by Jeff Woleslagle on Sep 08, 2009
Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and
commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.
Our coverage from this past weekend's PAX 2009 continues to
roll out, and Ten Ton Hammer's Reuben "Sardu" Waters somehow found time
the whole crazy experience that has become the industry's feature fan
event in North America. Part one of two follows in today's Loading...
Sardu's PAX 2009 Journal (Part 1 of 2).
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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/41"Biggest movers today:
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Dates
Ten Ton Hammer's Reuben "Sardu" Waters, especially valued by us not
only for his knowledable nice-guyness, love of MMOs, and his complete
inability to turn off his gamer side (as you'll see), made
several withdrawals on the old sleep account to journal his experience
at PAX 2009. Unprompted and unscripted, they turned out far too cool
not to share. We'll air his artfully constructed running
commentary in two parts, today and tomorrow. Enjoy!
===
Thursday (pre-PAX)
The flight into Seattle was mostly uneventful apart from some
of the more rowdy passengers a few seats ahead of me that somehow
managed to drain the flight of both vodka and whiskey in record time.
Apparently they were on their way to a bachelorette party in Vegas and
figured they might as well get the party started early. If I didnt
have a couple of quests to turn in as soon as the flight landed Id
have no doubt joined them for that leg of the journey, but thats
beside the point.
Speaking of quests, the flight reminded me of the one in Wintergrasp
that would send you back and forth between Everlook and Gadgetzan 3
times in a row. The first time I decided to run through that quest I
remember thinking that I could have easily painted my garage in the
time it took to fly from one end of Kalimdor to the other.
This flight somewhat reminded me of that. Since I wasnt really able to
go AFP (away from plane) to get some painting done, I did the next best
thing; I read through one of Jim Butchers Dresden novels (Fool Moon).
The only other thing that really stood out for me on this flight was
that the overall graphics didnt seem quite as polished as Id have
expected. I think a part of it had to do with the overuse of
bump-mapping to give the environments a minor semblance of topography
or depth when viewed from so far above. The weather effects were
particularly well done but unfortunately also served to obfuscate many
of the other environmental effects further off in the distance such as
the ambient lighting from some of the towns and outposts we passed
over. On a plus side, I really didnt see any obviously perceptible
zone lines, or the telltale seams that typically accompany the
transition between larger areas.
Once Jeff and I arrived and got checked into the hotel we took the
opportunity to see a bit of downtown Seattle after scampering over to
get our show badges at another nearby hotel. That process was almost
laughably easy considering all the hoops the media have to jump through
to register for the show typical anticlimactic quest completion to be
sure. After roughly 15 seconds of searching, the people at the check-in
counter decided they didnt have TTH badges for us so ended up giving
generic media badges instead. Generic quest rewards FTL.
Friday (PAX Day One)
PAX has built up quite the reputation for being a huge show
over the past few years, so I was somewhat surprised to discover that
huge in this case is more indicative of the caliber of games on
display much more so than overall floor space. Im sure that once you
factor in all the event rooms and lecture halls theres a ton of show
to be seen, but as far as the main exhibit hall itself goes, it was a
bit smaller than I expected. Mind you after 8 hours of scampering back
and forth between booths for our jam packed interview schedule I was
thankful of that fact.
Graphically, the developers of PAX were obviously going for a more
photorealistic approach than my preferred airline for this trip. That
being said, the level designers fell into the trap of having a ton of
assets to work with so they tried to stuff every single one of them
into a relatively small zone which caused things to be perhaps too busy
for your eyes to properly fix on any singular element for too long. In
an era thats all about inserting points of interest to draw players
towards cool things off in the distance, this aspect of PAX was more
like a throwback to Victorian times when horror vacui was still in
vogue.
The audio engineers could also learn a thing or two about ambient sound
placement. A perfect example would be the braniac decision to place the
private meeting rooms right next to the massive Rock Band stage. Our
first interview for the day was with Funcom to talk about
secret
things (check back on Thursday to find out exactly what Im talking
about here, but you can get a teaser
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/73968">here).
Even in the tiny meeting room Funcom had to use
a full PA system turned up to maximum volume just to be heard by people
sitting less than 5 feet away. Meanwhile the Beatles greatest hits were
setting the tone for an interview that had nothing to do with bright,
poppy sunshine by any far stretch of the imagination.
It was a great day overall though. Star Trek Online is
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74106">looking pretty
awesome so far, and it was nice to finally meet Craig
Zinkievich face
to face. One of the best things about these events is seeing how much
developers like Craig truly enjoy what theyre doing and the games
theyre creating. While certain well known developers (who shall
respectfully remain unnamed) are clearly serving as little more than PR
robots, meeting people like Mr. Zinkievich reminds you that most of the
developers out there are gamers too, and are just as excited as you are
about new MMOGs.
Friday Night
The Aion launch party was pretty cool, and definitely just as
packed as the exhibit hall. Not only did it give people an opportunity
to switch into their epic armor sets after a long day of game show
grinding, but everyone walked away with a pretty cool bag-o-swag which
included special shirts and statues from the event among other things.
NCsoft are clearly behind the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion/editorials/explainingwesternization">western
localization of Aion in a big
way, and hopefully it will all pay off for them come launch day.
Graphically the launch party was a mix of photorealism and quirky zone
design. The skyline view from the Space Needle was particularly well
done even if the art team went a little bit overboard on adding
lighting to distant structures. This kind of overkill on light sources
may look pretty, but it also tends to flatten things when viewed from a
great enough distance. As with the rest of PAX, the Aion launch party
was played in first person; this helped make certain quests like
retrieving potions from the bar easier if not somewhat routine, though
thanks to the wonky zone design of the interiors it was hard to really
get a solid group formed.
===
Part 2 tomorrow! In the meantime, check out all the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/pax09">new coverage
from PAX 2009 and take your thoughts and comments
to our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=46117">Loading...
forum.
From our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=139">WoW:
General Discussion forum
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45975">Do
you ever not help?
Let's
say you're playing World of Warcraft. You come across a night elf
struggling and dying repeatedly to the same six mobs who keep ganging
up on her. You know you could probably help, but that if you do she's
likely to cause your death, too. Do you help, do you walk away, or do
you stand back, point and laugh?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45975">Weigh
in on today's epic thread.
==============================
Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread
"I usually don't help.
They don't
learn anything from me swooping in and saving them with heals, or
tanking the mobs, or AoEing them. Not to mention the vast majority of
the time they're in the mess on their own accord."
- LiquidAppo
==============================
Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=32559">Tell
us!
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