Greetings, all. I had fully intended to play Starcraft 2 much more on the second day, after visiting some of the panels, but I must admit: I was drawn to watch the finals for the various tournaments going on at the convention. It was very interesting to see high level play for RTS games like Starcraft and Warcraft 3. I also go to watch the finals for the 5v5 arena championships.

( We Stomp the Comp(etition) )

Blizzcon, part 1 of 2

Rawr, you all.

I've returned from Blizzcon day 1, and I am here to write up my findings. I did take about 3 pages worth of notes today, so I've taken the time to organize my thoughts and write them up. ( Nothing stays uber forever... )

Today was the final day of E3, and I went back to take a look at a few things I had missed. Also, I ran by a few booths I hadn't had a chance to really get into, and was pleasantly surprised by a few things.

So without further ado, here we go:

( E3 2k6Day3 )

And it is time for another edition of E3, rawrasaur style.

( E3 2k6Day2 )

Hi folks.

Once again, it's time for the annual E3 blog. I actually ran into my old producer this morning, it was pretty cool. Seems he is working for Capcom now. That was neat. But you probably didn't really want to hear about that, so here comes the news and information I gleaned from my first day this year.

( E3 2k6Day1 )

So... it's that time again. E3 writeup, final day.

I've got some new tidbits for you all. Today was shorter than the others, since it ended at around 4pm instead of 6pm, so I lost out on about 2 hours of potential show-seeing. Doesn't make a huge difference though. Here's what I covered today:

First, the big one. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

This game was both good and bad. I had to actually stand in line for over *four hours* to see this game, so that was the bad. The good is that the game is pretty much everything that people had hoped Wind Waker was going to be. No more cel shading, an adultish Link. The same targeting type system from wind waker and even nods from the N64 versions. There isn't much more to say than that it was really just classic Zelda stuff, with some new features that just seem like natural extensions of the game.

Link is older, but he still uses his shield and sword. One of the cool new features is mounted combat. Epona is back, I think. Link rides her, and can fight with baddies while on the horse. He can, of course, dismount for some toe to toe action, but the mounted sequences are pretty fun. They don't make a lot of intuitive sense... the sequence I played was pretty much chase down the big boss bad guy, while beating down his henchmen that are after you. While mounted, you can use your items and sword, and also use a 'dash' method where you kick the horse's sides to spur it into a burst of speed. The dash meter has a specific number of uses before it empties... leaving it alone for a while will refill it. You can also do the sword charge-spin move on horseback, it as pretty useful. If you dash while near an obstacle, you can jump the obstacle. You need to use a dash charge for it.

The dungeon area was also classic zelda in 3D. Open doors, hit switches, fight monsters, all sorts of normal stuff. The only item I had in the dungeon areas were the boomerang and the lantern. Light torches, get some extra oil for when the lantern runs out. Hit some switches with the boomerang, including some boomerang-specific switches (they looked like windmills that you whacked). The boomerang was cool, you could throw it at multiple targets similar to how you could in previous zelda games, as well as charge it up before throwing to bring stuff back. You could even use the boomerang's charged up item carry ability to pick something up and drop it in another location. When I fought the temple boss, I had to use this. The temple boss was a big plant in a puddle of sludge. The sludge was bad, it drained my hearts while I stood in it. It had two 'arms' that were pretty much biting plant things too, and had a bigger mouth that would spit purple goo at me occasionally. During the fight, a baboon swings back and forth carrying a bomb-type fruit or something. You can use the bomb fruit to destroy the sidekick plants, or to damage the boss plant into falling at your feet and opening its mouth, which leaves its main eye vulnerable to attack. The strategy was to use the multi-targeting system with the boomerang to carry the bomb fruit from the baboon to the boss plant's mouth, so as to chop away at its exposed weak spot.

In other words, classic Zelda. One of the things I saw in one of the gameplay movies was that there will be some new stuff as well. Link becomes a werewolf or something, and he goes into wolf form, where players will spend some of their time. There's also some little demon guy dude thing that pops up and rides Link while he is wolfed out. There was no actual gameplay of this though, so I can't say for certain.

