PAX 2014!! - Saturday

Oh my goodness this was quite the day!

For our Friday adventures, check out this other really great post.

We woke up around 7 am to leave the hotel at 7:30. We went to a Target to pick up some walkie-talkies (Max forgot to bring his States phone) and see if we could do anything with the Target gift cards that are of no use in Canada. 

After also hitting up Starbucks for some breakfast, we drove into downtown Vancouver to get in line for the Exhibition hall! We were there around 9, and the hall didn't open until 10 am! On the way in we picked up a PAX program, saw a huge sculpture of LoL character Ziggs, another one of Annie and her giant bear friend Tibbers, and grabbed lanyards for our passes!

Ziggs

Annie and Tibbers

The line to get into the main Expo Hall ran through the room where the LoL Finals would be held later that day

Our program informed us that there were things to see on 4 different floors! We quickly realized we probably wouldn't make it through everything (In the end we covered 3 of the 4 floors to their (almost) entirety!!).

I found an Xbox game that I love!! 

There was a Sunset Overdrive demo booth that we waited in line for and eventually got to play! 

Pokemon booth!! I was hoping for a Ruby and Sapphire teaser, but all they had for demo was their online trading card game (super lame) 

Street fighter!!

Borderlands! We spent a lot of time, multiple times, in line for Borderlands, but never quite made it around to the front for the demo play 

WarHammer character 

Evolve Boss 

Play Station had a big section 

After our experiences with lines for Sunset Overdrive and Borderlands, it started to seem like they've gotten too big for their britches. The lines would be an hour or longer, and you would be able to play a 5 to 7 minute controlled demo. It was still tons of fun, but just something to consider for next year.

We decided to head to the LoL games around 1 pm. We split up, Max heading to Subway to grab some lunch for us, me heading to the seating to find us somewhere to watch from.

They were just ramping up for the first rounds. This was to be TSM (Team SoloMid) vs. Team LMQ. Here's the results of their match-up. We had to stand on the side for the first game. We were still really near the front, to it was still pretty good. 

The "Casters" (like the ESPN Football casters)

We opted to leave after LMQ lost the first game to see some more of the entire convention. We went by a booth for a game called Strife, where Max chatted up one of the members of the dev team. They also had a mechanical bull, that was actually a mechanical dragon. Max would not ride it despite my most adamant protests. I then wondered out into a lobby area to pick up some shirts, when I encountered the man dressed as a lion (in the bottom of this series of pictures).

From here we went to a theatre a couple of blocks over where they were having a discussion panel with a set of the LoL developers. They opened the floor to questions after their prepared speech, and boy were there some bizarre, unrelated questions/comments.

On our way back into the hall, we really wandered around the bottom two floors.

A whole pile of bean bag chairs 

A game based around blowing into your Super Nintendo game cartridge! 

The arcade room! 

Escalators in the center of the exhibit hall

Max playing Transistor

Then we went back to the LoL hall. We caught the 5th game of LMQ vs. TSM (this was especially impressive because it's a best of 5 series! Also, it was SEVERAL HOURS later). We assumed our previous standing position on the side lines, then I bullied our way into two pretty awesome seats to watch Cloud 9 vs. Curse! This was an amazing series! Cloud 9 took it in 3 games, with Curse surrendering in the first game!

Fun crazy people near us in the audience 

Max on the live cast! See the next three photos, too! 

Max was in the live cast right before game 1! Watch at 6:25

Max in the live cast! This was right before game 3, watch starting at 5 seconds

At the end we got to go take a picture with Cloud 9!! 

Max was wearing the same shirt as one of the casters! 

Also with the Casters!

We saw TSM on our way out of the conventions center! 

We found our way back to the hotel after that. Sunday morning we had the easiest and most beautiful border crossing of our lives!!! 

We've already looked into more conventions to attend. There's a big one in Vancouver next April. They haven't announced the location of PAX Prime 2015 yet, but I think it's always on the west coast somewhere.

PAX 2014!! - Friday night

IT WAS THE BEST!!! 

PAX 2014 in Seattle is one of the largest gaming conventions ever. They have handheld games, board games, PC games, console games, card games. ALL THE GAMES. This year PAX Prime (the main convention) was in Seatlle, WA, from Aug 29th through Sep 1st (Friday through Monday). They also have PAX East, PAX South, PAX Australia, and PAX Dev (which happens at the same location as PAX Prime, just a couple of days earlier).

Max found out about it a couple of weeks back and managed to find reasonably priced Saturday passes, so we booked a hotel and got super psyched. 

That blurry Space Needle!!

The Washington State Convention Center, home of PAX Prime 2014

We drove down on Friday night and went to a developer meet and greet for Wildstar, one of Max's current favorite games. The event was at a comedy club/bar downtown. The doors opened at 7 pm, so we showed up around 6:30  to get in line. We were the LAST people let in! It was pretty amazing. They cut it off immediately after us. There was free food and t-shirts. We saw some PAX reporters giving the scoop, and mingled with the developers for a while. 

Just found out the pool table at our wedding reception was set up the same way! So cool!

Free shirts are the best shirts!

Max eavesdropping on the PAX reporters 

We saw plenty of crazies, but this was one of the craziest...

There was supposed to be a presentation at some point, but by 9 we were hungry for more than just appetizers and a little stir crazy. There was a Cheesecake Factory across the street from the Convention Center, so we headed that way for some delicious foods!

Also, there was a Daily Grill there! Throw back to my Tulsa days working at Williams and breakfasting with Jesseca :)

We went inside to put our name on the list, then figured we'd go wait outside because it was a nice night out. We were immediately accosted by a very vulgar homeless man. Back inside it is. The buzzer went off and we moved toward the hostess bar, where there was a large crowd of people. I grabbed Max's hand and pulled him around to the side so we could hand in our buzzer and be seated. You apparently hand them the buzzer, they then print a ticket with your party name and table number, and put you in another line (admittedly shorter) to get to your seat.

Max seemed a little frazzled, and then told me that some professional League of Legends (LoL) players were around at the front of the hostess bar. He looked absolutely and adorable star struck. There were about 4 members of the Curse team with a couple of lady friends. I asked if he wanted to go meet them. Max muttered something about "yeah..." so I pulled him over to them. He asked if he could have a picture and they were very nice about it. He went in like he was going to take a selfie, so I grabbed his camera so it would be a better picture. The Cheesecake Factory is one of the darkest restaurants known to mankind, but the picture still turned out pretty fabulous!

L to R: Quas, Voyboy, Max, and Cop

Max was more fanboy than I've ever seen him! It was amazing! When we walked away, he was super jittery. He said he's wanted to go approach them, but other than Voyboy he wasn't sure how to "address" them! (For the non-gamers out there, Quas, Voyboy, and Cop are game handles, they all have actual names, but are generally referred to by their handles when in that sort of environment; ex: when you watch the competitions, they are referred to by their handles). It was super cute and adorable! The weekend was now worth it, no matter what happened on Saturday!!