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

Our schedule for next year is pretty much done.  There are a few variables left to figure out, and we still need to lock down our guests for next year.  We have a pretty good idea of who they will be, but there might be a last minute surprise addition, you never know.

We also have a pretty good idea of who is interested in sponsoring our track for next year. (More to come on that once it is official.)

So basically, the only things left to do is figure out how many staff we’ll need and bring them up to speed.  We also need to get our signage designed for next year as well as come up with our trivia and other contests.  Since this is November, and we usually don’t start that stuff until July or August, I’m thinking it’s going to be a fairly quiet year for the DC*MMO staff.

That means we’ll have more time to actually PLAY MMOs!!!

Got my 25-man Icecrown Citadel drake this week.

Downed Heroic Sindragosa and Heroic Professor Putricide last week.  Next stop, Heroic Lich King!

By the way, my guild is still recruiting. =)  Drop me a line if you’re interested.

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!”

Sadly, none of the audio from the weekend’s recordings made it (we think whatever weird thing that made Grimmy’s PC play music at chipmunk speed is the same thing that caused the audio to be unusable) but hey – learning experience for next year, when we’ll show you a real snarkcast.

Hey everyone! Krystalle from Massively.com here. I hope you all made it home safe and sound and are enjoying being back at home with your gaming computers, in your comfy chairs/beds. I know I’ve missed my beloved office! (That’s an old picture of it above. Much more filled with geekstuff now.)

I’d like to take a moment to thank all our awesome sponsors and contributors, as well as the many guests who came to lend their own brand of awesome to our track this year:

Track sponsors:

• Artix Entertainment
• Comcast /Xfinity
• Sony Online Entertainment

Guests / Panelists:

• Battle & Brew
• Brandon M. “Oxhorn” Dennis (who wrote up a great post about his adventure!)
• Brian “Psychochild” Green
• Cartoon Network
• CCP / EVE Online
• CK Knight / Curse.com
• Hi-Rez Studios / Global Agenda
• Jeff Lewis
• Kingdom of Loathing
• Lessons in Lore / Chad and Megan Tindale
• Sandeep Parikh
• Sean Becker
• Seraphina Brennan / Massively.com
• Shawn Schuster / Massively.com & GuildCast
• Star Wars Combine
• Romily Rilynn, our mistress of Machinima

And those who, while unable to make it, contributed prizes for us to give away!

• Bigfoot Networks
• Blizzard Entertainment
• Funcom
• Gazillion Entertainment
• Icarus Studios
• Kingsisle Entertainment

Without our above sponsors and guests, we wouldn’t have been able to pull off the epic win of this year’s MMO track. Many thanks, everyone!

Also, I wanted to take a moment to post some of the information from my panels, since some people did not grab the handouts I’d made. You can find it all after the break!

Kid-friendly MMOs / Virtual Worlds:

• AdventureQuest Worlds
• Club Penguin
• Digimon Battle
• Fantage
• FusionFall
• Free Realms
• Hello Kitty Online
• Jumpstart World
• Kung Fu Panda World
• LEGO Universe Online
• Maplestory
• Moshi Monsters
• MyMiniPeeps -  (Note: beta! Reg code “mmpfriends”)
• Pixie Hollow
• PopTropica
• Puzzle Pirates
• RuneScape
• Super Hero Squad Online
• WebbliWorld
• Wizard 101
• ZulaWorld

Free-to-play & Freemium MMOs:

• Allods Online
• Battle of the Immortals
• Black Prophecy
• Dungeons & Dragons Online
• Digimon Battle
• EverQuest II Extended
• Face of Mankind
• Forsaken World
• Free Realms
• FusionFall
• Godswar Online
• Hello Kitty Online
• Kingdom of Loathing
• Lord of the Rings Online
• Mabinogi
• MapleStory
• Need For Speed: World
• SoulMaster
• Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures
• Taikodom
• Vindictus
• Wizard 101
• Zentia

