E3 Coverage Begins

It's Sunday, it's 6am, and its zero degrees outside. I get in the car and turn on the radio to find that Power97 (the local hard rock radio station) is playing the Chili Peppers song "Californication". My wife an I both laugh at the timing. As you may know, I am heading to E3 in LA today, to start our TenTonHammer E3 coverage. She takes this time to advise me NOT to bring back more pictures standing behind other women bent over in mini skirts... Will I never live that one down? Poopsie was just to cute too not bend over, and her husband was in the next room in the bar. Is there anything wrong with souvenirs from road trips? And what ever happened to "what happens on the road, stays on the road"?

To start the trip, I am on my way to the Winnipeg airport to hook up with Ratboy (our community manager from our Warhammer Online site) and Ralphedelominius (Our community director, hereafter known as Ralph) to fly out to L.A. for E3. We arrive at the airport, meet up and grab our last civilized non-Starbucks coffee at Timmies (AKA Tim Horton's). Ratboy, Ralph and I have traveled together many times in the past for different events (mainly wargaming events) and always start weird things to annoy and frustrate others or ourselves. In the past these have ranged from the infamous SMC comments, ending every comment with ah-ha (a la Speed Racer), clinking glasses after everything and toasting "to evil", playing the annoying guy from the Canadian beer commercials (making wooo-wooo comments at everything while making devil horns above your head), and many others.

Ralph gave us to OK to continue this practice on this trip (...like we needed his OK!) however has pointed out that questions like "How late is the pool open, ah-ha (ala speed-racer)" may not be a wise idea at our hotel, since it's Japanese and in the middle of Japanese area of town. Sounds like a challenge to me :-)! Not really sure what new bad habits will come up on this trip, but one thing that has been started is the official TenTonHammer Winnipeg Contingent Coffee count. You can find and follow our caffeine consumption on Ratboy's blog located here: ratboy.blogs.tentonhammer.com.

Ratboy and I proceed through the international security desk, and I get hassled about not having passports. Huh? Passports? I proceed to inform the guy at the desk that I am not getting one until 2008 when we actually need them to get into the US from Canada. Where I find out that it's actually 2007, unless of course you are driving in to the US, in which case it's 2008. Double, huh?? So I can enter the country after 2007 as long as I drive? That makes so much sense it hurts. That god for the government, our purveyors of wisdom and logic. Of course it's still before 8am so my logic may not be up to par yet.

We are sitting waiting for our fearless leader Ralph to arrive. So far, no sign of him. Must be his keen military sense of timing and direction. For some reason I picture a bald angry guy running down the run way attempting to catch the plane. He arrives shortly after and "Bah's" at or jibes for being late. He also advises that arguing with a customs officer is not a good way to be allowed into the country. Hmm, never stopped me before, although I have wondered about all the "Random" body cavity searches.

On to the serious side of this editorial, our coverage of E3. As announced we (TenTonHammer) are literally invading E3 with 13 staff members to cover the event. If its big and MMO related, we will bee there. Ralph even managed to get soccer jerseys done up for everyone. Not sure the exact reason why soccer jerseys when we come from the land of Hockey and it's playoff time. Maybe he's thinking we will confuse the US police and they will think we are english soccer fans, and our drunken ball room brawls will largely go unnoticed, or at least we may not be charged for them this time around.

I am largely teamed up with Ratboy for event coverage and will be doing interviews with the following companies:

Blizzard - World of Warcraft Mythic - Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Nevrax- Saga of Ryzom and Ryzom Ring Runestone - Seed Simutronics- Hero's Journey Sigil Games Online - Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

We will also be checking out many other games in non-official interviews (aka harassing them at their booths) and posting as much information as we can. One of the booths that I know we are stopping by raises the following question. What letter comes after Q? That's right "ARRRRR"! We are stopping by the Pirates booth to find out all about this very cool sounding upcoming game. After all what could be more fun that playing a pirate. Hmm, wonder if we can be zombies in it? Ninjas? Good thing Ratboy and I both picked up eye patches!

While not related to MMO's at all, I resolve to head by the Nintendo booth. I want to get some sort of logical reason to go from a cool name like "The Nintendo Revolution" to an absolutely horrid name like "The Nintendo Wii" (pronounced by everyone as Weeeeeeeee!).

Overall, I am greatly looking forward to my E3 experience. Still not completely sure what to expect at it, or how crazy it will be, but I am sure, I can hit the ground running. After all, if I can cope with running events at Games Workshops Games Days in Baltimore, full of thousands of miniature Wargamers screaming WAAAARGHHH (Pronounced WAAAAAA) at the top of their lungs while stampeding in the front entrance, how bad can a bunch of fellow computer geek's be?

To keep up to date on my adventures, be sure to check out my E3 blog at messiah.blogs.tentonhammer.com. I will be updating it at least daily with information on the madness that is E3.

If anyone has comments, concerns or questions you would like me (or anyone else at E3) to follow up on, please send them to me here: messiah@tentonhammer.com.