Spring Balloon Festival, Horde Warfront Testing Thursday, Blue Posts

[chaud]

Challenge Rift - Week 46

Everybunny Get in Here is This Week's Tavern Brawl!

Diablo Rework Spotlight, Blue Posts

Overwatch League 2018: Stage 3 Week 5 Recap

Spring Balloon Festival
Spring Balloon Festival allows players to take a short balloon ride around a zone.

• Head to one of the red X markers on the world map to find a balloon.
• Once there, speak to the pilot and he will let you sign up to ride.
• Actually taking a ride requires a total of three players, so you will have to wait for more players to show up.
• The ride will take you elsewhere in the zone and play some dialogue along the way.
• You may learn useful things such as the traditional greeting in Suramar city:
• At the end of the ride you are dropped off and the balloon disappears.

Warfront Testing - Thursday 5/10

Tomorrow, Thursday May 10th, we'll be opening up Warfronts again for another round of testing. We'll be starting at 1 PM Pacific time (4 PM Eastern, 10 PM CEST).

We've made a lot of improvements since our last test, and could really use your help putting it through the ringer and seeing how everything holds up, as well as any feedback on the overall experience. Thanks!

This test will be Horde only and players will be scaled to the appropriate level and gear for the test.

Blue Posts

Is Blizzcon Worth it?
I think anyone who is a Blizzard fan should try to experience BlizzCon at least once. It's just a very unique experience to be there opening morning and hear the thousands of people shouting "For the Horde!" and "For the Alliance!". Just the thousands of people that love the same thing you do there to just meet each other and have fun. It's like coming home to me now. I see my guildies and old friends every year and now get to meet a ton of our players and just talk about the stuff we all love and have in common.

I recognize it can be a little expensive but that's why I say "at least once". Even if I wasn't an employee I'd still be going to it every year. I would make it a goal to save at least a small amount every paycheck to cover it and just save up over the year.

It's easy to travel and not spend a lot of money as long as you're doing it smart, its easier as well if you live in North America as flights aren't outrageously more expensive.

And I'm not a good planner.
I used to be the same way! There's a lot of little "BlizzCon hacks" that you learn over the years. Most of which are usual things you should do while traveling.

• Book flights 3-4 months in advance.
• Wiggle the days around to find the lowest price, coming a day or two early or maybe leaving a day or two late.
• If you have guildies or friends coordinate hotels or places to crash. My friends rent a house for a week and a half and we split the cost like 15-20 ways and crash all over the place. It ends up costing us around $200 each FOR THE WEEK. Yeah you read that right.
• It's easy to save money immediately if you're not staying at the Hilton or Marriott. They're nice and extremely convenient but you can save like half the price being 2-3 miles away.
• You can use ridesharing services or walk anywhere you need to go. I know people that come in and have forgone the trouble of renting cars. It saves you the price of rental fees, gas, AND parking. This is more of a personal preference at this point I think.

Every convention has these little things to be aware of that makes it easy to do them. BlizzCon is no exception

It's what you make of it OP. As someone else said, it's just like any other Con, so if you don't enjoy them in general, then you won't enjoy Blizzcon.
This is a great perspective to look at it too. It's fun and worth it if you make it fun and worth it.

Not as if we dont have venues..we have loads.
One thing that gets underestimated is how huge BlizzCon has become. Its not easy to just move it to another location. The Anaheim Convention Center has a total floor space of 1.6M square feet (that's like 150k square meters for the rest of the world) we take up almost all of it at this point and the new hall that they built which I don't believe is accounted for in that figure. The largest convention center in Australia for example is I believe the new International Convention Centre in Sydney. It's only 404k square feet. It's about a quarter of the size. You couldn't fit BlizzCon there let alone the astronomical costs of trying to make something like that happen.

It's a big ordeal just having it right down the road in Anaheim. It takes so much work to plan and make BlizzCon happen. When one finishes the main BlizzCon team has already started planning the following years. It's kind of amazing they're able to pull it off because there are just so many moving parts.

Now I'm not saying it won't ever happen, but there's some obvious reasons why its always been at the Anaheim Convention Center and continues to be. I'd love for that to happen but realistically it's just not that easy.

World of Warcraft DDoS Attacker Sentenced to One Year in Prison
An attacker that DDoSed World of Warcraft servers back in February and September 2010 has finally been sentenced to one year in prison and fined $29,987 according to the BBC.

[Saverem]

LUL

That'll teach him for mildly inconveniencing thousands of WoW players.

[Stacie]

Decent fine and sentence, should hopefully put others off doing the same. Well done to the courts and Activision-Blizzard.

[Laerrus]

Nice, I am all for real world consequences for Internet crime. Hopefully this sends a clear message to anyone thinking about doing this garbage.

[Biomega]

Glad he got an actual sentence. People need to learn that a DDoS against a business isn't "just a prank". It's a crime.

[Die Hard]

Justice system is a joke now days. You have rapists, pedohpiles and killers roaming the streets freely, and here you have some guy having fun with this computer skills going to prison, good lord. I mean sure, he probably deserved some financial punishment and a warning if he repeats the same "crime" again but going to jail is taking this to the extreme. And one more thing, shame on Romanian government for extraditing this guy to the US, well knowing that he is about to be subjected to unfair punishment over petty "crime"

[Inukashi]

LUL

That'll teach him for mildly inconveniencing thousands of WoW players.

The mildly inconveniencing WoW players it the smallest part of the damage. I'm oke with the punishment.

