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

As always, if you know of a good video that you think we should post, send it in.

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.

I know this is a shock to most of you, but I went ahead and pre-ordered Cataclysm today.  For those of you who are considering doing the same, I’d suggest getting the digital download from Blizzard.  You can download the Cataclysm data files now, and be ready to go live the second the switch is flipped on December 7. (You know… after 24 hours of patching and emergency bug fixes.)

The good news is.  If you’re looking for me between December 7 and December 12, I will be very easy to find.  The bad news is, if you send an email, I probably won’t see it.  If you call, you will only hear grunting… and maybe the occasional “MORE HOT POCKETS!“

With the recent 4.0.1 patch to World of Warcraft yesterday, a lot of the new functionality for spells and talents has been implemented.  You can throw a rock and hit a website with commentary on the changes, but suffice to say that if you haven’t updated your addons in a while, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening when you next log in.

Be prepared for:

• Your talents are all reset
• None of your addons will work correctly
• Your spells don’t do what they did before.
• Stat changes are in place (no more spell hit or defense, etc)
• Your gems are all different (and will almost certainly need to be replaced)

Between Reforging and Re-Gemming my items, I spent around 4k gold last night. (In fairness, I did a bit of theorycrafting)  You’ve been warned.

December 7th, 2010.  A day which will live in infamy as geeks all over the world come down with the same mysterious illness.  World of  Warcraft junkies of the world, get your Christmas shopping done early.  Rumor has it that the game will be available for digital download as well as in the more traditional box format.  Regular edition will cost 39.99, and the Collector’s Edition will run 79.99.

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…)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

If you enjoyed this, check out the whole series…

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

… and one that isn’t JoCo…

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

The good news for us is that he is coming back to Dragon*Con this year to talk about addons, he will also be participating in our World of Warcraft Q&A where we’ll give you some inside info on the upcoming release of Cataclysm!

If you’re into Warhammer Online or Runes of Magic, you’ll even have a chance to ask him about addons for those games.

However, something happened today that got my attention.  I am more excited about this change in World of Warcraft than I’ve been about any change in any video game ever.  Considering that I’ve been a gamer for nearly 30 years, that is no mean statement.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

You can read the rest of the statement here.

Blizzard is making a ballsy move, and one that has been LONG overdue in online discussion forums.  You know as well as I do that Internet forums are a haven for trolls and other jacknuts who hide behind the anonymity that the Internet provides in order to act like 10-year-old asshats.  It’s darn near impossible for most forums to enforce any kind of meaningful identity check because it’s easy to lie about who you are and not get caught.  In theory, this is highly desirable because there are some fields of discussion where anonymity promotes freedom of expression.

World of Warcraft is a different beast.  Free speech rights are not an issue.  This is a close community of paying customers who interact with developers and other players in order to gain insight and information about the game they are paying for.  Why do you need anonymity for that?  You don’t.    Blizzard, the only party in this situation with any meaningful power whatsoever, already knows who you are.  They have the ability to link character names to account information, and all parties in the discussion are aware of this.   Now they are choosing to remove the cloak of anonymity in order to foster intelligent and more mature discussion, and I say BRAVO!

To be sure, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who want to continue to troll and act like jerks while hiding behind an anonymous facade.  In fact, if you will notice some of the complaints in the thread mentioned above, you’ll see some familiar guild tags to anyone who has any familiarity with online griefing and trolling. (<Goons> anyone?)

To those folks, let me propose an idea which might make everyone happier.  Leave the official forums alone.  Don’t post there anymore.  Start your own “Free for all” forums for World of Warcraft fans who want to engage in the kind of behavior that will be curbed by the lack of anonymity on the Blizzard forums.

This issue has been a pet peeve of mine for many years now.  As some of you may know, I’ve run an EverQuest online community for 8 years now.  While I allow users to select whatever name they like for posting on the forums, I verify contact information for every user who registers.  If someone logs in and starts making my forums an un-fun place to visit, I want to know who to go after in order to make them stop.  It’s not flawless, and I’ve had to play whack-a-mole with trolls, retards, and asshats on occasion, but for the most part users knowing that I know who they are cuts down on the jerk factor considerably.

