Anything you want me to report on/take pictures of?
I will be there.
Anything you want me to report on/take pictures of?
First, I don't do cons. Second, I would like to request pics of chicks in revealing costumes. Lots of them. In fact, make all your pics that variety. Please. And if you see tank9 dancing, take a pic of that, too. Especially if he's got a chick with him. Don't know if he does BLizzcon, though. But chicks probably do. So yeah, pics of chicks in revealing costumes.
EDIT: Crap. Forgot an important qualifier. Please add 'hawt' in front of every use of chick or chicks.
EDIT2: On second thought, don't. I want some funny pics, too.
I would like to request pics of chicks in revealing costumes. Lots of them. In fact, make all your pics that variety. Please.
I will be there.
Anything you want me to report on/take pictures of?
First, I don't do cons. Second, I would like to request pics of chicks in revealing costumes. Lots of them. In fact, make all your pics that variety. Please. And if you see tank9 dancing, take a pic of that, too. Especially if he's got a chick with him. Don't know if he does BLizzcon, though. But chicks probably do. So yeah, pics of chicks in revealing costumes.
EDIT: Crap. Forgot an important qualifier. Please add 'hawt' in front of every use of chick or chicks.
EDIT2: On second thought, don't. I want some funny pics, too.
This. Definitely this.
Any new game announcements would be cool. Especially those of the MMO variety.
Not WoW.
I don't play it either; it's not my kind of game. But as a designer there is much you can learn from it. (Both things they did right and things they didn't)
Likely announcement is the next WoW expansion. There'll be a lot of SC2 Expansion info (Heart of the Swarm) but that's not an annoucement.
I'll keep y'all updated. For now it's time to shower and go get in line.
I've got a bunh of stuff, but I'm on clunky public wi-fi in YVR, so I'll get everything uploaded once I'm safe in YYC. Or Monday. I dunno, crazy tired and I have a ton to do since I effectively opted out of the last four days of my life.
So, just no guys cosplaying or biased photographer?
They're all pictures of girls (except maybe some of the helmed ones, though some of those appear to be girls as well)
So, just no guys cosplaying or biased photographer?
Well,since only you and me asked about non pictures,and eveyrone else asked for " pics of chicks in revealing costumes" I didn't think anyone owuld mind the biased photographer
d00d, looking at a few of the costumes the ladies came up with, I seriously doubt that. I mean, unless we're saying men are less creative and costume-creation capable than women. I don't think we are, obviously, but complexity of costume is totally, 100% not an issue. The linked gallery does a wonderful job of dispelling that notion.
I agree, that gallery is amazing. Those costumes were out of this world.
I really wish I had gotten into cosplay when I was younger and had more time and disposable income.
Oh well, I'll just be one of "those" moms!
I'm so jelly.
And I'm with you, PK - that costume is awesome!
I actually meant one of "those" moms that gets dressed up and goes to cons and stuff, like a big nerd.
Those are the best :D
My eldest son's first Halloween costume was Vader, and I was Princess Leia - though no images of the two of us survived because I was so horribly disappointed in the white dress, and my after-baby-body!! 
This year, I'm trying to save money so I'm just going with a witch with stuff out of my closet and a hat I bought last year. My eldest is a fireman (again - he picked it, not me) and my youngest will be a tiger.
I am working on my sewing skills, though, and I'd like to make a costume next year!
I've heard there's an anime convention in Raleigh, in the spring, so maybe I'll try to do something for that, at least for a day.
d00d, looking at a few of the costumes the ladies came up with, I seriously doubt that. I mean, unless we're saying men are less creative and costume-creation capable than women. I don't think we are, obviously, but complexity of costume is totally, 100% not an issue. The linked gallery does a wonderful job of dispelling that notion.
[Insert comment linking home ec to cosplay complexity]
wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg...
Please keep your posts polite, respectful, on-topic, and refrain from making crude remarks.
Either way here's my recap post on the podcast blog:
www.theworldstonekeep.com/2011/10/27/dan...
And here's the content sans pictures served up in a spoiler block:
A few years ago, shortly after the announcement of Diablo 3, I was spending a lot of time playing some crappy Everquest games for the PS2 with my friend Laura. The games were decidedly mediocre action RPGs, but they had hotseat multi-player and everything is fun if you're doing it with friends. Plus I had a crush on her, so there's that. I was also getting ready to move to Australia for university, and being a smooth operator I suggested that we'd just have to find another game, like Diablo 3, that we could play together over the net while I was away. Somehow I succeeded at getting her to promise to play D3 with me.
Well, Diablo 3 didn't come out quite in the timeframe I was assuming at the time, but it gave me time to convince her to date me for real, go to Australia, and come home to Canada. I even convinced her to go to Blizzcon with me! I've reminded her, repeatedly, of that promise, but her response has more or less fallen in the neighbourhood of "oh, right, I said that, didn't I?" I've had access to the beta for over a month now, and several times a week I've asked if she wanted to give it a try. She'd smile, "maybe later, I'm almost done Professor Layton."