Upcoming MMOs:

• Black Prophecy
• DC Universe Online
• Earthrise
• End of Nations
• EverQuest II Extended
• Fallout Online
• Final Fantasy XIV
• Forsaken World
• Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising (rezzed, no joke!)
• GuildWars 2
• Jumpgate Evolution
• LEGO Universe
• Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms
• Poisonville
• Super Hero Squad Online
  *Note: There is another Marvel MMO with a classic comic art style currently under development*
• Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures
• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Taikodom
• Rift: Planes of Telara
• TERA
• The Secret World
• Vindictus
• World of Tanks

If you have any questions about materials covered during any of my panels, feel free to ping me. You can email me at krystalle AT massively DOT com, or say hello on Twitter.

Hopefully, we’ll see you all next year!

By this time, 4 days from now, the DC*MMO crew will be descending upon an unsuspecting Sheraton hotel.   If you’re not there, it’s your loss.

In other news, the folks over at The Unique Geek will be interviewing Grim on Monday night as part of their excellent “40 Days of Dragon*Con” series.  Those of you “jonesing” for a SnarkCast fix will have to wait until after the convention.   Or… You could show up at the Sheraton’s Savannah Room at 10:00 AM on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday and catch Krystalle and Grim in the act LIVE at Dragon*Con.

Anyone want to lay odds on whether or not Krystalle can keep Grim in line while recording in front of a live audience?

Shall we upgrade the degree of difficulty a bit?  Let’s have some guests show up while we’re at it! (Psst:  We have Oxhorn on Friday and Jeff Lewis from The Guild on Saturday!)

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!

Grim and Krystalle discuss the schedule of events on the DC*MMO track for this year and give some exclusive information about the track that won’t appear in the program guide or pocket schedule. If you want the real inside scoop on what we’ll be up to this year, we’ve got the podcast for you. (or you can wait until con and read about it in the Daily Dragon…)

This picture was created by Douglas Shuler, an artist for Magic: The Gathering. It’s an image he made from his City of Heroes Supergroup. Quite impressive.

Nicely done.

This is just awesome.

And this must be what Alfred sees on The Bat’s bad nights.

You can drop down from “Dragon*Con Calendar” in the list of links above, or you can go here to see our schedule. Yes, we have included iCal and XML formats so you can upload the schedule into your phone. We aren’t complete Luddites, you know.

Less than 60 days until Dragon*Con!

Some highlights from this week’s (sic) podcast…

• Grim has hot three-way action with a couple of smokin’ hot babes!
• Grim and Krystalle discuss people who use excessive profanity.
• Fun with no air conditioning in Georgia in the Summertime!
• Krystalle gets spanked by a lucky community rep.
• Krystalle discusses her David Hasselhoff fixation.
• LOTRO goes free-to-play!
• Grim admits he is wrong about something.
• More riffing on Derek S****. (If you say his name online, he magically appears… like Candyman or Biggie Smalls)

As always… MORE DRAGON*CON NEWS!!!

Music used in this show:

• Opening song: The Swashbuckling Rum Run Of Tom Leftig – We Are They (from the Funny Music Project at TheFUmP.com)
• World of Warcraft Soundtrack.

As always, comments, offers of cookies, and hatemail should be directed to us in comments below, or by emailing us: podcast AT dc-mmo.org. We’ll see you next time! (c)2010, DC MMO. Released under a Creative Commons: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.

Not a huge amount of time for a long post this week, but the important thing is that the time and care was spent creating a brand new Dragon*Con MMO SnarkCast for you! Are you getting excited? We certainly are as plans are building here at the virtual D*C MMO HQ for this year’s convention.

Anyway, enough of the blathering – here’s the cast for you.

