Best Of

@DNA3000

New Journalism comes to MCOC and we are all better because of it. Well done, boss.

Great post! I wish I could’ve participated, but flights from Australia are just too expensive.

After all that reading, I just realized this is the first time I’m seeing Cat Murdock in person!

Bro wrote it like it's an official statement, so clear and detailed

@Anotherconcernplayer

It's a game, don't take it so seriously. Games are meant to be played for fun.

Is 12 hours excessive? Sure but if you want the rewards, that's what is required.

It's not like you have to sit in front of the screen watching the whole 12 hours. Just put it on and go about tour day. That's what I did. But i was not able to get the full 12 hours for all the rewards.

Also, I have never spent money on this game so it doesn't bother like it does other people.

For the second in-person event in a row, I have somehow indoctrinated everyone into a drink they must try! (The fact that you saw 5 separate people holding it and drinking it made me cackle, out loud. Thank you for that!)

The first is a Cactus Club (a chain restaurant in Vancouver) Bellini. It is delicious. If you go to the city, I insist you try it at least once. There's a picture floating around with a dozen or so content creators where we are all in a Cactus Club, almost everyone holding a Bellini. One of my favorite memories.

And now we have the liquid marijuana! (You want to know why it hit you so hard? We were drinking doubles, lol. That's why. I forgot that until much later. And by much later I mean like 1am when I was desperately drinking water before I went to sleep.)

It was a pleasure and a joy to get to meet you in person, I LOVED reading this write up!! I think you captured the energy of the event amazingly well.

Can we get something clear here.

MCoC have an international release, with players around the world in different time zone.

Kabam access and profited from players around the world spending money on the game.

Kabam HAVE to cater for all of their players, including creating a fair and accessible rewards to all players.

How they go about it is part of their business plan that they should already have in place, the game have been running for 10 years plus.

Whatever happened with Twitch, the rewards and banned issue is down the Kabam, as a company they and whomever overseeing the Marketing and Community department should have know Twitch ToS.

As to why the community is upset with Kabam, is creating a requirements of 12 hours viewing to obtain the rewards, then blame the community when Kabam broke the ToS of Twitch.

While it is understandable why a Kabam staffs might be stress and upset with these issue after a long weekend of working, it is definitely unacceptable (or professional) for them to lashed out and blame the community.

This is right after the CEO saying that Kabam are listening and will be more players focus.

I would like to keep playing this awesome game for many years to come. I found it really enjoyable. I don’t care if I’m not a top player. I play the game because it makes me feel good and forget the sadness that wants to defeat me. I don’t want to play other games. I found what I was looking for. I hope they listen to the players and fix the problems.

Kabam: It's your fault. We took the bullet for YOU!
Players: Nobody asked for Twitch drops. We always wanted promo codes.

Kabam: No, it's your fault. We took the bullet for YOU!

Players: 🤨😑🙄

Part two:

Sunday was even more of a blur than Saturday, because by now jetlag was kicking in, I had already absorbed 36 hours of meet and greet, and I'm getting too old for this. I spent most of my time in panels or watching the Brawl. The Brawl was bananas, and you had to be there to get the full effect of a live audience, many of whom are decent competitive players in their own right, wondering just what sort of drugs Tilapia was on that weekend. And that final match with Liam and Andy was just bonkers. For Andrew to go down 3-1 in a best of 7 and come back on a live stage is huge. And even though he lost 0-2 in the final round, that was the closest 0-2 match you'll ever see. Both matches were won by seconds or percents. The live audience reactions were genuine: we were seeing Battleground lore in the making, and we all knew it.

I want to say all the competitors, as far as I could tell and to the degree I had to interact with them, seemed to be there for the fun of it. Yes, they all wanted to win, and to varying degrees were locked in on the fights (Liam being the Iceman of the tournament was super locked in) but they also showed excellent camaraderie and sportsmanship. PvP can be a toxic environment in general and Battlegrounds in particular can be a toxic game mode, but to see the best of the best of the best just playing to play, and being good at the game because they love playing the game, it should be an example to everyone else. I firmly believe most of the toxicity in our community comes from insecurity. It comes from needing others to fail to feel better about themselves, These guys have no need to push others down to feel good about themselves. As Cantona put it on Saturday "I just want to get to day two, and I'm fine with it." All of them were commenting less on their own game play, and more on how amazing everyone else was. Especially Tilapia, that reparry kill was just ludicrous.

My brain was substantially more mushy on Sunday, so I had a lot more trouble starting conversations. For example, I ran into Cat Murdock on Sunday, and I wanted to tell her how much of a fan I am of her work, how I like the art and appreciate all the effort that goes into her infographics. It is in large part because of her I stopped doing event guides for the most part long ago: she does that stuff so much better than I used to. And also ask for a sticker please.

What came out was, I think, "hey, hi there."

So, about the Summonaire thing. I know what everyone is saying. Trust me, you get up in front of 250 people while live streaming to thousands after two days of being bombarded by a convention atmosphere and see if you get your own name right. I was following along and got three wrong in my head. One was because who actually remembers the name of the -pool crystals, and two just because my brain farted in the moment. And yes, one of them was the vampire question.

Saturday night Puppy said "I am going to get that other spot tomorrow" and he did, going into the finals of the Boss fight on Sunday. From my understanding, he had some control issues on stage but didn't want to make a fuss, which was very gracious. I was in a panel at the time, and did not see it live. Frankly, how he wasn't either dead from alcohol poisoning or hadn't just burst into flames from static build up I will never understand, much less be fully operational.

