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 we touch on a series of MMO highlights and news stories from both GDC and PAX East. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ve added some links and videos behind the break for those who want more information on the games we’re talking about this week!

SW:TOR Trailer:

The Secret World GDC writeup & trailer:

UFO Online: Fight for Earth:

Grimlands:

You can check out all this news and more over on Massively!

Music used:

• Opening: “Yellow Cake (Healflouride) by Ministry
• Bed: Tavern music from WoW (sampled and looped)
• Ending: “Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой” by Eduard Khil

Questions? Comments? Hatemail? Contact us at podcast [AT] dc [DASH] mmo [DOT] org or catch up with Krystalle & Kevin on Twitter

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.

I think Tara spend too many hours playing Red Dead Redemption or something, because she thought it would be a spiffy idea to invite me on the show as a guest this week. (We’re recording on Friday, and I’ll definitely be posting the link here when it goes live)

I think, in actuality, that this is payback for me making her sit on the infamous Meridian 59 panel with me all those years ago…

(That’s Tara on the left sitting next to me, Crumpster, and Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green back in 2006)

As an added bonus, here is conclusive proof that I do, in fact, wear costumes at Dragon*Con!

Tara was nice enough to write up her experiences back at the 2006 Dragon*Con on one of her other, very appropriately named, websites.

Maybe, one day, I’ll revisit the costume idea of “Jay and Pirate Bob”…

(Not that it will take much work to convince Muskulls to wear a pirate outfit again this year…)

You can see more of the pics from 2006 (and other years) in our Multimedia Gallery.

• 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.

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

I am half tempted, as soon as I have a few weeks of free time, to go through a bunch of our outtakes and give you a “best of Snarkcast which never got published”.  As chaotic and “free form” as we are, sometimes Krys and I ramble a little bit too much.  Mixed in with all that chaos are occasional nuggets of hilarity that may be dated, but still funny.

Time will tell, but for now you have some new podcasts to check out.

-Grim

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

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

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

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.

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”)

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”)

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

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!

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.

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

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!

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.