Here’s some pics from the DDO/DDOcast party at GenCon 2010 along with general pics from the convention.  Such good times.

These pics and more GenCon 2010 pics can be seen as a slideshow as well on DDOcast.

Jerry

Hi everyone!  Just a heads up that I will be taping Episode 164 of DDOcast LIVE on our UStream channel on Saturday, April 17th, 2010 from 8-10pm Eastern Daylight Time HERE!  Our call-in number will be (as usual) (507) 295-1847.

…is the one you need at the time you need it!  I doubt anyone would say that a +1 Returning Adamantine Throwing Dagger is very uber, but it was a lifesaver on Sunday!

I was running with the DDOcast Build Guild on the Vault of Night series, getting us dragon-ready.  Part 4 - we were doing fine until we got to the Master Control Unit and his two fellow iron golems…none of us had any weapons that could damage them!  Our caster didn’t have any spells that could help, either.  We were considering whether we could actually continue, when I realized that I had said dagger in my backpack.  Got it out and it took a long time, but we got it done.

I remember picking that dagger up in Korthos from a barrel that got a “special” drop - you know, when you hear the “kuh-THUNK” sound after breaking something.  I figured at the time, “Hey!  Never know when you’ll be out of arrows or need that adamantine.”  Glad I kept it.

Keep in mind this in on Orien = no twinked gear, no long-accrued plat.  So, no auction house and just able to get gear as I run up my first character with the Build Guild. Same with most of the rest of the group!  Also a shout-out to Cupcake - a long-time DDO player who I’ve read on the forums for years but never been able to group with.  It was awesome to finally meet the famous Cupcake!

So now it’s just a matter of getting other guildies ready for the dragon.  Haven’t fought Velah in forever, wonder how it’ll go.

I guess long and short of it - the most uber weapon is the one you need at the time you need it…and likely the one weapon you don’t have when it’s 100% necessary.

Jerry

Hiya, just a quick heads up that we will be recording episode 162 of DDOcast on SATURDAY, April 3rd from 3-5pm Eastern Daylight time LIVE! Also taking phone calls.

To listen: Visit our Ustream account HERE.

To call: (507) 295-1847

The show will also be recorded as a “regular” podcast.

We’ll be talking about guild housing (airships), Update 4 and a ton more. Call in with whatever you’d like to say!

And yeah, there WILL be free Turbine Points! I’ll be handing out some of the points cards I grabbed from the PAX East Turbine booth to callers…

Flight from Minneapolis to Milwaukee to Boston went surprisingly well.  No complaints here (well, I suppose charging $15 to check a bag instead of just rolling it into the price of the flight is a bit of a grr moment, but I guess it’s about putting their airline at the lowest price point when it comes to searching for flights on the Internet, so I can deal with it…)

Thanks Steiner-Davion and his girlfriend for putting me up at their place.   Hospitality is much appreciated.   A nice surprise was a little kitty:

I should probably make sure that the baby kitty gets onto DDOcast at some point, just to be consistent…

The big thing for my Thursday was an amazingly cool visit to a certain company’s headquarters!

It was very generous of Turbine to allow me to visit and shake hands with quite a few people who make our fine game. I came away from the visit really feeling like Turbine’s DDO team is perfectly suited to make our MMO - the passion was clearly there. Also, lots of D&D books in the office, something I wish would happen more in our world…

Otherwise, had to (unfortunately) do a bit of the ‘ol “real life” work…but did get the chance to head to downtown Boston for a few drinks with Tolero, her husband, Steiner-Davion, his girlfriend and several folks from the Defense Guild on Sarlona! Very cool and good times.

I’ve posted up all of the big news (that I could find anyway) of the day over at DDOcast.com, rather than repeat myself here I’d rather just LINK you to my post - super deal on Turbine Points, PAX East info from Turbine and more.

One last thing before I call it a night - gotta get up for PAX, after all:

DDOcast LIVE CALL-IN SHOW from PAX East!  Set for 9pm Eastern on my Ustream account HERE.  You can call me while the show is streaming at (507) 295-1847 or leave us a voice message for playback on Snapvine.com/ddocast.   Please consider saying hi and joining us.  Also, if you’re attending PAX East, I’ve set up a “mega-thread” where we can chat all weekend long over at the DDO.com boards here.

Jerry

Yeah, flying out today for Boston! I have to do some work on Thursday, but I wanted to try to fit in a “free day” in Boston to do some tourist stuff. Also maybe visit a certain game company’s headquarters, if they’ll let me in…
I’m such a nerd - I swear, my suitcase has more electronics than clothes in it….

Some equipment is for our live DDOcast plans - stay tuned to my Twitter feed at Twitter.com/DDOcast for last-minute announcements about live streaming. Steiner and I plan to pretty much chat online about PAX whenever we find spare time and free wireless…I will also be posting up pics of the Turbine booth (and maybe even more!) on DDOcast.com throughout the weekend.

Goal for the “main” live show will be to have it Friday night around 9pm Eastern, but that’s not set in stone.

What do I bring with me on a geek trip? Games, of course! Picked up an 8gb card for my PSP, so I can finally start ditching those terrible and annoying UMD’s and just download the games onto my system. Picked up a really fun Playstation One classic from the PSNetwork this week:

Grandia

The graphics hold up surprisingly well for an older game, and the music is very nice too. Also loaded up my PSP with some movies for the flight and airport wait.

Had a thought - wouldn’t it be cool if Turbine went the “Little Big Planet PSP” route and offered up cheap mini-quests for the PSP system! It does multiple players online, although not that many people use it. I realize it makes no commercial sense (especially cuz the PSP suffers from extreme piracy problems), but the idea of running waterworks on my flight is appealing.

