Laura: Underway

Though my AGC excitement started with a nearly missed plane and a very loud six year old kicking the back of my seat, I’ll spare you the details and suffice it to say that yesterday I utilized various means of transportation, didn’t eat very much, and played some late night Magic: The Gathering on arrival with a local friend (yeah, I’m that geeky.) Let’s start our journey with this morning, when I arrived at the actual convention center.

First off, AGC is a very different animal than E3, and though I didn’t attend PAX, I’d say it’s safe to guess there’s a big difference there, too. AGC is an industry show, not tailored to press or game players. Thus we are spared the flashy booths, the sound battle for attention, and the crowds upon crowds of people.

Today was spent going to various different panels. My first panel, the Beta Community Roundtable…well, you’ll just have to read my article for that one! After that I attended

The first panel I went to was Creating Characters for Games. I thought this would be more about creating believable characters with immersive stories, but it was more about working with a large team to make a character feel realistic through motions, tone, etc.

Next up I went to the MMOG Rant, which was awesomely funny. Most of the panelists ranted about World of Warcraft and how everyone (and their mom) is trying to make the next WoW…actually, all of the panelists did. Personally, I think that copying WoW is just copying a more polished version of EverQuest and every other pre-WoW MMO, but I’m sure you’ll all hate me for that. Go ahead, see if I care! The definite highlight of the panel was when Jessica Mulligan made a fake game pitch, where the “unique” feature list included “Everything from WoW,” “Realm vs. Realm Combat like in DAoC,” and “Dragons!”

Lastly we hit up Community by Design, a panel that talked about how the developers and community departments are totally separate, and need not to be.

Other than that, lots of people made short jokes about me and I waved my fist. Same old, same old. More tomorrow!

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