PAX East Day 3 Recap – Neverwinter, Guns of Icarus, Stinky Footboard, and More Cosplay!

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

Day three had finally arrived and Bowen and I (well mainly just me) could barely hobble out of the hotel after a long night partying with Bethesda and Perfect World Entertainment. James at least was still as chipper as ever, motivated most likely by the 20 degree Boston weather and the fact that he had just flown in from 90 degree weather in southern Texas. You’d probably have never seen someone power walk so fast from a taxi to the front door of the convention center while carrying 50 pounds of camera equipment.

By PAX East Day 3 even Ahri was running low on life essence

James took off and met with City of Steam yet again to film Gabriel showing off some high level gameplay to improve our upcoming MMOHuts Refresher. Unfortunately we can only imagine how this went at this point as Bowen and I spent an hour just trying to check bags in the maddening long bag check line.

When we finally caught up to James he was in an intense video interview with a member of Carbine Studios Wild Star team. Although we didn’t snag a lot of new info, it was great to see what we learned about in the demo earlier in the weekend actually playing out in real time on the live servers. We also got to see some of the Dominion gameplay instead of the Exile gameplay so be sure to keep an eye out for that video if you’re more interested in ruling the galaxy with an iron fist!

This Icarus has nothing to do with Guns of Icarus. Yet…

Next up we hit up our old friends at Muse Games to learn about their upcoming plans for a Guns of Icarus Adventure Mode. But for those who have never heard of Guns of Icarus, their new February trailer is a great quick crash course of what to expect.

Adventure Mode will take this game closer than ever before to achieving the feel of a fully-fledged open world MMORPG with factions and a huge world map to explore. Muse Games does an awesome job explaining it in their Kickstarter launch video and keep an eye out later this week as we talk to them about what makes Guns of Icarus such a unique title. And if you’re sold on the concept be sure to support them at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/musegames/guns-of-icarus-onlineadventure-mode.

Meanwhile our Team Doyle was helping do some good in the world by talking to the folks at Able Gamer about their charity to raise awareness of gamers with disabilities and promote new tools to level the playing field. Fun shouldn’t be restricted to only the enabled and you have to love what this charity is doing plus they also offer reviews of various titles to show how accessible they are for gamers with disabilities. You can learn more about them HERE.

And speaking of enabling gamers in new and unique ways, we spent some time over at the Stinky Footboard booth and have to say the game offers some great control options for the FPS they had on display. It’s essentially a PC Accessory that rests on the floor with buttons hidden underneath the panel that are activated when you press forward, back, left, or right with your foot. Combined with programmable functionality like Ctrl + Forward, it unlocks a wide range of new hotkeys that can make those not so easily reached keys a hindrance no longer. I’m personally rooting for their Kickstarter campaign as I’d love to test the game out on SMITE and League of Legends to see if it can up my MOBA skills.

And then things really went full circle when we met up with none other than OnRPG’s former admin Nilax, now a member of PWE’s European Neverwinter team, held a mini-reunion with me and Team Doyle, both of whom have been writing for OnRPG since long before my time at the site.

Grand Master Nilax Meets Young Bl0nde

MMOHuts and OnRPG United

We then split as James had a one on one interview with the head of Cryptic Studios and developer of Neverwinter, Jack Emmert, while I spoke to the Star Trek Online Community Manager, Brandon Felczer, on the upcoming Legacy of Romulus update.

We also threw professional cosplayer HaruVamp (cosplaying as the sexiest Tails Prower cosplayer we’ve ever seen) at Jack Emmert to see how he handles himself under impromptu pressure. You’ll have to stay tuned for the upcoming video to see how that all played out though!

It was finally time to finish off the show and catch our flight out of Boston before the terrible incoming blizzard trapped us. But I took a gamble and stuck around at the Riot Booth to get an interview with Associate Game Designer Riot FeralPony, best known for helping design such League of Legends champions as Fizz, Graves, Hecarim, Jayce, Rumble, as well as the Jax rework. Needless to say this guy knows how to make those champions that remain strong in just a unique enough way that you don’t see them nerfed until quite a while after their launch due to the challenge of learning to play them. He’s also a generally cool guy who will be explaining a bit about how the process of Champion Reworks is done, how various game modes and balancing decisions have expanded into a global operation, and if you ask nicely, we might even share his favorite restaurant in Santa Monica with you.

So ended our awesome PAX East convention. But so begins our extensive video coverage via Youtube! Be sure to subscribe to MMOHut’s channel to be the first to know about each of our upcoming videos as we’ll be working nearly around the clock to pump out the most solid coverage our tiny team can muster! Oh and as promised, more cosplay pics!