Surprisingly enough, Zelda: Twilight Princess is a Gamecube game, and not a Revolution game. Cool stuff. It was a little bit pixelated though :( Zelda: TP also got Game of the Show. Somehow I get the feeling that's just because nothing else was just that great this year :(

Ok, with that being said, I'll go on to the other games I saw today.

-Oblivion, aka The Elder Scrolls IV. Sorry hal, it was press only.

-D&D Online. It looked a lot like LotR online. It also had a little D20 in the lower right corner whenever a character tried to attack; I thought that was pretty slick.

-50cent: Bulletproof. I kid you not, there's a thuggish game in the works starring the overrated rapper 50cent. You shoot people, live the thug street life and beat people up. It was really rather silly... just like Saint's Row and Grand Theft Auto, but with a famous rapper as the title character. I think the only thing about it that stood out was that after the guy ran out of bullets in his pistol, he threw the gun at another guy before proceeding to kick the crap out of him.

-Okami. The game called Okami looked pretty damn visually impressive. I'm still not quite sure what the game is really about. From the little I played, the game is about ancient japanese legends. The player spent most of his time as a dog, but the whole game is cel-shaded and has the look of those old classical brushstroke japanese paintings. It looked really cool, definitely something to look out for if only for its visual flair.

-Ogatama. This thing was just... bizarre. I noticed it while standing in line for zelda today. It's a pinball game... sort of. You control an army that is fighting an enemy army. You have a microphone, which you can actually give battle orders to your army (charge! move left! retreat! form up!). However, you also have this giant rolling ball that crushes people (friend and foe alike). The result was just... bizarre.

-Ghost Recon 3. This is a first person shooter coming for the X-box 360, and other consoles. The thing is beautiful. Really beautiful. Squad-based FPS military-style combat, with the whole thing pretty much being seamless. There aren't any briefing screens or big menus. Everything that's a menu or communication in the game comes from a HUD that's really an overlay of the existing game viewport. That means that you can keep shooting while you get updated objectives, and scan targets and whatnot. The devs mapped out Mexico City (with a few changes for the year 2013), and the place looks great. Deformable terrain makes a big deal, and the really awesome explosion effects are breathtaking. It was really only a gameplay movie, so that's a tough call to make as to whether it will really be as cool as the movie (all signs point to no), but it still may be something to check out.

-X-men Legends II. Apocalypse is coming, the bad mutants and the good mutants band together to beat him up. Good stuff.

-Conquer, part deux. I actually went to check out the Conquer game, and played for a few seconds. It's a 2D sprite-based MMOG. That's about all I have to say about it. It stunk.

-City of Villains, part deux. I checked out the gameplay. It looked just like regular CoH stuff. Still have no idea how villains level up.

-Mario Baseball and Strikers. One of the latest things seems to be expanding the world of Mario. Mario Golf and Tennis were pretty popular, so now Nintendo is expanding the games to include Mario Baseball and Mario Strikers (soccer). You play the particular sport with Mario characters, and certain added gameplay effects (super kicks/hits, items like starmen, fire flowers, etc.). It's a cheap and easy way to make some cash using a license. Who'd have thought?

-Phantasy Star Universe. Online Phantasy Star without the card battle. It looked cool.

-Archive stuff. Square-Enix is trying something new with some system. They put out a manga, mobile and PS2 game all set in the same universe and related to each other simultaneously. It's kind of like the SaGa Frontier stuff with all the different characters with interlocking stories thing. It looks like it has potential.

-Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. Midway isn't that good at making games. Shaolin Monks is a walk around and beat them up game, plus it has some fatalities. You can play co-operatively as either Kung Lao and/or Liu Kang, and you wander around and beat bad guys up. There are fatalities you can pull (on regular bad guys, no less) that are there pretty much just for visual flair as far as I could tell. You go from room to room, opening doors and killing bad guys. The graphics are actually kind of blocky and ugly looking. There was blood, but no damage showed up on the clothes or anything. When Baraka stabbed a generic monk NPC, there was a ton of blood squirting everywhere. However, none of the textures changed, no blood stains, no damage to the guy's head. Just blood. Lame. As I played this, it also experienced slowdown at certain points when there were too many bad guys on screen.

-Gauntlet: 7 Sorrows. It's gauntlet, which means you walk around and shoot stuff in a fantasy setting. However it's nothing like the dark legacy and whatnot stuff. It's much less cartoonish and more sword and sorceryish. Good stuff.

-Ultimate Spider-Man. Michael Bendis of marvel comics wrote the story for this game, and the game looked pretty darn nice. It's using the Spider-Man 2 engine for the freeform movement about the city of New York. It's cel-shaded for a cartoony feel, and has panels to explain things and provide exposition. One of the cool things about the new game is that Venom is also in it and a playable character. You can select Spider-Man or Venom, and each has their own abilities (Venom can regan life by... er... eating people). The engine is terrific, it looks very pretty.

Stuff I wished I could have seen, but didn't have time for:

-the Playstation 3 demo. I was in line for zelda for most of the day today. Sniffle.
-Metal Gear Solid 4. Hideo Kojima is back in the director's seat. Raiden is back, though I believe Snake is the main character. Hot damn, I want more info!
-Final Fantasy XII. Square's booth had these ticket thingies to go into their little theater to see the big stuff coming up from them, but every time I went by the booth they had no tickets >:O. Advent Children will be out in September. Final Fantasy XII looks beautiful. I'm told that FFXII actually looks better than Advent Children. Look forward to it.

That's all I can remember for now. I also caught Star Wars Episode 3 tonight. It was ok, did what it set out to do (bridge the first crap trilogy with the older, less crappy trilogy), but there were problems with it that bugged me. When the best and most interesting character in the movie is a 2 foot tall green CG midget, you know something is wrong.

--Rawr

So here I am, in southern california, 400 miles away from my home, and I am updating my blog.

Why, you ask?

Because it's E3 time! That's right, today is my first day of E3, and I am here to report what I saw for you guys, the adoring public. Recently, I lost my job. The project was restructured, and that meant a lot of contractors were laid off. Booo, hiss. Yeah, it sucks. So I am currently looking for work. Again. I got a few leads today, so hopefully something will pan out.

But you aren't here to read about my life story, you're interested in the stuff I saw, aren't you? So without further ado...

First, the request.

I was asked by a friend or three to talk to Turbine in specific, because they were interested in Lord of the Rings Online. It's a MMOG, but they have a few different design dynamics. The game looks like a more 'realistic' looking game; all the characters are proportioned realistically, and the only characters I saw were human male warrior types. They have a skillchain system in the game similar to FFXI's, and it looks like it's more skill-based than weapon specific like FFXI is. The weapon skill chain system was supposed to be very simple so that casual players could easily do them. The ones they showed me were both warriors... a knockdown attack followed by some sort of slam attack on the guy who was knocked down. The bad guys I saw were bandits who were raiding a town (who looked suspiciously like the player characters) and some really big spiders.

The colors were very drab though; everything looked very brown and very dingy. The buildings were all quite dark; I don't think it's the type of game I'd play in terms of atmosphere. The demonstrator didn't mention a lot, and the game is still early in the development stage. However, the game is very heavily instance-based, and the emphasis is all on story and plot development.

