'Twas the night before PAX East, and all through Boston… aw crap, it’s snowing.

The organizers behind PAX East still haven’t quite been able to lock in a weekend to call their own for the event, but to be honest I’m glad that it falls before GDC this year. A little extra padding between the events would have been nice, but I’ll take what I can get.

In years past the ordering was reversed, with GDC getting as much as a two week jump on things. Unfortunately, however, asking certain nefarious press sites to sit on information for a full two weeks and wait for an embargo drop is like asking an orc to use proper table manners. It simply isn’t going to happen.

Either way, it seems like the event is starting to finally come into its own, with more and more top shelf publishers joining the party. While the MMO presence is still somewhat slim in comparison to the explosion of indie / mobile / social games developers this year, some heavy hitters are in attendance nonetheless.

While we continue setting up the Ten Ton Hammer mobile command center for this weekend’s outing, I thought I’d give you a quick overview of some of the biggest things we’ll be seeing and doing this weekend. Provided a deranged Barbie doll doesn’t feed my hands to her mutant My Little Pony scuba diving partner, you’ll be able to follow our coverage on the shiny PAX East event page.

Before I dive into the details on what we’ll be seeing over the next few days, be sure to tuck this little nugget of info in one of your brain pockets. If you have any burning questions about any of the games mentioned here (or about the event itself), be sure to shoot us a comment below. While I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to respond to everything asked, I’ll certainly make an attempt to as time permits.

For Whom the Blizzard Bell Tolls

Apparently Phil tried bringing his hockey stick with him to the event, but customs mistook him for Harry Dresden and confiscated the thing, noting that wizardry isn’t permitted in Boston this weekend. Shame really, as I’m sure we could have used it to secure a prime seat tomorrow morning for the big announcement from Blizzard. Speculation has been running rampant, and pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has a different opinion about what the Big B is hiding up its sleeves.

As long as it isn’t Barbie and her mutant My Little Pony scuba diving partner, we should be in for an awesome start to the event season.

Neverwinter, but not always summer either

Even if you can’t be physically with us this weekend, if you’re a Neverwinter fan you can be in spirit since the third beta weekend will be running concurrent to the event. So while you’re crawling through the virtual forest and hitting things with your +10 Stick of Stickiness, I’ll be stopping in at the Perfect World International booth to chat with the fine folks from Cryptic.

WildStart Me Up

Here’s a bit of random, useless trivia for you. The very first record I ever owned was the 7” single for Start Me Up by ye olde Rolling Stones. Make sure to write that down someplace secure, because you never know when it might turn up on a pop quiz!

Speaking of killer robots…

On Saturday we’ll be checking in with our friends at Carbine to see how development has been progressing since we last saw them during Arkship 2013. I'll also be dropping by the NCSoft booth throughout the weekend to partake in one of my favorite past times: watching the reactions as gamers experience a new MMO for the first time.

Guild Wars 2 Too

How awesome would it be if ArenaNet started selling branded Guild Wars 2 tutus?

I’ll be sure to tell Jon Peters he needs to make that happen when I meet up with him this weekend to discuss the awesome new content our friends over at ArenaNet have been working on. We’ll be sure to let you know the results here on the main Ten Ton Hammer channel, as well as over on our sister site GW2Hub.

Obey Your Elder Scrolls!

When I spoke to the folks from The Elder Scrolls Online team last week, they were pretty pumped to be bringing the game to Boston this weekend. This is going to be a pretty critical moment in the pre-launch phases of the game, and from what I’ve seen of the game so far I expect the hype meters for TESO to be off the charts by Monday.

In fact, the charts called me a little bit ago to see if I’ll be able to hang out next week (they’re already expecting to be lonely) but I had to regretfully decline since I’ll be stepping into my teleporter to cover GDC.

The Iceberg

That’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we’ll be seeing and doing this weekend. I’ve received plenty of assurances from our captain that even if the PAX East ship smacks into the iceberg, this state of the art vessel will be able to withstand the impact. How I ended up on a ship in the first place is still a mystery to me, however.

On that note, don’t forget to drop a comment below if you have any burning questions about what we’ll be seeing this weekend. And if you happen to be in Boston this weekend, be on the lookout for the mighty Team Hammer as we weave our way through the masses.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Reuben "Sardu" Waters has been writing professionally about the MMOG industry for eight years, and is the current Editor-in-Chief and Director of Development for Ten Ton Hammer.

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