Now that the veil of NDA has been lifted, I can say that I've been playing beta-testing the DC universe MMORPG, DCU Online.

The quickest assessment: pretty cool.

One of the first things that struck me is the physics. I thought Champions Online was pretty nifty because you could pick things up and chuck them about (walking into a warehouse and picking up a forklift so I could throw it at an evil robot who might be in the next room always amused me), especially after the quite static scenery of City of Heroes/Villains. In DCUO, things will get broken. If you're walking down the street and someone picks a fight with you, things will get knocked around and broken and blown-up, like it or not. Breaking stuff is fun.

Of course, the main reason someone is likely to choose DCUO over Champions or CoX is being able to interact with the heroes and villains of DC comics. I'm an old-timey traditional RPG nerd, so I thought it was pretty cool to play alongside Defender and other characters I remembered from Champions 4th edition (the "big blue book"). However, this has nothing on fighting back-to-back with perhaps the most iconic figure of modern fiction: Superman. Pretty much every character from the DCU is found somewhere, whether helping and guiding you, getting in your way or being rescued by you. The Booster Gold tourist-information-style kiosks may be the greatest thing in any video game ever, and Ambush Bug is (of course) aware that he is in a video game.

One thing that sets this apart from the other two superhero MMORPGs is that it has a premise. Where CoX and Champions entire premise is pretty much "there are superheroes," things have to be a little different for the DC game, since it is a well-defined universe with only a canonical handful of superheroes. The way the player characters fit in involves a major plot controlled by Brainiac, and interference from a time-traveling Lex Luthor.

Part of Brainiac's plan involves giving superpowers to a large swath of the population. This justifies more than just the known heroes having powers, as well as putting some structure on the storylines and the PCs. That means everyone has a built in origin story - not cool if you are looking for some RP (though I suppose you can ignore the "Brainiac gave you powers" thing if you want to play at being an alien or whatever).

That premise also explains why you don't start in an ideal state - you really are just a starting out in this whole superheroing/villaining thing. You get better at using powers and you get cooler costume pieces along the way.

Which is to say: initial character creation is a bit more limited than I'd like. There was much more flexibility in abilities for both Champions and CoX - I'm hoping the developers add more power sets as the game progresses.

Starting costumes are much more limited than either CoX or Champions, but the components that are there look great. Where Champions characters look appropriately cartoony and CoX characters are a relic of the graphics from a couple of generations back game-wise, DCUO costumes are amazingly detailed and textured. As limited as the initial design is, as you adventure you'll pick up more components that you may then wear; so you won't necessarily start with the look you want but you can build it as you go. Unlike many (non-superhero) games, you can use the costume bits with the most beneficial modifiers while having the appearance of any piece you've ever collected.

One of the reasons to play a superhero is to have a clever character, with the costume, origin and name all tied together, so major negatives from me in that regard; but the kinetic gameplay in a well-developed world might be enough to offset that.

About a week from now I'll be attending the San Diego Comic-Con for the twenty-fourth time - I'm not proud (or tired). Of course, one of the years I'm counting involved me stepping through the door, looking at the program schedule, saying "nah," and getting back on the trolley.

Somewhere around here is an incoherent ramble that was written in response to 2009's convention, in which I point out that every person who attended my first - every person, for the entire four days - could fit in Hall H of the new convention center. A lot more than just the scale of it has changed. The main thing that has changed for me has been *why* I go back every year.

I'm already feeling overwhelmed this year.

The first few years I went with my buddy Marc (his mom drove us), but I really had nothing to do with comic books. Didn't make, sell or read them, and had no interest in doing so. So why did I go? At first it was because I was interested in thing tangentially related to comic books: science fiction, role-playing games and other nerdiness.

The creativity and intelligence, the disregard for conventional behavior, and the passion for art and literature are what brought me back. It was a colorful, energetic experience. I became fascinated by the culture. I would tell anyone who would listen that they should go, even if they weren't into comics or science-fiction, just to experience the amazing culture.

There was no way I would not attend this thing - in high school, I would save my summer school "free" days-off to make sure I could go.

As it moved from Golden Hall to the convention center, I followed.

One of the first couple years there, we shared the center with a quilting convention. As the crowds got off the trolley, it wasn't much of a challenge to figure out who was there for which event.

It was soon clear that we could not share the space with the little old ladies, because they could totally take us in a fight the event soon took up the entire space, and was becoming something that people outside of my little subculture were noticing. The growth was wonderful and fascinating. The reach was going beyond the (stereo)typical comic book reader.

One year I found myself unemployed, but as I said, there was no way I would miss this cultural event. To get in, I volunteered to work there a couple hours each day. I ended up with disabled services, helping attendees register or get around the main floor or to and from programs, and met some great people. The focus and involvement are what made that one among my favorite years. I planned to do it again the next year. I didn't, though.

My reason for going the following years was because I got a job at a comic book store, and ended up working our booth at the convention. Also, I started to actually read comic books.

Once I stopped working at the comic store (for my first full-time radio gig), the convention became more of a social event for me. It is now a place for me to see old friends and meet folks of a similar mind-set.

Also, it has quite clearly become something else. You probably know that Hollywood studios and television networks now are using the summer event to announce upcoming projects and promote current ones. This year, Jeff Bridges, Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Smith, Penn & Teller, and Will Ferrell will be there, among many others.

The first year I went had me excited because I might get to see Larry Niven.

This is what's got me overwhelmed. Several years ago, I'd have friends saying that the convention has gotten too far away from comics, since they were having trouble finding an adequate supply of silver-age comics or whatever; I wasn't there for the comics to begin with, so it didn't bother me as the presence of comics became diluted. After all, it's not getting pushed out, just becoming a smaller percentage of this thing that has become gargantuan.