There were two Ask the Dev panels, one per day, and I attended both. I was not allowed to ask questions during the panels. This was probably the right move. I also attended a Dev Panel that was running while the Beat the Boss finals was on stage, which was composed of Kabam Mimic, DLL, and Honeydew talking about champion and encounter design and implementation. And as I told them, and I am now telling all of you, Mimic said bosses were too hard, Honeydew was dropping math, and DLL was teaching us Indian dance moves. You know, exactly what everyone expects from those designers.

And then of course there was the CEO crystal. After they cut stream, they continued to mill around stage a bit and everyone was wondering what was up. I wish I had filmed it, but I was kinda cameraed out at that point and just wanted to enjoy whatever was happening. I'm not sure how much this was covered, or if anyone else posted coverage, but there was this spinning crystal on monitors on Sunday just infinitely spinning.

Mike and Dave made a show of asking the CEO to use his "CEO-powers" to actually tap the crystal out, and it dropped a bunch of rewards. The first was the Dazzler pfp, and everyone kinda groaned. Then it was the crystals, and then the rank up gems. With each reward the cheers got louder and louder, and then the CEO basically said everyone should get those good rewards and the shouts were deafening (not that I wasn't already deaf from two nights in a row at Fable). It was the perfect punctuation to the weekend that got the crowd hyped after the Brawl and a weekend of long days.

If only Seatin had these CEO powers.

Sunday night I decided to skip Fable and go straight to the meet up at a place called Greta that Kabam set up for Kabam staff and content creators and the like. I was worried if I went to Fable I might get stuck there, but as Jinx and Puppy were at Greta, I shouldn't have worried.

I tried to get pics of people I neglected to get pics with earlier in the week, so I have a better record of who I ran into that night. There was PeterBlaze (aka some dude), Clobs (not that Clobs, or the other Klobs, but that Clobs), Xander (who I chatted with I think all three days), Darkness, Ackbar, Kip, Honeydew, Mike and Dave of course, Brian was still muttering something about eggs. I met Volatility there, who was busy telling Kabam Crashed everything he's doing wrong, and so I told her everything she was doing wrong. Just kidding: she was great, I discussed her recent video with her, and I told her while I had some points of disagreement, I felt her video was well constructed and worth watching. And then we swapped pictures, as proof there's no beef there.

Me and Volatility, preparing for our head butting match to the death.

I'm sure I met even more people, but forgot to scribble a note to myself for. If I chatted and forgot to mention, sorry about that.

A consistent theme of the entire weekend was that it was the connection to the people that was the most valuable. Game previews are great, and rewards are great, but speaking to real people face to face is priceless. You get the raw, unvarnished story, mostly. People show you who they are, far more than they do online. And I met dozens and dozens of people, and they were all great. Most had some gripe or criticism of the game, but who doesn't. Most love the game and want it to succeed. I talked to many small creators who I said hey, the community has its big creators, but it needs more than just a few big ones, it needs a lot of smaller ones too. A forest is not twelve large trees in a parking lot.

I wish I could remember more, but on Sunday I ran into Dragon. You may know Dragon from the old MCOC podcast, or more recently if you've been banned from the Discord (by the way, it probably wasn't her but the rest of us don't mind if you keep thinking it is her, and neither does she). Anyway, I made three mistakes there. First, I asked what she was drinking. And second, I said I'll have one of those. And third, I actually drank it.

As you can see, even the drink itself is trying to escape the glass, like in the movie The Thing.

This is apparently a "Liquid Marijuana" a concoction made from Blue Curacao, Midori, Pineapple Juice, Sour Mix, and the Anti-Life Equation. At one point I'm pretty sure I saw five separate people drinking this thing simultaneously (you can spot this drink from across the room) so I was not Dragon's first victim convert. Pinwheel thought they were just Mountain Dew Baja Blasts, but I can assure you they aren't. But just to be sure, I had three of them. I think. I was alternating them with margaritas. They are actually pretty good. For drinking, less so for remembering the night. Or weekend. I wouldn't say they were responsible for making me forget my umbrella at the bar, forcing me to walk all the way back from my hotel to fetch it, causing me to not get to bed until three AM. I take that back, I most definitely would blame Dragon for that.

If you ever find yourself in a position to attend one of these things, I would strongly recommend it. It is not about the game, it is about the community wrapped around the game. The developers love the game, the content creators love the game, anyone who traveled all the way to Vancouver just to hang out almost certainly loves the game. They are all there for the same reason you'll be there: to reach out and connect with others like us. I'm not the biggest social butterfly, but I did my best to reach out and chat with people. Some I remember, some its a bit hazy, but all of them I was interested in the moment. I met players of all ages, some even old enough to drive. I met people who didn't even play the game and was just there to support others that was still a fun time (I was geeking out with the significant other of an attendee at Greta who was a big MMO player like I was, which was an inception-like connection within a connection). At the end of the day, we're all just people (them moreso than you guys, but still).

I ended the weekend tired, partially deaf, voice gone, and full of blue brain rot, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Although seriously that CEO crystal was also not bad at all.

Thanks to everyone I met, everyone who came up to me and chatted, or who chatted with me when I thought I recognized you, and humored me when I introduced myself to you for the second or third time because I forgot what you looked like. Now you all know these posts aren't a bot: there's someone out there who actually talks like this, all the time. And if you were there and wanted to chat, and we either missed each other or my eyes were glazed over and didn't notice you at some point, I'm sorry about that. I did my best, right up to the moment I literally lost my voice for a bit.

PS: these were great:

I was waiting at YVR and munching on some snacks while waiting for my bus plane back to Seattle, and Sayfasi put me on to these. Apparently "All dressed" is a salt and vinegar crossed with light bbq seasoning thing, and if you're into that, these are the chips for you. Good job, Canada.