while playing multiplayer in running dungeons.

Even with all the hype around this game, Blizzard has never announced the official release date of Diablo III.  Not even an expected or estimated date. Blizzardwas still being very secretive in offering release date for this game during Blizzcon. They would only give out vague release date windows, which at this point, Q4 2011 if not Q1 of 2012, again not official . The Diablo III beta was released early September this year, that includes the first half of Act one with a little teaser story of the game. The beta test was more like a game demo that is open to player’s feedback, it was not enough to experience the real mechanics of the game

The article author (center) enjoying himself at Blizzcon.

This was one of my favorite statues at this year’s Blizzcon, the Tyrael statue. You saw this Iconic character from Diablo III right before you entered the D3 demo area. He was literally floating from the floor, which gave you a D3 chill as you walked in the area.

We also checked out Asus’ booth during the event. Asus has been one of our solid partners in the industry for quite some time now and it showed in their booth. Here is one of their systems under LN2, using the Dominator GT memory with one of our Force Series 3 SSDs. This set up created a good amount of traffic all thru out the event. It showed how good the Dominator GT memory can be when put in a system that is extremely overclocked.

They also used a couple of our Special Edition White Graphite Series 600T and Obsidian Series 650D cases for their demo systems, where people could try different games with their newly released expansions. It was pretty cool to see our cases being showcased in Asus’ booth; it really showed how the Graphite and Obsidian Series PC cases were made for gaming rigs.

Overall, it was an amazing event and definitely one to remember. Blizzard, once again did a great job sharing their success with their fans, this will surely keep a lot of their followers to keep coming back for more. See you again next year at Blizzcon 2012!