For more of Chad and Megan, be sure to check out their website over at Lessons in Lore.

Well, it took us more than 2 years, but we’ve finally made it to 20 podcasts.  I’m not sure of the significance of that milestone, but it’s a nice round number, so YAY! WE HAZ 20 PODCASTS NAO!  In this episode, Grimmy and Krystalle are a little… less inhibited, when it comes to snark.  We manage to keep things serious long enough to discuss…

• Cross-realm Dungeon Finder premium service coming soon
• Atari to Divest Champions Online Developer Cryptic Studios
• Funcom planning Age of Conan: Unrated F2P launch this summer
• Rift is getting ready to provide free server transfers
• Guild Launch is sponsoring the MMO Track this year
• Dragon*Con News

We’re also looking for feedback on the idea of going live with the show. If you’d like to chime in, please leave a comment here, or email us at podcast@dc-mmo.org

This week’s (sic) SnarkCast covers all sorts of fun stuff.

• SIEGE Con – Grim goes to a convention which doesn’t require him to work.  Will he survive?
• World of Darkness – Watch Krystalle nearly pass out from the Squee.
• Dragon*Con is making some changes for next year.
• Cataclysm is dropping on December 7th.  Grim expecting to get “sick” that week.
• DC*MMO is looking for a few good staffers. (Yes, we’re serious)
• and the proverbial.. “Much Much MORE!”

But enough about my thoughts on the video, here it is!

Also, I’d be terribly remiss if I was doing machinima without mentioning the incredibly wonderful and talented Christina “Romily” Rollins, who has been coming to Dragon*Con for a few years to share some of the best Machinima from around the world with us. Take, for example, this film she introduced us all to last year. While the game featured isn’t an MMO, I think anyone who has ever looked for a group can sympathize with this Pyro.

If you really enjoy machinima, be sure to check out her panels this year! Currently they are scheduled as follows:

Machinima (Cool, notable, and award-winning) – Friday, 8:30 PM, Savannah Room
Machinima (Comedy, off the wall, or as Grim calls it “fart and dick jokes”) – Saturday, 8:30 PM, Savannah Room

Also note, you’re welcome to bring snacks and drinks since this is set up pretty much just like going to the movies. Only we don’t have ushers, so please clean up after yourselves!

Anyhow, I thought I’d get things off to a rousing start by giving you all yet another JoCo video.  The man is a genius.

PLEASE COME TO DRAGON*CON!!!!

Ok, I got that out of my system.

Who is Jonathan Coulton, you ask?

Seriously?

If you’ve been to any of DC*MMO‘s WoW events, you have definitely seen the video for Code Monkey.

However, if you have ever played Portal, there is another song of his that you might find more familiar.

In fact, the only problem I have with this video is that Spiffworld has two versions.  The original, as it appeared in Portal, and one done by JoCo himself.

Got an opinion on which video we should show at D*C this year?  Got ideas for other videos that you would like to see this year?  Want us to bring back some videos from last year?  Drop us a line!

That means we’re close. 3 weeks to go, in fact!

To give you guys an update as to what’s going on, we’re starting to receive prize packages from some of our “Friends of DC*MMO” (see the column on the left) including t-shirts, posters, boxed copies of games, loot cards, and other assorted goodies that we’ll be giving away. Most of this stuff will be given away during our WoW party (WoW Stuff) and MMO Trivia Contest (Everything Else) during the weekend, but we’ll also be tossing out some swag during our panels. Which ones? Could be any of them!

It looks like the Digital Gaming Lab (DGL) will be moving up to the 3rd floor in the Hilton this year. Normally, that doesn’t affect us since we’re in the Sheraton, but if you actually want some “hands on” time with some of the games that we’ll be highlighting this year, the DGL is the place to be. We’ll be hosting “All-nighters” with Global Agenda and Age of Conan in the DGL this year.

We’ve updated the look of the website just a bit, and included links to the companies and people who have helped us out this year and in the past.  These folks have donated time, merchandise, and effort into making Dragon*Con successful, and I’d like to thank them all on behalf of the DC*MMO staff.

Finally, we’re steadily dwindling our supply of DC*MMO 2009 t-shirts.  We only have a few of the larger sizes left!  We’re also going to have a new SnarkCast available for you later today or tomorrow, and Krystalle and I will try to squeeze in one or two more before the convention.

As a final treat, I wanted to share this picture of the winning team (posing w/the Bling Gnome Trophy) from last year’s Hardcore MMO Trivia Contest.  The winners of each year’s trivia contest will win a fantastic set of prizes and have their picture immortalized on the base of the trophy. (last year, we had no base because my crafting skill is 0)

It’s been a crazy week in the land of SnarkCast, and Krys and Grim have already been overtaken by events given that we recorded this podcast before:

1. The Dragon*Con Staff Meeting last weekend.
2. Blizzard was allowed to partially re-launch WoW in China.

Oh well, them’s the breaks.  In any event, enjoy the podcast (show notes are included after the jump).  Thanks for listening, and we’ll be recording a new podcast very soon.

