Live from GenCon! (Part 2)

Well Day 2 and man the feet are sore. Lots of walking around. Today, I stopped and talked with the team at NCSoft. They are displaying Auto Assault, City of Heroes/Villians, Lineage 2 and Guild Wars: Factions. In talking with them about Lineage 2 Chronicles 5, I learned that it is going strong on the Korean front and the localization to English and other languages is going well. Just lots of work. Chronicles 5 will be the last updated named Chronicles, this actually goes along with Lineage I and the last update is called Episodes. No word on what the new name for the updates will be on both products. Should be interesting to see what they will be called. As most Lineage fans may know there are supposed to be 12 Chronicles for L2. We shall see?

Guild Wars:Faction is going strong and the new PvP options have been received really well. It was commented that the success of Guild Wars really shows that the free model of Guild Wars works well. I asked a bit about Auto Assault and how thing were since the server merge and staff changes at NCSoft. Word is that things are going smooth on the home front and that some of the internal changes are helping community relations and customer support work better. As for the game, it is starting to pick up steam and the single server helps with the use of convoys and such for players. The next large update is schedule in the next month or two and has tons of bug fixes, enhancements, and other requests that fans have been asking for. It sounds like if you have stopped playing, it maybe a great time to go back and check it out after that patch. We will of course post news on Auto Assault WarCry of the upcoming patch and patch notes when they are official released.

I was a bit surprised that they did not have Dungeon Runner on display as well GenCon is pretty heavy into Dungeons. I did learn that closed beta was going great.

Next after stopping by and getting an autograph from one of my favorite authors Margaret Weiss and a copy of the new Dragonlance book Dragons of the Dwarven Depths, I headed over to chat with the Pirates of the Burning Sea. While Pirates has been in a very limited beta for sometime, I learned they are working to ramp up the beta program to start letting more and more people in. Currently they are letting in a small number every week, but that number will be increasing very soon. Quite a few enhancements are planned for upcoming beta releases as well as overhuals of few internal areas (you know the stuff no one gets to see, but use all the time). Constant refining of areas, the addition of higher level quests, and added combat features are coming very soon. Those in the beta will really have a great time and if you aren't in beta, you should really head over to the official site and sign up for it. How can you not be in a game with Pirates? Yarr.

Next on my trip was a chance to see all the great changes to NeverWinter Nights 2 since E3, when I last had the chance to chat with them. And let me tell you, the game is looking great. Overall graphic changes are have really come a long way, game play improvements such as pathfinding are just amazing. If you ever played NWN1, you where guaranteed to make sure pathfinding was off. Not so in NWN2, you will find it works great. In a demo from Feargus Urquhart, he showed walking down a winding path and off to a distance spot. The pathfinding had the main character and all companions follow the trail perfectly and off to the distant point without anyone getting lost. This was very cool to see as I can't think of all the times I would loose someone in NWN1 have to go lead them to the party seperately. A full writeup on my adventures with Feargus will be on our NWN2 WarCry site later today(http://nwn2.warcry.com/scripts/news/view_news.phtml?site=91&id=64005) .

Well that is about it for Friday at GenCon. Time to get some dinner at the Alcatraz Brewery and maybe a foot massage.