Good news for those who are attending, but for those still on the fence, you’re out of luck. Even after Blizzard’s site collapsed from the crush of potential attendees, the event completely sold out in less than 24 hours.

Past Blizzcon events have seen huge revelations for the company (both World of Warcraft expansions, for instance), and though the schedule gives no hints as to any surprises Blizzard may have planned, I’m expecting something important to come out of Anaheim this October.

For those who did snag tickets, here’s what you have to look forward to:

• Diablo III Class Design
• Diablo III Game Design
• Diablo III – Lore and Art
• StarCraft II Gameplay
• StarCraft Lore
• StarCraft II Art
• World of Warcraft Class Design
• World of Warcraft PvP
• World of Warcraft Art
• World of Warcraft Dungeons & Raids
• World of Warcraft UI and Mods
• Blizzard Cinematics
• Blizzard Sound and Music

In-depth details on each panel can be found at Blizzard’s official Blizzcon 2008 website.

Image courtesy Blizzard

Panels [Blizzcon 2008]

Fans looking to pre-order the title can now do so from the Electronic Arts Store for $25. A $10 discount option also exists for those who order both Warhead and the original Crysis.

“Fans of Crysis are going to enjoy more of the open-ended gameplay, cutting-edge visuals and huge, epic battles from the first game, while also finally finding out what kind of havoc Psycho was wreaking on the other side of the island,” said Cervat Yerli, president of developer Crytek.

Image courtesy EA

The “gritty” actioner sees Batman battling through the infamous nuthouse’s gauntlet of supervillains. Typical storyline fodder really, but hearing that the game is to be co-written by Paul Dini (Detective Comics, Batman: The Animated Series) should be enough to excite fans of the Dark Knight.

As the plot seemingly strays far from the latest Batman film, the odds of B:AA falling into the “horrible cash-in” trap are low, though it still has to contend with the traditionally execrable history of games based on superheroes.

Solid release date and platform details have yet to be revealed, but presumably those will come to light when the official site’s winged clock runs down.

Included in the query were Capcom’s key current franchises: Resident Evil 5, Lost Planet, Flock, Age of Booty and Street Fighter IV — none of which Sven would specifically point to as upcoming ports, despite saying “one or two” of these series’ could make the jump.

There’s always the possibility that Sven is simply dismissing yet another whining fan, but Capcom’s prior multi-platform friendly business acumen certainly corroborates his claims.

The question now becomes: How do you transfer something like Resident Evil 5 or Lost Planet without losing each series’ next-gen aesthetic appeal?

Image courtesy Capcom

So the Wii is missing out on 3 Bionic Commando games [Capcom-Unity]

Hitting retail simultaneously with the game’s standard version, the special edition set will be available only through the Konamistyle webstore, and will include the game, an original soundtrack (on two CDs), and a leather-bound book cover with notebook.

The Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia premium pack will cost 8,830 yen ($80), and as with all game-related things that are special and good, will be available only in Japan.

Image courtesy Konami

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Konamistyle Special Edition [Konamistyle, via Famitsu]

The place in question is Super Arcade, located in Walnut, California. That particular game center’s other claim to fame is that it was one of the first places to receive Tekken 6 cabinets back in March.

Word has it that cabinets will be very limited in terms of North American locations, so if you’re in need of some Street Fighter IV arcade satisfaction, a California trip might be in order.

Image courtesy Capcom

First Street Fighter IV Machine in the U.S. [SDTEKKEN.COM, via NeoGAF]

The action RPG title topped the sales charts during its first week of release, with 342,000 in sales. Stores throughout the country reported first-day sell-outs of the game, with Sega having to quickly send out new shipments.

The game is certainly on its way to becoming the next Monster Hunter Portable, both in terms of level of success, and in the way it promotes ad-hoc multiplayer use of the PSP, with Japanese gamers getting together to play as a group.

Photo: Jean Snow/Wired.com

Shipments of 500,000 for Phantasy Star Portable [Game Watch]

Key to the game’s additions (revealed by Warhawk director Dylan Jobe) is a tutorial mode designed to ease new players into the shooter. Previously, new Warhawk fans were dumped unceremoniously into the game’s online combat without so much as a “good luck.”

Along with the tutorial missions, the patch gives Warhawk support for custom soundtracks, new paint schemes and a full complement of trophies — 56 in all.

Warhawk’s 1.5 patch should hit the PlayStation Network on August 27.

Image courtesy Sony

Warhawk v1.5 Update “Free Never Gets Old!” [PlayStation Blog]

The creator announced as much while responding to an open letter from Citizen Game, which brought up the issue of the difficulty in PixelJunk games.

“You’ll be pleased to know that one thing we will add to Monsters in an upcoming patch is a difficulty setting menu,” wrote Cuthbert. “The patch will be free.”

In the case of PixelJunk Eden, Cuthert joked that “a more namby pamby mode for the ‘lighter people’ out there” will most likely be added in a future expansion pack.

I’ll say this, both games are indeed quite challenging, and so far I’ve yet to finish either.

Image courtesy Sony

Dylan Responds [Citizen Game, via Kotaku]

“I think our bigger fear was that we didn’t want to offend any religious people,” Wright said.

“Looking at the discussion that unfolded from this thing, what we had was a good, sizeable group of players that we might call militant atheists, and the rest of the players seemed very tolerant, including all of the religious players.”

“I didn’t expect to hit hot buttons on the atheist side as much; I expected it on the religious side,” he adds. “So far I’ve had no critical feedback at all from anybody who is religious feeling that we were misrepresenting religion or it was bad to represent religion in the game. It was really the atheists.”

Image courtesy Electronic Arts

Maxis’ Will Wright [Eurogamer]