Conventioneering is a big deal for fans of popular culture media, although while comics really take the cake with ComicCon and Anime Expo, video games aren’t far behind with E3, PAX, and BlizzCon. The current hullaballoo centers around the upcoming BlizzCon 2011 which will be throwing open the doors of the Anaheim Convention Center in California. Expectations are high about revelations involving many Blizzard products including the next chapter if StarCraft 2, Diablo III, and World of Warcraft.

For those who cannot attend in person, Blizzard is once again offering BlizzCon virtual tickets for $40 a pop. The ticket price will net purchasers access to a livestream from the convention floor, keynote speeches, Q&A sessions, on-demand replay of missed events, and the concert at the end by the Foo Fighters. Accordingly the purchase will also come with “this year’s World of Warcraft pet and to-be-revealed StarCraft II in-game gift.” The virtual items from BlizzCon attendance have been highly valued in the past and are limited edition.

Time’s Techland blogger Keith Wagstaff ran a piece asking if $40 for a virtual ticket was worth the price—and past sell-outs have rang a clarion “Yes” from the fan base.

“Tickets usually sell out in seconds,” said Bob Colayco, PR manager for Blizzard. “We wanted a way for our fans who couldn’t come to be able to follow along with what was going on.”

BlizzCon tickets are already sold out. They ran for $175 a pop (4 per household) so the $40 virtual ticket is more than just a consolation prize; it’s a way to make sure that you don’t miss out on the festivities and allows you to do so for less than a quarter of the price of actually visiting—not to mention that you won’t have to expend further funds on lodging, food, and transportation.

Blizzard products have a gigantic cultural appeal across the PC gaming scene, and promote a particularly notable impact in the massively multiplayer online gaming community—as a result, anyone who is anyone is either at BlizzCon, Skyping in, or watching via the livestream. Undoubtedly there will be a sudden splash of YouTUBE coverage lagging behind the stream as people at the convention begin to pound their podiums. Watch channels such as TradeChat for a good round-up of what’s going down at BlizzCon from an on-the-ground gamer perspective.

At this year’s BlizzCon 2011, I hope to see more news covering the release of Diablo II; especially Blizzard’s intent with the real money Auction House feature they’re planning. The ability to legitimately make money from a Blizzard product may have strange appeal to some of the more hardcore players who live their lives in the games—and could net the semi-casual players a little bit of a discount from their subscription costs. I am also looking forward to further news on the real-money-for-gold tradable pet introduced into World of Warcraft.

These communities and the MMO administrators are constantly at war with gold farmers and spammers looking to make a buck from the population; having a way for them to make their money legitimately might permit easier regulation and less need to use the ignore button. At the same time, it could threaten to collapse the current in-game economies (in the case of WoW) and fundamentally change how auction houses work in the Blizzard games for the future D3.