Believe it or not, after 5 years in the industry, this was my first E3 I ever attended. The closest I had been before was being on the home office side of the 2004 demo for The Matrix Online. I’d heard plenty of stories about noise, crowds, and the somewhat-clad booth babes, and wasn’t quite sure what to expect this year.

This was only the second time MxO would appear at E3 and I was excited to show off the game to interested people. As I saw at Fan Faire this year, the game gets better looking as PC equipment gets better and less expensive. I knew we’d be showing off a game that looked as good or better than a lot of MMOs on the floor—even given we’re a year old now.

Tuesday, May 9

Just before leaving for SeaTac airport Tuesday morning, I got a call from the studio. It turns out there was a problem with the player client that prevented our in-game concert videos from playing. I had to leave things in the capable hands of Colin, one of our other producers, and checked in throughout the day on progress. The team cranked out two patches that day, with the second one being prepared for testing at 1AM Wednesday morning and release at 4AM. It looked to be the beginning of a long week for me.

I arrived in LA and went to the convention center with Matt Wilson, the Seattle studio head, to check out the venue. Dan Binter had already been there to make sure things were up and running, so it was mostly a fly-by on my part.

While I’d been planning on running the game at 1600x1200, Dan took it one step further. He had MxO at 1920x1200 with full graphic options going and it was running smooth as butter. Throw in Combat Revision 2.0 and I simply couldn’t wait to see peoples’ reactions to today’s MxO.

Since so many other community managers were around, it was a great chance to hang out with everyone I don’t get to see by being up in the Seattle office. It also gave me a chance to check in with my marketing and public relations folks and do a little update on how the free trial was going. (Incredibly well, by the way.) So, after a little face time, I hooked up with Jason, Em, and Kurt from the CRM team and got a ride back to the hotel.

That night we had the pre-E3 gathering in the hotel restaurant. After grabbing my shirts and taking them back to the room, it was time for more socializing with people from the other two studios. (Fortunately, my PR person wasn’t wielding a hammer by this point.) I sat down with some of the EQ2 team and we chatted about our respective games for a bit and caught up on what had been going on since we all saw each other at Fan Faire the month before.

Afterwards, I joined some folks from the CRM team at the tables, along with Leah from EQOA, and continued the chat. One of the nice things about being a fairly tight team is that we always seem to be able to pick up wherever we left off the last time we saw each other. I now have several invites to visit the Austin team, which sounds like a great idea—in the winter. ;)

And, no, I ducked out of mechanical bull riding, thank-you-very-much. :P

Wednesday, May 10

After a late night hanging out with everyone from the other studios, getting up at 4AM for the patch was not something I was looking forward to. However, I crawled out of bed, made some coffee, and called Colin back at Seattle to check in. Fortunately, everything went off without a hitch and we got the videos up and running that morning. Again, The Matrix Online team proved that they can work miracles, as we fixed the issue within only 24 hours of discovering the problem.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t get back to sleep. So, I stayed up and jacked in with our demo characters and tagged a few more hardlines for them and made sure they were ready to go that day.

Since I wasn’t scheduled to demo until that afternoon, I got a chance to wander around the main hall a bit. The first thing I did was track down my buddy Troy (Aether) over at the Pirates of the Burning Sea demo, which was in the nVidia booth. We did a bit of catching up and he harassed me about MxO players continuing to ask him questions about the game. It appears the Matrix has him, as well.

I wandered the main hall until it was time for me to go demo. There were lots of bright lights and big sounds, but nothing captured my attention for very long. The show seems designed for those of us with short attention-spans.

That afternoon was fairly quiet around our demo area—people were concentrating on the new stuff, for the most part. We had a stash of MxO boxes at the demo and handed them out to anyone who came by to try out the game. Dan had given away about ten copies already and I gave out another five or so by the end of the day.

The MMORadio crew stopped by to say “hello” and I got to hit them with the nostalgia bat for a while. (It certainly helps to have The Matrix Online running at the bleeding edge of current hardware.) I also got a chance to chat with Charles from Thinking Man Studios about MMORadio and Awakened Radio for a bit. Just to confirm: There are absolutely no hard feelings between us about AWR closing up shop. It was strictly a business decision and we’re more than happy to have the continued support from MMORadio.