• Intro
• WRUP? (Also known as “What are you playing?”)
• AOC’s “come back” promotion
  • http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2926&table=CONTENT
• WoW’s legal trouble in little China
  • http://www.jlmpacificepoch.com/newsstories?id=152539_0_5_0_M
• Global Agenda Beta starting on July 24
  • http://www.globalagendagame.com
• Professor Griefer & CoH
  • http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/loyola_university_professor_be.html
• CoH: Issue 16 announced
  • http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_16/issue_16_overview.html
• Cryptic”Nemesis Online, can we start calling it “CoH 2″ now?
  • http://www.massively.com/2009/07/16/cryptic-could-make-champions-counterpart-nemesis-online
• Eurogamer does re-review of Darkfall, rates it 4/10
  • http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/darkfall-online-second-review
  • http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/darkfall-online-review
• Why MMO’s are like Men/Women
  • http://blog.weflyspitfires.com/2009/07/12/mmorpgs-are-a-lot-like-women/
  • http://divagoth.com/2009/07/12/why-mmos-are-like-men-a-reply/
• Dragon*Con News Storytelling in MMO’s panel is added
  • TERRY FREAKIN’ GILLIAM IS COMING!!!
  • DC*MMO T-shirts in da house

(Opening music, courtesy of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

Scheduling is pretty much complete and now we turn our attention towards our giveaways, contests, and other events. One such bit of news, for those of you who are interested in attending our WoW Party on Saturday night, is that we will have a cash bar inside the ballroom this year.  You will not have to leave the party to obtain performance enhancing substances for our contest this time around.

Our new friends at Comcast (yes, THAT Comcast) have decided to sponsor our WoW party this year and will be adding some fantastic prizes for us to give away.  I could tell you… but I’d rather keep it a surprise.  You will not be disappointed.

We will also have some goodies to give away during our MMO Trivia contest on Sunday night, courtesy of Sony Online Entertainment, Funcom, Hi-Rez Studios, and a cast of dozens.  More details to follow, but I can say that we will probably have more free stuff to give away this year than we did last year… And last year, we had a LOT.

In this week’s show, we snarkify (otherwise known as “show notes”):

• E3
  • Booth Babes
  • Underwear as Swag
  • A “Stripper Game”
  • News from Sony Online Entertainment
    • Free Realms
    • The Agency
    • Hong Kong Shuffle
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic
  • Global Agenda
    • Bogus “Awards” given at E3
    • DC*MMO takes a studio tour
    • “Open All Night” demo at Dragon*Con
• Sony Fan Faire
  • Star Wars Galaxies
    • Zombies
    • User-created content
    • The Gungan Gun
  • SOE’s big party at Dragon*Con
• Blizzard
  • No LAN play for Starcraft II
  • What’s Wrong With WoW?
  • Special Interview w/Dr. Tran
  • WoW Faction changes
  • WoW may be an MMO with training wheels, but it serves an important purpose.
• EVE Online
  • Yet another bank scam
  • BoB is dead
• Age of Conan
  • Huge upcoming patch
  • “Fixing” stats and itemization
  • Problems with questing in AoC
• Warhammer Online
  • How to “Kill 10 rats” correctly
  • Public quests
  • Mark Jacobs leaving Mythic
  • Mythic is now part of Bioware
  • How will Bioware change WAR?
• City of Heroes
  • Issue 15 is coming
  • The 5th Column is back!
  • New costumes and facial options
  • Is it better to look good? or have uber stats on gear?
• Dragon*Con stuff
  • Schedule is done!
  • 50 panels and events scheduled on MMO track
  • WoW trivia event being combined into Hardcore MMO Trivia contest
  • 5 different parties planned on the MMO track this year.
• Closing Music and gag reel.

(Opening music, courtesy of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

The nice folks at Hi-Rez Studios, creators of Global Agenda, were nice enough to invite us  (For those of you keeping score, “us” is my second-in-command, Trevor, our staff barista, Ian, and yours truly) to their offices so we could have a look around and even get our hands on a pre-alpha version of the game.

To start off, we got to take a look behind the scenes and meet the artists and developers who are bringing this game to life.

The demonic red glow in his eyes was a comforting sign that this game will not coddle the weak or the Carebear. (either that, or our photographer loves his flash a little too much)  We also noticed a number of signs around the office that say “No Elves”.  There is a kind of attitude at Hi-Rez that shows that these guys love what they are doing, and those are the kind of people that make really good games.  We were looking forward to getting our hands on the real thing, even if it was described as “pre-pre-pre-Alpha” code.

Reality being what it is in the gaming industry, we all had to sign a stack of non-disclosure forms about the actual content in game, so you won’t see any screenshots or inside information (yet… keep reading).  However, we did manage to take some shots of the concept art that they had on the walls in the office.  I can only wish that my office decor was as cool.

