PAX East

[DragonHeart]

Anyone else going this year?

I've actually never been to a gaming convention before but this year I have the opportunity to, so myself and a friend just bought our badges. From what I've heard from a friend/coworker, it's a ton of fun and I'm super excited to be going.

[seanb]

I used to go to game conventions, but then I took an arrow in the knee



..but have a good time!

[Josh_R]

I used to go to game conventions, but then I took an arrow in the knee



..but have a good time!

Anywho I have never been to any gaming convention. I have thought several times about going to one.

[nix]

DragonHeart! Good to see you posting!

I've been to manyh conventions but never a gaming one strangely enough, where is this pax convention on? Is there one on the west side?

I'm just a 2hr drive from Seattle, yeha!

[DragonHeart]

Yeah, life's been busy so I've not really been around for awhile. Good to see you still here nix.

PAX East is in Boston so not exactly local for you lol. However, PAX Prime is in Seattle, sometime around Labor Day. Actually it looks like there's quite a few different conventions all over the country, only a handful of which I've even heard of.

[Kaiden]

I actually just sold my pass for it, as I double booked that weekend. Not sure if you are a fan but Boston also has their "anime" convention that weekend if you like those things.
As for conventions in general I have a lot of fun at them. I love watching top level players in CS or SC2 so if they have anything like that I am usually all over it. The games are fun to play but the lines are so long and usually only give you 5-10 minutes of playtime. So I struggle playing more than one big game. I don't know if you will get any major announcements at Pax East. I don't think companies have ever used it to announce projects but that is usually awesome to see to.

[DragonHeart]

So PAX was this weekend just past.

It was awesome. Seriously, if you ever get the chance to go, it's a lot of fun. There were about a billion people there but aside from the expo floor it actually wasn't too bad and since everyone was in a great mood it didn't feel as packed as it looked. All kinds of stuff going on, tournaments, contests, raffles, panels, concerts...you name it, it was there somewhere. Not just video games either, there was a lot of PC, tabletop, board games, etc.

We went to 5 or 6 panels, all of them interesting. The Dragon Age panel, while not very informative, was highly entertaining, complete with an official Hawke-mage cosplay. Even met a couple of game devs out on the expo floor, which was really neat. Definitely want to go to more of the panels next year. Too bad a lot of the good ones were at the same time so it was definitely a lot of pick and choose.

The friend I went with won a computer (well, most of one) in one of the raffles, which was cool. I didn't win anything per se but I got some free shit, including some stuff from Square Enix, which was nice. Ended up with some free games/beta codes, a Zelda comic done by the Penny Arcade guys, some Magic stuff since they were apparently a major expo sponsor or something and some other random odds and ends.

Not a lot of cosplayers, but I think they were all over at the anime con. Funny you should mention that Kaiden, maybe I saw you and didn't know it. Said friend had some other friends who went to that so after PAX two of the days we went to the general anime con area and hung out with them, which was also fun. The cons usually aren't scheduled at the same time but it ended up working out quite well that way.

All in all, the best weekend I've had in a long time.