Everquest | Dragon*Con MMO

D*C 2010 wrap/track info from Krystalle

D*C MMO, Dragon*Con Guests 3 Responses »

Sep 082010

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

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

Track sponsors:

Guests / Panelists:

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

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

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

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

Staff

Kevin “Grim” Stallard -Track Director

Kevin has been speaking on panels at Dragon*Con since 2002, when he was (literally) pulled out of the audience to speak about EverQuest. (You can blame Trevor for that.) Starting as a MUD developer in the early 90′s (Star Wars MUD, RealmsMUD), continuing as a Guide in EverQuest, taking a bit of time to do some early beta testing on World of Warcraft, and finally winding up as a columnist at Massively.com as well as somehow running the MMORPG track at Dragon*Con, Kevin has done a little bit of everything from development to testing to customer service, to high-end raiding. Currently, Kevin has cut his MMO addiction down to Age of Conan and World of Warcraft.

Trevor “Palehorse” Legg – Assistant Track Director

Trevor has been involved in gaming panels at Dragon*Con for nearly a decade. Way back when EverQuest and Ultima Online were the only games in town (at least as far as MMO’s go), Trevor was running MMO panels as part of the EFF track (which still claims to run online gaming, much to our annoyance). In 2002, as part of a panel on EverQuest, he recognized a loud-mouthed smartass in the audience as a classmate of his from high school and convinced him to participate as a panelist for the next couple of years. Who knew that he would be responsible for unleashing Grim on the rest of Dragon*Con? (ed: Yeah, Grim wrote this… consider it incentive to write your own bio. That goes for the rest of you as well!)

Mike “Critus” McGreevy – Assistant Track Director

Otherwise known as the “Sane One” in the DC*MMO braintrust, Mike has the double misfortune of having to work with many of the DC*MMO staff on both DC*MMO as well as being their “Guild Lemur” in World of Warcraft. (yeah, Mike isn’t actively playing WoW anymore, but he’ll always be our Guild Lemur.) Mike is an accomplished thespian, and as a result of many positive mentions in his stage reviews has demanded to be introduced as “The Always Magificent, Michael C. McGreevy”. How he convinced Grim to go along with this idea, nobody is quite certain.

Krystalle “Netgoth” Voecks

In addition to her fine work on Massively.com (which is how she came to be part of the DC*MMO family), Krystalle is co-host of The Snarkcast where she tries, in vain to keep her co-host on topic. Krystalle is also our co-host for the World of Warcraft Meet and Greet, and will be one of our DJ’s for the MMO Gathering of Heroes party at Dragon*Con this year. Has the distinction of being the only member of the DC*MMO team who has played more MMO’s than everyone else on staff (combined).

Rafe “SHUT UP, RAFE!” Brox

When we absolutely, positively, have to get something done. Rafe is our “go-to guy”. For all the abuse that he receives at the WoW Meet and Greet (see above nickname), he dishes it out as much as he takes it. Rafe will be co-hosting our Fun with Funcom event this year along with serving as one of our two DJ’s at the MMO Gathering of Heroes party.

Rafe maintains his bulletproof, kilt-clad physique by engaging in a ridiculous exercise regimen (folks with a morbid sense of curiosity and/or a high CON score can visit Digital Discipline if they think we’re kidding about how insane he is). Also, along with Mike and Krystalle, he writes a gamer-flavored fitness blog at ShrinkGeek.com.

Jay “Muskulls” Sturrock

Rules for operating the Muskulls 9000 at Dragon*Con:

Point Muskulls at Target.
Activate Muskulls with large quantities of caffeine.
Seek shelter

Now that you mention it, that pretty much describes his play style in World of Warcraft as well.

He has also been known to pick up stray microphones and start speaking about guilds he has been in and how much fun it is to squash alliance players. Much like his in-game character, once he gets going, you would be well advised to seek shelter.

He was also responsible for the “Tauren Goal Post” and painted all the “Flying Gnomes” that you all love to toss, kick, and otherwise abuse.

Ian “Coffee Master” Wickenkamp

We love our Coffee Master. He keeps us going (and going…and going…) through the weekend with the most evilly potent caffeinated brew in the universe. Don’t plan on sleeping for a week after drinking a pot of his coffee. Ian has played many MMOs over the years, but only just recently got his first “end-game” character. If you do an image search for “Altoholic”, you will find his picture… a lot.