If you check our gallery, you can see full-size pictures which show significantly more detail, but at least you can see a little bit of what is going to go into this game.  It did not escape our notice that there are more than just the standard sci-fi “urban dystopia” settings that so many sci-fi games drown in.  The outdoor scenery was quite impressive.  Michal, our host for this tour, even said “The outdoor scenes look like places I would want to go on vacation.  Except for all of the guns and bombs and stuff that we’ve added.”  We had to agree.  It was nice to see such a wide variety of settings and terrain.

Finally, they took us to the game testing lab!  Hi-Rez has recruited game players from the local community and invited them to come in with their friends to play and provide feedback on the game.  As it was, we happened to hit the gaming lab on a day where the room was packed (you wouldn’t know by this picture, but there were players waiting to get a turn at the game.)

In fact, the three empty chairs you see in the center of this picture are the ones that our butts were about to fill.  We were encouraged to figure out the mechanics on our own as best we could to see how intuitive the interface was, and for the most part, it was quite familiar.  Our host was nice enough to “bump us up” a few levels, then they turned us loose on some PvE missions.   The game has 4 basics classes (which you can read about on their website), and we tried a little of each.  Michal said that she would be back for us in 20 minutes or so, but we played for nearly an hour before we decided that we needed to wrap things up. (Rush hour traffic in Atlanta is no joke.)

Our opinion? (and it was unanimous)  We each took turns begging for a beta key, and we can’t wait to see the finished product.  Those of you who mourned the passing of Tabula Rasa will be especially happy as this game does a lot of the things TR did, but does them better.  It borrows some concepts from many different games, but has enough unique elements to make it a unique specimen of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

As a special treat for all of you who read this wall of text and pictures, I’d like to announce that we are currently working on having a hands-on, pre-beta, demo of Global Agenda at Dragon*Con this year.  Hi-Rez will have a 1-hour Q&A/Demo session on Sunday afternoon, but we’re working on setting up an “open-all-nite” gaming lab at the Sheraton where folks can come and play the game until the wee hours of the morning.  Believe me when I tell you that you will not want to miss it.

I took a much-needed break to look for my lost sanity, and celebrate my very first Father’s Day, and I’m back and well-rested for the final push towards Dragon*Con 2009.

The schedule is pretty much done at this point, but I’ll be meeting with a couple of folks this week to lock things down.  Once we get the schedule finalized, a process which involves hours of tedious data entry, we’ll let you guys know what we have in store for you.  I can’t tell you exactly how many panels and events we have planned, but I will say this much.  It’s a lot.

Here is a quick rundown of some of the other stuff we have to finish before we go downtown this year…

Prizes!   WoW TCG Loot has graciously agreed to provide some goodies for us to give away this year.  We have a  few surprises for our non-WoW players as well.

T-shirts!  We have an official “DC*MMO 2009″ t-shirt in the works, and we’ll be showing those off really soon.

Videos!  Our guys are scouring the Internet to find videos, trailers, and other goodies to show during our contests and in-between panels.

Trivia!  We’re still working on our questions for this year’s trivia contests.  There will be a “Hardcore MMO” trivia contest on Friday night. (very little, or even NO World of Warcraft trivia…) There will also be a World of Warcraft (only) trivia contest on Saturday.  Each game will have the same format.  Each game will have prizes.  But only the Hardcore Trivia Contest Winners will be honored with a place on our trophy, the Bling Gnome!  Every year, the winning trivia team will be immortalized with their picture placed on the base of the trophy.  Like the Stanley Cup, once we fill up all the room on the base, we’ll make the base a little bigger.

Podcast!  Yes, we are going to be doing another SnarkCast shortly.  Krystalle, in addition to her duties at E3, as been on the shelf with an injury and I’ve been spending way too much time at the “body-and-fender shop” myself, lately.

We have some other stuff in the works, and we’ll be telling you all about it as we get closer to the convention.

73 days until Dragon*Con.

I am certainly not shameless enough to encourage people to visit this site by posting gratuitous pictures of Ms. Day all over the front page… Why are you looking at me that way?

Ok, maybe I am that shameless.

Or maybe, just maybe, we hear a rumor that Felicia will be participating in our Machinima panels in addition to participating in our Q&A panels on “The Guild” this year.  And yes, before you snark away, we had Machinima panels last year, but made the rather foolish mistake of scheduling them late at night.  As a general rule,  folks don’t seem to be interested in panels late at night, they want to party.  Lesson learned.

But this is “Not another Felicia Day post“, right?

And so it is…

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed a while back that we were working on getting a couple of authors to sit down for a “Lore of Warcraft” panel with us.