Invariably, the issue that your garden-variety asshat brings up is “It’s a free country.  I have the right to speak my mind”.  Not on my forums, you don’t, and not on Blizzard’s either.  Rather than waste Blizzard’s time in tracking down and smacking down every jerk who wants to use his Internet connection as some kind of cathartic release at the expense of their fellow players, Blizzard has re-introduced the concept of community accountability.   If you want to be a jerk online then do what I did and start your own podcast/forum/blog.  You don’t have the right to trample someone else’s online garden.

In this episode, we discuss free-to-play games, games that are in trouble, and games that aren’t.  We give some props to the folks who are coming to Dragon*Con, and we HORRIBLY mangle the website for the D*C Digital Gaming track. (it is .ORG not .COM – I suck.)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Hit up YouTube for more of their songs as L70ETC or L80ETC…

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.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Earn Your Powers

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

And now you MMO, and MMOing is half the battle…

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

You can check out more of her work on her website, PVPGurl.com.

Image via ikayama on flickr

It’s Monday, MMO-keteers! You know what that means!!

No, that doesn’t mean it’s Music Monday. Sheesh.

BTW…You’re awesome if you got that reference and don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.

Yet again I have combed through hundreds of RSS links to pick out the choicest fruit for you, the faithful snarky flock of the Dragon*Con MMORPG community. Behind the cut below you’ll find the best geek news that’s fit to be transmitted in digital format. Well, ok…You’ll find the stuff that looked interesting to me before I hit the point where my eyes crossed and I clicked the “Mark All As Read” link.

Off we go!

• Ok, look. Japanese people are pretty kinky. We all know this, so let’s stop ignoring the elephant in the living room and acknowledge it. The latest addition to the Anime world is certainly doing so, and we might as well go along for the ride. A new animated series that’s going to be hitting the Japanese market is called Panty and Stocking, and the two main characters are crime fighting young girls named…wait for it…Panty and Stocking. Guess what you’re going to see a lot of in this one? Even better? One of them carries a gun with a barrel that is shaped like a pair of girls panties. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried, folks. [Source]
• Remember the Batman XXX porno parody I wrote about last week (oh, those were the good old days…how I miss them). The company behind that film has apparently decided that they aren’t going to draw the line at Batman. Apparently they are planning a whole series of super hero porno films. Me, personally? I wanna see what they do with The Fantastic Four. (No, I’m not filling in a joke about that…make your own…it’s easy enough). [Source]
• Heroes won’t be coming back for a fifth season. I wish I could say I was sad about this news, but I’m really not. Despite the fact that I watched the show every week, the fact of the matter is that after the fourth season they really didn’t deserve to come back for a fifth round. What started out as something truly amazing got ridiculous pretty damn fast. That being said, it looks like there is a possibility that there will be one last TV movie to “tie up the story line.” WHICH ONE??? Maybe the one where Peter left his girlfriend in an alternate hell future? Or…No…I’m gonna stop now before my head explodes. [Source]
• Apparently there are talks to bring Judge Dredd back to the big screen, and this time they are going to do it in 3-D. I’ve got kinda mixed feelings about this. I love Judge Dredd, and the absolute abomination that was the Sylvester Stallone film touched me in a no-no place and caused me to go into counseling for several years. Although I do have to admit it gave me great fodder for my Sly impersonation. Given the number of decent super hero movies we’ve seen come down the line recently I’ll hold on to hope that they might get it right this time, but I swear by all that is unholy in Mega City if he takes off his helmet in this one I’m walking out of the theater. [Source]
• There is, apparently, some serious talk out there about a Pac-Man Movie. I got nuttin’. [Source]
• Normally I try not to cover MMO related stuff, because I figure you guys get enough of that every other day of the week on this blog. This one was too good to pass up, though. Witness what happens when a very dedicated World of Warcraft player has his account password changed by his roommate. Oh, the profanities!! [Source]
• I love Dan Akroyd. I think he’s one of the most talented folks ever to come out of Saturday Night Live and many of his movies are fodder for my impressive arsenal of movie quotes (especially Ghostbusters…duh). Fact of the matter is, though, that the dude is kinda crazy. [Source]

OK kids. That’s all I’ve got for this week. Umm…insert some kind of pithy and witty end to the post here. I’m tired and can’t think of one.