The graphics engine seemed quite nice, the water effects (except for splashes, which were not yet in) were fairly pretty. The stuff was mostly drab and brown though, but the shadows were all rendered quite prettily. The story-heavy emphasis means that pretty much all of the content is designed around either solo or small groups (called, appropriately enough, fellowships). The small groups will enter instances with each other (which will be level based), and they will have an episodic-type adventure. The idea is that there aren't really areas with thousands of other players that you have to deal with and compete with for gaming resources, but that you can go to towns and such to hang out and deal with them there for tradeskills, bartering, finding groups, etc. I think this has some interesting potential, because if most of the content is instanced, it allows the developers to have a much more story-rich multiplayer game. However, you're bound to come across oddities when people start farming the same instances for loot and the like... You need replay value of course, but farming for loot somewhat breaks the immersion of a story-based game. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, since it is still early in the development cycle. It didn't seem like they were releasing information about anything else further along in the game (raid content, leveling progression, etc.), so I guess it's best to keep your eyes peeled.

Ok, so I also stopped by the Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony booths, and I'll talk about that stuff next.

Sony didn't have any PS3 demo stuff on the floor. They probably have some stuff that's being shown behind closed doors; I can go snoop around tomorrow. The games they had displayed were all PS2 and PSP stuff. I have very reliable information that all the stuff I saw for PS2 that was showing at E3 this year will all be out by the end of the year. There's quite a few interesting games there, though they were also being shown at other booths.

Microsoft was pushing X-box titles, with a few technical demos and upcoming games for X-box 360. The X-box 360 is very impressive stuff; it makes FFXI look absolutely fantastic. If you've played the PS2 version, you know it's kind of grainy and annoying. I played the PC version, and even then I had some slowdown and graininess and such, because it is a port. The X-box 360 version is frickin' awesome. The graphics are crisp, clear and beautiful. It runs at a fabulous frame rate as well. There were some other demos for the 360, like Kameo, Saint's Row, some driving games, and some first person shooters. I was never that much into x-box in particular, so I didn't check out the titles at the microsoft booth too much. It didn't help that I got a phone call while I was there either =/.

Nintendo is crazy. Crazy crazy. The line for the new Zelda game was insane. Absolutely, positively, flipping lips and drooling insane. They had markers for people to go in and see it. "1 Hour wait from here." "2 hour wait from here." "3 hour wait from here." And yes, there were people in line as far as 3 hours away. I didn't bother; it was a bit too much for me. I did get to check out some of the gamecube, GBA and DS stuff. One in particular for the DS was a courtroom drama game. That was pretty weird... you had to look through your court records in the lower screen to make objections and counter the witness testimonies. Yeah, it seemed weird... not sure who'd buy a game like that.

Games in specific I saw:

-Kingdom Hearts 2. Yes, Kingdom Hearts is back, and it looks to be the same kind of fun, offbeat action-RPG type game that the first one was. Sora has the choice of Donald, Goofy and now Mickey to play with. I saw a boss fight with this sort of flying dragony thing from Mulan (with Mulan as a sidekick, naturally). There's also a new meter called 'Drive' (I can't remember the old kingdom hearts well enough to tell if that is or is not a new feature), that seems to unleash some sort of super combo or something.

-We <3 Katamari (yes, that is a heart). The sequel to katamari damacy, which is just more of the same. Roll a ball around, stick stuff to it. There's now a cooperative play mode, where two players can roll the same ball around together, but most of the time I ended up just fighting with the other guy for control of the katamari, and it didn't pan out too well. I didn't see anything else that was really impressive about it. It's Katamari Damacy; you should know how it plays.

-The Incredible Hulk. Again, it's another hulk game. It looks a lot like the Spider-Man 2 engine at work, except you have the hulk doing massive leaps jumping from building to building, and moving around a city to beat the snot out of puny litte guys with guns. It looked kind of fun, except the hulk games in the past have all been rather silly. This game was definitely cross-platform; I've been seeing it a lot. It is rather interesting to use a bigass truck as a shield against gunfire though :)