The misery of waiting in lines didn't get to me, I simply decided to attend program with less interest. It then felt more like the quaint event it used to be.

But this year... I don't know, it might be that I'm getting a lot more information in advance than I used to (via internet and press releases (movie studios didn't send me a lot of press releases when I was in junior high)), but this year nearly intimidates me. There's just too much convention, with no way I can experience everything. There's no way I can experience even a shadow of a tiny percentage of it. But I will go, I will try to experience a lot of it, and I will try not to wait in lines.

I will probably end up not going to some of the things I am currently planning on, in favor of fish tacos and beer in the Gaslamp Quarter with my wife and some friends I haven't seen in a while. And that will be very cool.

Tim Gunn critiques superhero costumes:

I was going through my little flash drive thingy, sorting things into a better folder structure and deleting stuff I found to be redundant or otherwise useless, and I ran across a .TXT file that seems to have been written after last year's Comic-Con, and intended to be published as a blog post.

Clearly, I had meant to come back to it later and clean it up, complete some ideas, and put the paragraphs into some sort of order that made sense, and take out some irrelevancies. So I tried. Also, I failed. Some of it makes no sense. I'm sure it would have made some if I'd come back to it within the day I started it, but with several months separating me from the sleep-deprived haze that traditionally envelopes me after Con... Wow, that is some disjointed stuff.

Since I won't be able to make it happen the way I'd originally intended, I undid all my edits to the save point in late July, and now present an un-edited, disjointed, and largely nonsensical reaction to Comic-Con 2009:

===

July 30, 2009 5:20 AM

Allow me to become a bit of a curmudgeon.

The Comic-Con isn't what it used to be. You're probably aware that it's grown a ridiculous amount over the last forty years. The first one had about a hundred people. This year's hosted about 126,000 attendess. I'd venture that most weren't actually there for the comic books. I know I wasn't. I went because it's a social event.

I've been to the last 22 of these things, and only a few of those years I went for the comic books. It used to be that I went for the shear spectacle, the bizarre cross-section of society that would be there. I would be entertained by the people themselves, the color, the culture.

Of course, I'd always been into generally geeky things, so I would also get caught up in the science-fiction stuff and whatever role-playing games I could find there. Except for the few years that I worked as a comic retailer myself, I had very little interest in the comics. I used to tell people that they should go, at leasst once, explaining that it's not completely nerdy and it's not all about comic-books.

Last year, the largest comic book retailer out there was not sure about returnig (as the owner of Mile High said during the CBLDF auction).

Mile High was not there this year.

It has not gotten less crowded. After the first day, I discovered that I enjoyed the convention more by going out of my way to avoid lines. If the thing I was going to had a line, I found something else to do instead. Much better. Spent quite a bit of time in the Independent Film Festival, which was pretty entertaining.

Attendance was estimated to be 126,000. In 1988, first year I went, total attendance was 8,000 at Golden Hall. For further perspective, Hall H, the largest auditorium of the San Diego Convention Center, where the Comic-Con is now held, is limited to 6,400 people and is constantly full with ridiculous hours long lines. I'm pretty sure Golden Hall could fit inside Hall H.

Overall it was enjoyable. Of course, I think I was more frequently inebriated at this year's Con than previously, which had the indirect side-effect of creating one of the more surreal moments:

Having fish-and-chips, and drinking a beer twice as large as the one I ordered, but having been charged for the smaller - not complaining. As I'm finishing up my Blue Moon with a slice of orange, I look up to see some older Mexican dude walking out to the patio with his order. Edward James Olmos. He goes to sit down at his table, right behind me. Cyndi pointed out that the guy with him was Colonel Tigh. Grabbing a chair from another table was Kali (apparently it's supposed to be spelled Cally, but I think Kali is more in line with BSG's mythological naming conventions). I almost went to her to point out that she really shouldn't be there, having been killed about two seasons back.

Okay, so it was possible to get in to the panel, though it required much more waiting in line than I'd prefer.

Pretty sure it was worth it. Rather amusing bunch - a good balance of writers and actors. The draw to the more "Hollywood" panels seems to be the performers, rather than the creators, who are usually the ones *I* want to hear from.

One of the writers said that when they script the HOWTO voice-overs, he tries to write it the way Matt Nix (the creator) talks.

During the Q&A, someone asked if Nix would be interested in doing a horror project with Bruce Campbell, and he responded, "The thing you have to keep in mind when fighting a zombie with a chainsaw is..."

As close as I got:
http://mypict.me/show.php?id=dye9

I found out about the hunt itself after Thursday night's reveal, so I was clearly out of luck. I blame the glitternecrophiles.

I was in line for the panel that would be discussing Tron (as well as the upcoming Alice In Wonderland). The panel after that was the one for the Twilight series. They don't clear rooms between panels. Some of the Twilight folks were camped out since late Tuesday night.
http://mypict.me/show.php?id=cPHO

So we waited in the line for *our* panel, but it was cut off with us pretty close to the door. Because of the people there for Twilight sat through a panel they didn't care about, keeping me out, and away from Flynn's arcade.

I have since been even more grumpy about Twilight than when I found out it had glittery vampires.

Sometime in the last year, I found myself watching Tron on cable. I was surprised at how well it holds up, especially considering the subject matter. Yes, it's a bit silly and requires some suspension-of-disbelief, but it's reasonably enjoyable.

===

There you go. We will never know where I was really going with all that. Pretty sure it amounts to: Twilight sucks, Tron rocks, and OMG Edward James Olmos!!!eleven!!

Also something about Burn Notice. Hmm.

This is much cooler than it has any business being.