• WRUP – What we’re playing!
• How not to promote your game (or, CSI D*C)
• WAR, uh-huh, good gawd y’all, what is it good for? Apparently lawyer fees.
• RTS MMO WTF gimme
• Gentlemen (and ladies), start your engines!
• Kissing babies in New Eden
• Zero-day MMO reviews by people who haven’t played the game since launch are A Bad Idea
• With Friends and Family like that, who needs (business) enemies?
• Who’s hot (this week) to Kevin?
• Kevin says something nice
• Georgia Ren faire reminder for local Dragon*Con fiends!
• And more Dragon*Con MMO silliness and guest news!
• Audience participation SnarkCast

Music used in this show:

• Opening song: Zerøspace (Q-Burns Abstract Message Mix) – Kidneythieves
• Bed music: Green Nebula – CCP: Jon Hallur (soundtrack from EVE Online)
• Closing music: none this week because we didn’t have time to toss in the normal disclaimers before mashing it together and uploading it.

As always, comments, offers of cookies, and hatemail should be directed to us in comments below, or by emailing us: podcast AT dc-mmo.org. We’ll see you next time!

This podcast is (c)2010, DC MMO. Released under a Creative Commons: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.

A glorious evening to you all, noble warriors in the Snark army! It is time once again for your Secretary of Geek affairs to fill you in on some of the awesome news of the last week. My apologies for the lateness of the post, but I was feeling a bit under the weather today and so, unfortunately, has Mama McGreevy. Never worry, though! I did manage to gather a few tidbits to quench your thirst for geek knowledge, and you’ll find them behind the cut.

• Smiling Stan Lee has chimed in with his opinion of Marc Webb, the man who has been charged with the responsibility of taking the helm on the Spider-Man film franchise in the footsteps of Sam Raimi. Stan gave a fairly detailed summation of the meeting over on his Twitter account, and I’ve cobbled together all of them into one statement for you here. “Had a great time today. Lunched with Marc Webb who’s gonna direct Spider-Man 4. First time I’ve met him. Lemme give you my impression – After meeting Marc. I was certain Marvel had made a great choice to direct Spidey 4– and not just because of his table manners! The mighty Mr. Webb is smart and hip– and he cares about being true to Spidey as much as I do. And remember, he’s also a great director. I could tell by the dynamite ideas he proposed that Marc’s gonna bring new excitement and a new sense of wonder to ol’ Spidey! And remember–Marc wants a great Spider-Man movie that’ll bring new luster and glory to our web-swinger as much as we do! So let Marvel’s True Believers unite with my brave Brigadiers and get behind Mighty Marc, because hey, the best is yet to come! Excelsior!” I hope Stan is right. I do love Sam Raimi, but Spider-Man 3 was a complete train wreck of a film. Whether or not Sam is responsible for that really depends on who you believe, but the fact of the matter is that at this point a re-boot is probably the only thing that is going to help the franchise out. [Source]
• There have been countless revenge movies made in the relatively short history of modern cinema. The story is generally pretty much the same in all of them. You start the film and establish your happy, well-adjusted hero. You then proceed to slaughter his entire family and have him mutilated and left for dead. You then watch as he extracts bloody vengeance on all of those who wronged him. It’s a pretty tried-and-true trope, but it works. This time, however, the hero? Is a tire. A tire with the power to kill people with its mind. For reals. [Source]
• Star Wars fans rejoice! If you’re a TomTom owner you can now download the voice of Darth Vader to guide you to your destinations! My question is whether or not he’s constantly going to try and divert you to the Dark Side. If you watch the video associated with the this news release it’s pretty clear that the person voicing the Dark Lord isn’t James Earl Jones. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say it was Chad Vader. Still, it’s a pretty awesome download option and I’m seriously thinking of grabbing it myself. [Source]
• And speaking of Star Wars (there, Grimm…I’ve fulfilled my “speaking of” quota for this post)…A couple recently cobbled together what is, in my mind, the greatest birth announcement ever using clips from A New Hope. [Source]
• Hugo Weaving is going to play Red Skull in the upcoming Captain America : The First Avenger film. The utter awesomeness of the sentence I just wrote stands on its own and needs no further elaboration. [Source]
• Remember Stephen Baldwin? No, you probably don’t because he’s pretty much the Fredo of the Baldwin family. There are some who believe that his lack of popularity in Hollywood has nothing to do with his lack of talent and everything to do with the fact that he is an outspoken Christian. These people are so convinced this is the case that they have actually set up a charity to raise money for him. Once news got out about this, though, some enterprising internet folks decided the appropriate response was to set up a site to restore someone much more worthy of our praise. Joss Whedon. [Source]
• I like Batman. I also like porn. Regardless of the fact that I enjoy both of these things I have never actively sought to combine the two for my own enjoyment (despite the fact that Rule 34 dictates I could easily find material to do so should the desire strike me). Some folks, however, clearly think there is a market for such a combination and they have thrown together a porno parody of the old Adam West Batman television series. Someone has to ask Adam about this one if he comes to Dragon*Con again (someone who isn’t me). [Source]
• In my opinion one of the best parts of the Quentin Tarantino Grindhouse film was the fake trailer for a film called Machete starring ultimate bad-ass Danny Trejo. Apparently a lot of folks agreed with me, because they have turned Machete into a feature length film. Check out the trailer and a few words from Machete himself about the recent immigration legislation that was passed in Arizona. [Source]
• Yeah, ok. I might be getting a little trailer heavy today, but I can’t not post this one. The latest Discworld novel turned television movie is Going Postal, and the trailer just looks awesome. So far all of the Discworld movies have been great, and if this trailer is any indicator Going Postal is going to continue the tradition. [Source]
• Back in my day video games were hard. You didn’t have these fancy tutorials or access to websites with lots of cheat codes. If you wanted any kind of help playing the game you had to go out and buy a book, and every time you died it put you one step closer to dumping another quarter into the machine before you could continue. Want to see proof of what I’m talking about? Check out the video in the link that follows to see what it would look like if Super Mario Brothers was made today [Source]

