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Live from E3: "Like Pickles"
Posted: Friday May 20th, 2005
by
I was supposed to be at the convention hall to meet with the folks at Ignited Minds, to hopefully secure an advertising relationship. But, after days of phone tag and a very long first day (7am to 4am) I wasn't really feeling up to getting there in a timely fashion.
I did try again to get information about where to meet up with the people of Ignited Minds, but to no avail. So, I spent the time wandering around looking at more stuff. Funny how, no matter how many times you walk through the place, there STILL always something new to see.
So the first place I hit up was the Turbine booth. They were demoing both Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Lord of the Rings Online (which used to be Middle Earth Online). We hadn't secured an appointment to get a private demo, because their schedule and mine just didn't mesh well. So, I dropped the GU name and scored a press kit anyway. Information about the games is stored on a 128 Meg USB flash memory drive which now dangles from my E3 Lanyard. But, like all the other games, I'll tell you more about all of that as soon as I get back from E3.
From there, after meeting briefly with Kudane from EQInterface, I wandered off to play with more stuff.
I spent some time watching a live dance show at the Club Revolution booth (Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania, etc). It was great, chicks spinning on their heads and everything. I got myself a picture of an oversized Shadow the Hedgehog, watched a martial arts exhibition based on two Soul Calibur III characters, then had to rush off to my appoint with Blizzard.
In the mad press of bodies packed in too tight a space, all moving as quickly as possible in an infinite number of directions, I lost my cellphone. Of course, I didn't realize this, until my appointment had begun. I felt like a complete idiot. It was holstered on my belt, and someone in the crowd obviously dislodged it. But, lost phone or no, I was demoing Starcraft: Ghost and that's all that mattered at the moment. Phones... can be replaced.
Ghost, in a word, is awesome. Of all the console games I've seen on the convetion floor over the last two days (and there have been a LOT) this is by far the best. I can't wait for this one to hit the shelves. The question on't be "will I buy it?" or "when?" but "which console?".
From there, I moved staight into the WoW segment of my Blizzard appointment. The time there focussed primarily on the upcoming Battlegrounds patch. Alex, my demoer, was very tight lipped on the next content push. Not that I could have heard him if he'd told me anyway. The sound in South Hall is so ridiculous, I'll likely still be hearing cheesy ass techno obscured by the din of droning throngs of people for atleast two weeks after I get back.
After the Blizzard stop, I spent some time searching for my phone. Ultimately, I found nothing. And after having Verizon set the phone to "receive calls only", I continued about the business of attending E3, had some lunch, wandered around some more, etc etc etc. Yeah, today was my "slow day". Then headed off for an appointment with the Nevrax folks to see what's up with Ryzom.
Now, I haven't really given Ryzom much GU time, but that's likely fixing to change. Ryzom Ring is coming out soon an it puts the RP back in MMORPG. It's one thing to have instances to play around in... it's quite another to offer the gamers tools to create their OWN instances. You can tailor make encounters, etc. But, again, I'll get into that when I get home. They also loaded me down with swag, and demoed "Outposts", the next Ryzom extension, for me.
I had nothing left to do with the remaining hour, so, I headed back out in the infinitely more quiet West Hall. Got a gander at some kickass accesories coming out for the PSP from Nyko, and headed off into Midway's arcade room to have a look. Bumped into my pal Roy from Sony, and after watching him and my girlfriend play some Gauntlet, I called it a day and headed off to dinner.
Hopefully, the "down" day will have replenished my energy to handle tomorrow, which is full of appointments again. And, it's a short day (ending two hours early) so I'm really ging to have to be on my toes.
Note: For those of you interested in the cellphone story...
I did find out during dinner that someone had turned my phone in to on of the boothes, so it's not gone permanently. The people went down my "phone book" list calling people until they got to my girlfriends number. I can only imagine how confused my MOM must have been when a little Japanese woman called her about her sons lost phone. Wheee!
____________________
Today's Celebrity Sighting: John Romero
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I did try again to get information about where to meet up with the people of Ignited Minds, but to no avail. So, I spent the time wandering around looking at more stuff. Funny how, no matter how many times you walk through the place, there STILL always something new to see.
So the first place I hit up was the Turbine booth. They were demoing both Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Lord of the Rings Online (which used to be Middle Earth Online). We hadn't secured an appointment to get a private demo, because their schedule and mine just didn't mesh well. So, I dropped the GU name and scored a press kit anyway. Information about the games is stored on a 128 Meg USB flash memory drive which now dangles from my E3 Lanyard. But, like all the other games, I'll tell you more about all of that as soon as I get back from E3.
From there, after meeting briefly with Kudane from EQInterface, I wandered off to play with more stuff.
I spent some time watching a live dance show at the Club Revolution booth (Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania, etc). It was great, chicks spinning on their heads and everything. I got myself a picture of an oversized Shadow the Hedgehog, watched a martial arts exhibition based on two Soul Calibur III characters, then had to rush off to my appoint with Blizzard.
In the mad press of bodies packed in too tight a space, all moving as quickly as possible in an infinite number of directions, I lost my cellphone. Of course, I didn't realize this, until my appointment had begun. I felt like a complete idiot. It was holstered on my belt, and someone in the crowd obviously dislodged it. But, lost phone or no, I was demoing Starcraft: Ghost and that's all that mattered at the moment. Phones... can be replaced.
Ghost, in a word, is awesome. Of all the console games I've seen on the convetion floor over the last two days (and there have been a LOT) this is by far the best. I can't wait for this one to hit the shelves. The question on't be "will I buy it?" or "when?" but "which console?".
From there, I moved staight into the WoW segment of my Blizzard appointment. The time there focussed primarily on the upcoming Battlegrounds patch. Alex, my demoer, was very tight lipped on the next content push. Not that I could have heard him if he'd told me anyway. The sound in South Hall is so ridiculous, I'll likely still be hearing cheesy ass techno obscured by the din of droning throngs of people for atleast two weeks after I get back.
After the Blizzard stop, I spent some time searching for my phone. Ultimately, I found nothing. And after having Verizon set the phone to "receive calls only", I continued about the business of attending E3, had some lunch, wandered around some more, etc etc etc. Yeah, today was my "slow day". Then headed off for an appointment with the Nevrax folks to see what's up with Ryzom.
Now, I haven't really given Ryzom much GU time, but that's likely fixing to change. Ryzom Ring is coming out soon an it puts the RP back in MMORPG. It's one thing to have instances to play around in... it's quite another to offer the gamers tools to create their OWN instances. You can tailor make encounters, etc. But, again, I'll get into that when I get home. They also loaded me down with swag, and demoed "Outposts", the next Ryzom extension, for me.
I had nothing left to do with the remaining hour, so, I headed back out in the infinitely more quiet West Hall. Got a gander at some kickass accesories coming out for the PSP from Nyko, and headed off into Midway's arcade room to have a look. Bumped into my pal Roy from Sony, and after watching him and my girlfriend play some Gauntlet, I called it a day and headed off to dinner.
Hopefully, the "down" day will have replenished my energy to handle tomorrow, which is full of appointments again. And, it's a short day (ending two hours early) so I'm really ging to have to be on my toes.
Note: For those of you interested in the cellphone story...
I did find out during dinner that someone had turned my phone in to on of the boothes, so it's not gone permanently. The people went down my "phone book" list calling people until they got to my girlfriends number. I can only imagine how confused my MOM must have been when a little Japanese woman called her about her sons lost phone. Wheee!
____________________
Today's Celebrity Sighting: John Romero
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