Dragon9 came by and he and his faction hounded me a bit about Combat Revision 2.0 and in-game events. Dragon9 was driving a demo character, which was sadly not ready for prime-time PvP. Much pounding ensued. I’m not sure he or his faction was happy with my answers, but I was honest with them about where things stood and took note of their concerns.

The Wednesday afternoon bus ride took yet another route back to the hotel—I don’t think I ever took the same route twice the entire show. After an hour-and-a-half, we finally made it back to the hotel. Fortunately, most of the EQ2 team was on the same bus, so I joined them for dinner at the Stinking Rose. Many molitos and much fun ensued.

Thursday, May 11

I pulled the morning shift on Thursday and groggily rode the bus to the show. (One of the hazards of being from Seattle is being somewhat saddened by the quality of coffee in many other cities.) I got in a bit early and made sure everything was ready to go for the day.

Thursday morning was busier than Wednesday and I got to show off the game to a lot of people. I don’t think there was more than five minutes at a time that someone wasn’t looking at The Matrix Online during my shift. I think this is also the point where E3 officially became a blur to me.

At one point, a reporter from a European gaming site came by to ask questions about games based on movie IPs. (I can’t seem to find his card, else I’d mention the site. My apologies.) He also was specifically asking about how players were continuing the story and whether they made movies based on the game. I made sure he had a copy of MxO and told him to check out the community forums, as our players love telling their stories through the game.

It also appears that our next-door neighbors turned on their overhead light system on Thursday, as well. First, I noticed a spinning logo on the wall behind our demo stations. Turning around, I was greeted by a blinding light in my eyes until it turned to point the spinning logo on the front wall. I still have “Konami” burned into my retina as I write this a week later.

Dragon9 stopped by again and chatted with me about the game some more. It was nice to let him drive for a while as I talked to people who stopped by. We even had a couple guys from the Netherlands interested in learning more about the game.

I got another chance to walk around the show that afternoon and headed over to the West hall to chat with the folks from Massive. It was good to finally meet face-to-face with the folks I’ve been working with for so long. We had a productive conversation about both player concerns and future possible uses of their system. I think they’re a bit floored that our players want even more ads in game and are incredibly cooperative in working with us to keep the community happy.

After that, I did some more wandering and had to plow my way through the crowd trying to take pictures of Paris Hilton, of all things. I was still pretty exhausted after being up so early the day before, so I caught a bus back to the hotel. Fortunately it was early enough to avoid most of the bad traffic and we got there fairly quickly. Then it was time for a nap and then dinner.

Friday, May 12

The final day of my first E3 was upon me and I…was tired. I took the closing shift, so I caught a late bus into the venue. After two days of lights and sounds, I was more than willing to take a bit of time going inside again. Besides, this was the first sunny, warm morning of the entire show and I wanted to enjoy it a bit.

Back into the abyss, I relieved Mr. Binter from his duties and saw him off on his vacation. After demoing for two days, myself, I could certainly see the attraction of some time off.

Before he left, Dan told me we were out of boxes—I knew we’d been handing a lot out, but wondered how they all disappeared so fast. It turns out that Sara, our PR person, took all that we had left at the booth and put them in the big freebie bin at the front. I guess there wasn’t a box left after an hour or so. Sara told me later her only regrets were not thinking of that before and not bringing more boxes.

The gig was apparently up, as Fallen Horizon figured out that one of the demo characters was “NoElves” and met up with me in the Barrens. We chatted a bit during my brief breaks between visitors, but mostly they stood there dancing on the screen for everyone to see. At one point I turned around to see they had all lined up with my character for screenshots, apparently. When I commented that they were a bunch of jokers, Ic3b3rg retorted: “No Jokerz here. They’re all on Vector.” I love our community.

Conclusion

Amidst all the flash and glamour of all that is E3, The Matrix Online showed itself pretty well. It’s not the same game it was a year ago and I’d love to be able to say the same thing at E3 next year. By that time, even mid- and low-end machines will have the horses to bring the Matrix to life. And who knows where the white rabbit will lead in the meantime.

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