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On This Day In Gaming History...
| 2001, Richard "Lord British" Garriot announces new online game in development, Tabula Rasa. |
| 2003, Ubi Soft's servers for Shadowbane crash and burn with players unable to log into the game for over 10 hours, soon after the largest beta guild within game quits enmass. |
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E3 2003: Our Grand Adventure
The Electronic Entertainment Expo held once a year for three days in Los Angelese has become the industry's most important annual gathering place for computer and console gaming. Over 60,000 of the world's most influential retailers, distributors, developers, investors and media gather here for three days of intensive marketing for their products. There's nothing else like it in the world. We were there to check out the MMO Games!
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E3 2003: Our Grand Adventure - Div Devlin (05-19-03)
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| When you know, you have arrived. |
Ahh E3. Nothing like hanging in beautiful smog filled Los Angeles for a couple of days within a city that does not even have real trees! Where everyone can hang with sixty thousand industry types as they showcase what is hot and coming soon for the gaming enthusiast. PC addicts and console junkies are in heaven, or like a kid in a candy store with so many treats. And the booth babes, a story unto itself!
Sachant, Rayven, Valk, qx, Maestro, and I were really looking forward to attending E3 this year, more so for me as I've missed the past two with my last visit in 2000, and Sachant was not able to enjoy the show last year as she waddled (even though she does not waddle) around nine months pregnant. With so many MMO games coming out or being announced we had a full list of titles we were going to see.
No matter how carefully you plan something out, it always seems that Murphy's Law will dictate circumstances in which you are forced to just laugh while grinning and baring it as this year was no exception to that rule. A really good bud of mine once said that God is a comedian, and he enjoys playing sick and twisted jokes on him at the last minute. I think I came across one of his prankster moods.
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| It's not for real! |
If it could go wrong it did.
Originally all of our plans were set; appointments were scheduled starting at 8am on some days and lasting until 6pm. The show floor generally closes at 6pm with us knowing we would run over into scheduled appointments after the doors closed. Then at the last minute Maestro, one of our writers who was heading down with me had to cancel, which tossed up our plane tickets and hotel accommodations into the air. With new travel arrangements set and hooking up with Sachant and Rayven for lodging accommodations we were off and running again. I can't thank you two enuff!
The plane breaks down. It's only an electrical problem that consists of a mechanic crawling into some enclosed area and pushing a reset button. Yeah, sure right. Why did it take two hours for that? So now, I'm sweating bullets and having an overwhelming desire to get off the plane while suffering through nicotine withdrawal, when the plane departs. I guess someone decided to push the reset button. Arriving in LA E3 has already started local time.
We don't actually go!
Late and with the media information to get everyone in, Rayven and I finally arrive and go through a painless process of registration. Sachant comes down with a virus and never attends, while Valykrie and qx were thinking I died or something. Rayven in unknown to everyone until he is reintroduced as "Sachant's husband." Then bells click and people are talkative asking, "How she is doing," and "Where is she at?" That's gotta be a blow to the male self-esteem if your insecure in your masculinity! No wonder we spent so much time drinking at the bar with me buying the rounds! It is an E3 tradition afterall to stick Div with generous bar tabs.
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| Div happily toasted. |
Due to time constraints and being dependant upon others our coverage generally takes a nasty hit, since we don't make all the appointments we had scheduled. We can probably never make it up, as one of the number one rules which we have always followed is, "Make sure you make your appointments or reschedule, if you are going to mss them!" We are teh suck.
Names to Faces!
One of the best things about E3 is making new connections or finally meeting the folks whom you have interacted with during the past year, from developers, to publishers, to journalist. Associating names with the faces is never what you expect and we were surprised (in a good way) to finally meet some of the folks. We quickly learned that the Waterthread folks were really a bunch of kids, explaining why they decided to dodge us as we could out drink them and out cash them. GameRifts.com sets the new standard as the place for MMO games over thirty to get thier news and discussions! Maybe we shouldn't brag about that?
