The closest I have ever come to attending a big-tent church revival was at Blizzcon two years ago in sunny Anaheim, California. There, Chris Metzen—the man with the unenviable task of being in charge of Blizzard lore—took the stage to talk about the new World of Warcraft expansion Warlords of Draenor. Looking like a comfortably retired rock star, Metzen went into a long speech that involved excursions into the now-ancient history of Azeroth, and trips down memory lane to long-ago dungeons and battlefields that made the room ring out with cries of "For the Horde!" Such a thing wouldn't have been out of place at a professional wrestling event, the crowd somehow whipped into a frenzy for a decade-old game with slowly eroding subscription numbers by Metzen’s nostalgia-infused rhetoric.
By the end of Metzen’s speech, I was ready to fight Blizzard customer services to reopen the Warcraft account I had lost eight years ago. So frenzied was the crowd that he could have led the combined forces of the Horde and the Alliance on a crusade to storm the gates of hell—or at least the Disneyland just down the road. I'd been to fan conventions before, but Blizzcon was something else; it felt like a celebration and renewal of an old faith.
That didn't happen at this year's Blizzcon. Not because enthusiasm at the two-day event has dropped, but because Blizzard and its audience have changed so much. Two years ago, Blizzcon was about flattering people like me, a fan with rosy memories of Warcraft RTS battles and early World of Warcraft quests that was still hung-up on whether Kerrigan could be redeemed in StarCraft, or whether or not demon-slaying could be made even more efficient in Diablo. That was always the joy of Blizzcon: it was a magical place where 1990s PC gaming never ended.
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