Want a peek at the Relic Weapon Sets? Maybe some Leon or level 55 Weapons you haven't gotten a chance to see wielded? Come on by while we display these mavelous weapons (and maybe armor)!


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Santa Chooty has gone missing and the Chooty race expects foul play. As they ready their army to learn of his location, the Factions must brace themself for the oncoming fluffy attack.


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Want to win 10 million, 20 million, even 30 million in your race's currency? Enter the Novus Raffle and you could win!

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Enjoy the increased rates this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!

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Codemasters Online Gaming (COG) are pleased to announce that they will be bringing all of their exciting MMO titles to October 2006’s London MCM Expo.



COG will be showing their highly anticipated and newly released game, ArchLord, as well as exclusives from their forthcoming and eagerly awaited title, The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™.

Existing games Rising Force Online and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™ will also be part of their thrilling line up.

Throughout the weekend the team from Codemasters Online Gaming will be hosting a number of exciting competitions and there will be plenty of exclusive giveaways to be had including full versions of the games, free trials, artwork and plenty of AMD goodies.

So be sure to visit the Codemasters Online Gaming stand to experience some great MMO gaming action and to be in with a chance of winning some great prizes!


The London MCM Expo takes place on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th October at the London ExCeL centre, Docklands, with tickets priced at £7 for adults and £3 for children, (aged between 11 and 14). Fast track tickets are also available which allow visitors into the event up to two hours earlier than regular ticket holders. The first two thousand people on each day will get free goodie bags loaded with fantastic loot from all of the exhibitors!



For further information regarding the event, please visit the London MCM Expo homepage at www.londonexpo.com.

If you'd like a chance to win some tickets to go to the London Expo, make sure you keep an eye on each of our MMO websites or listen to our latest COGcast.

www.thecogcast.com
www.ddo-europe.com
www.rf-onlinegame.com
www.archlordgame.com
www.lotro-europe.com

We look forward to seeing you there!

The COG team

Setting off

The event started with the whole team driving down to London “first thing” Friday morning ready for a day of setting up. I say “first thing” because it happens that several bacon butties got in the way of us making an early start. That, and one missing director of marketing ;)

All five of us (Satine, Kat, EddRockett, Esperanto and Ulric) set off in two cars fully loaded with equipment and COG paraphernalia and shortly after putting a little more than 500 metres between us and Codemasters HQ, one car had lost the other. We suspect the cause of this was my suggestion to take the “short cut” to the motorway. :D

Once on the road spirits were high. We fetched the GPS out and decided to coast it to the centre of London following the dulcet tones of Miss Navigator. We told her that we wanted to take the fastest route and one that avoided the London congestion charge zone. Our journey should have taken around one and a half hours.

Two hours later we found ourselves driving past ALL of London’s major tourist attractions – we saw the Natural History Museum, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, The London Eye and the Tower of London to name a few. Needless to say we were well within the congestion charge zone and started to worry that the GPS was not functioning correctly.

Lots and lots of traffic light queues later, we finally got to the ExCeL centre. The other car had arrived around one hour before us and were worried. The one advantage of being stuck in central London was that the guys in the car that got there before us had done most of the unpacking :D


Friday afternoon

This afternoon we worked steadily and efficiently to set up the stand. We had tables, chairs, banners, pull-ups and special event display units to mount and arrange. We also got all the laptops up and running and started patching where appropriate and testing all of the games: LOTRO, DDO, ArchLord and RF Online. All seemed to be OK. This made us nervous; when things go smoothly it normally means you’ve forgotten something or it will go bad overnight!



At around 8pm we left the exhibition hall all ready for the following day. We hooked up with some of the guys from Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro who were also at the event for dinner. We enjoyed a very nice Chinese meal with them and shared stories of DDO and other game-related banter. (They’re all big players of DDO you know!)



After what seemed like ten courses later we made our way to the hotel for a refreshing shower and a nice sleep.


Saturday morning, the first day!