We are pleased to announce that Richard Knaak and Keith R.A. DeCandido are both confirmed as guests for Dragon*Con this year and that they are scheduled to talk with us about the “Lore of Warcraft”

Mr. DeCandido is the author of Cycle of Hatred of which he summarizes

At the end of Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 3X, humans and orcs were allies on the continent of Kalimdor. But in World of Warcraft, the two sides are enemies again. My task with the novel Cycle of Hatred, was to help explain that change. It takes place during the four-year gap between the two games, and involves the humans on Kalimdor lead by Lady Jaina Proudmoore and the orcs on the same continent lead by Thrall. Of all the characters in the Warcraft universe, I found Jaina and Thrall to be two of the three most compelling characters. Jaina is a powerful female wizard, who is put in a position of leading a small group of humans in a hostile land in the wake of a brutal war against a demon horde. Thrall is an orc raised by humans as a slave, who leads a rebellion of orcs against human bondage, and inspires the orcs to return to their old ways before they were cursed by demons. Both leaders are trying to forge a new future, moving past the old hatreds. Unfortunately, the old hatreds don’t die easily. If you’re wondering who the third character is, you’ll have to read the book to find out — the character is also in the book, but who it is is a surprise.

Mr. Knaak has written several novels set in the World of Warcraft universe including

• Day of the Dragon (2001)
• War of the Ancients Archive
  • The Well of Eternity (2004)
  • The Demon Soul (2004)
  • The Sundering (2005)
• The Sunwell Trilogy Ultimate Edition
  • Dragon Hunt (2005)
  • Shadows of Ice (2006)
  • Ghostlands (2007)
• Warcraft: Legends
  • Fallen (2008)
  • Fear (2008)
  • Fiend (2009)
  • Fate (2009)
• Night of the Dragon (2008)
• Dragons of Outland Trilogy
  • Shadow Wing (2009)
  • Volume 2 (TBA)
  • Volume 3 (TBA)
• Stormrage (2009)
• Mage (2010)

We have yet another best selling author who will be joining us for an MMO-related Q&A session.  Rather than give you a list of Timothy Zahn‘s bonafides (because there are too many), I’ll just leave you with a visual image that should explain everything, unless, of course, you live under a rock.

(If you do not know who this is, turn in your geek card and sell your Dragon*Con ticket on EBay or something.)

But wait!  There’s more!

Aaron de Orive is joining us at Dragon*Con this year.  His writing credits include

• Anarchy Online
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Tabula Rasa
• Ultima Worlds Online (UO2)
• and the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic (see trailer)

And while this may sound like a macro at this point… We’re not done yet.  We’ll bring you the latest additions to our track this year as soon as we get them scheduled.

However, I thought that it might be fun to tell the story of last year’s DC*MMO track in pictures.

First, let’s start with what an average panel looks like on most tracks…

Not too bad, right?  I mean, the room is full but not too crowded.  What’s interesting about this panel, Guild Management in case you were wondering, is that it was at 2:30 on Friday afternoon.   This means that the vast majority of convention attendees were still standing in line waiting for badges or hadn’t arrived at the convention yet.   The first panel slot of the con is at 1:00 PM.

This is a little closer to what we expect at such a time slot…

This is common for panels which take place early on Friday afternoon, or Monday.  Most folks are straggling in to the convention and you are fortunate to get a dozen people.  Of course this particular panel, with about 20 people, happened to be well after midnight (on Sunday, I believe) when most folks are out partying until the wee hours.  Our audience is hardcore, folks.  We ran “around the clock” at the convention, and had to, just to get everything to fit on the schedule.

But Grim, you ask, what was it like during regular hours?  What kind of crowd did you draw for your regular events?  I’m glad you asked…

EA/Mythic, if you’re reading this, notice that the crowd spills out of the room (and far down the hallway) for your game, Warhammer Online.  We thank you for sending us a copy of the trailer, and these guys really enjoyed it, but even we were surprised at the response to a game that was still a couple of months from release at Dragon*Con last year.  And in case you are wondering how much space was left in the room…

Not much…

Now I know what some of you are thinking.  You’re thinking that we took pictures of our most popular panels and used them to show a “typical” crowd for an MMO panel.  This panel, believe it or not, was not even in our top five in terms of attendance.  For one game, in particular, it wasn’t even close.

We’re gonna need a bigger room…

This particular event was for World of Warcraft, which should surprise nobody.  Believe it or not, this was not our largest event.  Unfortunately, we were too busy having a good time to take pictures of that party.

You may have noticed that there is a gap between the folks on the floor and the folks in seats.  It’s for a good reason.  We had to have room to punt these little guys all over the room.

We have some videos of the flying Gnomes from last year and some rough cuts might already be on YouTube.

Rest assured, the Flying Gnomes will be back with a vengeance this year.

Finally, to close things out last year, we invited anyone who was interested to join us on Monday for coffee and (quiet) chat about whatever subjects interested them.  We call this event our “Post MMOrtem” and it’s a chance for folks to talk to us directly and give us feedback on how we did.  We listened and I hope we learned enough to improve on last year’s experience which, from our perspective, was the most fun we’ve ever had at Dragon*Con.

(Foreground: Chris “Logan” White (wearing the yellow lanyard), who celebrated his 20th year as a volunteer at Dragon*Con.)

