San Fran-tastic! «

Posted by: SOE | April 29, 2008

San Fran-tastic!

This past weekend I went to San Francisco for a Star Wars Galaxies community summit. It was just an overnight trip, but I really had a fantastic time! I went to the summit with a few members of the dev team: AdeptStrain, Loche, Shadowbrak, and Blixtev. (We met up with DeadMeat there.)

I’ve never been to San Francisco before, so I was somewhat in awe when I saw the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz when we drove into the city. We were a little early so we couldn’t check into the hotel; we explored the Metreon area instead.

We wandered around taking pictures for a little while and then grabbed lunch with our team members from SOE and LucasArts. I finally changed after lunch and hoped that I didn’t smell like airplane anymore, and then it was time for the summit.

When registration opened I ran up to say hi to a few familiar faces when they arrived. Hopefully I didn’t scare them too much when they looked up and saw me barreling at them! I love meeting the people in front of the monitors, so to speak, so I was really excited.

I thought everyone asked the SWG team great questions and I took notes to remember everything. The most exciting part of the talk for me was our announcement that the team is working on creating the battle at Echo Base on Hoth. I’m really looking forward to seeing it take shape.

After the summit was over, we finally made it to the hotel to check in and clean up before heading out again. We wanted to check out the Fisherman’s Wharf and get some good seafood, so we grabbed a cab to Pier 39.

We made it there before sunset so we caught a glimpse of a number of large and slightly smelly seals relaxing on the docks. Alcatraz looked so close from our vantage point; it didn’t seem real!

While walking around Fisherman’s Wharf we wandered into a penny arcade museum. (It must be our natural gamer instinct that led us inside or maybe the fact that Lorin had visited the night before.) The museum had an odd assortment of games, from actual penny arcade machines to the original Star Wars arcade game. Lorin spent a quarter on a machine and we watched a tiny lumber mill come to life for just a minute. There were some really strange machines in there! Loche captured it on film for posterity.

We found a place to eat dinner — seafood of course — and relaxed for a little while before heading out.

We decided to take the trolley back to the hotel. After a long wait, we finally got on the trolley with so many people that it was standing-room only. The operator mentioned that the car was originally built in 1947. I saw Loche at the other end of the car signal to exit on the next stop, so we all got off… except Shadowbrak. The door closed on him while I said, “Nooooo” (in slow motion, of course).

It turned out that Shadowbrak stayed on the trolley because he knew that it was the wrong stop, and we didn’t! We met up with him a few streets over but we were a little lost downtown. DeadMeat and the GPS on his Blackberry finally led us back to the hotel safely.