Is it that time of year already again? I feel like I was just at E3 a month ago, drinking too much NOS getting sick during the Bioshock Infinite presentation, and eating entirely too much IHOP. Oh, and there were the games too. Well, believe it or not, E3 is back again with a vengeance this year. As you read this, most of us will be on our way to Los Angeles to take part in the country’s largest videogame expo, and with that in mind we thought we’d share with you five things we expect to happen at E3 2012. Maybe we’ll be wrong, but that’s never the case, so take these brief little statements as pure unadulterated fact (READ: don’t really do that).
5.) We Expect Lots of People to Discover Neverwinter
It was a dark horse at PAX East, but this is E3. We’re willing to bet lots of people will finally see what Cryptic’s beastly D&D game is all about, and they’ll be similarly as surprised as we were by its gameplay and polish. Our hope is that we’ll see some more classes, and maybe character creation? But hell, we’ll just be happy to get to play it again.
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4.) We Expect to be Killed a lot in Planetside 2
We’ll be getting our first hands on in PS2 this week too. What does that mean, exactly? It means Mike B will try his best to kill as many Vanu as possible, but will likely just die a whole lot while Creative Director Matt Higby laughs at him and pushes back his flocking brown locks (Matt’s hair is pretty… for real). In all seriousness, this will be the “test” for PS2, to find out if SOE’s ambitious MMOFPS redux can do better where its predecessor failed.
3.) We Expect End of Nations to Wow Us
End of Nations is inching closer and closer to a targeted fall launch. We’re hoping that this time we’ll get to see its touted PVE campaign and get a good idea about how the game will capture the hearts and minds of MMORPG gamers as well as RTS fans. One would expect that EON will probably start ramping up for beta following E3 too, so let’s hope there’s lots to see from the game this time.
2.) We Expect Otherland to be Weird
And we mean that in a good way. Based on the Tad Williams novels, Otherland came out of nowhere not long ago to show us a game that will very likely have a setting and flavor for everyone. But one thing we haven’t seen much of is the action-based combat. We’re hoping it really shines at this year’s E3, as the setting alone is enough to get gleeful over.
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1.) We Expect Elder Scrolls Online to Impress
We think, based on the backlash the game has seen so far that going into E3 with lowered expectations is only going to serve ESO well. We know now that it’s not supposed to be Skyrim Online, and instead may likely end up more like DAOC set in the TES world… how is that a bad thing again? We hope to come away from E3 with plenty of info and insight into the Zenimax Online (Bethesda) MMO, and if we’re lucky it’ll actually have us drooling for more.
