This week has been fantastic. You have already read about Monday through Wednesday, and here comes the story of Thursday and Friday. It so happens that both Perpetual and Funcom were holding press events and hands on for each of their games here in San Francisco, and lo and behold - we were there to get the snoop on the latest and greatest MMOs coming out.
Thursday started great, with finalization of the video interview with Perpetual's Seth Olshfski before heading out to the 1900 Jazz Club a few blocks down to take on Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. Once there I quickly met up with some old friends and familiars from websites and magazines such as Massive, Ten Ton Hammer, Warcry and IGN. Perpetual's crew were in place with art directors, product managers, the vice president, community and world teams.
After a few rounds in the bar it was time for the play session to start. Kevin was placed nicely in front of a computer while I dealt the camera work for this rounds event. Making sure to capture both the footage from Kevin's exploits as well as from the other participants, the hands-on quickly came and passed - and 5 hours later, we had tons of footage and a good base to write some reviews and articles. These will be posted on the Curse Mainpage on either Sunday or Monday.
Some pictures from the press event itself can be found here! and you can view the latest official trailer shown at the event below:
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Our good friends over at Kohnke made sure to keep us entertained with a festive afterparty. Dana Massey from Warcry, Rebecca Bundy from Massive and various other press along with some representatives from Perpetual dug into a few rounds of tequila shots, jack and coke and other alcoholic beverages before we parted ways at the end of the night.
Enter Friday. Pre-lunch was not much to talk about, your regular Friday with normal tasks. After lunchtime though, it was time for Kevin and I to prepare for and head out to an event over at Eidos' studios in Redwood for the Press Hands-On event for Age of Conan. We got down to Eidos' HQ at around 3:15, met up with the team and got ready for the mass gaming goodness.
At the current time of writing, any information regarding the event itself is embargoed until 9am PST on Monday morning - at which point we will have a whole lot of content for you to fiest your eyes upon.
The evening was later spent eating some amazing Indian food with Hubert, Kevin and Jorgen Tharaldsen from Funcom. Jorgen being a Norwegian like myself was a great change of pace from English speaking San Francisco nightlife. Being able to talk a bit in my native language was refreshing, and as the night went on and we hopped from bar to bar, Jorgen also proved that he still has Scandinavian blood in him and can handle a good amount of liquor and rounds along with yours truely.
Be sure to check out www.curse.com for official updates, reviews and articles regarding the games on Monday and Tuesday. In addition to the editorial, there will be mass ingame video from Age of Conan and Gods and Heroes also!