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On This Day In Gaming History...
| 1999, Carnage becomes name of past as Wolfpack announces development of Shadowbane. |
| 2003, Mutable Realms and Themis Group announce partnership for "Wish" beta, where Dave "Mahrin Skel" Rickey formerly of Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot is spotted as the Lead Designer. |
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Special Sections: Gen Con '02
After a long night of walking the streets of Milwaukee when our ride took off, even after leaving three notes on the car, we drop Donelle off at her hotel; Maestro and I then take a taxi back to our hotel. Exhausted and tired due to the way construction works we were pissed. Turns out they do all highway repairs at night and close off major parts of the highway! That's ok, as the next day we hit the Con and invaded the Main hall. The Main Hall is located on the third floor of the Convention Center, and this is where anyone who is someone in the industry is!
This is the third part of our GenCon Journal, both part one and part two have already been printed for you to enjoy.
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Invasion '02! - Div Devlin (08-11-02)
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| Welcome to GenCon! |
You can get all your gaming needs and dreams fulfilled in the hall, dealers from around the world showcase all their wares in what is the largest and oldest gaming convention in North America. Dice, Games, Clothes, Games, Maps, Games, Miniatures, Cards, Games, Guest's of Honor, demo's, and more games are all jam packed inside a hall that is too small for the attendees and exhibitors. Part of the reason that this is the last year of the Fair in Milwaukee as it moves to Indianapolis next year. More room, better housing and hopefully a better deal for the exhibitors.
As the horn sounds and the doors open, gamers who have been camping the zone entrance rush towards the spawn of their preferred vendors to get the latest new release before anyone else can. Traditionally GenCon has been a paper gamers market, but as more and more MMO companies try to capture the shares of larger audiences, this year is dubbed as the mini-E3, where game companies can market themselves to a public audience that well... loves games! Most of the gamers in the rush know exactly what they want and where to go as they have memorized the maps heading to their spot! As Maestro says:"I've never seen gamers move so fast!"
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| Domination by WoTC Castle! |
Normally when you hit the main hall, which is dominated in the center by Wizards of the Coast's Castle you hit either the left or right wall and make your way looking at each vendors booth in a giant flea market style as they hawk their wares and attempt to draw you into a spending spree you can not afford. Rokin doubted me when I told him to bring a backpack as he was going to walk out with a ton of free promotional materials from each company! If you are a gamer and want free stuff, you will get tons of it here! Going out of order and hitting the booths not in the way we visited them we made our first stop, and finally after three pages of writing begin to get to the games already! Which according to Maestro:"Took long enough!"
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| Nik "Azeraphel" Davidson |
Asheron's Call 2 otherwise known as "The Fallen Kings" takes place 300 years after the original storyline in Asheron's Call. A lot has changed with the game from the original. I confess I have not touched AC since I was in Beta back in the day. Nik "Azeraphel" Davidson the Lead Designer from Turbine was on hand showing demos and fielding questions from eager fans that, "Wanted to play today!" It was reminiscent of the Shadowbane fans! Talking a little about the game we were impressed and the hype we have been hearing from within the community is well worth it.
The game has just about been gutted and rebuilt from the ground up, or in this case the game engine. Players will be able to play more then just the human races now with an expanded choice of either the Tumelok or Lugian as well. A new economy system is also in the game that leaves us a little confused, but that's ok as we are all about the PvP. The PvP system is broken into a type of Realm vs. Realm action (ala DAoC or factions in Ultima) where players can be part of one of three kingdoms, for those who do not want to live PvP 24x7. Plans are to include arena's where anything goes as well as an entire PvP server (ala DarkTide) for the die-hard PvP'er.
The game looks good (some shots in our gallery), and from the demo we were able to see plays good as well. One thing we couldn't help but notice and just have to share is that the whole hype for AC2 GenCon was great. Players really want to get into Beta for this game, and AC2 was willing to oblige by giving beta disks to those who stopped by the Microsoft booth after signing the NDA. One player walked away with 15 beta disks, when we asked how he managed that, he replied:"While the Shadowbane server was down, I used their pc's to make some hotmail accounts."
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| Gigarauth! |
Our apologies go out as well to Nik Davidson who was more then willing to sit down with us for a short ten question Q&A about the game. We kept running into scheduling conflicts and could not get to him before the show opened (Something about us not getting there before 11am after consuming mass quantities of alcoholic beverages each night before played no part in it!).
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If a side hobby of yours is playing cards, there were quite a lot of card games to ease your pain and suffering with money sinks (no offense to the rabid collectors out there!). According to Rokin:"Your like an 80's flashback that should be playing in Whitesnake or something!" I preferred Great White as Whitesnake was a grrl band, so it was a coincidence when we ran into this game.
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| Band Grrls Not Included! |
Battle of the Bands is a card game made by Third World Games; a semi-adult themed game where up to six players can play in a "Battle of the Bands." You take your garage based band and in a cut-throat battle attempt to rise through the circuit of jam sessions, or as they say: "Get groupies, cut hit singles, do drugs, go on tour, and sabotage your competition all the way to the top with this funny and fast paced card game! Choose your band members from a collection of crazy characters! Get an instrument, get a reputation and become a star...or worse!" The characters are exactly that, crazy and spoof some of the greats we all know and hate; you are uber though when you have Death in your hand. It takes a little getting used to if you're hanging, but after a few times playing you can become a "rock gawd!" It's more fun then watching MTV, and for those who are not musically inclined with a guitar you don't have to worry about your fingers bleeding! If you have freinds then get this game, it's priced decent and is a lot of fun!
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If you are tired of your younger brothers, sisters assorted siblings or kids in general getting into your card collections and drooling all over them then here is a great solution, and adults can play it too!
Blink is a card game made by Out of The Box Publishing, which is exactly what they say it is. A fast paced card game that two players can play in a cross between war and Uno. You split the deck in half and have a discard pile with a hand of three cards. You then take turns discarding your cards matching them to the discard pile in colors, symbols or numbers. The first one out of cards, Wins! It makes you want to win and moves to fast to cheat. While adults can play it (not recommended if you were out drinking) with more then one deck while at a party we found it addicting, so whoever took my deck of cards, give them back! I wanted to give them to my kid! This is a great game for kids!
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Finally if you are a diehard card gamer, and need that must-have-hard-to-find-card, there is only one place that I recommend, mostly because they are really cool folks, but they are also from Chicago my hometown!
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| Runi from CardShark rocks! |
CardShark is the place to get your cards, it's similar to large auction sites in that it provides a market place for traders to buy and sell collectable cards, but is according to them is, "Radically different in its approach to transactions and community. With CardShark users have tools and programs customized for card traders that make buying and selling cards a natural extension of the game and hundreds of times faster than other auction-based sites like eBay."
I'm not much of a card gamer as you can tell, but these folks have come a long way. Last year they were hitting up folks and getting them sharked! This year they have a booth and are moving up in the industry as the place to trade cards on the net safely and securely.
Tell Runi we said, "Hi!" Oh Yeah, keeping with tradition Maestro and Rokin got sharked too!
Move on to page two and check out more!
Discuss: But... We want a Band Grrl!
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