VIP Tour of Blizzcon '08

This is what I will be seeing in a few short months. That's right this holynub (holy paladin to be precise) is going to Blizzcon baby! There has been a lot of controversy over the ticket sales for this year's con. Apparently the influx of people wanting to buy was signficantly more then Blizzard was prepared to handle on their store site. People were only able to buy tickets in short windows of time, before either the site would crash again or Blizzard manually would take it off line.

Recently the opt-in for the lottery of the remaining 3000 tickets just ended. You needed to have created a Blizzard store account to be eligible for the opt-in, which was nearly impossible if you were trying to do it while people were buying tickets.

A lot of discussion has been going on about the many problems involved with buying tickets. One of them being online ticket scalpers. There are a lot of factors to consider. 1. Ticket scalping is not illegal in California, which is the state in which the event is taking place. 2. Blizzard claims that the tickets aren't intended for resale. However, policing everyone's badges to make sure it matches their ID is going to be both incredibly annoying for everyone involved and logistically impractical. 3. The tickets are being sold at absurd Hannah Montana prices. Should Blizzard raise the initial price of the tickets to meet the demand and stifle the profit of these scalpers? 4. The largest am0unt of tickets that one could buy was 5, but does this allow scalpers to buy too many tickets? If blizzard lowered the number would it be able to handle the traffic to their site next year?

Anyway, swish that around in your noggin for awhile. Meanwhile, I will be going to Blizzcon with VIP status and bringing you pictures and interviews. Bringing you the latest news from Blizzard after everyone else.