I spent most of my time playing crowd control for the line for the Lineage 2 swag line. I was totally unnecessary as the crowd was pretty well behaved; a PK-enabled society is a polite society. From left, Jessica Folsom (community coordinator), Tim Tan and Sam Han (producers).

Also present were the Defuser, an Austin police officer who moonlights as a superhero, and Ghost Widow, whose secret identity is Bethany Baldwin from NC Support. They almost came to blows, oh noes!

Luckily, Ghost Widow was distracted by a small baby.

The Tabula Rasa team were also out in force and were pretty well mobbed the whole time, mainly because some guy in a uniform showed up. Next to him signing posters is Starr Long, Tabula Rasa’s producer.

Not to be outdone — *never* to be outdone — were the irreverent Dungeon Runners contingent, Mark Tucker and Stephen Nichols.

Clearly, they were taking their job as seriously as ever.

Kyle Stewart, US Lineage 1 producer.

April “CuppaJo” Burba and Richard “General British, SIR!” Garriott take questions about, um, Ultima 4. LOOK, EXPLOSIONS!

About this time, I was pretty tired.

However, when given the opportunity to throw things at players, I apparently caught a second wind. (Pics courtesy of fans not busy ducking)

Anyway, a great time and lots of phat lewt was had by all, upon which I went outside and found out my car had a flat tire. YAY.

Don’t think they brought them by our den; we’re pretty boring in terms of decorations, aside from my festival of socialist realism (as seen below)

World of Warcraft will continue to be an unholy juggernaut of a cultural phenomenon. Burning Crusade will launch, people will burn through it in a couple of months and crusade for more content patches, which Blizzard will dribble out in a fashion quick for the rest of the industry, and not nearly fast enough for the players. At some point, they will announce breaking the 8 million user mark world wide, but won’t talk about their NA/Europe numbers. (Traditionally expansion packs help with retaining current customers but do little to attract new blood.)

PASS, but only because I was really Master of the Obvious on this one. (Actually they went over 9 million in July.)

Vanguard will attract the most dramatic forum drama for 2007 as the launch community turns out to be entirely different from the beta community, and the two sides implode into violent hellfire.

FAIL, SORT OF. Vanguard had lots of drama, just not on the forums.

Second Life’s torrid affair with the media will end. As they attract more users they’ll run into scaling issues (this is a safe prediction because it’s happening already) and will adapt or die.

PASS, and again another Master of the Obvious prediction, since it was already happening when I wrote that. The bloom is definitely off the rose for Linden Lab, and 2008 will see the first SL competitors, I’d wager.

Raph Koster’s Areae will go public with what they’re doing. I haven’t the foggiest over what it actually is; based on their employment ads it’s something very web-centric and based on Raph’s oft-stated beliefs it’s something very virtual worldy. It will attract violently passionate fans immediately despite not having anything even vaguely playable on the horizon.

PASS as of yesterday, and it looks like I nailed it pretty well, they’re even getting the passionate fans already.

Bioware Austin will finally reveal what they’ve been working on, and everyone will go “oh, is THAT what you wouldn’t tell us?” (Note: I don’t actually know, I just know it’ll have to be anticlimactic)

I DUNNO. Doesn’t look good for this year, though.

Warhammer Online will ship near the end of 2007 and the geek forum wars between “Dude, this game totally ripped off World of Warcraft” and “Dude, World of Warcraft totally ripped off Warhammer” will begin in all-too-earnest. Sanya Weathers will roll her eyes a lot (which is a neat trick when you do it online).

FAIL, as the game’s been pushed back to 2008 and Sanya Weathers don’ work there no’ mo’ (but may well roll her eyes anyway).

The media will fall on an RMT story (either involving defrauding a lot of kids or some organized crime involvement — or both) and an American politician will get involved, to appear relevant and net-wise.

FAIL, for now, anyway. And a good thing that is.

Very, very few gamers upgrade to Windows Vista.

PASS, adoption rates for Windows Vista are somewhere around 15% last time I saw estimates.

Assuming all goes well, I’ll actually be able to go public a bit with what I’ve been working on. Some of you will like it. Some won’t.

FAIL, we’re still keeping it tightly under wraps for now. Hey, that’s fewer broken promises! But still, when you fail a prognostication about YOUR OWN PROJECT, you may want to work on the whole industry analysis thing…

Should be all better now, and service should be more reliable in general. Hopefully.

Maybe.

I also switched the blog template to a less dynamic/ajaxy and hopefully more resource friendly incarnation of evil.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to stuff my cat in a carrier and take her to the vet to get her ears operated on. If I look frazzled at AGDC, that would be why.