Greetings. I just got back from the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo. It was great meeting some Neowiners there this year. For those of you who couldn"t go, this quickie photo album should help you see what you missed.
PAX is in Seattle. And this year, it sold out pretty quickly. If you"re a gamer, this is pretty much heaven on earth. A whole area for playing board games and card games. Huge LAN parties and areas dedicated to multilayer console gaming were just some of the highlights of the "show".
The Blizzard booth dominated the show. They had Diablo III, Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft. I would go as far as to say that the Blizzard area was more popular than the next 5 most popular booths combined.
For a game that isn"t coming out for awhile, Diablo 3 was remarkably playable. People were lined up to play it and even at this early stage it was very fun.
At the risk of being biased (my day job is at Stardock), Stardock"s new fantasy strategy game, Elemental, was received extremely well despite not scheduled for release until sometime next year.
Bioware"s Dragon Age: Origins had one of the coolest looking booths but you could only see the actual game behind closed doors which made me a bit sad.
Star Trek Online looked especially fun. I kept finding myself drawn back to it over and over.
Stardock"s Ready to Play is expected to go into beta later this week. This free program is designed to easily find strangers who have a compatible gaming profile to you get games going.
PAX isn"t like E3 or other shows. This is a get together of gamers and speaking for myself, it was a real blast.
One of the coolest things I saw at the show was Beatles: Rock Band. I don"t think any single game at the show, including the Blizzard games, captured the attention of people quite like this game did.
I spent most of my time at the Stardock booth doing demos and presentations. It"s a great experience meeting gamers from the community face to face.
If you"re a hard core gamer, PAX 2010 is likely to be in Seattle again next year in late August/early September. It"s totally worth going to if you can make it.