Before I forget, a few pics that ended up on Flickr…

Images by Mat, of course. A few more (just a few!!) are on the official Flickr feed for us.

They’re performances of the winning entries for Set the Stage, the competition that we ran to get players to write scripts for the Aion and Guild Wars characters to perform. (The scripts were reworked by me to become suitable for performance, but these two are quite similar to the original material, with many lines remaining intact. You can download my script drafts for all six final entries at the official Aion and Guild Wars sites.)

The sound quality is not excellent – source was basically the speakers on the stand, which had to compete with everything around – so I’ve embedded the ‘normal’ and English subtitled versions. (There are also French and German versions of each – see below.)

As I said before, these stage performances were probably what I was most proud of achieving during Games Convention. Trust me; there were some obstacles to overcome! However, I personally feel the performances were excellent, given the lack of rehearsal time we had and the environment they were performing in, and I’m very proud to present them to you.

Aion: The Tower of Eternity – ‘Captive’ by Will Carpenter

Script performance draft by Stephen Reid

Subtitled in English

French subtitled version | German subtitled version

Guild Wars – ‘No Beautiful Day’ by Melanie Lauterbach

Script performance draft by Stephen Reid

Subtitled in English

Start the day with coffee, and trying to figure out what we have left to do for the UK Games Expo. We’ve done this so many times it should become second nature, and to an extent it has, but there’s always room for error… and the more complacent you get the more errors you make.

We need to buy hangers (for t-shirts) and storage ‘tubs’ for stock and, in fact, t-shirts. Quick trip to Woolies and one of several local ‘pound shops’ and we’re sorted.

Back to the office. It’s Massage Day (woo!) and Chris is having his First Ever Massage. When he comes out he tells me “I don’t know why I waited so long to have that.” Nor do I mate.

Check on the movie Spaff left rendering overnight. Lucky I did, as despite being excellent quality, it has one minute of ‘blank space’ at the end which probably makes it several hundred MB bigger than it needs to be. Set it to re-render.

Dive into email, feeling way too jittery from the coffees first thing. I never learn.

While I’m emailing, three PC cases are delivered to me. They need to go in the van tomorrow for Secret Prize Project. Feel like an old man as I talk about when I used to open PC cases for a living; well kinda, I was a PC journalist once.

I’ve been asked to judge a student competition for Stafford University, so download the files that I need to look at.

The first re-render of Spaff’s video is the right length – and half the size – but is smeary and pixellated. Fiddle with a few things and start it going again. Pretty sure it’s not going to work.

Watch a few of the videos from the UbiDays press conference. Good job by them on their PR. Remain unconvinced of the earth-shattering importance of a follow-up to Beyond Good & Evil. I mean it was good, but it wasn’t The Best Game Evar.

Browse through some very creative rendered Lego people for the competition. Students are smart. Must adjust my presentation accordingly.

Read an email from @Geoffrey – hallo! – pointing me to an interesting article about the deaths of MMOs. The stuff about Auto Assault is quite moving. That leads me on to a new post-apocalypse MMO that’s being worked on, in part, by some die-hard AA fans. It’s called Apokalypsos. Be careful not to drop that final ‘S’ or it’ll be something to do with the end of the world via dance… or a crappy fruit drink.

Start an email with thoughts on the Lego designs, but don’t finish; go to lunch with Mat and Chris instead. Over burgers we talk about the show this weekend, and set the MMO world to rights – usual stuff.

Back to the desk to an email announcing our summer party; we’re going to Thorpe Park. Even though I’ve known about this for ages, I’m suddenly excited by the prospect of many rollercoasters. Yayyy!

Next up: boring show prep. First, decide on how much stock we want to take, then see if we’ve got that much available. Then, re-price an awful lot of it as the prices have changed. I am the Pricing Gun Kid.

In the middle of this I get a phone call from my contact at Stafford, pressing me for decisions on the Lego design thing. I give her my choices over the phone.

At 4pm we go over to our other building to do a count of every t-shirt we have, and move them all from flimsy, crappy cardboard boxes (which are a pain to move, stack, and store) into those new tubs. Utterly tedious and sweaty work, but needed to be done.

