14 May
2012
With its predecessor now 11 years old, Diablo III’s May 15th global release has been highly anticipated in the gaming world. Now while I’m not a serious gamer, I can appreciate the hype around it, mostly because my brother has spoken of nothing else for the last while. We pre-ordered the game on Kalahari.com and on Monday night we attended their launch party in Gandalf’s – it was loads of fun.
Gandalf’s really was a great venue choice; more illuminated than I’d ever seen, and populated by decidedly not the typical crowd, it had a real buzz of excitement and anticipation about it.
There was (a small mountain of) pizza and an open bar, along with multiple prize give-aways and a group of cosplayers with awesome and (I’m told) really acurate home-made costumes. The night’s first prize actually went to the sole non-cosplayer who came dressed up – a guy with a bloodied apron, giant cleaver and viking hat, aptly called ‘the Butcher’.
At 10pm we all shuffled upstairs to ROAR for some musical entertainment in the form of Tombstone Pete. An interesting choice for an event like this, I asked him how he felt about being there. “Yeah, it’s pretty different alright…” was his response, quietly amused by it all.
Though short, his set was as punchy and entertaining as ever – even the metalheads next to me were enjoying it.
Up next were Strident, by far the most metal band I’ve ever seen. It was all there – the theatre and melodrama, the outfits, the long hair and the heavy riffage. I’ll admit, not really my thing but very entertaining nonetheless.
They played some ‘mystery tunes’ as part of another prize give-away; the guy next to me insisted the one was the Diablo loading screen music, which I can neither confirm nor deny as I missed the winning answer, but I can confirm that the other was the Diablo II theme because someone shouted it out (and got a lot of disgruntled looks).
Competition over, Strident’s onslaught of headbanging continued.
Music over, we headed back downstairs for a ‘special announcement’, which turned out to be permission from Diablo developer Blizzard to release the game an hour early. General giddiness abounded as the crowd obligingly got into an alphabetically ordered line to collect their games, before swiftly disappearing home to unwrap and install them.
It was a great evening: slick, well-paced (worth noting given how often events drag on or feel too thinly spread) and loads of fun, plus all of the organisers and Kalahari.com staff I spoke to were super friendly and helpful. I’m not sure how common events like this are, but as both a great incentive to pre-order stuff and a really cool reward for the fans, it’d be awesome to have more of them.
Having eyed the decorative boxes lining the room, and after watching in dismay as people walked out with them, Chris finally seized the last one up on the dispatch table.
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Kalahari.com & Facebook page | Diablo | Strident | Tombstone Pete
