What You Did There; I See It.

First and foremost – PAX East photos! I’m notoriously terrible at remembering that I have a camera when I’m having fun, so I apologize that this small bundle is all I have to offer.

Quick and easy link to the photoset can be found here.

So PAX East – I loved it. There were aspects that were terrible, certainly (*cough* most panels *cough* – I’ll rant about the Girls On Gaming panel soon), but the sights, sounds, and pure gaming fun? Can’t be beat, and I can’t wait for next year. As everyone has already said, the Hynes Convention Center was a terrible location for such an event, but they tried and did what they could. The location was right (right smack dab in the middle of Boston Proper), but the failing was just that the convention hall didn’t have the customization required for such an event. The preexisting halls were too small to contain even a fraction of the people who wanted to be present for a given panel, and I foolishly spent the majority of the first day learning that it wasn’t really worth trying to get into any of them. Once I took that to heart and got to the wandering and sporadic gaming, I had a blast. Next year I expect will be even better.

Oh, and I totally would have OWNED the RB2 tourney had I decided to compete. Winning song was freakin’ Bad Romance. No shit. Come ON.

A few high points of PAX East for me:

• Competing in the Portal challenge – a brand new map incorporating anti-gravity and concluding with cake (!!). Completion entered me into a raffle for an Alienware machine, but I did not win. Bah.
• Playing Fluxx with my guildies – What do you do at a gaming convention? Play games, of course! There were long hallways full of awesome beanbags where we camped ourselves and played Fluxx and Bang! (though I never got a chance to play Bang!, it looked fun).
• Limbo demo - Limbo will be hitting the xbox live arcade sometime this summer, and it looks amazing. Dark, foreboding, simple in concept yet complex in execution. You play a small shadow boy in a dark forest world filled with numerous gruesome deaths, and you try to avoid them. That’s about all I was able to figure out from a few moments of play, but it was enough. I’ll be getting this game the day it comes out.
• Split/Second demo – This game was very, very polished, and while I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks once it releases, if I had to guess right now, my money on breakaway awesome racing hit of 2010 will still be Blur.
• D&D Multi-Touch Table – This thing is totally sick. I’d heard about this rich boy toy for a while now, but seeing it in action is something else entirely. *drool*

Tons more, for sure, but those are some of my favorites.

So one con down, another coming. In a little less than two weeks, ROFLcon will be upon us. I have a lot less guildies coming into town for this one, but I’m looking forward to seeing Eitri again, and hopefully kicking his ass at some Fluxx. I’ve glanced over the schedule a bit, but since it’s still a week and a half out, I figure a lot of it is still up in the air, and there’s no use in getting all worked up about a schedule that’s just going to change 8 times before the day comes. I’ll update more as we get a little bit closer to it (not to mention during).

Oh, and before I go – the Blur Multiplayer Beta Demo is in Open Beta status, which means that if you have an xbox 360 and a gold live account, you can download it for free. Check it out and hit me up; I’ll crush you.

This weekend, expect -

• PAX East decom post (wih pictures!)
• RB2 DLC update (Hendrix!)
• Ascended Meetup! (tons of fun, and even more beer!)
• D&D Discussion (yes, I’m starting again)
• FFXIII talk (not much, as I’m not far in)
• ROFLcon Anticipation (less than a month!)
• Lich King 10m update (hint: still trying)

and MORE! You’ll see; it’ll be rad.

Ok, so what the crap is new. Christmas came and went, a new year is upon us, new gated content awaits, not one but TWO(!!!11!) super nerdy conventions are fast approaching, and more! Read on.

So for xmas, my wonderful girlfriend (with the mass assistance of my fantastic guild) put together a care package of all 25 Primordial Saronite needed for The Sacred and The Corrupt, the aforementioned Shadowmourne intro starting quest. All of them (they’re at least 2k a pop on my server, even now – they were more then). Seriously, these guys are way too good to me.

Add on top of that our recent Festergut and Rotface kills (are these fights fun or what?), and that gives me a shiny new weapon, Shadow’s Edge, and you have one happy Death Knight. I’m currently at 97/1000 souls for A Feast of Souls, and looking forward to adding some more tonight in the 10m run.

So PAX East 2010 – who’s going? I know I’m already registered for all three days; I know a good dozen or so of my guild is as well. This is looking to be a sell-out event, so if you’re thinking of going, you should really get a move on those registrations.

While I’m at it, what about ROFLCon? They just announced Auto Tune the News, and the list of confirmed guests gets larger every day. Two years ago, ROFLCon was not only a good time, it was an unexpectedly informative and intelligent one, and if you’re interested in not just the lulz of internet culture, but also how it got here, where it is, and where it is going, I strongly suggest checking it out. (plus you’ll get to drink with me – fun times!)

As a complete aside, Firefox’s new tab behavior can suck my salty balls. I don’t want to have to know where my current tab is in order to find my new one; I want it to be at the end of my tab panel. This is why I don’t use Chrome. Firefox, you suck now (at least until someone makes an addon that reverts). Boo.