Finished by 5pm, and we drop by the Community team to grab some swag for the weekend. We pick up mostly Guild Wars stuff – Skill Pins, Mini-Pet cards. I walk out with a very heavy bag. Mat also hands over the new printed signage for the weekend, and we agree to meet tomorrow before we go pick up the Transit van.

5:30pm, and we’re locking down final bits and pieces. I’m starting to get that feeling, that tingly feeling of dread that we’ve forgotten something or we haven’t done something. This results in me asking Chris “Have we got [insert thing here]” about a million times.

Last thing before I leave, Chris says: “We’re up to 186 applications.” Meaning our casting job isn’t getting any easier.

Tomorrow: van hire, packing, then The Road to Birmingham. Expect service to be light.

Continuing the apparent obsession we have with releasing games on April 28th, in case you weren’t aware today is also the three year anniversary of Guild Wars’ original release.

(For the record, Guild Wars Factions was released two years ago to the day, while Guild Wars Nightfall was released in October 2006 – possibly even the 28th of that month, or darn near. We do like our symmetry.)

April 28th 2005 was a pretty big day for us in Europe – it was the first time we’d released a game simultaneously with the US*, and it was actually as a company the first time we’d released any title globally at the same time (Guild Wars went live in Korea on the same day). There was champagne and video conference link-ups, if memory serves, and given the time differences some of the participants were in pyjamas (Seattle), some were bleary-eyed (Austin), some were having breakfast (Brighton) and some were going to bed (Seoul).

Massively has a couple of retrospective articles up to mark the date, and of course if you’re a player there have been in-game celebrations going on for the last few days, although today’s special; today is when you get your character’s birthday present, assuming that your character was created on launch day, of course.

I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I haven’t finished the original GW campaign, Prophecies, and I always told myself I wouldn’t play Factions or Nightfall until I’d finished the original. (I did dip into Factions a bit with an Assassin character; it was just too tempting.) This isn’t through lack of trying; I just got stuck on a particular story mission and haven’t been able to get past it! I know, what a slacker… one day, one day.

Anyway; happy birthday to all of our April games, and many happy returns.

* If you’re wondering: NCsoft Europe didn’t exist when City of Heroes and Lineage II were released in April, 2004 in the US. We launched them as soon as we could after we did exist, mind you…

Via Rock Paper Shotgun, I read an interesting interview tonight with Daniel Dociu, the Chief Art Director for ArenaNet – who make Guild Wars, in case you weren’t aware. The interview’s at the excellently named BLDGBLOG, which is a blog about architecture.

Why talk to Daniel? Well, he has interesting things to say about architecture in games, and of course he really knows his onions. When asked about his influences when coming up with designs, this was part of what he had to say:

… I look back all the way to the dawn of mankind: to ruins, and Greek architecture, and Mycenean architecture, all the way up to the architecture of the Crusades, and castles in North Africa, and the Romanesque and Gothic and Baroque and Rococo – even to neo-Classical and art deco and Bauhaus and Modernist.

Sounds like he’s forgotten more about architecture than I’d ever know! Anyway, the interview’s worth a read. Or if you prefer, just worth a look for some lovely imagery of Daniel’s. If you’d like more info on the man himself he’s also got his own site, complete with gallery for your perusal.

We’ve got new blood in the Guild Wars community team… but watch out, because that blood’s acidic! Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaohgodthatwasanawfulpun, I apologise, I am very tired.

Yes! New person. Specifically, this person, Regina Buenaobra, and I wish I knew how to pronounce her name so it sounded less mangled in my head. Regina’s just started today in fact, as the new ‘on-site’ community manager at ArenaNet (near Seattle, WA). As well as being officially announced she’s also been officially added to the official Guild Wars Wiki. Officially.

Why do I tell you all this? Well apart from being downright neighbourly I also do it because I’ve ‘known’ of Regina for some time, but I have always known her just as ‘Brinstar’, the mysterious online persona that she blogged under. (Well, not that mysterious. It sounds good though doesn’t it?)

Brin’s blogged about Guild Wars for absolutely aaaages, although she occasionally talks about other games too, at Acid for Blood dot net (ah, at last the opening pun makes sense). You should drop by. It’s good blog.