-24, the game. This one was a little strange, because it's trying to make a game from a TV show. The game pretty much plays out that someone (terrorists!) is trying to assassinate the vice president, and Jack Bauer of 24 fame must find them and stop it. The game itself plays out like watching '24' in that all stuff proceeds in real time (and with time limits!) but it's also full of a bunch of mini-games to play. The stuff they showed was Jack interrogating a captured person (which happens quite a bit on the show), where the player has to try to get the bad guy to respond by a variety of methods... threatening, soothing, coaxing, etc. to keep the enemy reactions within a specific level. Once you get enough info from the guy, you 'break' him and get everything you need. It does kind of play out like it does in the TV show, so fans of the show would probably be impressed. If the game really does play out a lot like the show, it'd be an interesting experience, though I'm not too sure how much fun the game would really be. And, of course, as such there will probably be 0 replay value. I did watch through the entire 2nd season of '24' lately, and I enjoyed it. Maybe that's why the game stuck out to me.

-DDR: Mario Mix. I kid thee not. DDR with classic old and new Mario tunes. It was extremely easy; even on the 'super hard' setting it was easy. There isn't much else to say about this one.

-Prince of Persia 3. PoP3 looks pretty interesting. I didn't really play Warrior Within, but I heartily enjoyed the Sands of Time (despite the girl being rather annoying). They are having some new types of gameplay, and sticking to the tried-and-true super agility of the prince. Now they are emphasizing a new combat system, called 'swift kill' or something like that. They are incorporating elements of stealth into the game. As long as the enemy is not aware of the prince, the prince can just go ahead and kill the bad guy in one move (usually... in a pretty bloody manner.) The prince has an evil twin in this game now. He runs through the streets of Babylon (his home town), and jumps from rooftop to rooftop. There's something big to do with Fire in this game... if he gets burned, he turns into the Dark Prince (woooooo). The Dark Prince is essentially the prince with white hair and a new weapon. He's got a sword on a chain, similar to Kratos from God of War. Dark Prince (DP) uses the chain to get around, swing on things, raise and lower himself, and also to decapitate bad guys. There was also a pretty neat Chariot sequence, where the prince drives a speeding chariot through the streets. He got to use a bad guy as a human shield for arrows, as well as a lot of crashing through stuff and stabbing things. All in all, it looked like a pretty spectacular sequence (though probably mostly lacking in gameplay). Finally, they did mention that the boss fights from Warrior Within (which admittedly were very few of in Sands of Time) would be coming back in a bigger and badder way, so it definitely looks like it will be promising.

3D Third-Person action-type games seem to be very popular this year. I saw quite a few others that were in a similar vein.

-Devil May Cry 4. What a letdown. I was hoping for some footage or something. When I got to the Capcom booth, I saw a screen with a countdown on it that said 'Devil May Cry 4' and a bunch of people sitting in front of it, so I sat down and watched. 15 minute wait (I sat down around 4 minutes to go) and then it aired a 30 second teaser, and then that was it. BOOOOO.

-Onimusha 4. Onimusha, but with a helper sidekick girl. Some blonde samurai with a red glowy sword on his back that beats up ze demons! He doesn't actually swing the red glowy sword; he has one of his own. I'd press buttons and sometimes the red sword would just fly around the samurai and cut stuff down. Not sure how I got it to work; I lost interest after a bit.

-Starcraft: Ghost. This game has changed a *LOT* since I saw it two years ago; but that's expected. The cinematic for Starcraft: Ghost was very impressive. It introduced Nova, and I got a chance to see some pretty cool epic battle-type stuff between the zerg (a horde of zerglings) and the terran marine corps. The sequence with the firebat BBQing zerglings until he finally gets swarmed under by them was pretty sweet looking; the mutalisks shooting the wraiths down in the air was very impressive too. However, that's about as cool as it got. The gameplay itself seemed a bit lackluster. I guess you should know a bit of background for this particular game. Blizzard isn't developing Starcraft: Ghost. They farmed it out to other software studios. The first studio they farmed it out to was called Nihilistic Software. They pretty much made the game a Metal Gear-esque sneaking game. You sneak around, you shoot stuff, you try your best not to be seen. And yeah, there are starcraft type guys in it... hydralisks, marines, etc. However, Blizzard didn't like the way it was going (I guess?) so they took it back and handed it to a new company called Swingin' Ape Studios. Now Starcraft: Ghost doesn't seem to emphasize the sneaking and stealth so much as a run-and-gun 3rd person shooter type game. They have multiplayer now, with 8 people running around shooting each other (as marines or ghosts), and that was kind of neat. However, I do feel that the whole 'ghost' thing seemed to be more a stealth type move than a shooter, so maybe I'm just not feeling it.

