I know we haven’t updated the site much in the last couple of weeks.  Krys is getting ready for E3, and I’ve  been busy putting the finishing touches on this year’s schedule.

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!)