Image via bark on flickr

Ahhh, Lazy Sunday. A day to rest and recharge for the week. Unless, that is, you happen to be on the Dragon*Con MMORPG track staff. If you are and your name just happens to be Michael C. McGreevy (which mine is), Sunday is a day for digging up a bunch of links about geek stuff and making a post with snarky comments about them.

Which, I suppose, isn’t all that bad in the grand scheme of things. He could have asked me to comb his back hair or something. Yeech.

Anyway, here’s your Monday Geek Roundup you lucky dogs! I tried to collect news throughout the entire week instead of just gathering stuff that popped up over the weekend this time, so you may have already caught some of this.

• I’ve always had a bit of a crush on Seattle, but a recent news item out of the state really cemented in my adoration for the city. The Make-A-Wish Foundation teamed up with the city to grant the wish of a young man who always wanted to be a super hero. Fair warning on this one, folks. If you’re the least bit sentimental it’s going to bring a tear to your eye. [Source]
• Rumor has it that yet another super hero franchise is getting ready to undergo the re-boot treatment. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles appear to be poised to take on the big screen again, this time with a slightly more serious tone. Anyone who read the original comics knows that the series really wasn’t started as a kids book (at the end of the first story arc Raphael ran Shredder through with his katana and then they blew his ass up). The mask in the link that follows is supposedly going to be in the new film, and it’s definitely a less “goofy” look for the heroes. [Source]
• In light of rapidly declining sales, Sony announced last week that as of next year they will no longer be making floppy disks. This really isn’t much of a surprise, considering that I’m one of the few people I know that still has a floppy drive in his computer. Really, they only thing they are good for these days is flashing the BIOS anyway, and most (if not all) motherboards will allow you to do that with a flash drive now. Still, I have to admit that this news fills me with a wee bit of sadness. Yet another computer staple from my youth is just so much landfill now. YOU KIDS GET OFF OF MY LAWN!! [Source]
• File this under “why the hell haven’t we done this at Dragon*Con?!?!” G4TV got a group of ladies together dressed up as Slave Leia and held a charity car wash. I realize that for some folks the whole Slave Leia obsession is probably tired, but as someone who was going through puberty when Return of the Jedi came out I, for one, welcome our new metal bikini clad overlords. [Source]
• Oh, you internet. You are so full of clever people. Like the guy who made a really awesome trailer for all of the big movies due out this summer. [Source]
• Looks like the new (and improved?) version of Clash of the Titans is going to get a sequel. I haven’t seen it yet myself, but most reports I’ve heard so far have been pretty solidly in the “meh” category. I suppose it has done well enough, though. Me, personally? I can’t get behind a Perseus that despised his clockwork owl. I’m 100% Team Bubo, ya’ll. [Source]
• Comicsalliance.com has a great little series of “comics that never happened.” While the original was great in and of itself, the recent addition of Aliens vs. Predators vs. Ted Nugent is a move I’d give up some precious anatomy to see. [Source]
• Turns out that Gene Roddenberry’s son is not, in fact, a Trekkie. I guess that makes sense. Children tend to rebel against the things their parents love in order to find their own identity. Hell, I once scolded my son for not playing World of Warcraft enough (no, I’m not kidding…I got over it). In an effort to try and understand why, exactly, so many people loved his Father young Master Roddenberry has put together a documentary called Final Frontier. While Trek documentaries are nothing new, if the trailer is any indicator this could turn out to be a very touching tribute to Gene. [Source]
• The upcoming Jonah Hex movie has a trailer, and while I have to admit that I’ve never read the comic myself this one looks to be pretty interesting. Even with Megan Fox in it. Yeah, yeah. I get it. She’s a hottie and she does geek movies and a lot of you love her. Sorry, my fellow nerds. While I admit she’s decent eye candy I prefer my “geek chicks” to actually have a brain and, I don’t know, some acting talent. I’m sure you have no idea who I could possibly be referring to. [Source]
• Speaking of my favorite red head – Felicia Day is going to be appearing in a SyFy original movie called Red. It’s a modern-day retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” in which the namesake of the story is a werewolf hunter. The movie is scheduled to premier sometime in 2011. [Source]
• Batman 3 has a release date! Christopher Nolan is going to be bringing the Dark Knight back to the silver screen in July of 2012. From what I’ve heard, Nolan had a three movie story arc in mind when he took on the original project, so this film should be the end of the hero cycle that he set up for the character. It will definitely be interesting to see whether or not The Joker makes an appearance in the next film. Heath Ledger pretty well changed the definition of the character and stepping in to the role after he did so would be intimidating (to say the least). That said, The Joker is, well, insane. Many of his personality shifts (from goofy clown to homicidal maniac) have been explained away as different manifestations of his demented mind. Perhaps the best way to take over the role would be to make him completely different? Details about the film are scant at this point, but we’ll definitely keep in on our radar. [Source]
• Ron Howard (“Opie Cunningham! Opie Cunningham!”) is getting his hands on Stephen King. Well, Stephen King’s work, anyway. Howard’s production company has just gotten the rights to the Dark Tower series, and apparently they are planning a big screen film that will be followed up with a television series to end the story. [Source]
• Marvel has released the first image of Chris Hemsworth as Thor from the upcoming Kenneth Branagh film. I have two words for you, true believers. Odin’s Beard! [Source]
• Apparently someone has optioned the rights to make a movie based on the Magic 8 Ball. You know, that thing you would whisper a question to and then turn over for an enigmatic answer like “Reply hazy. Try again later”? Yeah, that Magic 8 Ball. You know what Magic 8 Ball has to say about this new film idea? “Outlook Not So Good.” [Source]
• Remember the Diva song from The Fifth Element? Apparently if you listen to the commentary the director mentions that he created it by mixing together a whole bunch of different clips from various opera singers and then performing some computer wizardry on it. He goes on to make the claim that it was impossible for someone to sing. Welllll, turns out “impossible” isn’t a word that disneydiva7 is familiar with. She posted a video of herself singing the last part of the song, and she completely nails it (admittedly, the faces she has to make to do so aren’t exactly…normal). [Source]