Thank you to everyone who made last year so much fun.  Thank you Krystalle, Elizabeth, and Colin from Massively.com.  Thanks to our staff last year,  Jay, Sheryl, Logan, TJ, Crump, Sam, and especially Trevor, my “number 2″.  Thank you to Rafe, Mike, Beej, and all of the other folks who paid to come to Dragon*Con, but stuck around to give us a hand during the convention.   Thank you Funcom, Sony, NCSoft (holy crap, that was a lot of swag!!!), AQ Worlds, Wardog Studios, Flying Lab, and all of the other game developers who came to talk to us last year.  Most of all, thank you, the fans who made this all possible.

It’s going to be a great year at Dragon*Con this year, and we hope that the MMO track will make some significant strides from last year, which happened to be our very first year as a track of our own.  If you were there last year, we look forward to seeing you again this year.  If you couldn’t make it, we’ll make room for ya until Mr. Fire Marshall shuts us down.  Come on down and see us! (less than 100 days to go!)

You’re welcome.

• Voltaire is confirmed.  You may resume breathing. (And V, if you’re an MMO fan, we would LOVE to have you MC a few contests for us.  Otherwise, *I* might have to do it again this year.)

• We have added a Second Life panel.

• We have added a Guild Wars panel.

• We are working on a Pirates of the Burning Sea panel.

• We have re-added Champions Online. (No Cryptic, but I think you guys will like this…)

We are co-hosting a very special panel with the Space track this year.  It seems that NASA did some work on an MMO in the recent past, and even got to the point where they brought in Timothy Zahn to help with the game design.  Since we just happen to have Les Johnson from NASA and Mr. Zahn at Dragon*Con this year, we thought it might be a neat idea to discuss the MMO that might have been.

Our Snark Cast is officially on hiatus until my lovely and talented co-host returns from E3 and recovers sufficiently to put up with me once again.

To end things, I thought I would post an old pic that was rediscovered in Ol’ Chumbucket’s archives recently.  Behold, a picture of the infamous “Meridian 59 Guy” panel!

(From left to right:  Alihja, Grim, Crumpster, and “The Meridian 59 Guy”)

First off, let me say that Brian “Psychochild” Green is a super nice guy, and I’m glad that he has kept M59 going strong after 14 years (launched in late 1995, went public in 1996) and we wish him nothing but the best.  However, this was an Everquest panel.  The other three people you see at that table are/were EQ players.  The subject was EQ and the focus was on game design elements of EQ.  If Brian started a sentence with words other than “In my game, Meridian 59…” we are unaware of it.  It was one of the more infamous (funny in retrospect) panels that we had ever run.  Despite all of that, he did have some really good insights into game design that have since become part of the mainstream, more or less.  Remember, back when we did this panel 4 years ago, WoW was the new kid on the block and wasn’t the monster MMO that it is today.  We only had 3 WoW panels that year, as opposed to an entire day devoted to WoW this year.

Maybe later this week, I’ll post a “history in pictures” of the MMO track and you can see just how far we have come in 7 years, bearing in mind that we weren’t an official track at Dragon*Con until last year.

That’s what we have in place so far for the MMO track this year.  More importantly, we’re not done yet.

We’ve got a few more commitments to nail down.  Once we submit the final schedule to the powers that be, we’ll post an unofficial schedule here.  Once the schedule is made official, we’ll have links to iCal and XML files so you can put the entire weekend of events in your phone or PDA.  Why?  Because we’re geeks, and we love our toys too.

Stay tuned, folks.  We’re only a couple more months away.

Thus, we opted to reimagine the entire podcast, and have rebranded it SnarkCast. In this, our official first edition of SnarkCast, we discuss D*C MMO bidness, sure – but we also wander across the landscape from MMO drama to just what the heck is wrong with FreeRealms. Add in a healthy dose of Hentai, and you have the first-ever SnarkCast.

Admittedly, the engineering on this one is a bit rough, but we’re still working that out. As always feedback, suggestions, or gifts of chocolate-covered espresso beans are welcome!

EPISODE #1, VOLUME #1

**SHOW NOTES**

Topics listed here are meant as resources for further reading, but are by no means the entirety of topics covered. If you have any questions on sources, feel free to leave a comment and ask!

• Richard Garriott sues NCsoft
• Trion to reveal MMOs at E3
• Darkfall drama llama
• Free Realms!
• Stargate Worlds studio head heads for Gazillion
• Ace of Cakes Squig Herder cake

Music used in this podcast:

• Intro: “Isis Unveiled” by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network
• Bed music: “Suco de Melancia (Costa del Sol)” by Red Tailed Fox, courtesy of the FFVII Voices of the Lifestream OverClocked Remix project
• Featured bed snarky musical blurb – Super Mario Theme (Rock remix) by psobot
• Outro: “Lunatic Moon (Red XIII’s Theme ~ Cosmo Canyon)” by Sixto Sounds & zircon,  courtesy of the FFVII Voices of the Lifestream OverClocked Remix project

Comments? Questions? Hatemail? Email podcast [at] dc-mmo [dot] org, or ping Grim & netgoth on twitter

So we’re asking you.

