BlizzCon: Gamers unite in Southern California

This year marked the arrival of BlizzCon, a celebration of video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment. While Blizzard is one of the premier game developers in the industry, it is one of the only companies with a fan base fanatical enough to support a convention considering its relatively small roster of games. Join TG Daily for a visit at BlizzCon.

People love to gather. There is an innate need in most of us to seek out others with similar interests and interact with them. This need is the driving force behind the phenomenon of the "Con"; short for convention. From Comic-Con to Gen Con, Quake Con to Dragon*Con, people with specific interests will travel far and wide to gather and interact sharing their unique fandom and the feeling that they belong with their people.

(Photo by Humphrey Cheung)

Blizzard is a company about franchises and all their games over the past ten years have been members of one of the big three; Warcraft, Starcraft (the space-age spiritual successor to Warcraft), and Diablo. With an extraordinarily successful Warcraft title currently being played by over four million people and a new Starcraft title (albeit long overdue) nearing release, BlizzCon 2005 focused directly on those two families. There was very little for the Diablo fan this year, although rumors were rampant that Blizzard would announce Diablo III. What Blizzard did reveal, however, was the World of Warcraft expansion titled The Burning Crusade.