Ready to head out to Blizzcon this year? Well get your credit cards ready, tickets for Blizzard’s all-things-Azeroth/Diablo/Starcraft/etc conference will go on sale May 21st at 10am PST and May 25th at 7pm PST, for — get this — $175.

Yup, that’s a $25 increase over last year. The price increase hasn’t stopped the WoW community from going nuts over the announcement though, with more than a few people I’ve seen over at Twitter (follow me @halophoenix!) bemoaning the price hike but clearly saying it won’t stop them from attending.

There’ll also be a special series of $500 tickets on sale on May 28th for those lucky folks with more cash to drop and who want to attend a special pre-con dinner to benefit the Children’s Hospital of Orange Country.

As usual, if you can’t make it at all, you can snag the virtual tickets for $39.99, which gives you access to live streams of the panels and all of the events.

And remember – the convention itself will be October 22nd and 23rd of this year, so even if you think you might want to attend, you should probably snag a ticket if you can!

So the first day of Blizzcon ticket sales came and went in about a half-hour last night after they went on sale, and there’s only one day left — this Sunday — when tickets will go on sale again and everyone who didn’t get one yesterday combined with everyone who specifically planned on waiting for this Sunday will flood the Blizzard Store to try and get theirs.

So what about you? Are you planning a trip to Blizzcon this year? Have you purchased your ticket already or are you planning on grabbing one Sunday? Shot it out in the comments and let us know!

Last night Blizzard announced that Blizzcon tickets would officially go on sale on Wednesday June 2nd and Saturday June 5th, for $150 per person.

Tickets will likely go fast, so make sure you’re up and at ’em when it comes time to buy your ticket., and they’ll be sold through the Blizzard Store, the same as last year. If you can’t come, you’ll be able to buy the same DirecTV streaming package as last year as well.

Thanks to WoW.com for the scoop!

(image courtesy of MMO Champion)

I have a hard enough time pulling myself away from my computer (and of course, subsequently from WoW) to go to work, much less play Guitar Hero, but I think the trip to the living room just got a little easier. Activision (who merged with Blizzard back in December of 2007) announced in a press release today that Guitar Hero III players can grab the epic ballad I Am Murloc by Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain as a free download from the XBox LIVE Marketplace if you’re rocking out on the XBox 360, and from the PlayStation Store if you jam on the PS3.

Never heard of it? Check out the video!

The song will be available starting tomorrow, and was released in conjunction with the Blizzard Entertainment WorldWide Invitational in Paris scheduled for this weekend. It makes sense that Activision and Blizzard are trying to do a little mingling of two of their most popular properties, and I wish them both all the best, but I can’t help but take this as a reminder that we got jilted out of a Bard Hero Class. I mean, I know it was an April Fool’s joke, but come on!

Earlier this week Joi Ito gave a talk about WoW at the 23rd Chaos Communications Congress. We Make Money Not Art posted some fantastic notes from the talk (as well as the image to the right) as did Plubimi. The entire talk is online now on Google Video and Joi talks about much of the value of WoW as well as the areas where Blizzard is really missing it, and compares some of that to Second Live. It’s definitely interesting to watch and you don’t need to have several level 60’s to understand what he’s getting at. And the undead shadow priest in the last slide looks like a total bad ass. I bet all the alliance on his sever runs in fear the moment he shows up. kek.

Jerry from the Electric Sheep Co. is currently planning a crossover event between WoW and Second Life.

“SL and WoW respectively represent the state of the art in the narrative and non-narrative, game and non-game metaverse, but their cultures, aims, and the experiences they provide are dramatically different. WoW players often dis on SL users (“Oh, it’s just a boring social world”), and vice verse (“You can’t *do* anything in WoW”), perhaps based partly on a lack of understanding and shared experience.”

A wiki about the event has been started here.
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E3 is coming, and so are the pre-announcements. Blizzard has, like everyone else, a booth at this year’s E3 in the South Hall, booth 1224. Shouldn’t be able to miss that one.

Rumored news include the Alliance race, a preview into 1.11 and the Expansion pack, a few nice handouts of truly epic fan value, and … well, you’ll have to come and see. I won’t be there, btw, ask me in 3 weeks when I’ve calmed down, why…