DNA3000 goes to Summoner's Fest

DNA3000

While it is all still in my head (actually, it isn't all in my head anymore but I'm hoping a lot of it is) I thought I would share my experience with Summoner's Fest. There are and will be a lot of coverage on the things Kabam revealed there, and I'm sure all of that will be covered in great detail by many content creators, but this is not that. If you're looking for analysis of the announcements or sneak peaks or any of that, I will at best touch on those things. What I want to do is give those who could not make it a chance to see the event through my eyes, maybe capture some of the magic, feels, and vibes of actually being there.

Also, a disclaimer: I wouldn't say my experience was necessarily typical. In many ways it was, and in some ways it wasn't. To the best extent possible, I will try to cover both sides of that. I am simultaneously very famous and also extremely anonymous, since almost no one recognizes me on sight. So keep that in mind. And with that, here we go.

For those who don't know, I hail from Hawaii. I flew into Vancouver overnight Thursday, connecting through Seattle. Which means I landed in Seattle Friday morning. And as my flight did not have wifi of any kind, I had no way to check on flight status. As many are probably at least somewhat aware, flying in and out of the US was ... interesting to say the least these past few days. Fortunately, my connecting flight was a Horizon flight, which is more of a bus with wings so I don't think they even count those when considering air traffic load:


I have been to bus stations that were more modernized.

YVR Vancouver is a nice airport, and there's a train that will take you practically to Kabam HQ's doorstep, that stops immediately across the street from baggage claim. I booked a hotel literally a block away so I wouldn't have to walk far. I got in early afternoon on Friday, and I decided to meet a friend who was recently hired by Kabam to be an economy designer. I would say the economy is in good hands, but after hearing his suggestion for a new event, I think you guys are all screwed. I also chatted with a few of the game designers, one of which showed me all sorts of stuff coming up, and also this new gadget Kabam gives to the Live Ops crew:



Anyway, I went straight from the airport to the hotel and spend the entire afternoon just sitting there apparently. The content creators decided to hook up Friday evening at a bar called Fable. It was organized by IntoxicatedGamer, because of course. Fable has a basement area with a pool table, some dart boards, and a place groups can hang out. And right there at the bottom of the stairs I ran into someone that should be familiar to many of you:



Yup, that's right: its SammyMCOC. Cool guy, you should subscribe to his channel. We had a nice chat, possibly more than one, but as the entire weekend is a bit of a blur, its hard to say for sure.

Oh yeah, Brian was there also. Some of you might know him, he used to make videos before he lost his mind decided to take a break but he just kept saying something about eggs. At least he wasn't dressed like an egg, I don't think he would have made it down the stairs.

I met a lot of people for the first time that night, at least in person. Shout out to Sanskrit for not being more than ten years younger than me and having a name that sounds even older. I wish I could name all the people I chatted with on Friday night, but I would probably forget people so I won't try to list them all. I will say it was nice meeting Cantona for the first time (sorry, Cant0na~1). I've mentioned before Cantona is on my MCOC Mount Rushmore up there with the likes of MSD, and that's not just an expression of how good a player they are, but also their approach to the game. Cantona seems like someone that does stuff just for the fun of it, and meeting him in person he's definitely that. I can't vouch for what the other competitors were doing, but Cantona was preparing for the Brawl by getting drunk off his butt and wandering out of the bar past 11.


Cant0na, trying in vain to count the number of shots he's had up to this point.

I also have to mention Jinx and Puppy, who I was chatting with until everyone else left, and I'm not just talking about the MCOCers but like everybody. Jinx is a self-described casual player but he's way better than that. If he's casual, I'm in a coma. Puppy aka Dylan was already way past the point of being capable of self-description, and I was there by like 7pm. I got so involved in the conversation with them we didn't leave the bar until past 1am. I was happy to just be capable of standing in line for registration the next morning, while they were hammering the Beat the Boss leaderboards on Saturday. This was not an isolated incident.

The security for the venue was higher than I expected, although in these times I guess this should have been expected. We all did get some nice transparent backpacks which I think served both to prevent people from hiding dangerous things while at the Fest and also restrict arm movement to limit our combat effectiveness if we got rowdy, as the straps were a bit short. There was the waiver, the strip search, the genetic swab, all the stuff you expect when attending a gaming convention. We also got a T-shirt and these nice keychains that were class-coded, and of course it seemed like almost everyone got Mystic and wanted to trade for something else, which is also on brand for Kabam.


Pro-tip, if you check the box that said you spend time on the forums, there was a mandatory fingerprinting and background check.