You can also get to this survey (and all of our other surveys) by clicking the link at the top of our main page.  Thanks for your input!

This week, we’ll be talking with Blizzard, 38 Studios, and Netdevil again in attempts to get them on board.  We are also working on some events with our friends at Battle & Brew, a local gaming pub in Atlanta.  We’ll be providing additional details on that in upcoming weeks.

Finally, we spoke with Funcom last week, and they have got a lot of plans for Dragon*Con this year.  We are adding a Friday Night Party to the schedule, and they’ll be presenting panels on Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, and possibly a panel on their upcoming title as well.  They will also be providing some prizes for our contests and live-action quest as well.

Now that Dragon*Con is only a couple more months away, we’ll be updating the site more frequently.  Stay tuned.

Our schedule is starting to come together.  NetDevil, makers of the upcoming release Jumpgate: Evolution, is very interested in attending Dragon*Con and we are working to confirm their participation for this year.

We have also received favorable response from 38 Studios, and they are looking to send some heavy hitters to Dragon*Con this year. I would say who, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise just yet.

We are also working on putting together our prize packages for all of our various contests and games.  I don’t think you guys will be disappointed.

The podcast will be out later this week.  Krystalle has one hell of an editing job ahead of her if she plans on making me sound halfway decent.

For the latest and greatest information, check the podcast as we have scattered all kinds of interesting tidbits for your enjoyment.

I managed to find an MP3 of Dragon*Con’s “Gathering of the Guilds” panel from 2002. This was a good solid 2 years before anyone had heard of World of Warcraft.  From the program guide…

Gathering of the Guilds
MP3

Gathering of the Guilds is an event whose goal is to attract members of the guild community as well as MMORPG players in general. To facilitate this, we will be inviting organizers of some of the more highly recognized guilds and members of design teams from various gaming companies. We plan to have these teams demonstrate some of the games they have in development, hold discussion panels, and meet the MMORPG community.

Palehorse
Elonka Dunin
Waylon Adams

Attendance: 70

For those of you who are curious, Palehorse is our very own Trevor, who is now the assistant director of the MMO track.  Elonka is probably the smartest woman on the planet.  Waylon is the gentleman who started running MMO panels as part of the EFF track WAAAAY back in the day.  Waylon was the guy who got Trevor and I involved, and his help and support is a big part of why we are here today.

If you listen REEEEEALY closely (hint:  I mention the fact that I played on the Druzzil Ro server…) you’ll hear a certain smartass who somehow managed to talk his way into a spot on the panel. (I can’t remember if it was that year, or the following year)

The rest… is history.  By 2004, I was a bonafide panelist, and Funcom  had joined us at Dragon*Con.   We started doing WoW panels in 2006, and last year, we managed to come up with an entire track for the first time.  Hard to believe it’s only been 7 years…

Hopefully, we’ll be recording tonight and able to get the finished product up for you on Monday.

In case you haven’t noticed, the link at the top of the page that says DC*MMO Survey will take you to the survey page.  I promise you that these answers will be used for something fun at Dragon*Con, but we need at least 100 people to answer the survey. (What could it be?!?)

Let’s play the Feud! Um, I mean, it’s a secret. Yeah, that’s it!

We’re going to do another podcast this week, and it will probably be ready by Friday.

NCSoft (City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars) will not be joining us this year at Dragon*Con, but they have been gracious enough to send some stuff for us to give away.

We’re working very hard on Blizzard, 38 Studios, and NetDevil this week, and hopefully one (or more) of them will agree to participate this year.

Our World of Warcraft “gathering” this year is going to be something special.  Last year, the games and contests we held seemed to go over quite well, and this year we thought we’d emphasize that theme.  This year, our WoW “Meet and Greet” will be called the “Tournament of Azeroth”.   We’ll have prizes for all of the competitors, and music, drinks, and fun for all of the spectators.  It should be a blast.

I have put most of the schedule into the D*C database, which means we have a schedule, but we’re still lacking most of the panel descriptions, so I can’t call it “done” yet.  A couple of changes are going down for this year.

We are only running one panel on Monday, but it’s going to be 3 hours long.  Monday will be the day where you can join the entire DC*MMO staff and ask questions, provide feedback, or just hang out and wind down from the convention.  We would up doing something similar in the lobby of the Marriott last year, and it was a true pleasure to meet and get to know some of our fans without the hectic pace and schedule of trying to run a panel track.

We are also leaving an empty block of time each day so that our staff can take a break, eat a decent meal, or, heaven forbid, attend a few functions at the con themselves.  Last year, we ran pretty much around-the-clock, and I think it showed by Sunday.

That said, we still have 42 events on the schedule this year, unless I am mistaken, that’s more than every other track aside from (maybe) Main Programming.

