|
Page 3 of 3 All Good Things......must come to an end, and that included our day at Blizzard. My biggest regret of the day was not having more time! I spent just as much time talking with Blizzard employees about everything Diablo as I did playing the Expansion Pack. It was a fabulous experience that I'll never forget - being surrounded by the people who loved to make the best games in the business. But my day wasn't over when I left the Blizzard offices...  Around 5:00 PM, discussion of dinner came up. We made reservations at a tiny San Francisco street-corner restaurant named "The Rooster," located at 22nd and Valencia in the trendy Mission District. It exemplified the city's culture. As we left Blizzard North, my roommate and I snagged some free Blizzard gear - a Diablo II cap and T-shirt just like those you can snag for yourself at Blizzard's online store. What I really would have wanted, though, was one of those Blizzard North hockey jerseys Tyler Thompson had. :)
Ken Williams, Diablo II producer, brought us to the restaurant, where we joined Matt Householder and Tyler Thompson. This place had excellent decor, a violin player, and great wine to boot. Tyler's charming wife Paige also was there, and she put up a valiant effort to be interested in our gaming geek talk throughout the dinner as the discussion moved from Diablo II to the gaming industry to Diablo I to the structure of Blizzard and Blizzard North to the sales of Diablo II (just recently announced at over 2.75 million copies, yowza) and to run-on sentences. We talked of our favorite games and movies, and of other technical aspects of the Diablo universe. Various tidbits of conversation came along: "Initially, the Smith was incredibly powerful, like the Butcher of Diablo I," stated Ken Williams. Right after that, I swear, Ken, Matt, Tyler, and myself all said simultaneously: "Ahh, fresh meat!" Then followed talk of Butcher-killing strategies...Ken continued by telling of how he bet a fellow employee that he could take the Smith and won. Matt chimed in by stating that he usually would just park the Smith somewhere and grab the Horadric Malus. I suppose it's a good thing he was reduced in power for the final version! Moo.
Eventually talk turned to the secret cow level. Some of you may remember Blizzard's April 1st 1999 Diablo II Screenshot of the Week which featured a few cows rampaging around. At the time, everyone thought it was fake, a fun April Fools joke, since the legend of the Cow Level from Diablo 1 was widespread (ever been to http://www.cowlevel.com?). Then, after the secret of the Cow Level in Diablo II had been exposed, everyone came to realize the screenshot was real...or was it? "We had been looking for an excuse to put in a cow level for Diablo II for a while," explained Tyler. "Then along comes this fake screenshot we made and we realized 'hey, the artwork is mostly done!'" The rest is history. A screenshot originally thought to be fake, then assumed to have been real, turned out to originally be fake after all. Frankly, my mind had been blown from so much Diablo all day, and getting to meet so many Blizzard employees (starstruck was I, yes), that I could have been hit by a train and wouldn't have noticed. But the next thing I knew, Ken Williams was dropping me off at the hotel and our day was over. My roommate turned to me and stated matter-of-factly, "that was so awesome." I just used Bill Roper's overstated line at the last Diablo II fansite chat: "Amen." Saturday, January 20thIt was time for a fun day on the streets of San Francisco. A warm day greeted us (55 degrees Fahrenheit), but most of the people around the city were wearing coats! It all depends on what you're used to, and we're used to below 0 wind chills in the frosty Pennsylvania winter. Our first stop was the Exploratorium, a museum of science where we had reserved a tour through the Tactile Dome. Imagine a labyrinth, completely pitch black, where you need to feel your way through to get out. On every wall and surface are textures and objects, and you spend your time trying to figure out just what you're touching. It's a strange experience, I'll tell you that. If the idea of forcing yourself to use senses other than your eyes intrigues you, go for it if you're ever in San Francisco. The Exploratorium is part of the amazingly beautiful Palace of Fine Arts, built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal. It's a park located right by the marina district, which includes a neighborhood with more BMW's, Mercedes, and Porches per block than I've ever seen before (right by the yacht club, so you do the math as to the average income of a family there). Yum. Heading back downtown, we passed by Chinatown, only days before their celebration of the Chinese New Year. The place was hopping, with parades and a street market. We vowed to return later to get a taste of decent Chinese-American food. More Yum. But our target at the current moment was the Sony Metreon, a building housing gadgets, games, a top-of-the-line theatre, and more toys for boys. It was recommended by various Blizzard employees, and sounded like the perfect hangout for gaming geeks like us. Inside the Metreon was a Sony theatre, advertising centers for new technology, video games, an IMax theatre, restaurants, and more. A great place to waste a few hours, and that's exactly what we did. One interesting facet was in the Microsoft area; they had a few preliminary ads for the X-Box, Microsoft's upcoming gaming console which will go directly head-to-head with Sony's Playstation 2. I don't think Sony would be too pleased seeing an X-Box center in the middle of their building. :-) One thing you don't want to miss inside the Metreon is Hyperbowl, a video arcade version of bowling. You and some friends can gather around and play virtual bowling, but it isn't in a standard bowling alley. As you bowl, you use your hands to roll a ball in place and your motion of the ball corresponds to its movement on the screen. You bowl in different environments, such as the streets of San Francisco and a medieval forest. I told you; toys for boys. We managed to escape from the Metreon without losing too much money (we're college students - budget was our middle names). It was already approaching evening and we decided to take the low-cost tour (read: we walked) to Chinatown again and search for a restaurant which was highly recommended by several Lounge readers, the House of Nan King. All I can say is, thank you, readers! The food was superb; the sesame chicken served there was completely fabulous (and cheap, too). Add to that a bowl of Wonton Soup unlike any I'd had before and some imported Asian beer (hey, I said we were college students), and a good meal was consumed rapidly. San Francisco is a beautiful (and expensive) city. I can't thank Blizzard and Gamespot enough for for making my trip possible. Special thanks go to Matt Householder, Tyler Thompson, Ken Williams, Debra Osborne, Susan Sams, and all of Blizzard North for a weekend I'll never forget out west. On returning home to Pennsylvania, I had the joy of cleaning 3 inches of snow and a thick layer of ice off my car in 15 degree below-freezing temperatures and returning to my classes at Penn State. Oh, boy. Back to reality. Back to waiting for the Expansion Pack to come out so I can return as a Druid to the town of Harrogath, to challenge Baal's evil schemes once again.
|
Navigation:Home 
Articles 
