World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

When I originally heard about Warlords of Draenor, I was excited, but a bit worried about the premise. As much as I liked the idea of fighting these big name Orc Warlords and seeing how powerful they truly could be when free of the Burning Legion’s corruption, when you mix in time travel and alternate realities into any fiction, things always have the potential to go off the rails and end up a mess. World of Warcraft has dealt with time travel in the past with dungeons and even the Mount Hyjal raid, but this is an entire expansion built around having an alternate reality invade our own? Can something like this really hold up to scrutiny? In a word: absolutely. For a longer description, I’ll use my own starting experience to give an example.

The staff at ZAM has spent many hours debating which of the games we’ve played over the past year were most deserving of an award. In several cases the votes were neck-and-neck while others had an overwhelming victory. We had so much love to spread around that we expanded our voting categories from six to twelve this year.

Congratulations to the final six winners and runners up of 2013!

This November Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is slated to make its next-generation console debut on the Playstation 4 at BlizzCon 2013. BlizzCon is Blizzard Entertainment's annual expo covering just about everything Blizzard related. The demo will be playable for the full two day duration of the event spanning from November 8th-9th.

This week Blizzard finally released the event schedule for this year's BlizzCon in Anaheim, CA. From opening ceremony at 10AM on Friday, November 8th to the closing concert on at 6:30PM on November 9th, every panel, tournament and contest is outlined for in-person and Virtual Ticket attendees to plan out their two days. A floor map was also included with the new schedules, so those going to the show can figure out which panels they'll have to run across the convention center to catch and where they can play Heroes of the Storm while waiting for the next one.

It's been a hellish three days. We've poked and prodded the latest games from the biggest developers. We've interviewed those behind the games, probing for in-depth answers on how they'll entertain us in the coming months and years. Finally, after careful consideration, we have our verdicts. Join us, as we tell you about the best games heading your way in 2014.

Some startling news out of the mouth of Blizzard Entertainment, as they've just recently announced that in light of their "jam-packed" schedule, they've decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013. This has obviously set the rumour mills a-churning as to what this really means, but common concensus is that without any major announcements to make (no Titan?), Blizzard has simply decided to focus on delivering their products (Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm) as fast as possible.

Blizzard is not, however, going to kill one of its biggest Blizzard eSports tournament venues, which usually takes place at BlizzCon and, as such, they've announced the 2012 Battle.net World Championship that will take place in Asia "toward the end of 2012." For now, let's have a moment of silence for those BlizzCon memories that would have been.

While most of the non-gaming media continues to cover events like BlizzCon as a nerd-fest gathering of an incomprehensible and socially-inept subculture, one guy is helping to lift the curtain and change those preconceptions. Well, from his standpoint, at least. Chris Nguyen, a.k.a. ddrfreak5o3 on YouTube, directed and produced his own fan-made, mini-documentary called "BlizzCon: An Event For Fans" while attending BlizzCon 2009 last month.

"I suppose the main purpose of this decision was to challenge myself, prepare for some documentary film classes (as well as a few other Journalistic Electronic Media classes), and update my digital portfolio," he wrote in the video's description on YouTube. Although he might not have originally intended it to be a deep, sociological insight into the die-hard gaming community, it's a fairly distinct and refreshingly alternative piece, compared to similar "fish-out-of-water" documentaries and news reports.

The mini-docu runs just over 10 minutes long and is surprisingly well-edited and shot. Nguyen captured high-quality video throughout a variety of BlizzCon events and exhibitions, including the Ozzy Osbourne performance. He also interviewed a couple of WoW gamers, and the winner of this year's costume contest. All in all, it's an extremely polished video for a fan-made documentary; one that shines a light on the best elements of BlizzCon, and the community behind it.