That’s it for this week, gang! If you see anything newsworthy you think I should include in the Geek Roundup please feel free to shoot me an email!

Fear not, my fellow geeks.  WoW.com is on the case.  They have announcements and analysis for all of the upcoming class changes and it looks like every class is getting a taste.  The only class that hasn’t been announced yet is Paladins, but I think we can all agree that next to Warlocks, they are the class in most dire need of a severe nerfing.

Of course, we, the fearless staff of DC*MMO, are happy to do our part to repress, supress, and distress the Warlocks among us.  We even had a “Live-action Warlock Nerfing” at Dragon*Con a couple of years back…

MOAR DOTZ!

-Grim

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Find a good video made from or about an MMO? Email me.

Who is the tank?

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

(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”)

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!

In preparation for our next SnarkCast and because Krystalle can be, at times, a moderating influence on me, I have prepared a Christmas “Naughty or Nice?” list of stories, people, and things that have happened in the past year. Don’t expect anything even remotely “correct” or “political”.

Nice
World of Warcraft’s 3.3 patch
The new content is nice, but the LFG tool has made dungeon groups fun again. I don’t think I’ve seen a wait time longer than 10 minutes for a dungeon. I love to bag on WoW on the SnarkCast, but I must give credit where it is due. 3.3 has me playing again… a lot.

Fallen Earth

The folks at Fallen Earth have come up with a rather nifty game set in a Post Apocalyptic American Southwest. (Grand Canyon, to be specific)  If you’re in the mood to check out a game that departs from the average fantasy-based WoW clone, I highly recommend this one.  It’s from a small, independent studio so there are some warts in the game, but the community is tight-knit and the in-game customer service staff is responsive.  Enjoy.

Sony Online Entertainment

SOE has a lot going on.  There is a new EQ expansion out there (16!!!), more EQII content on the way, and Free Realms has gotten off to a very good start.  That, and Brenlo and the gang are lots of fun to hang out with at Dragon*Con.

Ok, enough of the syrupy sweet, here comes the “coal in the stocking”…

Naughty
Aion

A craptacular grindfest which is packaged in eye candy is still a craptacular grindfest.  The fact that NCSoft, a studio which seems all-too-eager to pull the plug on MMO’s that don’t make enough money for them, is behind it leads me to believe that this title won’t have much staying power. (Tabula Rasa, anyone?)

