A busy day, so to tide you over a few pictures from this past weekend. All of the stuff I shot will be up on Flickr eventually, but I like to take my time with that. Here you go, in the meantime.

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I just got back about an hour ago from the Indie MMO Game Developer’s Conference. It was a great trip; just four hours by car from home to Minneapolis, great speakers, lots of great conversations.

Quickie highlights:

• Dr. Bartle! In general, and in specific - his chat on government interference in MMOs, which dovetailed nicely with his keynote this morning about the future history of the genre, annnnd getting to interview him. We ended up talking pretty much all about World of Warcraft. Which, at least, I enjoyed quite a bit.
• Nick Fortugno, of Rebel Monkey, did a fantastic talk about the casual industry’s view of Massive games. Really engaging speaker, very fun to listen to, and amazing content.
• Gordon Walton did a more directed ‘future of the genre’ talk, and it was some amazingly inspiring stuff. Personally inspiring as well as professionally - just really really great.
• Interviewed Scott Hartsman, Brian Green, and Jonathan Stevens about various and sundry.
• Fantastic dinner with some fellow MMO commentators, fish and chips and Boddingtons, and a great argument about WoW’s older content that feeds right into my feelings about revamping old content. Also: Got pissed at and made up with Kendricke. Good times.
• Recorded MNB #7 on the way home in the car! So with some (hopefully quick) editing, next show will go up promptly.

Cuppy, Scott, and Cameron were all there as well, and have some discussion of the event. If you’re curious as to where you can see my coverage, that’d be Gamasutra - probably all week long. Got a looot of stuff to transcribe. I wasn’t sure before I went if the time was worth it for the reward, and I think I chose wisely.

Thanks to everyone I got to chat with over the weekend for stimulating my brain.

Sooooo I’ve been enjoying FRAPS quite a bit of late. My Flickr account has been steadily getting more interesting in the last few weeks as a result. I’ve decided to start doing some more video just for kicks, (I did pay for the full version after all) and now my YouTube account is starting to feel some love as well. I certainly play MMOs enough to have one bloody interesting thing to show you each week and thus starts my attempt at a regular post: the Friday Film.

Notice: The Friday film is intended to be a brief glimpse into my gameplay over the past week. It is not intended to amuse, frighten, or inform anyone but myself. By watching the video you indemnify me from any comments along the lines of “Boring”, “Teh Suxx0r”, or “L2P”.

Today you get two videos. One’s an ancient file I’ve been keeping around for years now: video of my first character dinging 60. Good old Grodin. The other video is the actual clip from this week, of the Shortiez EQ2 group battling a pack of wolves in Permafrost. My wife Katie (Caimia) dings 53 during the course of the battle.

Enjoy. Have fun. Tolerate, citizen.

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After the harshness of Everfrost and the giant citadel, the green lushness of the Lesser Faydark was a great big relief. Especially since, at least for my wife and I, Everfrost bore far too close a resemblance to the view out the window. Early February was a cold, terrible month in Wisconsin. The chance to travel to a warm, green place - if even virtually - was fantastic. The Shortiez group was there, we saw … and we did a good number on the local plant and fairy life. We also, as a result of Tipa’s awesome assistance, are now officially a guild!

Read on for a discussion of Faydark’s secrets and the process of tagging a surly bunch of gnomes.
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The sixth episode of the MMOG Nation Broadcast is another audio clip from out in the world … hopefully you’ll be able to hear this one better than the interview with Greg Short. Step into the world of Free Realms as you listen to audio from a Q&A with the game’s lead designer! Recorded at the SOE community Influencer’s event early this month.

Relevant Links:
What the Heck is Free Realms?
Free Realms: Getting Rid of the Bullshit in MMOs (Pt.1)

Music:
Demo track for the Free Realms video; used with permission, I assume.

Though I’m a day late I now have the second part of my demo of Free Realms, the upcoming tween/teen-aimed Massive game from Sony Online Entertainment. Yesterday I had a full writeup of the demo video and Laralyn McWilliams’ running commentary. Today I have brief notes from the Q&A session that followed and (more enlightening, I think) the full audio of that experience in the form of the MMOG Nation Broadcast #6.

Many thanks to Ms. McWilliams and the SOE community team for the chance to see the game; it was actually kind of inspiring. Read on for the notes, or go check out MNB #6.

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I got the feeling in my poke yesterday that Radar was a bit put off by my poking. I want to make it clear, I’m an equal opportunity poker. Yesterday I was tweaked by their strange subscription choice.

Today I’m blown away by their video coverage of a visit to EA Mythic. Seriously. They’ve got a walkthrough of Altdorf, a discussion of armor dyes, more discussion on those fantastic trophies … and … what’s this? CRAFTING. They have a video about CRAFTING in Warhammer. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been trying to get this info out of them, and it’s RIGHT THERE in the video. Brilliant. Seriously guys, great job with this stuff. Nicely done.

My favorite is, of course, a discussion with Josh Drescher and Paul Barnett about the big picture. It’s embedded after the cut for your viewing pleasure.

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