By Game Intruder Staff It was the biggest AGC ever, and Game Intruder was there, along with 2400 other games industry folk, all packed in to the Austin Convention Center. The Conference started with a speech from the Mayor of Austin Texas, welcoming the attendees and proudly proclaiming his great city’s attributes.  The first keynote speech of the Conference was given by non other than Blizzard’s Rob Pardo, Lead Designer on World of Warcraft. Amongst the revelations Rob gave in regards to WoW’s production, he also stated that incredibly, WoW had recently reach the incredible number of 7 Million subscribers worldwide. The other folks in the industry were literally salivating at the chance to take even a mere 1% of WoW’s subscriber numbers.  In general, WoW was on the tip of everyone’s tongues at AGC. Some developers claimed that it was impossible to topple WoW, but that the right game could take 10% of their subscribers. Other said that because Blizzard spent an unprecedented 70-100 Million dollars producing WoW, it would take only a company with the resources to spend double that number, in order to topple the great giant. An interesting theory indeed. The highlight of Day 1 for this reported was the MMO rant, featuring rants from such industry personalities as NC Soft’s Scott Jennings (perhaps better known to some as Lum the Mad), Bioware Austin’s Richard Vogel, Former Mythic Entertainment VP Matt Firor, and industry veteran and consultant Jessica Mulligan.  This panel focused largely on bemoaning the problems with MMOs, focusing on lack of innovation, and why so many MMOs feature a fantasy setting. A refreshing exception to this was the rant from Matt Firor, where he took the opposite stance, choosing to focus on what the industry has done right, and successes such as World of Warcraft. Though not technically on the panel, Bioware Austin’s Gordon Walton also decided to chime in, echoing Firor’s point, but choosing to express it by telling the room that, “You’re all a bunch of whiney bitches”.  Day 2 featured a number of interesting discussions. The most controversial being Raph Koster’s talk entitled, “The Age of the Dinosaurs”, in which he basically said the Games Industry must adapt or die as it moves forward. The opinion surrounding Raph’s talk ranged from sentiment that he was correct, and a visionary, to other simply saying that Koster had finally gone mad. The highlight of Day 3 was a talk given by industry veteran Damien Schubert of Bioware Austin, entitled “Beyond Men in Tights”. This talk explored the reasons as to why most MMO companies choose to produce their MMOs under a fantasy setting. He drew many conclusions, for example, the fantasy enivironment is very friendly, and welcoming. As well, that Fantasy is also an Intellectual Property unto itself, which allows designers to make an MMO without having to follow the intensely-specific guidelines one would when doing an actual IP license. All in all the conference was an outstanding experience, and in only it’s 4th year, AGC has no where to go but up.