by Angel Washizu

If you don't want to read about my trip and are only interested in the games showcased at Fanstock, head here.

As some of you know, MS invited me to FanStock this week. If you remember GameStock, it was where they showed off their new games to members of the gaming press. Fanstock, however, was for fansite webmasters of Microsoft titles. Agers were fairly well represented there with 3 people including myself (the others were Merlin from AOE2.com and Thunder of the AOK Battlefield).

Day 1

Now, I have to say, this trip was fantastic. When word gets out about this, MS is going to have quite a number of new fansites. Monday morning I made my news post about the scenario contest finalists and headed out, unsure about what this whole FanStock thing would be like. Unfortunately, the crazy IMF and World Bank protesters were causing delays on the subway, but I made it to Reagen National Airport anyway for a long flight through Houston (yes, Houston) and finally on to Seattle. I heard it was supposed to rain there all the time, but all I saw was blue skies. So there I sat, waiting for the Shuttle Express guy to call me over, when finally, my name was called and I walked over to the shuttle. I was the last one to grab a seat, so when I hopped aboard I found myself in the company of The Mystic from The Allegiance Zone, Stormbringer from DungeonSiege.org, and Merlin of AOE2.com. We talked games the whole way to the hotel, and I'll bet our non gaming passengers didn't know what to think of us. Finally we arrived at the hotel and after checking in, I strolled down to meet Steve "Vidguy" Cherrier and others, but along the way I saw a fellow ager...

It was Thunder from the AOK Battlefield of course! He's a rather soft spoken guy, but great to hang out with. I grabbed him and we headed over to Steve's room, which is probably known as "Falcor's Tavern" by now with all the Fanstock recaps being posted. Here's where I first met Allen Grey of The Call of Dereth and Brian from Catch the Fever who is forever now known as the "Whazzzssssup" guy who liked to talk about certain flash movies starring Britany Spears. I also got to meet Shadowlight of the Vault Network (he works on the Allegiance, Starlancer, and Freelancer Vaults), a bunch of guys from the Midtown Madness and Motorcross Madness sites, and later ES Webmaster Mike McCart even showed up! Pretty soon the beer ran out and dinner time was fast approaching...

We all hopped on the bus and headed out to Daniel's Broiler, a steakhouse of the highest caliber. I don't know about you guys, but I love a great steak and I was very satisfied with what they served me. I sat next to Sebastian Motte of MS Games, who turned out to be a great guy with this thick French accent. He had tons of questions for me on things from the recent scenario contest, to how I was enjoying the evening so far. On the other side of me was Thunder, who picked the lucky seat of the night, because no more than a few minutes after we sat down, AOK designer Bruce Shelley pulls up a chair next to Thunder! We talked about Age, Homeworld, and how good the food was at Daniel's Broiler! Oh, I almost forgot to mention the nice people that sat across from me, who came all the way from Holland! After dinner, we piled back on the bus and headed to an Arcade called Gameworks, and on the way we were given an informal tour of the Seattle area by one of the webmasters who somehow managed to get the bus driver's loud speaker hahaha. Once there, Thunder and I played one of the current generation Operation Wolf type games for a while, but the game started hurting my wrists (haha), so I switched over to a shark killing game that was pretty fun. The game I spent the most time on was the arcade version of the fantastic Gauntlet Legends, which is known to cause many to take their sick days early after buying the console version. By this time I was extremely exhausted and when I layed down, I think I fell asleep immediately. The combination of jet lag, good food, and great conversations just put me in a mood to get some shut-eye.

Day 2

After bouncing out of bed (the easiest 7:00AM wake up I've ever had), we once again piled on the bus. Today, our destination was the Redwest Campus and we got to see some incredible stuff... They showed us demos and trailers for a lot of their new games, including AOK:TC (which I can't say too much about until after E3 :(, Dungeon Siege (an Action RPG), Combat Flight Simulator, Crimson Skies (an over the top fantasy flight sim), MechCommander 2 (a Battletech RTS), MechWarrior 4 (a Battletech FPS), Midtown Madness 2 (a crazy city racing game), Motorcross Madness 2 (dirt bike racing), and Loose Cannon (a really interesting car attack/FPS game.)