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PAX East 2010: Turbine on renting vs. owning in the MMO market
Blizzard's presence at PAX East 2010 was even smaller than I was expecting, with two or so Community reps there to oversee the StarCraft II tournaments going on. Boston-based Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine, though, had a very large demo area which saw a lot of traffic over the course of the three-day event. Con-goers could stop by and demo LotRO, as well as Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, and hobnob with the Community reps and developers present. With the WoW-specific news at the event registering somewhere between "literally nothing" and "nearly nothing" on the newsy scale, I decided to stop by Turbine and ask them a few questions about their MMOs. I ended up speaking with their Design Director, Ian Currie. "I'm from WoW.com," I said, "so obviously I don't normally do a lot of reporting on your games. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever even played DDO, and I've only played a little bit of LotRO." Currie smiled and said "You really don't know what you're missing, then, do you!" "Apparently not," I acquiesced, "but maybe you can help fill in the blanks."
PAX East 2010 Gallery
Penny Arcade creators Gabe and Tycho brought the ever-growing Penny Arcade Expo to the Bay State this weekend, with nerdfolk from all over pouring into Boston, MA for PAX East. As the sole WoW.com rep at the show (with Spiritual Guidance's Fox Van Allen in attendance as "just a dude" instead of "dude with a press badge"), I stomped the floor with the Joystiq and Massively crew, who squeezed every last drop of relevant info from the expo at record speed. "Hello my boss Chris Grant of Joystiq fame," I would tap out on my smartphone, "here's a pretty hot gaming scoop just revealed moments ago!" He would reply three seconds later with "Already posted," with an image attached of his frowning face. As for my site's particular field of interest -- was there a lot of Blizzard-related news? Not really! Thankfully, on top of news about other MMOs, there was some other stuff going on, which you can see in this gallery. There was WoW-related stuff worth writing about though, which'll be posted in the next day or so. A special thanks to all the readers who stopped by to say hello to me! We love you guys, and we'll see you at BlizzCon in full effect.%Gallery-89201%
PSA: PAX East warns it'll sell out, get badges now
In very clear and certain terms, the PAX East site states: "FACT. We will sell out of badges for PAX East Coast 2010." What this means is that there will, oh wait, they get all caps-locky about this one too: "There will be NO BADGES AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR." For those who plan to attend and don't want to be left out in the cold (literally, it's freakin' March 26-28 in Boston), get registered now! Update: Robert Khoo, Penny Arcade, Inc. President of Operations and Business Development: "Sorry guys - no marketing ploy here. We were able to make the announcement about the sellout because our daily rate of tickets sales alone, with no announcement, would have sold our allotment of badges. What we're trying to prevent here are people coming up to the door and being disappointed that they can't get in. We tried to prevent this with PAX 2009 as well, and still some people flew in from out of town without getting badges beforehand."
PAX East coming late March 2010, venue revealed
Well, that was fast. After revealing that the East Coast iteration of Penny Arcade Expo is heading to Boston in 2010, we now have more specific details care of BigDownload and PA director of sales Mike Fehlauer. In an interview with BigD, Fehlauer confirmed that the window is "late March 2010" and will be at John B Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, a venue with 193,000 square feet of exhibit space, roughly the same amount as this year's PAX. However, Fehlauer noted that the first PAX EC will not be planned as a huge vent first, with growth planned every year.Penny Arcade will handle exhibitor booking, event planning and other content, while the grunt work (labor unions, hotels, etc.) will be done by Reed Exhibitions (New York Comic-Con). When asked if there are any potential conflicts with the Game Developers Conference, Fehlauer explained that they feel the audiences are disparate (industry vs. consumer) and both events are very different.
First East Coast PAX coming to Boston in 2010
Straight out of the mouths of Tycho and Gabe (Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins) to Joystiq: The first East Coast PAX is coming to Boston in 2010. Check back later for our full interview with the Penny Arcade duo!
