Blizzard has announced that it will raffle off tickets to BlizzCon in an attempt to satisfy the huge demand for passes to the event.

Tickets for BlizzCon ’08 went on sale at the beginning of the week, but unfortunately over the course of Monday and Tuesday, sales were slowed down due to heavy traffic and issues with the website. Blizzard took the website offline twice at the beginning of the week to try and rectify some of the problems users had been having. Sadly, shortly after the site came back online most fans discovered the tickets sold out.

Fans were disappointed especially those who thought they had managed to secure tickets before the Blizzard site began experiencing problems only to discover their order had not been processed. The company apologized yesterday for the way things turned out with ticket sales, and explained that after moving some things around in the convention center, it could now offer 3,000 fans a chance to attend the conventions in Anaheim, Calif.

“BlizzCon is about the positive experiences you all have had with Blizzard games. As a result of this week’s events, the excitement that many of you felt about the show has turned into dissatisfaction and disappointment,” said Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime in a statement. “Due to these circumstances, we’ve reevaluated our convention hall space and come up with some solutions that will allow us to offer 3,000 more tickets for sale.”

He went on to explain that extra tickets would be sold using a lottery system to avoid a repeat of the problems the company had earlier in the week as well as detailing the offer would only be open to those who had were registered with Blizzard at the time the tickets were sold out.

“To avoid the issues many of you faced this week, we’ll be selling these 3,000 via a lottery. We’ll post further details once our plans are finalized,” Mr. Morhaime said. “Please note that the lottery will only be open to those with an active Blizzard Account as of 9:00 PM PDT on August 12, the time that the ’Sold Out’ notice was posted.”

With a reported 11 million Blizzard fans, 3,000 will hardly make a difference to those who don’t win. However, it does say a lot for Blizzard, and indeed BlizzCon and we’re sure it’ll make a difference to those 3,000 fortunate fans.

We won’t know how the lottery is going to work until it’s decided by Blizzard so it’s unclear as to whether it will be a case of users coughing up $100 (the price of a BlizzCon pass) to have their name entered in a draw and being refunded if they don’t win, or merely registering your interest and forking out the cash if you win. We’ll keep you posted.