MMO’s which are basically LAN-party sized games with a giant chat lobby.

Ok, so it isn’t Guild Wars’ fault that so many new games are adopting this approach, but for the love of Curt Schilling, can we stop calling games that are chat lobbies for 5-10 player “dungeons” MMORPGs?  Raiding Temple of Veeshan with 300 players is Massive.  Raiding Molten Core with 40 players is Massive.   Sitting in a chat lobby until you can mash together a 5 man group in order to run a dungeon is NOT Massive.  If you can’t get out of the quest hub and explore the world, it’s not an MMO.  If “the world” is instanced to the point that you have zero chance of randomly encountering another player in it, it is not an MMO.  It can still be a great game, but call it something else.

Champions Online

Ok, so I was super stoked about buying this game.  So much so that I got the 6 month subscription (thus guaranteeing me a place in the Star Trek Online beta, which I am currently enjoying)  I played it for about a week, then realized… Grind-tacular snorefest.  The comic book style graphics are interesting and the game has a world of promise, but do us all a favor.  Reduce the level cap by half and cram what content you have into those levels.  Gaps in content make levelling an endless chore.  If I wanted that, I’d have stayed in Everquest.  I hope Star Trek Online is listening…

As always, this is just my opinion.   I can’t help it that I’m right.

Merry Christmas!

-Grim

P.S. as an added bonus, and because I’ve mentioned her in just about every SnarkCast we’ve done, here’s a Christmas pic of Samantha.

The highlights:

• New Expansion coming, called Cataclysm
• New races for Horde (Goblin) and Alliance (Worgen)
• Level Cap raised to 85
• Skill caps raised another 75 points
• Lots of new zones in Azeroth, and mega changes to existing zones. (example, The Barrens will now be two zones)
• Goblin Racial: Rocket Jump  / +1% to casting/attack speed / 15 to Alchemy / Personal Hobgoblin servant
• Worgen Racial: Don’t need a skinning knife to get leather / Sprint / Worgen Form / Reduced duration diseases and curses
• Goblin Classes: All but Paladin and Druid
• Worgen Classes: All but Shaman and Paladin
• Following Item Stats are gone:  MP5, Spellpower, Defense, Attack Power, Armor Penetration
• Major Changes to: Haste and Block
• Reforging allows crafters to change stats on gear
• Big changes to Fishing
• No more spell ranks.  Spell power increases as you level.
• Warlock shards no longer stored in bags
• New race/class combos… Say hi to the Dwarf Mage (back from Beta!)

There are some more bits of information here, but don’t take my word for it… See for yourself.

Oh, and they unveiled the Monk class for Diablo 3, but this is an MMO site, and I’m sure none of you are interested in that.

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”)

(Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Jorgen Tharaldsen, and Craig Morrison, none of whom are big fans of World of Warcraft)

Fear not, my costumed brethren (and sistren)!

Some enterprising folks have taken it upon themselves to organize a WoW Costume group for the Dragon*Con parade this year!

(Wasn’t this contest supposed to be for ALL MMO’s? The Jedi is going to win “Best Non-WoW Costume” by default!)

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.

This morning, I get an email from Cameron (CKKnight) Knight, letting me know that he is coming to Dragon*Con and would like to do another WoW Addon panel this year.  After the reception that last year’s panel got, I nearly broke something (else) in an attempt to say “Yes!”.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mr. Knight’s work, he is the brains behind WoWAce.com , Curse Forge, and the Pitbull addon among other things.  He is also heavily involved with writing addons for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and Runes of Magic and will be joining us for those panels as well as the WoW Addons panel.

Just one problem.  We had set everything up to keep all of the World of Warcraft related stuff on Saturday and we are officially out of Saturday time slots.  (Yes, we are running 3 rooms concurrently all day on Saturday, and 2 rooms at the same time during the evening.)

So now we have some WoW stuff on Sunday too.

We are almost to the point where we are out of room on the schedule unless we start having a bunch of panels on Monday.  In fact, if you normally make plans to leave early on Monday, I would suggest reconsidering.

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

Ok, maybe I am that shameless.

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

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

And so it is…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But wait!  There’s more!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not much…

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

We’re gonna need a bigger room…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 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.