When she’s not there, she’s also writing articles elsewhere, like this one for the online magazine Cerise, which is dedicated to women gamers.

I’m really happy that Regina’s now part of the extended NCsoft family and I’m happy to welcome her into the fold. (One of us, one of us, etc.) Go for it Brin! Good luck!

Know of any good gaming blogs by the way? Lemme know your faves in comments.

If you’d like to hear all manner of NCsoft staff talking up a storm (plus Draw the World Together artists like David Nakayama and Andrew Wildman, to boot) then Split Infinity Radio and MusicWorldRadio have you covered, baby.

I had the pleasure of talking over the weekend with Riff, AKA Scarlet Shocker, of MusicWorldRadio, and also with Simon, AKA DJ Villain, of Split Infinity. Both had plenty of questions to ask and I hope I answered ‘em well. I’d like to thank them both for taking the time out to come down to the event and do the interviews – I hope you had a good time guys, and we’ll definitely see you next year!

Keep reading for all the links and information you need….

Split Infinity Radio presents…

First of all, Split Infinity have a bunch of different interviews live. You can get to an index of all of them from this news story, but if you prefer you can download the MP3s directly. The links below are all separate MP3 downloads, so you can get each one easily. The interviews include all of the following peeps:

From NCsoft Europe

• Avatea – One-woman community commando for Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa
• The entire City of Heroes/Villains community team (that’ll be GhostRaptor, Kerensky and Palladium)
• Martin ‘Snowstorm’ Kerstein, Guild Wars guru
• Martin ‘Amboss’ Rabl, Aion authority
• .. and me, some ligger who got involved somehow…

From NCNorCal

• Melissa ‘War Witch’ Bianco, our guest of honour for the weekend and game designer for City of Heroes/Villains

From Draw the World Together

• David Nakayama, artist on the City of Heroes comic (and also now kicking ass on Marvel Adventures)
• Andrew Wildman, legendary pencil behind Transformers for many years… and of course the founder of Draw the World Together

MusicWorldRadio presents…

Not wanting to be left out of the party… Riff of MusicWorldRadio also got loads of material, including the entire Q&A session that Melissa ‘War Witch’ Bianco did on Saturday (including my ‘standing too close to the microphone causing feedback’ gaffs at the start – watch your ears folks!).

He also recorded an entirely separate chat with Melissa that’s over an hour long. If you want value for your listening download Riff’s your man, although I assure you Split Infinity packs loads into their interviews as well (If you listen to one SI chat, make it Melissa’s – good stuff).

Anyway, when Riff first put his interviews live, the traffic to his site was so great it overloaded his bandwidth, so we offered to host the interviews on the EU COH site servers. That’s where you’ll find them in two convenient ZIPs:

MusicWorldRadio Interview Set One includes chats with Martin ‘Amboss’ Rabl about Aion (28m19s), GhostRaptor (24m45s), Kerensky (18m25s), myself (30m32s – spot the blowhard) and Martin ‘Snowstorm’ Kerstein about Guild Wars (15m10s).

There’s also a short retrospective piece from Riff talking about the entire convention experience, which is a great round-up of the whole thing (thanks Riff – and by the way, August Bank Holiday? Are you INSANE, man??). Six files folks, two hours of chatter! Get it on your iPod and enjoy on your commute or in the gym.

MusicWorldRadio Interview Set Two is a back-to-back MelissaFest, including her Q&A on Saturday (Again – watch out for those ear-splitting screeches near the start…!) and a one-to-one interview with Melissa herself. Bear in mind the first part of the Q&A was done using presentation slides, so occasionally, you might not quite understand what’s being referred to (yeah, I’m going to try and get those up somewhere). However, the recording includes the extensive Q&A we had afterwards, which should make sense.

On top of that you also get over an hour (boy, can she talk!) between Riff and Melissa herself, which I’ve listened to, and is a really great chat with exclusive information in it right from the start. Face it, you’ve just gotta download ‘em all!

Again – thanks to all of you guys who interviewed us, we appreciate it – and I hope all of you who listen to ‘em, enjoy them!