I don’t care if Monday IS blue! I’m here to cheer you up with the latest and greatest geek news on the block. I’m also kind of running out of kitschy pop-culture references to go along with Monday in my opening statements, so if you can help a brother out lemme know.

We’ve got some great news in the works for those of you who attend our track panels this year, but we’re not quite ready to reveal it yet. Suffice it to say, if you thought we had some great events last year you haven’t seen ANYTHING yet. In the meantime, though, get a load of the list below for some other fun things that are going on in the geek world.

• Now, we all know that Pirates are more awesome than Ninjas.* This is scientific fact that really doesn’t need to be discussed any further. That being said, it doesn’t mean that Ninjas are lacking in the awesome department. Case in point? Over in Australia a bunch of Ninjas stopped a group of would-be muggers from pummeling some poor guy to bits over his wallet and an iPod. Turns out the bad guys decided that the appropriate place to mug someone would be right outside of a dojo full of Ninjas. Funny thing is that the group of shadowy assassins didn’t actually DO anything. Apparently the whole “sliding out of the shadows and scaring the crap out of you” thing is good enough these days. [Source]
• Ok, so I’ve already mentioned my hang up for Slave Leia. I truly thought there could be no cosplay greater. That is, until, I saw Slave Wonder Woman. Yeah. Someone enterprising young lass combined Slave Leia and Wonder Woman into one costume. I’ll be in my bunk. [Source]
• So Heroes didn’t turn out so well. I’ll admit that. I have to agree with Topless Robot, though, that the replacement isn’t looking too bad. Then again, all you really need to do is mention Summer Glau and super heroes and you have my attention. [Source]
• I guess Lost ended last night or something? I could be wrong. I mean, it’s not like EVERYONE AND THEIR BROTHER WAS TALKING ABOUT IT ON TWITTER! Hey, you know…I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but…I’m really kinda over the whole “bitching about spoilers” thing. If you don’t want to see spoilers, I’ve got a pretty far-out suggestion for you – Watch the show when it is on the air. If you can’t do that, just avoid the internet altogether. Seriously, kids. Getting pissy because people are excited about something they are seeing and want to talk about it on social media outlets (which is, you know, kinda what we all do these days) is just self-centered and ridiculous. You are not that important, and contrary to what you may think the internet doesn’t revolve around you. So…yeah…Where was I? Oh, right. Lost. I didn’t watch the show. No freakin’ idea what it’s about. But you can follow the link here and see some cats sum up the characters. [Source]
• You may not have heard of the group Improv Everywhere but chances are you have heard of some of their “missions.” Improv Everywhere is a group based out of New York that has a mission to create scenes of “chaos and joy in public places” and then post videos of them up on YouTube. Some of their more infamous stunts have included hundreds of people being frozen in Grand Central Station and a spontaneous musical that erupted in a mall food court. Their latest mission is a loose re-creation of the library scene from Ghostbusters, and it was staged in the same library. As amusing as this idea is, I have to be honest and admit that I’m a little disappointed in the execution. Maybe I’m just spoiled by all the great Ghostbusters cosplay I’ve seen at Dragon*Con, but inflatable proton packs? Really? That, and part of what made Ghostbusters great was the personalities of the main characters, and all these guys did was walk in and start chasing ghosts. I would have loved to have seen some interaction with the crowd “in character.” All that being said, 10 out of 10 for the idea in and of itself and for Improv Everywhere’s continuing effort to bring something interesting to our lives. [Source]
• You know…I laughed and laughed when they announced the Batman XXX Porn Parody. I chuckled when it went on to include other super hero movies. But now? NOW? They’ve gone too far. There is a Golden Girls XXX Porn Parody in the works. Just…God…I….Hold me. [Source] Video included on the original post is NSFW. Duh.

Ok…You know what? After that last link I’m done. Well, that and I have to go get Mama McGreevy from the hospital soon (Yayyy!).

*Ok, have you people SEEN my boss? In his full Pirate gear? With the weapons and the scowl and stuff? And his propensity to assign unruly minions to crappy track duties? If I don’t throw in with Team Pirate I’m gonna end up hosting a Hello Kitty Online panel. Cut me some slack, dudes!

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.)

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.

What does Grim do for fun, you ask?

Oddly enough, not much MMO playing.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still play a bit, but currently, I’m working on integrating this site with Facebook, particularly our new application and fan page.  Now that might sound perilously close to working on D*C, but I’m looking at this from a “hey, this is a technical challenge” standpoint and indulging my inner hacker by trying to figure out how all this stuff works.  It’s very much a work-in-progress, but it’s been quite fun so far.

Of course, my wife has a long list of suggestions for things to do besides Dragon*Con stuff, and I’ve been working on those too.  Expect things to be kinda quiet around here for a week or so, but we’ll be back next week for the home stretch.  If you really need to reach me, that’s what we have the contact form for, or you could even try Facebook or Twitter.  Less than 3 months to go until Dragon*Con!

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!)

• 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.

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.

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!.

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!.

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

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.

(We’re still revamping, but as soon as we’re done, you’ll hear about it.. I promise.)

-Grim