Arrival
Flying to EALA was much less stressful than when I went to last year�s community summit. The reason behind this is last year was my first time ever flying! I arrived and got right into a taxi and told him to head to the luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel which EA had the expenses paid for already. The taxi driver kept mumbling in his own made up language and I had no idea what was going on so I just said yes to everything he said. He probably asked me questions like �are you a psycho�, �are you a waste of life�, and I said yes to everything, oh well. I arrived and talked to the receptionist desk about my room, and I was upgraded to a suite which was amazing. John (DarkMorgulKing) from GameReplays checked in at the same time, he was my roommate so it was good timing. The receptionist then asked if we liked Wii or XBOX. I told her PC because its better than both. She goes �what�s a PC?�, John goes �a personal computer.� She then said �I don�t know what that is�� So I replied �it�s the thing with the mouse and keyboard, called a computer, that you are using right now to look up our rooms.� Then she got embarrassed and ran off to a corner.

Our room was amazing since it was a suite. It had a nice look over the pier where there were a million boats docked. We had a huge TV plenty and of room to do whatever we wanted. We had a few hours before the meet and greet dinner so I went on the forums and wrote down everything people wanted me to ask for the next day. Me and John got to know each other and discussed funny CNC moments or things in the game. Finally, it was time to meet and greet, so we went downstairs.

Downstairs we met everyone else including JohnWE from CNC Files, Steve from CNCDEN, Zee Hypnotist, Ghorkov from Planet CNC, and all the others. We all talked about the game and stuff, and how Aaron (APOC) would be late. He actually wasn�t that late. When he arrived we taxied over to a nice Mexican restaurant. We sat in the outside section, and water dripped on me the entire time because I sat under a tree branch that was wet. I pulled out a bar of soap and showered right there (not true). We ate a ton of food, I had this burrito that could feed multiple families so I didn�t come close to finishing it. Mark (crazy CNC fan from the last battlecast episode), and David Silverman arrived and we talked about the game. Mark asked us about different things, such as what sites we were from, what our favorite CNC was, how we got into the community, etc. It was a nice time. Its really fun to be able to sit with a group of people and discuss any CNC stuff that you want. I talked to Kam-Ra a lot from epileptic gaming, it was interesting. We then head back to the hotel for sleep, since we had to get up at around 7:30 the next morning.

Back at the hotel, I realized it looked like the room from the movie 1408. If you haven�t seen it, it�s a movie where a guy checks into a haunted hotel room to check it out and gets trapped in it, and all this creepy stuff happens. The remainder of the night did not settle my nerves. The beds had like 6 pillows on them. I'm a fan of sleeping on one pillow, so I threw them on the floor. I woke up in the middle of the night and they were all on my bed again�WTF!?. I woke up again later and the room had a few small rearrangements�.why? HOW? And then in the morning there was the sneaky newspaper drop. The horrifying thing about all this is that me and John barely slept, so how did room service accomplish any of this without us knowing? They must be trained combatants from the Vietnam war or something. I pictured them army crawling around reorganizing things. The person that put the pillow back in my bed most likely entered the room via slicing a hole in the window and summer saulting in full boar. He then used a rope to hang from the ceiling and carefully placed the pillows next to me back on my bed. Lesson learned, don�t mess with the pillows, so I never did again.

Event Day
John and I awoke from a sleepless night to discuss how violated we were by the Vietnam Veteran room service brigade. We went downstairs and met up with everyone, and taxied over to EA. The taxi driver told us that we should stop playing games and �bang da woman�. He told us to find something else to do with our lives. I decided not to take advice from the very successful taxi driver that he was. He then talked about his retarded dog that apparently  �eats and sleeps�. I guess dogs aren�t supposed to do either of those? The EA building was awesome, its mostly made of glass so it looks cool. We head over to the cafeteria section, which used to be called EAts (Microsoft word just corrected my spelling by making the A lowercase, what Microsoft doesn�t realize is that Electronic Arts is really clever, and wanted to put their company name in the name of the cafeteria). It is now called EA EAts which is even more horrible. This is made up for by some of the most amazing breakfast food. I had pancakes cause I love them, along with reeses peanut butter cups because I am hooked on them. Me and John tried to meet more people there, and I lost my notebook somehow. I found it lying on a random counter. I gave my notebook a stone cold stunner through a table immediately (nope). It was then presentation time.

Presentations
We went to the other side of the spooky see through black curtains to see two huge projector screens saying Kane�s Wrath, and I got very excited. Jim Vassella and Sam Bass proceeded with an explanation of the game, the global conquest mode, many of the units behind the subfactions, and they answered questions.

The game was not supposed to have a prequel part of the story, but they wanted to unify the canon for the fans. The truth is, most of what this expansion is comprised of is fan ideas, and it really shows. I could especially tell because my site is all about fan ideas for CNC games and I show them to APOC, and many of the ideas from my message boards are in this game. Jim stated that he really hopes each of us can find something we wanted in the game in this expansion pack. It is also worth noting that the Titan and Wolverine weren�t going to be a part of the game, but due to Aaron pushing for them, they are now in, so everyone can thank APOC!

We were then sent to play on top notch Dell computers with LCD screen G15 keyboards and a mouse since usually that helps to play video games. The computers were so massive, probably the biggest computer boxes I have ever seen. They were provided by Dell for the event. You could probably sleep in one of the computer boxes. I figured there was at like 15 terabytes of RAM, but I am most likely wrong. The point is they were ready to play the game at max settings, and so were we.

We were allowed to play on two maps, Eastern Promises and another map which I don�t remember the name. I was sneaky though and saw a new map that is just like Tournament Arena only with dry blue fields�(maybe a hint for the future of Tournament arena, or maybe we will have two of them). It had some other small differences as well.