Edit: I've been told Blizzard *bought* Swingin' Ape studios. That explains a lot.

-City of Villains. Not really a new game per se, but it's a sort-of sequel to City of Heroes, in th same vein. A MMOG type thing (perhaps it's an addon pack for CoH), where the players are allowed to make their own villains. Super powers, super weapons, make your own evil lair, that sort of thing. It looked neat, though I would have liked more interesting archetypes. They have the Brute (tanker), the Dominator (controller), the Stalker (scrapper), the Destroyer (I think... Blaster... even had the same fire breath move) and the Mastermind (Defender, but with pets). Really, they seemed to be mirror images of the old game. However, the aspects of pvp and such did seem interesting. I wonder how they will play out the 'leveling up' of villains? The door missions in CoH were all about saving hostages, retrieving information and beating up the bad guys... will there be 'kill hostages', 'steal information' and 'beat up the good guys' for the villains?

-Soul Calibur III. It's soul calibur, it's prettier, it looked fantastic. New characters, new battle areas, better graphics. Not a lot else to see here; they didn't have a lot of characters finished. I got a chance to see Kilik, Talim, Astaroth, Berserker (I think he was like Nightmare... but maybe not?), as well as a new character named Tira (who is the one in all the pictures... she has that big razor hula hoop weapon). It looks like they are emphasizing the story type battle for each character, which is really kind of annoying. The story battles pretty much went 'read this text box and fight. read this and fight'. However... did I mention it looked fantastic?

Speaking of looking fantastic...

-Dead or Alive 4. Wow. Pretty stuff. Actual clothes flowing like the real thing. One of the new girls has some really long sleeves on her outfit. They flow around very impressively. Another of the characters has this chinese sword with the handkerchief-like tassel thing. It all moves very fluidly, it looks awesome. Yes, all of the female characters have the requisite gigantic melons as well. Also, the environments seem to come into play a lot more... I saw two characters fighting on a street, and one of them knocked the other into an oncoming car. Like... slam, person goes flying, bounce off car that drives by.

Speaking of flowing clothes...

-Some NBA game 2k6. This was one of the demos for X-Box 360. The NBA players look very good. Modeled faces and bodies, plus their jerseys are separate from their bodies. The jerseys are actually moving separately. It was really neat looking. Their crowds were animated and 3D models as well, but they kinda looked like crap.

-Saint's Row. A gangster simulator type game. You are a thug, you rob stuff, shoot people, try to extend your influence. Shoot the other bad thugs, become a crime boss, attract hookers, things like that. You can pimp out your car with shiny rims and new paintjobs, get bling bling rings, necklaces, etc. with your ill-gotten cash, and generally become a thug. Cartoony, but kind of disturbing.

Other stuff:

-I checked out the Square-Enix booth. They have some interesting things coming. Kingdom Hearts II is one of them, but they also have some other RPG type things coming. A new Dragon Quest (I think 8, not positive) is coming, that looked neat.

