Blizzard Grants a Wish

Friday, December 07, 2007

I stumbled across a heart warming story today while playing WoW, I was googling a quest I needed a location for and after some further reading, found out about 10 year old Ezra Chatterton. This happened earlier this year and as I’ve never heard of this before, thought I should share it.

Make a wish foundation along with Blizzard Entertainment, gave young Ezra Chatterton, a Riverside fifth grader with a brain tumour, joined forces and treated Ezra with a day behind the scenes of WoW. After a week in the hospital, when Ezra was first diagnosed, all he wanted to do was play WoW, a true fan. He got the chance to tour the company and even create something new for the game.

Chatterton was whisked immediately to Kaplan's office to create weapons and characters for the game. Later he would head to the recording studio to do a voice for the new character and meet with an artist to get the character's look just right. Throughout the day, he got to design a new weapon, add his dog Kyle to the game, create a quest and record his voice for the new character, Ahab Wheathoof, the Old Rancher.

That’s how I came across this brilliant story, while searching for more info on this quest: Kyle's Gone Missing!

Kaplan created a unique crossbow, amongst other things, to Ezra’s specifications. "I want it to shoot a fiery arrow at 300 damage over 10 seconds," he said.

"This crossbow will be the only one in the game and it's very difficult to get," Kaplan explained. "You're going to get a lot of questions (from other players)."

Ezra wanted to play World of Warcraft from the start, but the cost of not only the game and subscription, but also the internet connection, he couldn’t quite get it at first. After a fire which burned down their house last fall, along with all of his toys, Ezra’s dad decided to use some of the insurance money to buy his son a PC and the father and son team joined the online sensation.

Blizzard has bumped ePhoenix, Ezra’s WoW character, to level 70 and stocked the character with WoW gold, armour and weapons.
After nearly seven hours with the Blizzard team, Ezra had fully enjoyed his day. "

Good luck Ezra Chatterton, you’re in our thoughts and prayers. And Happy hunting!