BlizzCon 2010 Sold Out, DirecTV Available Again [World of Warcraft]

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Despite Blizzard's effort to accommodate more fans at this year's BlizzCon (October 22 and 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center), tickets sold out amazingly fast during online sales last Wednesday and Saturday. According to statistics tracked by WoW.com, the first round of tickets sold out in just 23 minutes, with the peak ticket queue at 30,000. The second round of sales, on Saturday, sold out in 28 minutes, with the peak queue at 20,000. Recent blog and fansite chatter reports that the Blizzard Store was in better shape during this year's ticket sales than in 2009, when it was slammed with traffic, resulting in downtime and disconnected customers. Nonetheless, this year's ticket capacity was reached within a half-hour throughout both sales, leaving many fans empty-handed.

This year Blizzard implemented a new policy to deter ticket-scalping; everyone who purchased a ticket will have to provide photo identification at the door, which must match their badge information. However, the new ID challenge isn't fool-proof; Blizzard allows ticket buyers to "update" their personal information until June 20, giving scalpers a brief window of time to sell the tickets by changing the purchaser info to match that of potential buyers. Hundreds of tickets have already shown up on third-party sites like eBay and Craigslist (both links show the result of a "BlizzCon 2010" query). But for those of you who missed out on the official sale or don't like the idea of lining a scalper's pocket with ridiculous amounts of cash, there's still a way you can enjoy the event from the comfort of your own sofa...

Blizzard teamed up with DirecTV again to provide coverage of this year's event. According to the BlizzCon website, "coverage of the gaming festival will also be offered by DIRECTV as a Pay Per View event, available both via satellite and multi-channel Internet stream." In the FAQ section of the main page, Blizzard explains that the BlizzCon Pay Per View event "will be available to existing DIRECTV customers in the United States for $39.95 USD," while the Internet stream "will be available around the world for $39.95 USD." Regardless of which option is purchased, everyone will also receive this year's BlizzCon-exclusive WoW in-game item. Specific ordering information will be available at the official BlizzCon website "as the event draws closer," according to the FAQ. In the mean time, let's hear from our ZAM readers who were lucky enough to get tickets! And for everyone else who missed out for whatever reason, are you planning on buying the DirecTV coverage this year?



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