E3 Debriefing

It’s over… This year’s E3 is over, and what an event it was. Not only was I able to get interviews with several developers, I also got the honour of meeting all the people I work with on the TenTonHammer network (excluding Messiah and Ralph’ who I knew from before). In the digital age it’s one thing to IM or email someone; but it’s another thing to sit down with them in a nice Italian restaurant with a glass of wine… no seriously we did… honestly there was no bar involved!

There were several surprises at this years E3, and I’m walking away wanting to play so many different upcoming MMOs that I may have to turn away from TenTonHammer to a life of crime (‘Ratboy’ has a nice super villain ring to it though…). I got the chance to interview several developers as well as informally stopping by their booths, it was an awesome experience. Here’s a quick list of games I was able to cover:

-World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade

-Warhammer Online

-Auto Assault

-Tabula Rasa

-Saga of Ryzom: Ryzon Ring

-Seed

-Gods & Heroes

-Hero’s Journey

All of these games I am interested in giving at least one try now! Some of the expansion additions are edging me back into playing WoW (feel free to send me flaming emails about this), however from the demo I saw of Warhammer Online, I think there is potential to unseat WoW as the headrunner of the MMO industry. Only time will tell at this point.

Since my main concern with this E3 was Warhammer Online, I think it deserves some special mention in what I thought about it. Messiah and I walked into that interview completely blown away by what Mythic had made in the span of only eight months. The gameplay, graphics, cinematic, and controls were almost perfect. I am still shocked at the fact that when I played the game in the demo booth at E3 it seemed like it was a complete game, and there were no flaws that I could find. I look forward to getting back the Q/A I had sent Mythic, they informed me that it would be ready soon.

The interview with the people from Mythic, including their Director of Community Relations Sanya M. Weathers was excellent. Mythic seems to be very excited about their own game, and are working hard with Games Workshop to bring the Warhammer World into the Online realm. The only downside I could find to the entire interview with Mythic was their response to the ever-important “cake or pie” question… I still think that “cheesecake” is cheating.

The other games I went through were also very impressive, with Hero’s Journey simply blowing my mind. The character creation system that Simutronics has put together blows every other MMO out of the water, even Pirates of the Burning Sea, and it’s a water based MMO! If there is a game of E3 that I could of being the most “well rounded” Hero’s Journey would be taking it, but I’m unsure if Simutronics will have the marketing power to get their game into the big leagues. The fact that Messiah and I spent about three minutes to make the many faces of Ralph’ was incredible and eerie considering there had originally been more character management options in the earlier version of Hero’s Journey.

Another special note has to go out to the staff over at Danish based Runestone Game Development who were extremely forthcoming and passionate in their interview with us. Nis Haller Baggesen and Jan Roed Thastum were both exceptionally professional with us and gave us a great overview of their game Seed. Getting to meet both the Lead Programmer and the Art Director for a game that is so unique and visually stunning was a great benefit to the TenTonHammer team. Of course the real reason for interviewing them was to further Boomjack’s plots of invading Denmark (past ‘Loading…’ article), but they were good enough to get an article written about them.

Going back to where I started this article, I really have to say that meeting some of the other TenTonHammerites was an excellent experience. There was no awkwardness, no asking of basic questions, no… instead it was directly to the raunchy awful humour that makes TenTonHammer what we are! I think Messiah and I made the rest of the team worried, just because how horrible we could be at points, but that’s just our mutual heritages and the fact that everyone likes to blame us. This year’s motto for the network became “Putting the Ass in Massively Multiplayer”, next year could easily be “Blame Canada”.

In fact there were a lot of good TenTonHammer moments this year… Our first dinner out as a team was to a Tempura Grill where our Industry Relations person Awenyddion was hesitant on eating the raw salmon presented to her, but took a bite saying, “what’s the worst that could happen?” to which the chef replied in a deadpan voice, “you could die.”. Sufficed to say, the line “you could die” was one of the most used phrases during our entire coverage of the event. Another moment that stuck out was Ethec’s “finger puppetry” (see Ralph’s blog), and the fact that during the rest of the coverage of E3 almost everyone did little finger puppetry comments when trying to get our soft-spoken editor to speak.

All in all, this year’s E3 was a blast! As a network we all agree that it was quite successful and that the content we got out was top notch, but that would be up to you (our wonderful readers) to decide. With articles that varied from World of Warcraft’s newest expansion, Tabula Rasa first impressions, Vanguard talking about their SoE merger, and even Wonder Woman getting thrown out of E3, we at TenTonHammer have tried to keep up our reputation of being the most direct and honest MMORPG network out there!