AC Player Luncheon - Boston 2003 |
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Ah, the ACPL! I look forward to it every year. And every year, it takes me a
week to recover. It's definitely lots of fun, but usually, not a lot of
sleep!
Thursday We did some Boston. Shopping and eating and seeing the sights, then went back to the room. Which was not cool. We called the front desk and they sent someone up right away! He changed the filter and fiddled with it and we heard what sounded like the compressor kicking in! What a great hotel! We took a walk to look for a place to have dinner and landed at a Thai restaurant. It was very yummy! Back at the hotel, ACPL people were beginning to trickle in, but we make it a relatively early night so that we could stay up late the next few days! We headed back up to our dreamy room, which was still not cool. A short debate ensued, but the need for AC (it was the AC-PL, after all!) won out. We asked to switch rooms and were giving a new room one floor down. Our new room was a shoebox. A tiny, cramped shoebox. Where were our overstuffed chairs, and plush ottomans? Where was my big wide desk? My fluffy pillows? Too bad, so sad. Easy come, easy go. At least it was cool! Friday
Then it was off to dinner at Pizza-something Uno's! In addition to the usual suspects, a contingent of Turbine Devs and a pile of fan site people, there were some other folks I again have no idea who they were! I got to meet Zyrca and Jessica and Paraduck, and even Dad of Paraduck who was having a rocking good time. He expressed his delight that we were all quite nice and very normal and not at all what he was expecting (Paraduck runs AC Vault).
While some groups split off to do allegiance things, a pile of us went back to the hotel with one mission: find Kwip! 'Cause you know, where there's Kwip, there's party. Does anyone know his real name, someone asked. I do, I said, and mentioned it. Hey, that's *my* name, another in our group claimed. Yes, Kwip had also been placed in a shoe-box because someone with the same name had already hacked into his room! What are the chances, I ask you?
After harassing Kwip and Kwipette for a while, we took the party back downstairs to the lobby. Rally and Circeus entertained us with scenes from Star Wars Galaxies (practicing up for Whose Drudge) and Sue Anne, artist extraordinaire, told us more than we ever imagined there was to know about rubber inner tubes.
Saturday (Note: The fine folks at Fallen Kingdoms did a live feed of the entire ACPL to the web and recorded the entire thing! They were kind enough to give me a copy of the disk. I had hoped to have transcribed the Q&A for you, but just haven't gotten a chance yet. In due time, I also hope to have a few clips available for download.)
Jessica gave the a speech after lunch, describing her background in gaming and explaining more about the relationship between Microsoft and Turbine. There were even more questions from the crowd (coming soon!). She also called out the server names, each in turn, so everyone had a chance to see who played where. I was sitting at a table with Latte, Jo's and Pat's Mage, fellow Thisledowners I played with in-game and was thrilled to meet in person. Another table of TD-ers were right behind us and we all met and said hello as lunch was clearing out. I also got a chance to see a few videos a player named Tim had put together, my favorite being the one of his Shadowclaim adventures! I was unable to play Shadowclaim for various reasons (couldn't find the dang link, hectic work schedule, out of town), so it was very exciting to see all the goings-on! Kwip tries to claim Tim as his very own fanboi, but everyone knows that Tim is *my* stalker. (Just kidding, Tim! You know I love you!)
This year's ACPL was a little different than previous years since it featured both AC and AC2. They were also a few other new activities. The first allowed you to bring a resume if you were interested in getting a job in gaming. Someone was available to critique it for you and give you advice. The second was another way to give money to Habitat Humanity in addition to the usual raffle. For a $5 donation you could record your voice for possible inclusion into a Turbine game! Me and my vassal jumped at the chance to be charitable (and FAMOUS, of course!), so I missed a lot of the AC2 Q&A that was going on in the meantime.
After the AC2 segment there was, of course, the Whose Drudge Is It Anyway contest! Those of you familiar with the game know that groups of players are given subjects having to do with AC and must act them out with only minutes to prepare. It's always hilariously funny! This year they asked the audience to pick a few Devs to judge the event. Besides Jesse and Yew and Sandra (who bowed out of the judging), they also asked me to be an honorary judge! I got a great front row seat! Sadly, however, I didn't get as many pics as I thought I had. I was distracted by Jesse who kept trying to show me his underwear. He insisted it was a joke "thing," but I suspect he was flirting with me. It was a really tough decision. All the groups made us laugh, acting out such subjects as /tells gone bad, the Secret Life of Tinkers, and the classic: Dudes in Arwic. Ravlen was there, defending his championship streak, but in the end, without the aid of his secret weapon, he was doomed to 3rd place. This year, the cheap sex joke won out over the well crafted pun. ;-)
And there's more! We also saw a preview video of Middle Earth Online, the newest Turbine game coming down the pipe. The capes looked cool. Afterwards there was much more merriment. Another Thai dinner with a group of friends (and Sean D.'s hilarious comment to my vassal, calling him "Nod" after he showed up in his new hat), an attempt at seeing "Pirates of the Caribbean" (sold out, darn the luck). A sunset walk through Boston Commons instead, then back to the hotel lobby for even more late night fun!
Wrap-Up All in all, though, another fabulously successful player gathering, even without nametags (the yellow stickers *might* have worked if you had left off the shirt sizes!! ;-). There's just nothing like it: the friends, the fun, the players, Boston, my bag of swag, Jessica, the best Devs in gaming history and more AC talk than you can shake a festively feathered and beribboned stick at! And for those of you who wrote to me after the event, saying they were at the ACPL, but didn't want to bother me... are you crazy people or something?? ;-) That's why we're there, after all. As Jessica said, "we come for the game; we stay for the friends." Or something like that. |
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PREVIOUS ACPLs: Other 2003 Write-ups amd pics: Fallen Kingdom's ACPL page - video clips available!! |
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