We did a little exploring around San Francisco before the event began later that afternoon. Places visited: Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard Street (also known as the crookedest street in the world) and a glance at Alcatraz from the distance. It was nice to walk up and down and check out the shops in China town. I enjoy collecting leopard items so I was eyeing anything that had the pattern in the windows.
What’s sort of funny… I recall something Christina ‘Pookie’ Chan said last year right after the PGL Finals. They all wanted to go to the Stinking Rose Restaurant, and we happened to pass by it that day.
Westwood Studios
Entering Club-i was much calmer than the PGL finals. Don’t get me wrong, it was exciting last year but the building didn’t have as many people crammed in one space. The first person I recognized was Aaron Cohen, the public relations director for Westwood Studios.
Aaron directed me to sign in with Chris Rubyor, another Public Relations rep for Westwood Studios. Chris reminded me of someone but I can’t recall who. While I walked over to the food and drinks area, I heard another familiar voice. As I glanced over I saw my buddy John Hight, such a funny guy. He can make anyone laugh. We talked about some of Nox’s game features. I later on introduced him to my brother, Jacob.
Nox Game Impressions
As I sat down to start my game with Nox and became focused on improving my skills to get better and understand the game more. A person behind me asked “How is everything doing over here?” I looked around to see Chris Rubyor. I asked how to play, then asked why I wasn’t able to pick up certain weapons and armor laying around on the map. I was able to pick up certain boots, armor, a bow (with arrows) and a cape a few times. Chris explained that I was playing the Conjurer Class, there are only certain weapons I was able to pick up. The weapons I couldn’t pick up are for the Wizard and Warrior Classes. I wondered off into some woods and ran into some horrifying monsters only to find they were another player’s pets. Whoever the person was, he summoned (created) them and hunted other opponent that came in view.
Not long after I discovered how to add creatures like the Ember Demon and other spells to my spell book. The Ember Demon strange is red dwarf that runs around swiftly. What’s great about a Conjurer is, you can have options of summoning creatures.
One of the options is to ESCORT your player. The creatures tag along, like a chum, then they attack anything that comes near you – sort of like a body guard. The other feature is GUARD. Your creature will guard anything you tell it to. You have to walk over to that area and click on the Guard feature for the creature to stay there. This process caused me to picture a a guard dog being told to sit. There are more options you can have for your creature but my favorite us tge HUNT. The creature will act like a blood hound and find any other opponent to attack until they are defeated. It racked up some points too.
John Hight also dropped by to share some some tips on some of the weapons. I asked him what the Cherub creature did. The Cherubs are cute creatures with wings, they fly around with these arrows. The only thing, they don’t look like innocent cherubs, they are a reddish/orange color. Other creatures I tried was the Ghosts and Shade. Shade was black creature with a very sneaky look to it. It crawled like Spiderman on the ground but it reminded me more of Nightcrawler in the X-Men series. The Bear was another cool creature to control.
There is a spell someone else did in the game that made me jump out of my seat, the “Fist of Vengeance.” It looked like it was coming out of the screen at me. I wasn’t expecting to see such a huge fist it the screen and make a noise like that.
The Pixie Swarm was really cool. It is a yellow sparkly color that glows and swarms around the Conjurer (me). It will attack anything around, but it does have to be energized by Manna posts (light blue glowing posts that are easy will find around the map).
I would have to say my favorite weapon as a Conjurer was the green wand. It is a powerful weapon so it reflects off the walls. I did that quite a few times, destroyed an opponent and then forgot that it would head straight back at me. After a couple of times like that, I knew to start running from my own blast.
I played Capture the Flag mode for a while. I liked it but I am a deathmatch fan so I would rather be fighting against other players than considering an objective. By then some people were putting their creatures right in the CTF bases to guard and protect their flag so it got a bit more difficult.
Nihilistic Software
One thing that caught me off guard is seeing a couple of folks from Nihilistic. I figured out how to change my name to CaliGirl and logged back in, I heard someone next to me say, “CaliGirl?” I looked over to find Steve ‘Gateway’ Tietze from Nihilistic Software (creators of Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption game). There was a guy sitting right next to him. Steve smiled and pointed at him saying, “It’s Rob”. My first words to Rob was, “You’re so young! I expected to see a much older man with dark brown hair.” When I said that, Rob just had an expression of “huh?” Then we started laughing. Rob Huebner is in his mid 20s or early 30s with blondish colored hair. It was nice to see them both show up at the event.
Nox Tournament
Jacob and Nathan signed up for the Nox Tournament. The Tournament consisted of 20 people, six matches held, with 6 finalists.
1st Place: Jacob Robinson
2nd Place: Daniel Tu
2rd Place: Donald Wong
4rth Place: Tod Milton
Movie Time (Fight Club)
After leaving Club-i, Nathan, Jacob and I went to go to see a movie. We wanted to see “Three Kings” but they were sold out so we all decided to see Fight Club. I thought the movie was going to have a completely different storyline. There is an interesting twist and I wouldn’t mind seeing again. The actor, Edward Norton plays a funny character in the beginning. Then later on, it all unfolds everything. It’s a mind boggling movie.
Conclusion
Besides meeting and talking with a lot of really cool people there, the game is different and tons of fun to play. I’m looking forward to it.