If you’ve ever used an addon for World of Warcraft, chances are that you have used something written by ckknight. If you’ve ever used Pitbull, FuBar, Ace or Cartographer, then you have DEFINITELY used something written by ckknight.
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.
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.
After a month off to tend to various injuries (Krys hurt her wrist, and Grim busted up his knee), Krys and Grim are back with another SnarkCast. Everyone and everything is fair game for our snarktastic duo this time around. If you, or the game you love, find yourselves in our cross-hairs, take solace in the fact that you aren’t alone. We snark because we love. (Except Gold Farmers, nobody likes those little idiots.)
So now that I’m on the shelf for a few days, I thought I’d take a look and see what else we could cram in to our schedule.
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 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.
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!)
9 game development companies (we’re not done yet…)
6 parties…
2 best-selling authors…
1 amazingly cool geek celebrity gamer babe…
a live action quest that lasts all weekend…
…and a charity event that we’re gonna make you bleed for. (Relax, it’s part of the blood drive.)
That’s what we have in place so far for the MMO track this year. More importantly, we’re not done yet.
We’ve got a few more commitments to nail down. Once we submit the final schedule to the powers that be, we’ll post an unofficial schedule here. Once the schedule is made official, we’ll have links to iCal and XML files so you can put the entire weekend of events in your phone or PDA. Why? Because we’re geeks, and we love our toys too.
Stay tuned, folks. We’re only a couple more months away.
I’m about to install the new Windows 7RC1 build on my gaming rig at home. I don’t know if this build includes DirectX 11 or not, but I am very much interested to see how my current MMO’s play under this new OS.
If there are any games you would like me to try under Windows 7, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
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.
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.
I’ve had a few e-mails and messages on this subject, so I thought I’d go ahead and throw this out there.
Yes, we have a staff slot open on the Dragon*ConMMO team. If you want to know what volunteers do at Dragon*Con, you can read this. Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the MMO team.
Being in the MMO group is a year-round gig. We start planning next year’s convention about 2 weeks after the end of Dragon*Con each year. What will you be doing?
Do you blog? Can you write well? That’s a start. You’re going to be participating in discussions on forums and blogs all over the Internet.
Obviously, you’ll need to be up-to-date on the latest and greatest MMO’s out there. If you “play WoW sometimes”, that’s not going to cut it… Ideally, you will have played 4 or 5 MMO’s and know enough about others to carry on a conversation without sounding like a total noob. We are especially looking for folks who play Lord of the Rings Online, EVE Online, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, or Guild Wars.
Do you know people in the gaming industry? If I told you to get in touch with a Community Relations rep at Flying Lab, would you have the foggiest idea who to call, or what game I’m referring to?
Oh yeah, you’ll also need to work your 20 hours at the convention. None of the year round stuff counts towards your 20 hours of time at the convention itself. (We had one staff member who worked over 60, that’s why we’re looking for more help.) We’re going to need you to be bright-eyed and bushy tailed, even if you get scheduled for a 10:00 AM panel the night after working a party until 4:00 AM. What’s more, you’re going to be dealing with game industry professionals, so you are going to have to be able to act like a professional yourself.
Here are some of the other skills that would come in handy in our group.
Photoshoppery
Designing your own graphics
Familiarity with Youtube and Flickr (You’ll be searching for videos and pictures a lot)
Public speaking (yeah, you might have to work a crowd…)
Willing to bring (and use) your own laptop to Dragon*Con
If you’re just looking for a place to work 20 easy hours in order to get a free badge, we’re sorry, but we can’t use you. We do most of our meetings throughout the year in Ventrilo, so you don’t have to be local to the Atlanta area. If you don’t have all of the things I listed above, but are willing to work like hell to learn how to do those things, that’ll work too. It’s a fun job, but it’s definitely a job. If you’re interested in working with us, drop us a line with your name and contact information and we’ll be in touch. Ideally, we’d like to have the last spot filled by the time the staff meeting rolls around in March.