I also saw the FFXI Boss Fight spectacular. I saw a team from (I think) Leviathan try to beat the ???? boss from the extravaganza, to win (each) Pentium processors and motherboards. I think the processors were like 3.46 GHz or something, it was impressive stuff. The team was to fight Tenzen (and un-targetable taru sidekicks) from the Chains of Promathia expansion. He's a hume samurai with the topknot hair/headstyle. I saw them fight, and it wasn't that pretty. The team consisted of: Galka NIN (wearing what I guessed was Yasha gear and optical hat), Mithra THF (had a scorpion harness and some pink pants), elvaan War/Nin (wore adaman armor, but had a juggernaut and woodeville's axe), taru WHM/something (vermillion cloak), hume RDM (AF gear) and a hume bard (was wearing errant stuff). They started off fairly well, fought Tenzen for a while, then Tenzen used some TP moves and just blasted the crap out of the nin, and started shooting arrows at the WHM (or maybe it was RDM, not sure. One of the casters). Then Tenzen started busting out the TP moves and everyone started dying. It was odd; the ninja got killed, reraised (from goddess hymnus), then used Mijin Gakure right away. Probably shouldn't have done that. Anyway, he got raised and they fought him tooth and nail until Tenzen said 'enough's enough' and used some crazy TP move that hit area effect, and pretty much hosed the entire party.

One of the things I should mention is that I'm not sure if Hironobu Sakaguchi is still with Square or not! I saw a demo for a game called "Lost Odyssey" coming for the X-box 360. Sakaguchi is the executive producer, Nobuo Uematsu is the composer, and it looks like the character designer is classic Final Fantasy as well. The story was about a man who was over 1000 years old and could not die, and the wars and events he's witnessed. It seemed pretty interesting. However, the weird thing was that I didn't see ANY mention of Square-Enix from that at all in the advertisements. Weird stuff!

It's rather odd. I'd rank the NCSoft booth as the absolute most annoying booth there. Extremely loud. Like... rock concert loud. It was annoying, as well. They had a number of drum sets on a stage, where they had people banging on them to make a big beat, while they had dancers and such on stage. Some of them ate fire, some of them twirled flags or batons, or whatever. Most were very scantily dressed. Drum beat was very long and very loud. I have no idea what the hell they were thinking about while doing it. It had nothing to do with games. I guess they just wanted to attract attention. I get the feeling that a certain perv I know spent most of his time here. Or at the Conquer booth.

The second most annoying was the Conquer booth. Conquer is a _FREE_ MMOG. Free client, free gameplay. Free. That's its claim to fame. It's getting bigger, but I have no idea how the gameplay is. They didn't really demo it. They just had a bunch of booth babes dance and such, to try to attract attention.

I'll be going back tomorrow. My hitlist for stuff includes:

-Oblivion (Elder Scrolls 4, aka Morrowind Sequel)
-DnD Online
-Zelda (... maybe)
-Obsidian (NWN 2)

If you want me to go after anything else in specific, please post a comment and let me know; I'll check back before I leave for the convention tomorrow.

Edit: Oh right, I had forgotten. I also spent a good amount of time at the Blizzard booth playing with the Battlegrounds on the test server in World of Warcraft. I had a chat with a certain Assistant Community Manager (yes, I met Caydiem), and we discussed the game (along with a few other things that I don't think I'll go into). Also spoke to a level designer from Blizzard, and really all things are still coming. The Blizzard devs really don't consider WoW anywhere near complete yet, or even close to complete. Battlegrounds and the next content patch are due out in June (yes, I really *DID* get an ETA from Caydiem... she even made a joke about it. I have her business card and all). Upcoming PvE stuff is pretty much going to be Blackwing's Lair (tier 4 raid content... with 5 being molten core and 6 being onyxia), and then further down will be Zul'Gurub in Stranglethorn, which will be similar to Upper Blackrock Spire. It's estimated to be around 2 hours to complete, with similar rewards and challenges. It would be nice to have alternatives, that's for sure. Right now Battlegrounds are #1. I think the Warsong Gulch one looked rather interesting... a 10v10 capture the flag game. I had a chance to play as a Troll Rogue with a felstriker, heartseeker, full Nightslayer armor, Onyxia Tooth Pendant... it was just crazy what I could do with her. Nightslayer stuff looks pretty impressive too. For anyone who plays on the test server, go check out the battlegrounds on the test server between 10am and 6pm PST. You'll get a chance to see some damn uber equipped characters.

--Rawr