by Angel Washizu

After hearing about all these great games, Thunder, Merlin and I got a tour of MS Games from Sebastian Motte and Mike McCart. We saw some of the testing areas where they study newbies playing AOK behind windows that look like mirrors on one side. This is where they gathered tons of data for input into the William Wallace learning campaign. Some of the highlights on trip were getting to meet MS's expert playtesting staff, consisting of Kevin "The Sheriff" Holme, Brock "Malice" Meade, Mike "Staffa" Christensen and Dennis "Menelaus" Stone. They were great and answered many of our questions. We even saw the infamous dry-erase board that may or may not have revealed an AOK:TC civilization. I got a strange look from Sebastian when I mentioned the board (I don't think he realized that I was the one who blew the thing up 4x larger than normal so we could see it better ;), but I don't think he was too mad. ;) We noticed they were already using the Strategic Commander, and the Sheriff said he had his whole start programmed to one button. Pretty impressive.

For a while we were allowed to play some of the games we saw during the day, so Thunder and I booted up AOK:TC, and decided to play one of the new game types. Unfortuneatly, I lost, but I will have my revenge. Mark my words, I will have my revenge. All this made me extremely hungry, but luckily the next place we headed after our day at Redwest was dinner on a boat called the Argosy! I really got to know a lot of people on the dinner boat, but after setting down my Fanstock bag I was pleasently surprised to see Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games sit down next to me!

During dinner we all talked about Dungeon Siege, game development, and anything that came to mind. I think I remember one person bringing up John Romero ;) Who knew that the Daikatana demo would be released a few days later!

Here are a few pictures from the week!

Thanks to Leslie Arbuthnot, DeEtte Christie, and Steve "Vidguy" Cherrier for a great trip!

The house that Microsoft built!

AOK Designer Bruce Shelley and ES Webmaster Mike McCart!

Lastly I'd like to thank the following people. Leslie Arbuthnot, DeEtte Christie, and Steve "Vidguy" Cherrier from Arbuthnot Communications for putting together a great few days for us, Bruce Shelley and Mike McCart for going out of your way to make the Age webmasters feel important, and to Sebastian, Beth, Chris, Ed and everyone at MS Games for making this happen. Who knows, maybe this will be a regular event! I'd also like to thank my fellow Angels (past and present), without whom I'd never have a site here to begin with. Here are some of the other Fanstock2000 previews: Thunder from the AOK Battlefield Merlin of aoe2.com and his AOK Q/A Allen Grey of the Crossroads of Dereth The MX Madness dudes have pictures galore!