Please join us later this week for our podcast where Krystalle and I will go into more details about what we have planned for this year as well as the latest and greatest news from around the MMO world.

Jumpgate Evolution from NetDevil is high on our list of targeted companies.  It seems like everyone and their fairy godmother is looking for a Sci-Fi themed MMO, and these guys will be going live in June.  With a little luck, we’ll be getting them to Dragon*Con to give you guys an up-close and personal look at the game.

We will also be talking with 38 Studios this week about their game, code named Copernicus.  Since I am a notorious Boston Red Sox fan, you can imagine that I’m really looking forward to this release.  If you don’t know what the Sox have to do with this game, 38 Studios’ CEO is Curt Schilling, former pitcher, and major gaming fanatic,  for the Red Sox.

Our tireless crew of motley mischief makers is working hard on a couple of art projects for this year’s convention.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think you’ll like it.   We are in a deep debate on what we should call our WoW-themed competition event at this year’s convention.  Last year, we had Gnome Punting, Gnome Tossing, a dance contest, and other activities that set members of the Horde against members of the Alliance.  This year, we are going to expand on that theme and plan a party around it.  If you have suggestions for what we can call this little festival of mayhem, please let us know.

We also have our first podcast under our belts.  Krystalle and I give you all the inside scoop on what’s happening in MMO land.  Make sure you listen all the way to the very end for some entertaining outtakes. (and since this was our first podcast, there were more than a few to choose from)

If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please contact us and let us know about it.  If you’d like to buy a shirt to help us out, that would be great too!.

Also, as this is our first-ever attempt at actually making a podcast, we welcome your thoughts. You can contact Kevin and Krystalle by dropping an email to them at podcast [at] dc-mmo [dot] org. Gifts are accepted in the form of beta keys, money, or chocolate covered espresso beans.

Feel free to follow these two crazy monkeys on Twitter as well. Kevin can be found [here] and Krystalle lurks around [over here].

This episode features music from around the MMO landscape: City of Heroes, EVE Online, EverQuest II, Age of Conan, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and a bit of audio silliness here and there. See if you can figure out which is which; or if you’re truly hardcore, what the track names are. (After all, we have an MMO Trivia panel to plan for… You never know.)

We’ll see you in two weeks for Episode II; and not the one where Anakin is a whiny, emo QQer.

So, with no further ado, here’s where we stand.

We will definitely be back in the Sheraton this year, specifically in the Athens and Augusta rooms.

The following companies have already confirmed that they will be participating in Dragon*Con this year:
Sony (EQ, EQ2, Star Wars Galaxies, DC Universe Online, Free Realms, The Agency)
Funcom (Age of Conan, Secret World, Anarchy Online)
CCP (EVE Online)
Adventure Quest (AQ Worlds)
Gaia Interactive (Gaia Online)
Wardog Studios (Force of Arms)
Cartoon Network (FusionFall)

We are still in talks with the following companies:
NCSoft (City of Heroes, Guild Wars)
EA/Mythic (Warhammer Online)
Cryptic Studios (Star Trek Online, Champions Online)
Bioware (Star Wars: The Old Republic)
Blizzard (DUHHHHHH)
38 Studios (Copernicus)
Frogster Interactive (Runes of Magic)

We are planning additional panels on topics such as
Guild Management
Dead MMO’s
Free MMO’s
WoW Lore (with authors Richard A. Knaak and Keith R.A. DeCandido)
The state of MMO gaming (with representatives from several MMO companies)
The Guild, starring Felicia Day (not nailed down yet, but we’re working on it)

Of course, we are also planning a series of parties/events for our night time sessions…
Quest Givers (yes, we’re doing the weekend-long live action quests again!)
Kickoff Party on Friday Night
World of Warcraft Trivia Contest
Hardcore MMO Trivia Contest (all games)
WoW Olympics (Gnome Tossing, Dodgeball, Dance Contest, Emote Contest, etc)
Kingdom of Loathing Party
Sony Party (EQ, EQ2, SWG, etc)

We are also working on getting all of the MMO games that we will be discussing included in the computer gaming lab in the Hilton so that you guys can try out some of these games on your own time.  As with all convention preparations, things can (and often do) change at the last minute, but this is a snapshot of where we are as of right now.  We have our 12th, and final, staff member on board for this year and we plan on moving very quickly to finalize our plans for this year so that you guys will have plenty of opportunity to get ready for an outstanding Dragon*Con this year.

If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please contact us and let us know about it.  If you’d like to buy a shirt to help us out, that would be great too!.

For those of you unfamiliar with his work, Richard Knaak has written several novels on Dragonlance, Diablo, Dragonrealm, and (most importantly to us) World of Warcraft.  It is our intention to pair Richard Knaak with Keith R.A. DeCandido for a panel on the Lore of Warcraft.  Who better to learn Warcraft’s back story from than the two gentlemen who (literally) wrote the book on the subject?  We will provide additional details on the Lore panel as things develop.

