WoWFanCon: Day 2 Wrap Up!

WoWFanCon Day 2 Wrap-up

With much enthusiasm after yesterday’s spectacular Day 1, I sat down at my laptop to check out Day 2 of the WoWFanCon! Check out what I found.

Jeff Lewis (Vork from the Guild) QnA

The QnA started off with many questions about The Guild such as questions on a 6^th and further seasons of the popular web series. He was unable to answer but said the ball is more in Microsoft’s court.  Other questions included many questions about various characters in the show, such as Jeff’s character Vork, why he enjoys playing Vork so much – he sites childhood memories of his father being very cheap as a massive inspiration for Vork and how he acts.

Josh Wheaton was noted during the QnA for taking inspiration from the Guild and as Lewis looks up to him quite a lot, he felt honored by his admiration. Apparently Wheaton was introduced to the Guild during the Writer’s Strike a few years back by Felicia Day and that led to Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog as well as other projects.

Jeff Lewis’ comedic influences include many physical comedy sketches, but especially Saturday Night Live which he has watched since its inception. He is noted to have been a graduate of the ACME Acting School and was involved with the acting troupe the Groundlings.

He goes on to state that the Game in The Guild webseries is best represented by World of Warcraft.  He speaks about the real life guild Knights of Good, that all of the folks from the guild actually played characters very similar to those in the show and had all of the names reserved from the beginning. He goes on to say that he didn’t really enjoy roleplaying in WoW because you were somewhat restricted in what you could do. His example was that you couldn’t just walk into a city and kill people. That’s frowned upon (which he laughed at his own joke, hehe).

“Do You want to Date my Avatar?” Was talked about quite a lot as well. He said he enjoyed it quite a lot an d enjoyed shooting a rap video, which is something he thought he’d never ever be doing, and judging by Jeff’s appearance, most folks wouldn’t see him as a rapper. It really made him feel like a star. He was in a state of disbelief over the state of the phenomenon and states that it was #1 on itunes for a bit.

His most memorable moment as Vork is apparently when he got in the shower as Vork, fully dressed, punching the wall yelling “CLARA, HOW COULD YOU?! I’ve been betrayed!!”

He met Felicia Day through an Improv group called “Empty Stage” in Los Angeles, a weekly show called Being Human which played on Friday nights. They had a grand old time doing funny sketches, etc. Then she wrote the Guild and just asked Lewis to do it. She just had an intuition that Lewis could play a character like Vork even though he had no experience with neurotic characters.

He’s not a fan of doing standup comedy as Jeff Lewis, but he does enjoy doing it in character as Vork.  He says this is just because he reads off of index cards Felcia Day writes usually.

The questions from here started to get silly, topics such as drug use in college (apparently there was a lot), and just degenerated further from there, so that’s where we’ll leave this off.

Gareth McBride (aka Von Kallenbach of Skewed and Reviewed)

A brief intro from WoWFanCon’s website:

Gareth Von Kallenbach is a syndicated movie & game critic, writer, author and frequent radio guest. His work has appeared in over 60 publications worldwide and he is the creator of the rising entertainment site "Skewed and Reviewed", as well as their quarterly magazine and weekly web tv show.

He has three books of film, game reviews and interviews published and is a well-received and in demand speaker on the convention circuit. Gareth has appeared in movies and is a regular guest on the top rated Seattle morning show as well as their weekly Geek Nation segment. Gareth has also worked in the game industry giving him insider access to the latest industry news. He has created two Star Wars fan films which he wrote and directed and appeared recently in "Love Happens", "Postal", and "Far Cry" and voiced a character in the POSTAL 3 video game. Skewed and Reviewed have just opened their second office and Gareth runs both the Seattle and and AZ offices.

I would have a ton to say about Mr. McBride, but my software for the UtherConvention kept crashing so this is going to be rather short.

Gareth talked a lot about what he thought of 3D technologies in films, saying that more research should be done and movies should not be just converted to 3D in a lab, as most films are. If they are going to be 3D movies, that’s how they should exist, period, no after conversion. He also goes on to talk about the state of the PS3 and how Sony is ahead as far as the 3D market goes.

Gareth also talked a bit about being a freelancer, which is something I can relate to. He says that the best way to go about being a freelance writer is to offer your work to anyone who will carry it while compensating you in some way, whether that is just with a name on the work, or with actual money.

He then went on to talk about some Star Wars rumors. Apparently 20^th Century Fox has a new Star Wars Trilogy in the works for sometime in 2014? It’s on their release docket, anyway. No one knows what this could be. If it’s an extension of the future expanded universe or set sometime during the Old Republic era like the games are. Will be interesting either way.

I wish I could’ve been there for the whole thing, but as I said, the client kept crashing. I will say that Utherverse has virtually no support staff to speak of. Not very impressive. But this convention was still an innovative idea that I wish would be replicated more across the gaming community.

Day 2, and the convention, closed out with a dance party in the main ballroom with some nice tunes. Overall a very fun time, and I will be attending next year.

Dustin Steiner is GameZone's eSports Correspondent and Freelancer! Follow him on Twitter @SteinerDustin!