That’s all I’ve got this week, folks! Happy Monday to ya!

• WRUP – What we’re playing!
• Macrotransaction vs microtransaction snark
• Nexon looking to play grown-up, goes om nom nom
• Shrinkage is still a problem after the apocalypse
• It’s almost time to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
• JGEOMGWTF, HURRY UP
• Yarr Realms
• Brenlo deserves a beer
• New content and Bards and Uncle Voltie, oh my
• In other news, gang leaders make good models
• The two Perpetual Nerd Questions
• What do William Shatner and Patrick Stewart have in common with chipmunks?
• And more Dragon*Con MMO silliness and guest news!

Music used in this show:

• Opening song: The Swashbuckling Rum Run Of Tom Leftig – We Are They (from the Funny Music Project at TheFUmP.com)
• Bed music: The Damp Barachan Nights – from the Age of Conan soundtrack (by Knut Avenstroup Haugen)
• Closing music: Afro Samurai Fight Groove #4 from the Afro Samurai videogame

As always, comments, offers of cookies, and hatemail should be directed to us in comments below, or by emailing us: podcast AT dc-mmo.org. We’ll see you next time! (c)2010, DC MMO. Released under a Creative Commons: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.

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!

Really, anything I add to this would just be superfluous.

This version of the Snarkcast is a little more “free form” than usual.  Of course we make fun of the usual suspects (World of  Warcraft, Aion, and NCSoft in general) as well as give you some recent news from Dragon*Con and the games we happen to be playing at the moment. (Both Krystalle and I are kinda hooked on Fallen Earth right now)

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy.  Now that we’re a little closer to the holidays, we should start getting more Dragon*Con related information to throw your way as well as having a little more time to actually play all of the games we love to play.