After a bumpy night’s sleep, (we were all anxious about it all going well) we met for breakfast. There were lots of Expo people about and the hotel was buzzing! We arrived at the hall at around 8am and were thankful to see that everything was still OK! DDO had finished patching up to Module 3 and everything else was ready to go too!



We made a few finishing touches to the stand and then the doors opened and the first fast-track people came in!

Within minutes the hall was alive with noise, people and excitement. Before you could grab a coffee our stand was full of people who had all come to try out the games. Our little shop selling games, posters and other goodies was soon crowded too as people were desperate to get themselves bargains. We had special Expo prices for the weekend so many shopping bags were filled!



We had several forum people turn up to see us; the ones I remember (and can spell) are: Kheldon, imconfused, Sheldie, Solitaire, Covo, Mercenarri, Zed (UK), Khazneh, Sylvara and the guys who came with their custom-printed DDO T-shirts. His name began with a “V” and was very long and difficult to remember! It was fantastic to see you all and was even better seeing you all playing our games and having a good time J



There was so much to see and do at the show in addition to visiting us. There were many famous film and TV stars there such as some of the cast from CSI, The 4400 and Stargate Atlantis. Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg’s new film was previewed there and even the great man Christopher Lee was there to sign autographs! There was CosPlay, loads of Anime-related stands and guests and in addition to all that there were lots of collectibles traders, Robot Wars and various shows and talks going on throughout the weekend. Saturday’s show was unbelievably busy and the organisers and the ExCeL staff said it was the busiest show in terms of sheer numbers that had EVER been held there! Woohoo! It was immense and spectacularly busy and before we knew it the entire day flew past!



At the end of the day we nursed our sore feet back to the hotel for some dinner and then straight upstairs to get ready for the Expo party. I have to confess that this year there wasn’t enough cheesy music for me to dance to like Abba and Steps ;) however a good time was had by all and a massive hole was left in our wallets following the London bar prices! After mingling with the stars and having fun doing the Macarena, myself and Kat made our way upstairs to bed before turning in to pumpkins so that we got a good night’s sleep before the next full day of the event.


Sunday – day of rest

Not likely! There was no resting this Sunday. Thankfully the event organisers had scheduled the Expo on the weekend that we all get an extra hour in bed as the clocks go back :D That hour was just what we needed after the two busy days previous. After breakfast surrounded by the cast of 4400, CSI and Dirty Den from Eastenders we made our way back to the ExCeL and got a tray full of double-shot coffees to fire us up.

The doors opened and the public flooded in. Today started off quieter than yesterday which was quite nice as it got us warmed up slowly. It was also a lot cooler which was pleasant.



Today was much the same. The game stations were busy the whole time and we had so many people wanting to play LOTRO that we even set up a couple of extra laptops for them to do so. We answered lots of questions and made a lot of beta key promises ;) At 4pm we drew the raffle once again. Throughout both days we had been handing out raffle tickets to anyone and everyone that sat down and played one of our games. At 4pm on both days we drew a raffle and gave out bags full of goodies such as games, T-shirts, COG merchandise and game-time cards with the top prize being a fantastic AMD processor! Most people remembered to come back at 4pm and there was much excitement as each ticket was drawn.



Then sadly the time came to end the Expo. The last of the public were ushered out and break-down of the show commenced. It was chaos with fork-lift trucks, trolleys, vans, people, builders and stuff moving everywhere. We were surprisingly efficient at getting it all down however getting it all back to the cars was less than efficient due to the distance security made us park at and lack of trolleys. Not to worry, a quick scan of the bay revealed an unaccompanied trolley so we borrowed it for half an hour ;)

Once the cars were packed up we all took a wonderful sit down finally and prepared for our journey back to the Midlands. The GPS system was safely switched off and locked in the glove compartment and we made good time on the return trip.

The Expo was a huge amount of fun and a great success. We’d like to thank everyone who stopped by to say hi and to play. It was great to finally meet some of you and it was even better to see you enjoying yourselves.

We’ll most certainly do another one in the future and we hope that some of you that were unable to make it this time will be able to the next time!

For more photos, see our gallery!