A few weeks ago I told you all about the WoW Fancon, a ‘virtual convention’ that was held for World of Warcraft (WoW) players by Utherverse. For those who’ve never played WoW, a ‘virtual convention’ is very much like Second Life or The Sims, with attendees using custom-made avatars to explore a convention center that exists only in cyber-space. This sort of event makes conventions possible without the need to book a plane ticket, hotel room and rental car. You can quite literally attend without ever leaving your home. Which brings me to wonder if this is the future of conventioneering? (Is that even a word? I digress…)
Now, I ‘attended’ the WoW Fancon myself (a first time for me I’ll admit), getting to interact with WoW fans as well as some virtual property designers, and had some observations to share…
Virtual Cons Aren’t Really for Noobs:
As fun as they may be, you really should be familiar with the mechanics of ‘virtual worlds’ and using avatars to interact. At one point during the ‘show’ my headset stopped picking up the audio feed of one of the guest speakers and I needed the help of the Utherverse staff to get myself going again. They were helpful and patient, but if you’re not accustomed to dealing with technical glitches, and persistent enough to work them through, you may get frustrated.
Beware of trolls:
Yeah, just like every other corner of the internet, there were a couple trolls at the WoW Fancon. The most prominent one in my feed was the one who kept proclaiming “I’m gunna sex u” and running around the main hall making lewd comments. Those idiots are mostly harmless and can be reported or ignored, but it still baffles me how some people act on the internet.
(Yes, some of you may giggle at that knowing how I behave on Twitter myself.)
In spite of these two issues, I will admit that…
Virtual Conventions Are Addictive!:
Take the veil of anonymity of chat rooms, combine them with a visual medium that lets you recreate yourself as any kind of person you want to be (there were buff guys with muscle tees and gals who were dressed as pixies) and you can find yourself spending a LOT of time chatting it up at a virtual con.
Yeah, even though you run into the occasional troll, or uber-nerd who laments that half the people in the hall have never been on a raid before, the majority of people at the event are friendly, out-going fantasy fans who just want to socialize and have fun. I met a few folks who claimed that they really didn’t play WoW as much as their significant others, but they still enjoyed the experience of playing in a ‘virtual world.’
When I asked for statistics, a rep for Utherverse informed me that there were a total of 3,208 unique members overall at the convention. That’s an impressive number of people interacting in cyber-space over 2 days if you ask me.
Over the 2 days attendees spent 190,000 Rays, the currency of the Utherverse virtual world.
As for ‘star power’, there were 5 guest speakers who each drew over 1,000 attendees to their talks. Roberto Garcia – aka Towelliee- a well-known WoW player drew thousands of people to his Q&A session and also streamed himself live onto Twitch TV where over 1,000 people watched him live.
Jeff Lewis, who plays Vork on The Guild was also a speaker. (I missed him as he was the speaker who was on when I had my technical issues.)
In the final analysis, for as much fun as it was, I still opt for the traditional fan convention that takes place IRL. Even if I do end up with a case of the ‘con crud,’ that awful malady that afflicts you after hanging out with a few thousand fanboys and fangirls.
The ‘virtual con’ offered by Utherverse does have its appeal, though.
I give the WoW Fancon a Geek Factor Rating of 3 dragon scales (out of 4).
For more info on virtual conventions, visit the Utherverse web site!