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

It also looks like the new engineering is working nicely in terms of flipping these casts over faster. We’re going to aim for once a week, but we’d love to hear from you in regards to show times. Would you prefer SnarkCast be around 30 minutes, or is the current hour-long chunk good for you? Be sure to let us know in the comments!

Note: If the above audio is choppy for you, please consider downloading it to your local machine before listening. We’ve made the file significantly smaller than before, so it should come down pretty quickly.

As always, full show notes are after the break!

Here’s what we’re talkin’ ’bout this week, Willis.

• D*C stuffs, as always!
• Is MAG an MMO?
  http://www.massively.com/2009/09/15/the-daily-grind-is-mag-an-mmo/
• Blogger sued by Evony for Defamation/Libel
  http://www.massively.com/2009/09/14/blogger-sued-by-evony-for-defamation-libel/
  Get the FULL details after you’ve caught up at: http://www.bruceongames.com/
• EVE Online council member steps down for insider trading
  http://www.massively.com/2009/09/08/eve-online-player-elected-council-rep-steps-down-in-wake-of-insi/
• DDO goes F2P
• Fallen Earth goes into pre-launch early start release
• Beatles Rock Band just came out

Music comes from the remix artists over at OverClocked Remix, with the exception of the brief snip of organ “hold” music.

The specific songs used are:

• Ghetto Lee Lewis – Ultima Online “Create your Fantasy” remix
• djpretzel, Vigilante – Short Skirts (Tifa’s Theme), Disc 2 “Dirge”, Voices of the Lifestream FFVII remix project
• Wurlitzer organ music blurb “Nola” from VirtualOrgan.com. (Get your minds out of the gutter, people.)

Comments, hate-mail, proposals, or offers for lewd and lascivious housecleaning can be sent to podcast [at] dc [dash] mmo [dot] org. That is, if you’re into that kind of thing.

As always, thanks for listening. Enjoy!

- Krys

Thrill to the sounds of two crispy fried post-convention geeks!

Chill with the cool background music while we ramble like a couple of blithering idiots!

Now with 100% more DC content than the last two weeks worth of non-podcasts, and 100% less MMO content than ever before!

Show notes are behind the jump for those curious. Now if you’ll pardon me, there’s a nap calling my name.

SnarkCast – Episode 5, Volume #1

Happy Birthday Sam!

Opening music: Gonna Make You Crazy by Eclectic Submarine
Bed music: Libation by Al Phlipp and the Woo Team

The music provided is from Mevio’s Music Alley. Check it out at music.mevio.com.

All rights belong to the respective artists.

SnarkCast is (c)2008-2009 Kevin Stallard & Krystalle Voecks. Copyright violators will have their faces melted.

We’ll be better next week – promise. Until then, enjoy.

- Krystalle

We WTFPWNED! the old Thriller Dance record set at William & Mary (Bill and Buffy) University.  They had just over 200 people dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  Dragon*Con had over 900.

Comic-Con took the record for largest charity blood drive from us…briefly.  We retook the record with over 1900 units of blood donated.  DC*MMO’s own “Horde vs. Alliance” blood drive saw 250 donors step up and bleed for a good cause.  My most sincere thanks to everyone who gave. (even if it did make you a cheap drunk for the rest of the weekend… Don’t think we didn’t notice.)

50 panels and events on the MMO track this year, and hardly a “bomb scare” in the bunch.   Thank you to our guests and panelists for making this year’s DC*MMO track such a success.

Felicia Day is amazingly cool, and apparently had a really good time at Dragon*Con.  Thank you Felicia, and thank you fans for showing her a good time this year.  Felicia screened all of seasons 1 and 2 as well as the first episode of season 3 which debuted last week just before the convention started.

Thank you Funcom for throwing a killer party on Friday night!

Thank you Sony Online Entertainment for throwing a killer… well… all day Sunday!

Thank you CCP, Cartoon Network, Wardog Studios, Artix Entertainment, Hi-Rez Studios, Massively.com, and WoW.com for hosting excellent panels and events for us.  We look forward to working with you again next year.

