Design Notes

May 20, 2015

AQWednesday: Newsletter for May 22 Releases

Attack on a Titan: Wrath of the Flamelord

June 13, 2011

E3 Review!

Titan and I are back at the lab

Last week, Titan and I went to Los Angeles to attend E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It is the most famous gaming expo of the year where the biggest game companies in the world announce their new consoles and games. Those of you following me on Twitter got the inside scoop on some of our wacky adventures... but as promised -- you get the full story here.

Some highlights include playing the new Final Fantasy XIII-2, StarWars: The Old Republic, checking out the Wii-U, and seeing all of the crazy displays that these companies created. We met with one of the awesome co-founders of Unity 3D. He was probably the first person I met that talked faster than I do when I get excited.... and he talked 3x faster! We also hung out in my room for two hours with the President of Electronic Arts and the head guy from Bioware. It was REALLY inspiring (as I am sure you already surmised.)

Some AE staff do not have game-names... but do like Warhammer!

Earlier that day I was truly flattered when we walked by the Sony area and the President of Sony Online Entertainment recognized me! This was a pretty big deal to me personally because John Smedly (known online as Smed) has been a long time role model of mine. He created the original EverQuest. He is also one super nice guy who really loves games. You would be surprised at how few Presidents of major game companies actually play their games.

We also got to hang out with some big-wigs from Ubisoft (I totally scored Zhoom a pre-release copy of the upcoming Assasin's Creed) and... ok. You guys know me. I am literally on cloud 9 after this trip and am so excited I do not know how to contain all the joy. (And if you think I am happy, you should see Titan!) .

It got better though. We made friends with head honcho over at BigPoint and got invited to the most exclusive party at E3. Where, I am embarrased to say.. I was standing 3 feet away from Notch and missed the chance to meet him in person! (In all fairness, I did not know he was Notch. I only figured it out when I was telling stories to Rolith and it hit me who he was.) We cancelled our flights to attend, and PariahCon was the next day. So with less than 1 hour of sleep we got on the 1st flight back to Florida to try to make it to PariahCon before the panel started!

PariahCon review!

The plane landed in Florida. As I stepped off the plane there were only 30 minutes remaining to get to the convention before the Artix Entertainment Panel started. Which would have been fine... except that the contention was about an hour away. Worse yet, there was a 6-car pile-up crash on the highway which shutdown the highway (I hope no one was hurt.) 

PariahCon is a brand new convention created by a friend of Korin's. While small, it was super fun for everyone who attended. Nythera, Thyton, Faith, Safiria, Jemini, Stratos and other AE team members were running our booth and showing people how to play the AQworlds card game.

Cysero really does look like his NPC!

*Sad face* I arrived 30 minutes after our panel had ended. Cysero, who ran the panel (and was super fun as usual), told me on the phone that there where only a few of our players at this convention... and that I should stop stressing. ...and a little joke about how he hoped we could write-off those super expensive, last minute tickets to try to get here on time. But it was easy for him to be encouraging... he got to hang out with the players in person! But then it hit me....  because there were only a few players there, they would still be around after the panel and I could give all my attention to them when I got there! Which is exactly what I did. 100% worth the tickets! *Big smile*

This week in AQWorlds

After battling all this undead we are getting a breath of fresh air and returning to the SkyGuard storyline! Then, the following week we will return to DoomWood and enter... THE NECROPOLIS!