gamescom 2012 Comes to a Close

We spent an amazing five days at gamescom this year, and we’d again like to thank everyone who visited us at the Blizzard booth! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

We put on a great show with some incredible activities. Who could forget the world premiere of the stunning World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria opening cinematic? If you missed it, don’t worry – you can watch it online here. Thanks to MANAO – Drums of China for setting the stage for our remarkable cinematic trailer with an impressive drum performance.

Of course gamescom wouldn’t be complete without our famous costume and dance contests. Congratulations to Svetlana Quindt, who took first place in the Blizzard Costume Contest for her handmade barbarian garb from Diablo III. Congratulations also go out to the World of Warcraft Dance Contest winner Sebastian Kothe, who impressed the crowd and the judges with his brave rendition of the Orc dance.

Accolades are also due to the winners of our two Mists of Pandaria leveling contests, Justin Schilling and Mark-Hendrik Moll, who out-raced their competitors by being the fastest to make it to level five in the pandaren starting area.

All of our winners took home some incredible prizes from our partners, including a Schenker XMG P502 PRO Gaming Notebook, SteelSeries gaming gear, and Mega Bloks sets.

In addition to showing their stuff in our contests, our visitors were treated to some inspired entertainment. Blizzard artist Grace Liu was on stage demonstrating her talent during live drawing sessions every day. She amazed our audience with her creations of a witch doctor and the Butcher. We also experienced an amazing eight-piece orchestra play popular songs from World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III.

And of course Blizzard’s presence at gamescom wouldn’t have been complete without some exciting eSports action! We saw some of the best StarCraft II players in the world demonstrate their skills during intense show matches every day. On Thursday: Jang “MC” Min Chul won against Lee “PuMa” Ho Joon; and Kim “SuperNova” Young Jin prevailed over Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen. On Friday: Eugin "Strelok" Oparyshev beat Jared "PiG" Krensel; and Andrew “mOOnGLaDe” Pender came out on top against Tomasz "Tarson" Boron. On Saturday: Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk prevailed over Jérémy "Feast" Vansnick. Finally, on Sunday: it was Kim "SuperNova" Young Jin who prevailed over Pedro "LucifroN" Moreno Duran.

We also saw two of the most well-known European raiding guilds battle elite bosses in live World of Warcraft raids. Members of Method took down the main Cataclysm bosses, followed by an awesome PvP fight, while members of For The Horde raced through Dragon Soul in 25-man Heroic mode.

On Sunday afternoon, we ended this year’s gamescom with the 2012 European World of Warcraft Invitational! We saw the best arena teams in Europe battle it out for a $30,000 USD prize pool and two spots in the Global Finals.

Congratulations to team Yaspresents: Another (Death Knight), Zunniyaki (Priest) and Câra (Paladin) and team I'm just being honest: Swapxy (Shaman), Boetar (Shaman), and Blukstack (Warlock) who’ll be heading to the Battle.net World Championship in Shanghai, China!

Be sure to check out the daily recaps for the details of all our activities at gamescom this year, and our updated photo gallery for pictures from each day of the event.

We hope to see you next year at gamescom!