Thank you, WoWTCGLoot.com, NCSoft, iZ3D,  and Turbine for donating prizes for us to give away this year.

Most of all, thank you to my staff of unpaid volunteers who busted their humps for me all year long in order to pull this weekend off.

My assistant directors, Trevor Legg and Krystalle Voecks.  I could not have done this without you two by my side to keep me sane and remind me of all of the things that could have slipped through the cracks.  Trevor’s ideas and ability to think creatively (I hate the term “outside the box”) and Krystalle’s organizational skills and industry knowledge were both absolutely essential to our success.  I thank you both.

To the rest of the gang, Michael McGreevy, Rafe Brox, Ian Wickenkamp (I didn’t forget you this year!!!), Jonna Crane, Doug Keller, Scott Blanks, Jay & Sheryl Sturrock, Sam Levine (Happy Birthday!) and all of the folks who stuck around and chipped in to help us even though they didn’t have to… You have my thanks, and that doesn’t even begin to cover it.  I put you guys through a pretty brutal wringer this year, and you all came through shining brightly.  Rest well, you have earned it.

Planning for Dragon*Con 2010 starts next week.

-Grim

First, watch this video…

Now, here are some major differences between Dragon*Con and “everybody else”…

GenCon is gaming, only gaming, nothing but gaming.  They are the Mac-Daddy gaming convention, and they do gaming very well.  They do not, however, have concerts, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Costuming, or any of the other “3 hotels worth of stuff” that Dragon*Con does.

Penny Arcade Expo, is run for gaming companies, by gaming companies, and caters to an established audience.  If you are a computer or console gamer, this is a great convention.  If, however, you want to have drinks with celebrities, or are not a hardcore gamer.  PAX isn’t for you.

Comic-Con focuses on Sci-Fi and (duh) Comics.  You’ll have a pretty good chance of seeing celebrities there (since it’s located near Los Angeles and New York) and there is a correspondingly large media presence there.

There is only one convention that does “all of the above”.  There’s only one convention that isn’t so hip-deep in advertising and sponsorship dollars that you can save yourself the trouble and just download press-releases all day.  There’s only one convention that boasts 24-hour, round-the-clock, non-stop “stuff to do”.  There’s only one convention that is run by fans, for fans.

That’s us.

Fear not.  Most of my staff is camping in line for the Shatner panel on Friday, and I’m busy packing all of the loot and prizes that I’m bringing down to D*C to give away to you guys.

The schedule is out, the panels are set, and we’re ready to get our geek on.  SnarkCast and other regular features that we have throughout the year will return after the con, and after we catch up on sleep. (No… NOT January)

If you’re looking for me, chances are I’ll be in the Sheraton somewhere.  3 days left.

You just never know who might be our special guest referee at the WoW Party…

It might even be…

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW!!!

(Seriously, while we would be thrilled to have them there, we do not have plans to involve Felicia Day or William Shatner in the WoW party on Saturday. If they turn up, we’ll be just as surprised as you are.)

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.

The schedule for this year is pretty much done. “Pretty much?” The “NASA’s almost-MMO” panel may be moving from it’s current time and location (Saturday at 2:30 in the Marriott A601-602) to the Sheraton on Sunday at 4:00. It is not etched in stone yet, but as soon as we get an answer, I’ll update the schedule.

The “Google Calendar” containing all of the Dragon*Con related events from now until the convention can be found here.  It also contains links to the schedule in XML or iCal format if you’d like to download the schedule into your phone or PDA. (always nice to get a reminder during the con)

For additional convenience, we also have a schedule grid that you can print and use if you prefer.

The official schedule for the entire convention will be coming soon.  It is possible that other events may change, but doubtful for our track, one does not juggle such a large number of events lightly.

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”)

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.

• 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.

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.