Jason “Jhaer” Pace

Jhaer, also called Jason, was formed out of the aether in the mid-1970s, which explains a lot. Raised on a steady diet of BASIC and ROM chips he escaped onto the Internet by modem – 300 baud, which also explains a lot – and wandered the digital wastelands. From the Solar and Barren Realms to Britannia, from Norrath to Azeroth, he survived the Trade Wars, the Global Agenda and the outbreak in the city of Malton, he has puzzled with pirates, freed realms, gone to wizard school and danced until dawn with heroes in spandex. He has seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. He watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… No, wait, that last part was Roy Batty in Blade Runner. But it could be true. Seriously. Either that or Jason is programmer who has gaming and movie geek issues. But, hey, who doesn’t? Am I right?

Jason also maintains a blog called Aim for the Head at http://weblog.probablynot.com

Jonna “Cookie” Crane

Cookie was raised in a government laboratory until the age of two, when she was rescued along with her partner, Wonderboy, by fellow captive Oh-Bob the monkey. Since that time, she has been secretly trained by Oh-Bob in the secret arts of the Orient to fight villainy and corruption anywhere it may be found. Her super powers include binge drinking and a super no-limit credit card. She enjoys flying, coffee shops, beaches, long scary needles and Chinese food, especially Kung Pow Kitten. She and Wonderboy could lay claim to saving the universe on numerous occasions if their rampant addictions did not get in the way, as it is, Oh-Bob tends to do all the work.

Her alter ego Jonna is rather boring and nondescript.

Brandy “Bumble” Parker

Brandy is your typical sweet and innocent, blonde and blue-eyed Louisiana girl. It wasn’t till LSU that she was introduced to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy, role-playing world. What is this “Dungeons & Dragons” of which you speak? Show me more ShadowRun and Vampire! Her psyche began to form another, more masterful side. Myca was formed on a World of Warcraft, wrapping up her stronger traits in Shammy Goodness! With her fist weapons of power, she joined her fellow lemmings of rabidness, leaping from high places and dancing naked in large cities! But there was another metamorphosis to be had…after many trials and tribulations, Myca had to be abandoned in limbo until a more fortuitous time is reached. But the other psyche could not rest! After attending dragoncon a few times, the many pirates, superheroes, zombies, and druggie muffinheads raised The Bumble from the timid recesses of Brandy’s mind! Her main thought? “Butt-kicking for Goodness!”

A Rant in F-U-Major

Gaming News 4 Responses »

Jul 062010

Ok, so I don’t do a whole lot of serious op-ed stuff outside of the SnarkCast…

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.

Season's Greetings from DC*MMO

Gaming News No Responses »

Dec 252009

Yeah, I know. We haven’t been as diligent as we should be in updating the site with the latest and greatest news in MMO land. On the other hand, we’re too busy playing them to write much.

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.

Oh, and another sign that we're getting close...

D*C MMO, Dragon*Con 3 Responses »

Aug 132009

You may see this plastered somewhere around the convention. When I tell you that we can always use creative talent, this is why. I actually had to do this bit of photoshoppery myself.

Oops, sorry!

D*C MMO, Dragon*Con 2 Responses »

May 312009

I know I promised you guys more frequent updates. Consider this a mini-update until I have time to write a real one later this week.

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-babe, Grim, Crumpster, and "Meridian 59 Guy")

(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.

Kicking it OLD school at Dragon*Con

D*C MMO, Dragon*Con No Responses »

Apr 192009

Every now and then, you stumble across something you didn’t have any idea existed.

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

Gathering of the Guilds
MP3

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

Palehorse
Elonka Dunin
Waylon Adams

Attendance: 70

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

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

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

Dragon*Con MMO Podcast #1

Podcast 1 Response »

Apr 032009

Join us for thrills, chills, and more as the two snarky emcees from Dragon*Con’s MMO track settle down and talk geek. For this, our first-ever D*C MMO podcast, we touch briefly on some of the lessons learned from running the track last year, and some of the things we’re doing to make this year rock much harder. Curious as to who we’ve booked as guests and who we’re in talks with? You’ll get the behind the scenes scoop on all the latest MMO track happenings with a hint of general MMO news as Kevin and Krystalle wander across the Dragon*Con landscape.

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].

D*C MMO Podcast, Episode I [19:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (517)

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.

DC-MMO Update - March 30, 2009

D*C MMO No Responses »

Mar 302009

Welcome to the first weekly installment of the DC-MMO Update. Now that we’re about 5 months away from Dragon*Con, and preparations are underway in earnest, it makes sense for us to keep everyone up to date on where we are.

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!.

About

DC*MMO is a year-round community of gamers and fans of the MMORPG Programming Track at Dragon*Con. Rather than update a Facebook page, a LiveJournal page, a Twitter feed, a MySpace page, and a hundred other sources of information, we created this site as the official source of all news and information of interest to the DC*MMO community.

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.

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