I've spoken a little before about Wildstar, the only MMO I've ever enjoyed. Tonight is the end of the Wildstar beta. The game goes live for real on June 3rd, but all our characters, gold and dreams get wiped tonight ready for the big launch next month.

In honour of this, I figured I'd do a little presentation of my current characters. May they be forever remembered!

Snowbelle was my first ever Wildstar character. Moose and I got beta access on Christmas eve, so it seemed only fitting that I create a magical Aurin imbued with the spirit of Christmas! The name 'Snowbelle' was surprisingly not taken, and the candy cane ears, little star earrings and spunky elf-like hair made her perfect. I made her an Esper (seemed magical enough) and an Explorer.

Taffy's my main character, currently level 30 as of the beta's end. He's an engineer/settler. His name has a dumb history. The only place I ever really roleplayed, years ago, was The Lion King MUCK, an old text based roleplay that was ridiculously popular. Considering, yes, it was a roleplay designed for The Lion King universe, it was really intense and really fun and I spent far too much time there! My main character back then was an old grizzled white/grey hyena, and I named him Tafauti because it apparently means 'different' or 'defect' in Swahili, and Taffy was white (such a  unique character!) It suited him well as the roleplay progressed, oddly enough, because he was lame in one leg and was finally accepted by a lion pride. Haha, I sound so cool typing all this out, right? but TLK Muck was kind of strict on that sort of thing (no dumb coloured animals, no friendships like Hyena/Lion without proper roleplay character development etc.) so the fact I achieved that was pretty cool! Anyway! Taffy is a Chua personification of that character. Grizzled, old veteran. Sadly Wildstar don't offer white Chua fur so this is as close as I could get.

I fell in love with Aurin designs and ended up making a bunch of them. I thought Sprightly was super pretty, but I never played her. Poor Sprightly.

Sundown is the prettiest Aurin! I think she was a stalker who again, like Sundown, I never played, but I think her design is the one I'm going to use for my Exile main when the game's released. I think she's absolutely gorgeous! I don't know if I'll play a stalker with her though. We'll see!

Back when only Moose, Luke and I had beta access, my buddy DC came over and wanted to mess around with the character creation and classes. I signed into Wildstar and told him he could play Sprightly or Sundown if he wanted, to get a feel for things, while I went and had a shower.

When I returned from my shower, DC was playing neither Sprightly nor Sundown. Instead, Snuffley existed.

We don't talk much of Snuffley.

Sorry blogging world! I've not forgotten you! May is just my hectic month, cramming three conventions in a row. I'll be a better blogger in June, I promise!

Last weekend was Bristol Comic Expo. BCExpo is actually one of the first conventions I ever attended, after the London Comic Art Convention ceased to be. It was, for years, held at the Passenger Shed by Bristol train station, with panels and talks taking place at adjacent hotels. I think the station is taking the venue back into service or something though, because BCExpo was forced to find another location, and it did in the form of the Future Inn at Cabot Circus.

Honestly? Yeah. I've been attending BCExpo for absolutely years, and this was my third year as a vendor there. The Passenger Shed was a huge venue, with plenty of space and a huge variety of dealers, independent comic creators and merchandise stalls. I spent a lot of money last year on art supplies from an art store there, had my photo taken next to a full size TARDIS and generally had a lot of fun mooching around the vastness and the variety of the place.

This year, we had one small hotel room, upstairs on floor six. In that small room were five aisles of comic vendors, which made Saturday an absolute nightmare to walk around. Despite the crammed aisles though, there were so many vendors missing from the convention. I don't know if they limited table sales, since I ordered mine way back in October last year, but I guess they must have because there simply wasn't the room to have added more even if they'd wanted to.

In terms of atmosphere, the convention was lovely. Everything being in one place was great. The main room was mainly independent artists and comic creators with only a couple of merchandise retailers, so that was nice. Downstairs, in the foyer , was a small 'Steampunk' showcase (Professor Elemental was one of their guests, who ran a panel and performed Saturday evening), some professional artists and a couple of retailers. One thing I noticed was that they were all forced to pack up in the evening to turn it back into a restaurant/bar area - not something I'd be happy about doing myself.

Had this been my first BCExpo, I'd probably not fault it all that much, but sadly the previous ones have set the bar pretty high. My takings were horrendously down on last year - a complaint I heard from a lot of dealers. BCExpo is one of the more expensive tables to book, too (the table being a similar cost to those in the Comic Village at MCM London, the UK's largest convention) I think I took about £30 all day Sunday. It wasn't worth being a two-day convention at all this year, and if I'd booked a hotel and traveled a greater distance for it (thankfully Bristol is 'local' to me and we all made plans to stay with my buddy Luke who lives there) I'd have been a little heartbroken. Admittedly, Saturday was decent in terms of trade, but the crush put a lot of people off, and, having read some feedback from visitors, I fear a lot of people won't rush to return. The convention was due to finish at 5:30 on the Sunday, but people started packing up as early as three, which kind of shows how worthwhile the second day really was from a vendor's perspective.

It was just so underwhelming.

I didn't get to any panels and missed the cosplay competition, I rarely do since I'm usually behind a table, but I'll say that having it all in one place was a nice touch. Despite the grumbling here, I like hotel conventions. A lot. I prefer them to conventions held in halls. I like everything being in one place, and that you can walk around the halls in silly costumes and meet other people doing the same. There's a lovely sense of community at hotel cons, but BCExpo was lacking so, so much in its transition that I'm curious to see where it goes from here. I've heard the hotel has been contracted to them for three years, so there's no hope of moving venue right now. Hopefully they'll find more space to utilize though, and get back some of the familiar faces we lost this year.

I've heard some really exciting things on the grapevine in terms of Bristol conventions, so all is not lost! Let's just call this one a little blip and a bumpy transition, and look forward to seeing what BCExpo 2015 has to bring. :)

Sorry for the absence guys! I've been down in Plymouth having a killer weekend and selling art at DevCon!

My table at conventions is always growing and evolving, and I'm still learning how best to present everything! The trouble is, I have so much stuff I can hardly fit it all in a 6ft table now, so it's turning into a little bit of a headache! At DevCon I didn't even hang out any larger A3 sized prints, but it was the first time I had the chance to sell my necklaces and accessories properly. I was so excited to find I'd been given an extra little side table, so that was perfect to use for the 'stuff' while the main table held all my art. I think I'm going to have to start using folders to display more prints, which is something I've always wanted to avoid (I prefer people to be able to glance across and see everything in one go), but I'd rather a folder than just not display the art at all.

DevCon is a nice little convention, with a friendly attitude. It sort of feels like a mix between a toy fair and a comic convention, with lots of dealers geared towards nostalgia and second hand merchandise over the traditional anime/modern popular culture dealers found at a lot of cons. The meet and greets were free, which was a nice plus, but there weren't any panels or scheduled events to my knowledge, not even a cosplay masquerade, which was a shame given the number of great costumes I saw there.

This weekend is Bristol Comic Expo, so I don't get much time to prep between cons this time! Eep!