When we first got to Blizzcon she was mostly excited for the costumes, the atmosphere, the vacation, and just being somewhere fun with a bunch of fellow geeks. Lining up to try a demo for fifteen minutes wasn't very high on her list at all, so there was some trepidation when I convinced her to hit up the Diablo 3 demo right after the opening ceremony, since that was the shortest the line would ever get and we had a half hour to kill before the Sound and Music panel started.
"But I don't know what to play..."
"Just pick whichever one sounds cool. Wizard and Barbarian are really straightforward."
"Alright, I guess so."
We were only in line for a minute or so before staff escorted us through the field of computers bathed in red ambiance, the furious clicking of hundreds of players audible over the crowd and looping cinematics. My pulse started to race and I forgot all about Laura. Here was the latest build of Diablo 3. What was different from the Beta? What had they changed, what bugs had they fixed, what had they added? I sat down, quickly made my Monk and began to play. Mentally I made as many notes as possible, keeping track of little details, comparing to the Beta that I've run so very many times at this point. They added this graphic, the difficulty is tuned way higher, this bug has been fixed, that skill unlocks later. Fifteen minutes wasn't long enough, I'd barely made it to the Blacksmith. Well, I'll have to try again later, see if I can burn through to Leoric in record time. How much can I skip? It was harder, so I'll still need to pick up some loot and gain some levels or I'll get smashed even if I do make it to Leoric.
Then the best moment of Blizzcon happened.
"The Wizard is so awesome! Pew pew! You've got the Beta on your laptop, right? I mean, I know we've got a lot of convention to see, but maybe later I can borrow your laptop? I can't wait to get Disintegrate! Laser beams! SO! MUCH! FUN!"
What else really needs to be said?
Oh, alright, there's my sappy story, here's the rest:
Demo
The version that we played at Blizzcon is more or less what we can expect to see in the next Beta patch. This includes a lot of the class and skill changes, plus piles of bug fixes. Numerous little graphics have been added, such as new nameplate/health bars for Rares and Champions. These tiny changes are individually almost not worth mentioning, but when taken together they give the game a much more finished feel.
The most interesting thing was the change in difficulty. Now, there's a big caveat on this: I talked with Bashiok about the difficulty level of the Blizzcon demo and he explained that it was mostly an unintended side effect of how changes filter down through the game (they'd done a big pass on the database, but hadn't fine tuned the results yet) but it also gave a taste of what all the different buttons and levers inside the game do, and how very slight changes to various attributes can have dramatic effects on the gameplay. To look at just one element, monster health was much higher that before, which meant that things didn't die in one hit, and latent AoE wasn't enough to buzzsaw through packs of monsters anymore. In turn this made it far more likely that monsters would survive long enough to hit you and, possibly, surround you. This, in turn, made skills like Blinding Flash, which I've criticized before as a weak/pointless level 2 skill, critical for survival. Add in increased aggression and chase distance and suddenly the "easy mode" beta becomes a surprisingly stiff opponent.
Personally I found the upped difficulty refreshing and challenging, but it was too high and will be toned down, possibly (probably?) before it even makes it to the Beta patch. Even though that's the case it was still an enlightening insight into how the game will change at higher levels and has already driven me back to the skill calculator to rethink my skill/rune choices.
Another tidbit I ran into in the Demo was the revised (nerfed) Arcane enchanted Champions and the new Mortar enchant. Mortar was new, and thus terrifying, while the nerfed Arcane was terrifying, but much more manageable. Mortar enchanted creatures lob a constant stream of fireballs in an arc out in front of themselves, creating a safe zone in melee and a deathtrap at range, specifically created because of complaints that Champion enchants are biased against melee characters.
Arena
The team deathmatch format is organized chaos. There's enough control and strategy that you can take it pretty seriously if you want, but at the same time you can jump in, run around like a maniac, die a lot, lose, and still have an absolute blast. I was disappointed by the last team standing format originally revealed because it's the kind of high stakes, srs bsns PvP that I can only tolerate in very small doses, but I can see myself regularly jumping into the new Team Deathmatch format, or even building a character specifically for PvP.
Conclusion
There's a lot more bits and bobs that are floating around in my head, but organizing them into something coherent is difficult. You pick up a grocery list of info at Blizzcon - a line hear, a fact there - and communicating all those little things in a way that's interesting is almost impossible. For example I found out that dungeons won't scale up in size as you progress through the different difficulties, meaning no five hectare Durance of Hate, and the music has in many cases been composed with the intent that you'll experience it in game layered over area ambiance and under sound effects and dialogue. Where do you squeeze those in? The comments section of course! If you have specific questions ask away and I'll do my best to get all of that grocery list out of my head and onto your screen.
One last thought: for everyone who was disappointed that this "wasn't Diablo's Blizzcon" I present to you the graphic below.