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September 6, 2012
A Practical Dragon*Con Recap

Howdy there, EpicDuelists. I'm stopping by briefly to turn the DNs over to EpicDuel tester and Mod Practel for a thorough Dragon*Con recap. Artix did a pretty amazing job describing the event from the developers' perspectives, but I think it's equally interesting to read about the Con through a different set of eyes. Without further ado, heeeeeeere's Practel!

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We’re home!

Hey there, Duelists! You might have noticed that this Design Notes post isn’t from your friendly neighborhood warrior princess, Cinderella. This is my first (and most likely last) Design Notes post! Some of you may not know me, so let me introduce myself. My name is Practel, I’ve been playing EpicDuel since December of 2009 when EpicDuel merged with Artix Entertainment. I became a tester (someone who tests the weekly releases every week for bugs and to make sure it’s stable for you guys) in August 2011, and now I am an in-game Moderator for EpicDuel and a forum ArchKnight! I’ll be writing the Dragon*Con Recap since our awesome story telling writer Cinderella wasn’t able to attend (which is sad, there’s always next year!)


What is Dragon*Con?

Every year about 50 Artix Entertainment staff and assistant staff travel from their secret undisclosed battle locations to Atlanta Georgia (an 8 hour bus ride) to attend Dragon*Con! Dragon*Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe! Each year the convention attracts about 60 to 70 thousand people, and an awesome group of Artix Entertainment players! To see everything that the con has to offer is almost impossible, but those who are courageous enough to fight the “4 days with no sleep” boss can do it! The con offers something for anyone. There are panels about everything from making your own functional steampunk R2-D2, to meet-and-greets with some of the biggest names in TVs, Movies, Gaming and Books. There are thousands of people dressed up as their favorite characters, movie marathons, a sea of tables for table top games like Dungeons and Dragons, card games like Pokémon, Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh, board games like Risk, Settlers of Catan and King of Tokyo.

Did I mention there were storm troopers?


Dragon*Con Pizza Party Meet and Greet!

Each year, generally the day before the convention officially starts, AE throws an awesome pizza party for all the players that attend. People come across the world just to hang out and talk with the staff about the games, what’s coming up, and genuinely have a good time. The players LOVE hanging out with the staff, and the staff love hanging out with the players! Each year a different, very dedicated player will come by and discuss the game to the point where even the player knows more than the developers about their own game! This year there was one player who was VERY dedicated and even cosplayed as Artix!




The Artix Entertainment Panel

Just like the awesome pizza party AE holds every year, it’s always a tradition to hold one of the coolest panels in all of Dragon*Con! This year was definitely the best panel AE has ever hosted – it had well over 100 people attending to come and watch, laugh, even cry, and genuinely enjoy their time as a player and proud con-goer. Each game lead stood up, discussed the game they headed, told the players what was going to happen in the future, and answered questions. Coincidently, I happen to have a video of Nightwraith discussing some EpicDuel stuff!

As promised, anyone who went to Dragon*Con this year should have received their Slayer armor and DragonBuster II sword by now! If you signed the paper for the AQW item, but forgot to list your EpicDuel name, please let us know!


The Booth

Artix Entertainment always has a player fan booth, where about 5 or 6 staff sit, talk to players, answer questions, and have a good time. For the entire convention. During this time, we had a few very friendly players that most of us knew from Twitter and the forums visit. I was completely shocked and happy when one of my good friends A.C.W popped up and introduced himself to me officially in real life! If you visited the booth, you could have gotten a bunch of cool ribbons to put on your badge. One for each day the booth was open!




HawkBlackWell

He came in a champ… left as a legend. One very awesome, and very dedicated player by the name of HawkBlackWell did the unimaginable… he challenged Titan to an Epic BattleOn Battle Cards game!

The stakes were as follows:

If Titan won, he would receive one steampunk trophy.
If HawkBlackWell won, he would receive one permanent NPC in EpicDuel!

The battle was tight… Titan was annihilating HawkBlackWell, and it was in everyones eyes that Titan was going to win. Then, the most magical thing happened. HawkBlackWell played his deadliest card, life swap, swapping his and Titan’s HP. Titan was instantly annihilated.

A deal is a deal, and it was a tournament between Titan and HawkBlackWell. Look for a HawkBlackWell NPC sometime in the future!




Returning Home

It’s always sad to leave the wonderful players each year, but there’s always the time where everyone needs to get back to reality, go to school, work… life. Everyone had a great time this year at Dragon*Con, and it was all thanks to you guys, the players. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

As usual, we hope to see you next year, for another epic time with the team.

BattleOn!

Practel

Tags: Titan Dragon*Con Nightwraith RabbleFroth charfade Cinderella HawkBlackWell Pizza Convention Artix Entertainment Panel Cards NPC