Difference between revisions of "Blizzard Museum"

Latest revision as of 11:06, 21 July 2011

The Blizzard Museum is a dedicated space in the main building on Blizzard's Irvine Campus, where numerous works of art by the Blizzard artists are displayed. These pieces are real paintings, as well as digital art blown up to giant size. The Blizzard Museum has a full time curator who cycles in new pieces and keeps rotating the art on display throughout the year.

The museum also houses some of the art exhibits created for display at BlizzCon and other gaming shows, including life-size statues of Starcraft:Ghost, along with various characters and monsters from World of Warcraft. Besides artworks, the museum holds other items of historical interest and keepsakes, such as special edition merchandise, game launch event souveniors, the original letter and $15,000 loan Mike Morhaime used to start Silicone and Synapse (which grew into Blizzard Entertainment), merchandise, awards their games have won, and much more.

Blizzard sets up smaller versions of their museum at various shows and public events, including in museums[1]. Blizzard artwork made up an entire museum show in Taiwan in late 2010.[2]

A smaller display is set up every year at BlizzCon, as well as at Blizzard's WWI events,[3] and the Blizzcon museum has debuted numerous piece of Diablo III artwork long before (if ever) they showed up online in digital form.

• Flux has taken photos of all the new Diablo III art from the Blizzcon Museum at the last three BlizzCons.
  • 2008's post is offline temporarily.
  • 2009 brought dozens of new pieces of art, which were posted in six separate posts.
  • Just a few new pieces in 2010.

Blizzard's Irvine Museum[edit | edit source]

The Blizzard museum occupies a space near the central lobby in their Irvine Campus, and is one of the first stops for most visitors to their offices. Numerous members of the media have written about their tours through this area, and there are countless pictures and videos online.

Images displayed there have given us new game info on several occasions. For instance, the Sand Golem and Spider Caves were first seen in June 2010,[4] and the mysterious Black Soulstone debuted in May 2011.[5]

Since the artwork displayed in the museum is changed regularly, photo tours from different dates will show different artwork.

• IGN's Jessica Talbot provides a video tour of the museum shortly after it opened in 2008.
• Joystiq posted an extensive gallery in June 2009.
• SC Legacy posted numerous photos from the museum in June 2011].
• Diablo3 ESP toured the museum in June 2010 and found numerous new pieces of Diablo III artwork.
• Diablo.IncGamers.com hosts a larger gallery of photos from Blizzard's Irvine offices including numerous shots from the museum.

The best view to date came from a Chinese Starcraft site, who shot the video below in May 2011.