We ran into Scott “Unknown Player“ Miller who used to be part of UnknownPlayer.com and now is the Community Relations Manager for some kind of funky browser based game. No matter how I tried he just would not focus in the camera, you broke my camera demon spawn! He went on to brag that he had a booth babe in tow promoting his game. We never saw her as she had to leave, how convenient. People collaborated his story, so I just ended up making him cry and he left. When we have an official spokes model, she generally sticks with us for the full duration.
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| A Tale in the Desert Team. |
Nothing is as grand as being called a “Newbie” from those who have been around for a few years, one such instance is when we ran into one of the most respected net writers, Mark Asher heading into the Matrix Online private showing with Rich Vogel as we were headed out. Samurai Cat from SB Catacombs fits the bill as a younger version of Tom Selleck (or not!), and I was this close to just start referring to him as Magnum if you've never met him, who is also a definitely cool guy. We also had the pleasure of finally meeting David Ladyman and Beth Loubet from MOG Magazine making the rounds. At some points we were actually running into each other at the same booths. Go subscribe to their magazine!
Were missing about fifty or so people that we met and talked with, that we will never be able to do justice to, so to everyone that we didn't list, shout outs to all of ya! It was good meeting everyone, including all you corporate folks doing the development and publishing for the games were most looking forward too!
Funny Stuph:
One of the humorous tales, that really sucked, had to do with Gabe and Tycho the comic duo who fit the bill as stand up comics from Penny Arcade that were brought in by E3 to do autograph signings since they are in fact celebrities. Once you have a lawsuit tossed at you or are syndicated in a half dozen publications, I'd say you are a star. They originally set up to do signings in one of the halls, but quickly the space allocated to them could not handle the crowd they gathered. So, they were asked to move shop into an entrance area. Easily done. But as the crowd grew larger, they were asked to move outside. Once outside, we hear tell they were told to take it to the curb! What's up with that! But they sure did get some hot chicks hitting them up. I think many a gal was upset that they are happily married, and portray themselves in their comics based on their self-image of still being young and single. At least they got to watch her ink dry.
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| America Army Protecting E3 |
Where is teh Shadowbane!
This is probably the first year that Shadowbane did not have a presence at E3. We were disappointed in a large way as there are numerous questions we wanted to have asked. Also, we would think that so soon after the launch of Shadowbane, Ubi Soft would be actively PROMOTING the game's strong points to get it back in the news and increase it's player base. This was not the case. Can we say that the publisher no longer cares about the state of Shadowbane? Some major internal politics must be going on within. While Wolfpack Studios and Shadowbane did not have a presence, they did have people present. I jumped on Sara “Lietgardis” Jensen to get a hug from her taking her by surprise and making me feel all special since I have not seen her in two years from when we first met at E32000 as a writer on Lum the Mad's site, who was also with Damion “Ubiq” Schubert for the producer for Shadowbane who promptly turned his back on me and walked away after introductions were exchanged. That blew the mood of getting a hug from Lietgardis putting me back in my place.
Where is the Content!
Over all it was a good show for meeting and greeting people. A lot of game companies are in the pinch cycle as well, so not a ton of phat lewt was going around. Some folks would walk away with shopping bags full of uber shirts when they left at day's end, but there was nothing to reallybrag about. The market sucks.
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| Show's Over. Leave. |
When it came down to MMOG's we were rather disappointed at the showing this year. With more then 20 titles showing off their fluff, we were hoping to see innovations. It was just more of the same-old, same-old. While the five year cycle continues to burn and churn for game development everyone is hitting on eye candy for the games coming out. The number one thing we heard was “This is just the Tech Demo of the graphics engine were showcasing right now.” Which left a lot of games devoid of content. Of course, content can always be patched in later right?
There are several titles that do stand out from the crowd, which we take a good look at since they are coming out this year to see what they will offer. One thing in common of all games besides not having major content to show case was that they all look really good. Eye candy though is not the pleaser we want or have been looking for. We want, Customer Service, We want Community Representation, We want Open Lines of Communication, We want to know how Bugs will be handled, and we want to know what's Different with your game, and not to mention another very important aspect of MMO gaming, is how will PvP be handled. All questions no one was really prepared to answer, “At this time.”
We will see how the games turn out, as we report on them in our “Smarmy Style” as one of them has to be a winner.
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Discuss: So, Div just pisses people off?
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