Over the weekend in Taipei, Blizzard hosted a pretty epic event celebrating the upcoming August 14th release of the latest World of Warcraft expansion – Battle for Azeroth. There were numerous Warcraft-inspired stations where attendees could participate in various DIY activities such as creating their own Horde/Alliance shirts, crafting legendary weapons, and more. Blizzard game designers John Yang and Johnny Cash (not the singer!) were also there helping to hype up the crowd. I had the chance to go check it out and I must say it was really well put together.
Here are some highlights:
The event took place at Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park, a multi-purpose park where artists from a variety of fields come to promote their work.
The weather that day was typical Taipei weird – there was an early morning downpour which led to an unbearably hot and humid afternoon. The Blizzard crew was prepared for the rain and had a solid contingency plan: they handed out plastic World of Warcraft Azeroth maps to all visitors so that we could use them as mats to sit on while waiting for the aforementioned developers to make their grand appearance.
There was a display of the recent World of Warcraft “Warbringer” videos on the center stage to help pass the time while the entrance procession was preparing. Once things were ready, John Yang and Johnny Cash entered the stage dressed in Horde and Alliance armor respectively.
They spoke a few words with the host, who prompted them to try their best to say “For the Horde” or “For the Alliance” in Chinese. Afterwards, they summoned their soldiers to join them in posing for the cameras.
Once they had exited the stage, visitors had the opportunity to participate in several different activities.
One of them was a DIY T-shirt making station where attendees could manually press a stamp of their favorite faction onto white or black shirts.
And here’s the Alliance shirt.
The printing machine was really cool.
In addition to the T-shirts, there was also a DIY weapon station where visitors could forge their own legendary WoW weapons such as Ashbringer and Warglaive of Azzinoth out of cardboard. Here you can see a warglaive as well as the schematics illustrating how to make an Ashbringer.
And here is the completed Ashbringer.
They also had an amazing station where Blizz artists would draw portraits of visitors as stylized WoW characters.
The artists worked really fast – they could finish an entire portrait in a matter of minutes.
Despite the blistering heat, it was an action packed day and I’m sure all of my fellow World of Warcraft fans who attended had a blast as well.
Well done Blizzard, well done.