Something I immediately noticed with the first map I played was that it was extremely large compared to any CNC3 map. It was awesome. I felt like I had much more room and  I could expand with a surveyor, since base crawling would force me to buy 100 buildings. I tried out the Steel Talons because that is what I was most excited to play. I am not going to get into a breakdown of faction units until later, just some general things I did when I was playing for now. I have to say, seeing the Titan walk out of the war factory made me so happy. It fit right in, and it felt like Tiberian Sun in 3D. I made some wolverines and it was so cool to see. They noted in the earlier presentation that they know you guys don�t like the size of the legs, and they are looking at fixing it, and giving them new animations. The speed of the wolverine and titan has also been fixed. I fooled around and lost to the computer. I have to say the AI is improved, I was just trying to try out the new units but they came in and kicked my butt, so I lowered the AI for the following matches so I�d have time to try stuff out. I mainly tried out GDI and Nod, but also played the Scrin subfaction Reaper-17 one time. My favorite units to see were the MARV for GDI (it is so huge, it is 4x bigger than the mammoth), the awakened for Nod (EMPing tanks is hilarious and then killing the infantry with its arm gun), and the Reaper Tripod for Scrin (a tripod that looks more menacing and can suck up tiberium to do extreme damage from all three lasers).

One thing I noticed with the game is the extreme amount of new support powers that are very awesome. For example, the Steel Talons have railgun accelerators, a field that you place on a group of rail gun units and they do much more damage and shoot faster. The units take damage over time, but the amount they kill in that time is worth it. GDI also has the Supersonic air attack, where aircraft fly in and drop a massive sonic bomb that destroys all the aircraft in the area. This would be good against venom spam. I noticed there are a lot of anti spam features in the game which will help CNC3 out. Its hard to just spam tanks against Nod because they can EMP most of them. You can�t spam venoms or they will do the supersonic air attack on you. These powers, mixed in with the new units, subfaction specific units, and new upgrades brought a whole new plate of strategies, and although I played for a very long time at the event, I knew I had not even come close to figuring out how everything you could do. CNC fans are in for a treat I believe, the game is going to grow in tremendous ways do to this expansion pack!

Lunch was brought in the form of many subway platters and amazing chocolate chip cookies. We ate and talked to some of the devs. Mike Verdu came in which was nice, and he talked to a few of us about the future of console games and such. I interviewed Sam Bass and Jim Vessella about some concerns I had, which I will talk about later in this article. I began talking the Jason from QA who I continued to talk to the most through the rest of the day. He had a notepad out and wrote down most of what I had to say. This is where I told him about a lot of problems CNC3 has such as unbalances and bugs. Me and my roommate John helped to demonstrate a lot of bugs to him as well. Examples are:

Unbalances: I told him the mutant marauders are useless, the rig is horrible, the corruptor is horrible.

Bugs: We showed him the double growth accelerator bug, the inability of the firehawk to stratofighter over water bug, and orcas flying to their target even if they already launched their missiles bug. Zone troopers and commandos getting attacked by ground units while flying is also tagged as bugged. Firehawks and vertigo�s bombs disappearing when they hit the ground sometimes was also brought up.

I also told him more bugs and unbalances, using my �would you like these changes for 1.10� and my �bugs� thread as a template. He said that the rig may get some changes such as a larger repair radius, and may be able to repair air units, but nothing is set yet. He also knows that the mutants are bad, and they are marked as bugged and may get fixed. These are just small examples of what we discussed, we talked for a very long time and I feel proud to have represented CNC Vision and the message boards because I think I got a lot of your concerns directly to the developers this way.

Tournament
It was then time for the 2v2 tournament. I got a bye first round, and that was my only victory. In the next game, my enemy and I both tried to expand to a blue tiberium field. I was steel talons and he was Nod. I was dominating his scorpions with my titans, and finding out that titans can walk over and crush other vehicles helped. He brought in the awakened cyborg and EMP�d most of my tanks. I tried to get some anti infantry while the awakened killed my rocket troops, but he claimed the expansion. He had way more money then me from then on and destroyed my base. I ran my MCV to my partner�s base and built up there, but they double teamed him and we lost. I believe he did the Tiberium Vein detonation to finish him off, a new devastating power for the Nod Subfaction, the Marked of Kane.

After that I played a few more games, I talked to Jason about more balance issues and things we talk about on the boards all the time. He was a very nice guy and I�m very happy I met him. Me, him, and John talked for a while. I was interviewed by EA about the summit, and I was also interviewed by Epileptic gaming, which I will link to whenever the video is ready!

We then head over to the battlecast primetime set. It was actually in a very small room, nothing like I imagined. David Silverman described how they film it and edit it, and we met Raj Joshi who is extremely entertaining. We got to sit at the set and get our pictures taken, it was very cool. We then got out stuff and went off to the Sabers vs. Kings game.

The Hockey Game
We entered our VIP booth at the Staples Center hockey game. Free hotdogs and chips all night, it was awesome. The Sabers got beat horribly. 8-2 I believe. It is funny because I am from Buffalo and so are the sabers.. I don�t watch hockey much so I didn�t get too upset by the loss. Hockey is definitely a lot more intense when you are actually there. During the first timeout, they played a commercial for KW then the camera showed our section. We went insane. I yelled so loud I thought my ears were going to bleed. Later in the game, two kids played guitar hero and won guitar hero 3 for free. Raj and the others made sure everyone in the area know that EA�s rock band was the better game. Raj and the others got funnier and funnier as the night went on, it was awesome. After that we went back to the hotel and the night was over. I made sure I didn�t move any pillows so that Havoc didn�t C4 me while I was sleeping, and I fell asleep. The next morning me and Steve from CNCDEN head off to the airport, where we left to go back home.