Of course, with all this PAX stuff, haven’t been able to play much DDO lately. Looking forward to getting a lot more game time in when I return.

Jerry

Mockduck, my DDOcast Build Guild character on Orien, seems to have a haberdashery problem…he’s become a hat-holic!

He hit level 8 recently and celebrated with the Lucky Hat. Bunnies next…

Ran through Three Barrel Cove with the Build Guild on Sunday, will finish up our questing there soon, I think. I love that area! Yeah, the loot’s not as good as you can get in other quests at that level, but the first time through you will get plenty of xp - more than enough to make it worthwhile. And the quests are just plain fun, IMO.

Last Friday’s DDOcast live show was a huge success. Hoping to do a bunch of streaming from PAX East this week in Boston, make sure to follow my Twitter feed at Twitter.com/DDOcast if you want to know when we’ll be streaming. ALSO - details on our live call-in show from PAX will be announced later this week.

My Mockduck on Lammania found one of the new named items coming in Update 4 - seems pretty interesting, especially for a low level quest. Wonder what it updates to?

Oh, and I have to say that I really hate my job…I wonder if I’ll ever achieve my dream of working in the video game industry…sigh. At least I’ve got DDOcast! It’s everything I’d want it to be and getting better all the time. Sure wish I could find a good game job, though. Work while on vacation (yes, at PAX) and not get paid for it? Sounds like fun, thanks for telling me that my previously-approved vacation plans mean nothing….grr…it’s not just this, though, it’s been years of this kind of crud. My “real” job is interesting sometimes, but I’m sooooo ready to move on. Sorry to get kind of personal here, but it’s just really bothering me today - I’ve been trying to make a positive career change for years, and it just never seems to happen for me.
Anyway, chin up, Jerry! You’ve got PAX this week, DDOcast just keeps setting new records for listenership and (IMO) success and I have a lot to be happy about.

Jerry

Yes, it’s time for part 2 of my pre-PAX East test of DDOcast’s live capabilities. Last week was a basic test to see if I could get a Skype call streamed easily and deal with production. Yes!

This week: Add live calls!

So, here’s how it will work. I will be broadcasting over my Ustream account (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ddocast) on Friday, March 12th from 8pm until 10pm Eastern! Besides the regular DDOcast craziness, we’ll be taking your calls one of a few ways:

1. Google Voice: I’ve set up a Google Voice number for the show - (507) 295-1847 - that you can call on Friday night to be live on the air. You can call it before then, but I won’t answer and it’ll go straight into voice mail.

2. Snapvine - I’ve had an account on Snapvine for people to leave voice messages for a few months now. If you’d like to pre-record your message to us for broadcast on Friday, visit Snapvine.com/DDOcast.

That’s it! Pretty easy. The show will also be recorded for regular release, probably on Saturday.

I’d love to have you give me a call on Friday night! Say what you want.

Jerry

Last night I ran I Dream of Jeets on Elite on Mockduck the level 20 Cleric. It was far more difficult than I expected! We did it, but there were many deaths, I’m afraid…

Reason I bring it up is that I looted a something-or-other belt of Heavy Fortification from one of the chests. After the quest, I was selling all of my loot to the bartender when all of a sudden I paused - Wait! Someone could probably use that belt. Maybe an F2P player getting started, maybe a premium player without the Necropolis adventure pack series.

So, I’ll be putting that belt up on the Auction House on Sarlona for a small buyout. Maybe a couple thousand plat. I realized that I tend to sell a lot of loot that could be used by others. After four years, you tend to have all the “level up” gear that you send to newly rolled characters to get them prepared as they level. But there are many people who aren’t in this position!

Hopefully the good karma will come back to me in the form of a Bloodstone.

I’ve decided that Mockduck is headed toward favor heaven. His next step is to max out favor on all of the quests! I’m currently at about 2300ish, so I’ve got a ways to go, but have made a lot of progress already. Yes, that means no True Reincarnation in his future, but I’m fine with that. There really aren’t any major things I’d change with him, so it’s a good chance to have that “permanent” character.

He’s also currently wearing armor that looks a bit like a skirt-top combo…

I sort of see the look of my character at low levels sort of the way I look at kids between the ages of 13-16:  Trust me, your fashion statement is not nearly as cool as you think it is, and you’ll look back on it later and shake your head.  Thing is, I look for armor properties over look until I’m ready to move into +5 armor (and eventually Dragontouched, but that all looks the same).  So, at say level 5 I’m wearing whatever the best armor is I can find at the moment.  If it looks like I should be wearing tights instead of leggings, well, that’s fine for now.

Somewhere out there I have pictures of me wearing LOTS of Hypercolor shirts.  Yes, I even had a Hypercolor tank top.  At least I never wore my overalls backwards like many of my peers…*

So without further ado:  the Three-Pointed Hat:

I really LIKE the three-pointed hat!  As an introduction to how armor skinning could enter DDO, I’m all for it!  I will admit, though, that I’m also wearing this particular combination because I think it’s funny.  Then again, I think Halflings are kinda funny.  He’s doing amazingly well, but dresses a bit odd.

Ran through all of the Explorers and got 118 or so slayers (and five of ten Rares) in Sorrowdusk last night on him.  That is such easy xp!  Sneak Attack bonus for the win.  I’m also learning how to properly use sneak, hide-move silently and Diplomacy, which I have found can be really nice if done properly.

Sunday’s DDOcast Build Guild plan?  Not sure.  Thinking either Tangleroot or Three Barrel Cove, haven’t yet decided.

Jerry

*Keep in mind that I graduated from high school in Minnesota in 1993…