Justice system is a joke now days. You have rapists, pedohpiles and killers roaming the streets freely, and here you have some guy having fun with this computer skills going to prison, good lord. I mean sure, he probably deserved some financial punishment and a warning if he repeats the same "crime" again but going to jail is taking this to the extreme.

A killer like you describe can get easy 300+ years in the US for his crimes.
I think someone damaging the goods of a company should get a punishment like this. It's like burning down a shop, just without the danger for humans.
But the damage is done.

[Morrigenn]

Good.

DDoS-ing is not a game, and not someone "having fun with his computer".

He got the least of what he deserved.

[Spacewalrus2010]

Justice system is a joke now days. You have rapists, pedohpiles and killers roaming the streets freely, and here you have some guy having fun with this computer skills going to prison, good lord. I mean sure, he probably deserved some financial punishment and a warning if he repeats the same "crime" again but going to jail is taking this to the extreme. And one more thing, shame on Romanian government for extraditing this guy to the US, well knowing that he is about to be subjected to unfair punishment over petty "crime"

Why exactly do you think a year in prison is unfair? Personally thought he should get more than that.

Granted I'd preferably have the rapists, pedophiles, and killers not roaming the streets if I had choice between the two scenarios...but the justice system ain't perfect.

[therealbowser]

LUL

That'll teach him for mildly inconveniencing thousands of WoW players.

Wasn't a mild inconvenience. Fuck with a big business's profits, and they will fuck you right back. If anything, this guy got off extremely lightly; he was screwing with far worse things than Blizzard, but those charges got dropped because he accepted this one. He got off easy.

[Deleted]

Raiding as defined by the BBC 'using his in-game avatar, often participated in collaborative events, such as 'raids' where players joined forces to meet game objectives and were rewarded with virtual proceeds or in-game advantage'

I love raiding for virtual proceeds and in-game advantages.

[lolbubble]

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

what a NOOB

[Saverem]

Wasn't a mild inconvenience. Fuck with a big business's profits, and they will fuck you right back. If anything, this guy got off extremely lightly; he was screwing with far worse things than Blizzard, but those charges got dropped because he accepted this one. He got off easy.

Not saying he didn't deserve it.


All DDoSers and SWATTERs should be jailed.

[Armourboy]

Glad they finally nailed one of these guys, maybe it will make others think about it a bit longer before they do it.

[therealbowser]

Not saying he didn't deserve it.


All DDoSers and SWATTERs should be jailed.

Could have fooled me with how sarcastically you stated it. Either way, he had far worse charges dropped, and frankly that surprises me.

Calling it a 'mild inconvenience' is ludicrous, though. Single-handedly making the game unplayable for a week after a major expansion launch isn't a 'minor' inconvenience, nor does it apply anything remotely as such to Blizzard who lost a lot of money because of it and paid a lot of money to try and get around it. You can argue that playing this game isn't necessary, but as far as playing this game goes, no, it was not even remotely a 'minor' inconvenience. Sorry.

[Kathranis]

Justice system is a joke now days. You have rapists, pedohpiles and killers roaming the streets freely, and here you have some guy having fun with this computer skills going to prison, good lord. I mean sure, he probably deserved some financial punishment and a warning if he repeats the same "crime" again but going to jail is taking this to the extreme. And one more thing, shame on Romanian government for extraditing this guy to the US, well knowing that he is about to be subjected to unfair punishment over petty "crime"

He was a repeat offender. This was I believe his third arrest.

Also, what computer skills? It was a DDoS.

[Saverem]

Could have fooled me

Not could have, did.

[Socialhealer]

Justice system is a joke now days. You have rapists, pedohpiles and killers roaming the streets freely, and here you have some guy having fun with this computer skills going to prison, good lord. I mean sure, he probably deserved some financial punishment and a warning if he repeats the same "crime" again but going to jail is taking this to the extreme. And one more thing, shame on Romanian government for extraditing this guy to the US, well knowing that he is about to be subjected to unfair punishment over petty "crime"

ahh the usual LUL ITS A PRANK BRO defense.

doesn't actually hold up in a court of law sorry.

[therealbowser]

Not could have, did.

Well there are two possibilities, one being you are being sarcastically sarcastic and tricked me into thinking you were only just being sarcastic, in which case this is sarcastic inception and you are just some kind of sarcastic genius. Bear with me, I'm being sarcastic here.

The other being that this is bait. I can't help that I like bait. Don't judge me, bro.

Hard to take this post seriously at this point, but I don't feel like that's a bad thing, to be fair. In reality, you are just defending yourself from being wrong while making up ridiculous fiction to support it, but where's the fun in admitting that? Just have fun with it, IMO.

[Eon Drache]

Justice system is a joke now days. You have rapists, pedohpiles and killers roaming the streets freely, and here you have some guy having fun with this computer skills going to prison, good lord. I mean sure, he probably deserved some financial punishment and a warning if he repeats the same "crime" again but going to jail is taking this to the extreme. And one more thing, shame on Romanian government for extraditing this guy to the US, well knowing that he is about to be subjected to unfair punishment over petty "crime"

So this guy stole $29, 987 dollars from Blizzard. You think he shouldn't get any jail time. Can I go steal a $20,000 car and just walk off the lot because its not as bad as killing someone?

This was also a repeat offense. He also tried to steal 10 million dollars from a tech company and failed. But that's not too bad! Let him walk.