This should be the last about PAX 09

Still on the post PAX high. Doubly so as not me, Svayvti or any of our families kids have gotten the swine flu that took down Penny Arcade, Wil Wheaton, host of game developers and who knows who else. No, just like Wil Wheaton I have a hard time coming down from that Post-PAX high, though nobody serenaded me on video as they did WilW (or off video either for those curious).

By the way I think Bioware continues to show off why parent companies should sometimes just allow themselves to be run by subsidiaries. I guess EA should be glad I'm not a majority shareholder because I would clean house of the execs and replace them with Bioware people. So I bet the Bioware execs are "invited to resign" within the next 3 years or so. Kind of like how Mythic is being trampled under foot right now. Anyways Bioware had a very, very busy booth in contrast to EA. They also had the best handout of the convention as pictured to the right for their new Dragon Age game. They gave Dragon condoms... err, shrink wrapped inflatable swords (hmm, maybe I was right the first time) and had enough for everyone who came by. My family claimed 4 as part of our successful game swag haul.

Funcom is another company in my dog house but they did pretty well with their showing new game "The Secret World". I'm hoping that with Gaute Godager gone and Ragnar Tornquist now in charge of The Secret World that Funcom can make a good game again. Ragnar was most of the creative genius I originally liked behind the story of Anarchy Online. Then Gaute got a hold of it and tried to turn it into Everquest with future magic in several expansions and. With Gaute in charge Funcom could never keep track of what direction Anarchy Online's development was trying to go in.

I'm curious to see what PAX does to come up with more space next year, because they're definitely going to need it. Maybe they can add a 4th day? If the explosive growth of the convention keeps up then within a few years they'll just have to rent the entirety of downtown Seattle for the weekend.

Oh yeah, and Starcraft 2? It absolutely rocked.

Other people blog too

If you even casually enjoy watching The Guild like I do then you would be interested to know that Wil Wheaton is appearing in season 3. He blogged about it for quite a while about his trip to Comic-Con with the cast of The Guild. Though I do wonder about Felicia Day's alternate identity wearing a costume like that. (Edit: Picture "like that" was deleted from its source)

Brad McQuaid has also completed his part 3 of his Vanguard Post Mortem about why he created a flying flop. Have to give him some credit, most people in the MMO industry never admit to failure. SWG NGE... they never admit failure. Gaute Godager driving AO to needing to give away free accounts to keep the player base alive and single handedly destroying Age of Conan... not in his words. So it is nice to see someone in the industry publicly learning from their own mistakes.

or read the very weird Emerson Wild: Monster Hunter blog. I did warn you it was weird though so don't come back complaining.

Been under the weather a bit so enjoy other people writing about (hopefully) something interesting.