Vancouver in November is a bit nippy. I went from 80 degree weather to 40 degree weather, and milling around in 40 degree temperatures is not something I do outside of shopping for salad mix in the Costco cold area. Registration started at 8:30am (did I mention I left the bar past 1am?) and then the beat the boss station was open by I think 9am. I'm not sure what was more impressive, the fact that players were able to drive down the time on the Grandmaster from six minutes to almost three, or the fact they were doing it on iPads that were jumping around on stands that were all connected to each other. I got to phase two, died, got my stamp, and called it a day.

Oh yeah, we all got stamp cards for chances at the Big Wheel-o-Prizes. First stamp free, three stamps for attending and participating with the Beat the Boss, the Coliseum preview, and this Dazzler minigame thing. Then two additional stamps if you could beat the boss on day one and day two. I got my four on day one and figured I wasn't likely to beat the boss on either day and so headed over to the Wheel. If you want to know what the prizes were, here they are:


Getting a free spin at the cost of a spin is not a free spin. There, I said it before you did.

By the way, those prizes are printed on little wedges of paper and slid into the wheel. I know this because one very aggressive player decided to really really spin the wheel, and all the prize cards flew out of the wheel like they were pieces of the Death Star exploding outward. Also there was a small mix up at the start of day one. The attendants told everyone in line they would get one spin free, and one if they filled the card. I believe these were the rules in a prior iteration of the wheel. However, your boy DNA was there, and he was reading the nodes:



After a bit of a confab, it was confirmed those were the actual rules, and everyone got four spins instead of two. Reading: its not just for Incursion nodes.

At this point, between that and my unit guides and war revives it is possible I am the highest negative return player in the entire game. The Anti-whale, if you will.

My haul was pretty good:


(Don't bother trying to photoshop the bars away, I already used the codes. I know my audience)

I did see someone get the rank 3-4 gem *and* the 3000 units, but he moved the card before I could get a picture of it. For purely documentational purposes, of course.

I mentioned Puppy and Jinx earlier. This was the leaderboard for Beat the Boss around 1pm-ish:



These times are already ridiculous, but by quarter to five they were insane:



There was some tiny controversies in there I won't go into, regardless I've taken longer to beat some Elder bosses.

There were two preview stations downstairs at the Fest, which I'm sure there must be videos of either during the live stream or by a content creator, but alas I didn't film them. One of them was a Dazzler based minigame that will show up at some point in the game, probably in the same vein as Fantastic Force (aka MCOC Poker) and The Coliseum, which is a new solo and alliance participation competitive game mode. The largest applause Kabam got the entire weekend was when they announced that the Coliseum would replace standard AQ during its run when it arrived.

Saturday opened with an opening presentation, then everyone broke up into whatever they were about: Beat the Boss, the preview stations, watching the early rounds of the Brawl. Kabam did not have food at the event, so people had to wander off for lunch. Kabam HQ is right in the middle of food central. Across the street from my hotel was an A&W and a Tim Hortons (technically that probably doesn't count as I'm sure by law everyone is across the street from a Tim Hortons), plus a 7/11 (although I wouldn't recommend eating there) plus an Italian pasta and pizza place, there was Ramen and a Wrap place, salads and sandwiches, a Halal restaurant, Gyros, a Vietnamese Pho restaurant, whatever you wanted.


I don't care what the sign says, there's no such thing as a Japanese style hotdog.

It is probably hard to see in the stream, but there are two separate seating areas on opposite sides of the stage area. On the side I was on most of the time there's stadium style seating with steps on either side. Most people, like me, just climbed down the seats as if they were stairs, and I can honestly say I did not fall on my face once. I am not going to say if I did so twice.

Mike and Dave were both their usual high energy selves during the show. Some ask if Dave and Mike are as they appear on stream. The answer is yes, and no. Live, they are exactly as they appear on stream. However, Mike is just always the energizer bunny, on or off camera. He's just hopping around constantly. Dave is more of a calm presence off camera. There's a bit of Bert and Ernie energy when they are together.

Saturday night was more of the same. Which is to say, IntoxicatedGamer booked Fable again. I heard we did so much business Friday night the bar manager actually offered to bring in staff if IG wanted to to book it again, so he booked it again. And once again I had many great chats in there, and once again I stumbled out wondering if Puppy and Jinx were going to make it back to their hotel, or any hotel, way past one. And I would have made it back to the hotel by 2am, except by now I was far less anonymous and ran into FaustOutLoud and Wolfdt69 outside the bar:


This is Faust giving me the thumbs up and his brother who is clearly a speedster wondering who the guy in the hat is. Somehow, my picture of Wolf got messed up, but he was in the Who Wants to Be a Summonaire event.


-- Part Two in the first comment, because I ran out of space. --

DNA3000

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.