We will have a Kingdom of Loathing panel at Dragon*Con this year.  In fact, the guys who are going to be running the panel are also planning a party and planning on bringing some swag and cool things to give away.

If you have never heard of Kingdom of Loathing before, I highly recommend that you check it out.  It’s web based, free to play, and takes very little time to learn.

Also, you may have noticed the link that says “DC*MMO Swag Fund“  We have set up a Paypal link for folks who want to contribute to the prize budget.  Those of you who are feeling generous will be recognized at the Kickoff Party on Friday night at the convention.

If you want a little something more than recognition, we also have a t-shirt store set up.  Every single dime we make from these t-shirts will go to buy prizes to give away at Dragon*Con.  To be sure, we have a lot of help from our participating guests and no matter what happens we will have a lot of fun stuff to give away, but with your help we will be able to do a lot more.

Dragon*KHAAAN T-shirt

Quick news bites for you:

CCP (EVE Online) has confirmed with us that they are planning on attending Dragon*Con this year.

So have the folks at AdventureQuest Worlds…

So has Funcom (Age of Conan, Anarchy Online)

Slowly, but surely, we are filling up our event schedule. If all goes as planned, there will be over 50 MMO panels and events for you to check out at Dragon*Con this year.

1) We are going to have a “Kickoff Event” on Friday evening where folks can play some games, win some prizes, have some fun, but most importantly, get the latest and greatest information on all of the stuff we’ll be doing all weekend.

2) Penny Arcade Expo is scheduled on the same weekend as Dragon*Con again this year. So far, most of the companies that we have talked to are planning on coming to both events, but of course that can change.

3) Keith R.A. DeCandido is confirmed as a guest for Dragon*Con this year. Since he has written a novel set in the World of Warcraft universe (Cycle of Hatred), we are trying to get him to host a panel on Lore in World of Warcraft.

4) We are re-working our t-shirt site and should have some new and interesting designs for you soon.

5) We may have a volunteer staff opening for this year, so if you’re interested, you may want to get in touch with us before the general staff meeting in March.

If you have ideas or suggestions for panels or events that we should run at D*C this year, let us know! We are starting to get in touch with some of the companies that were unable to participate last year, and by next month, we anticipate being able to give you some better ideas of who is coming this year.

-Grim

• It looks like we will be back in the Sheraton (probably in the same rooms we had last year)
• Main registration will be moving to the Sheraton as well
• There will be a lot of shuffling around in an effort to spread things out among all 4 hotels and alleviate crowding.
• There is a football game *and* a NASCAR race in Atlanta on D*C weekend.  If you don’t have a room already, the Hyatt and Marriott are already sold out.  Get your rooms NOW.
• There will be significantly more World of Warcraft stuff going on.  That isn’t to say we won’t have events with other games, but we will definitely have more WoW panels than last year.

If you have suggestions for events or panels for this year, now would be the time to send them to us.  We are going to start filling up our schedule very soon.

-Grim

Mr. DeCandido, among other novels, has written the World of Warcraft novel Cycle of Hatred and we are making plans to have him participate in a “Lore of World of Warcraft” panel for this year’s convention.

We have a handful of confirmations already, and any new information about our events will appear here first.

Quest Givers will be back to run our live action quests throughout the weekend.

We will have more Gnome Dodgeball and Gnome Punting

We are planning on more trivia competitions including

• Hardcore MMO Trivia (all games)
• World of Warcraft Trivia

Oh yeah, we’re also going to have…

-Grim

Who are we?

DC*MMO has a dozen staff members who work year-round to prepare for each year’s Dragon*Con. In addition to maintaining this website, we have to research new games (yes, playing games is part of the job), talk to community relations staff, come up with contests and prizes, and most of all work the convention itself and make sure our guests and fans get where they are supposed to go. It’s fun work, but it never ever ends.

A partial list of the games that we cover includes:

• Age of Conan
• Anarchy Online
• AQ Worlds
• Champions Online
• City of Heroes
• DC Universe Online
• EVE Online
• Everquest
• Everquest 2
• Force of Arms
• Free Realms
• Gaia Online
• Guild Wars
• Kingdom of Loathing
• Lord of the Rings Online
• Pirates of the Burning Sea
• Second Life
• Star Trek Online
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Stargate Worlds
• Tabula Rasa
• Vanguard
• Warhammer Online
and, of course…
• World of Warcraft

If there is a game that you would like to see us cover, of if you are a game developer who wants to participate in Dragon*Con, please Contact Us and let us know.

Combined with earlier interest from some of our other guests, we have heard from nearly everyone who hosted a panel on our track this year, and all have expressed their intentions to come back.

Does that mean we’re done getting folks?  Absolutely NOT.

More to come…

-Grim

I can also tell you that you can expect a LOT more World of Warcraft related panels and activities next year.  It also looks like we’ll be adding Tabula Rasa to our list of "Dead MMOs"

-Grim

Calendar in iCal format
Calendar in XML format

[show-ics-events=500]