Ms. Day is a self-professed avid gamer and wrote The Guild based on her own experiences playing World of Warcraft.  If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend checking the series out.  Chances are you’ll be reminded of someone you know…maybe even yourself (the first one of you that compares me to Vork is totally getting a 50 DKP minus).

Those of you who are fans of Ms. Day should also keep an eye out on the Whedon Track site to see what they have planned for her there as well!

I know there’s a lot of spandex loving Dragon*Con attendees out there who are eagerly anticipating this one (at least, if their panels last year were any indicator), and I have to admit that the recent announcement of the “swinging” travel power has me itching to put the tights on again myself.

Hey, what can I say?  I have an affinity for a certain web-slinger.

With Dragon*Con happening just over a month after the release we’re really hoping that Cryptic decides to join us again this year and give us the insider scoop to their new MMO hotness!

Now you may be wondering why I’d be bringing him up in a post on the Dragon*Con MMORPG track site.  Or you may be wondering what you’re going to have for lunch.  I don’t know.  I’m not you.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Right.  Anthony Daniels.  Star Wars. Ok.  A good number of you that have come to our panels in the past are fans of Sony’s Star Wars Galaxies, and we’ve also heard a lot of buzz about the upcoming Star Wars : The Old Republic from Bioware.  A lot of Star Wars fans like to joke that C-3PO is the “gay robot” from the Star Wars mythos (although in the interest of full disclosure I understand Mr. Daniels has gotten quite friendly with some of the ladies in the Dawn lookalike contest in the past, so the actor himself likely isn’t gay…just British).

How does all of this tie together?  Well, according to at least one community moderator over on the Bioware site not only was C-3PO a confirmed homosexual but the terms “homosexual,” “lesbian,” and “gay” are “terms that do not exist in Star Wars.”

Somebody needs to tell Voltaire this.  Stat.

In all fairness to Bioware they reversed their position on this yesterday by re-opening threads with titles like “GBLT Discrimination in Forums?”  Not only that, but one poster on their forums made the very valid case that, at least in the Star Wars gaming universe, there is already an established incident of at least one homosexual character (Juhani from the original Knights of the Old Republic).   It appears, at least at this point, that Bioware isn’t going to have a hard line stance against references to homosexuality in their upcoming game.

This situation opens up a larger question for me, personally, though.  Is it really necessary for sexual preference to be an issue when you’re playing an MMORPG?

I jump around to so many different stances on this particular issue I make myself dizzy.  From a Role-Playing perspective I think it’s perfectly valid that a character in an MMORPG could be a homosexual, and I think that a person who chooses to play a character in that manner should be allowed to do so.  I also, however, have a real problem with the fact that, in a game not marketed as adults-only, sexuality comes into play at all.

This fact alone has kept me off of Role-Playing servers in games like World of Warcraft.  I’ve been a role-player since I was 12 years old, but if I walk into an inn in Goldshire I want to encounter other young adventurers – not naked night elves giving lap dances to dwarves.  I’ve encountered the same thing on several occasions in City of Heroes, and it always bothers me whenever it happens.  I understand that people might want to get their virtual freak on, but in an environment where putting on your robe and wizard hat might happen in front of a 13 year old kid (or, even worse, WITH a 13 year old kid) I just don’t think it’s appropriate.

I sure hope saying that does not make me a prude (and considering some of the stuff I’ve done at previous cons I’d hate to see what a pervert did if I was), but as a parent it’s always something that has been a concern of mine.  The whole topic of sex and sexuality is a touchy one, but as a parent my first inclination is to say that unless it’s being marketed to adults it really not one that belongs in our video games.

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…

News may be a little slow over the next couple of weeks, but I can say that Sunday at Dragon*Con is going to highlight Sony Online Entertainment.  SOE will have 7 panels on Sunday and is planning a huge party for Sunday night.  If you can’t make it to Fan Faire this year, come to Dragon*Con.  We’re going to have our own!

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.