although that was not really hard

the devil-in-disguise who apparently likes whiskey-coke

Design Your Own Death

Which in my opinion is a totally valid thing to think about.

Well I finally got home and had some good sleep. So I figured I'd write you some stories about the ESO Tavern in Cologne during the Gamescom weekend. Not only to simply show how awesome it was, but also to attract even more people next year! TL;DR version at the end.So, lets start at the beginning, shall we? Before the event was announced Kai Schober (German community manager) came to me on teamspeak after a meeting we had about trials. He asked me if I would be interested in doing a panel with Rich Lambert and Mike Finnigan about the design of a dungeon during an event they were going to organize in Cologne. Since Cologne is about an hour by train for me, I obviously said yes after a few seconds. He told me I could bring someone with me so that we had two players and two devs on the panel. I asked @Xantaria to join me on this panel.So there we were, on the 19th of August around 5:30 we arrived at the location where the tavern would take place. At first we were held up by security, but after a quick "Why are you here this early?" and a check of the guest list we were let in with no problems. The actual tavern would start at 6:00, but we had to set up a few things on the pc's beforehand like addons, and Xantaria even took his own keyboard with him.As we walk down the stairs (because this particular location was located in the cellar) I hear a few low voices echo through the stairways, they're speaking English. They were easy to distinguish as we had heard German all day long basically. The room was 2 stories high, a balcony, where all the food was located was directly to the right after entering. The lower floor, where all the tables were was where the actual happening was going to be.We walked down the stairs to the lower floor. to the left was an area that was a bit higher than the rest, a little stage one could call it. There were two fully equipped game pc's along with an HD beamer and a big screen. To the right was a big bar and the entire room was filled with tables and chairs, there was also enough room to move around still. The entire room was decorated with daedric symbols and Elder Scrolls banners.So then there the were, Kai Schober was doing some last preparations while Matt Firor, Mike Finnigan and Rich Lambert were having a beer at the bar. We were greeted by all and after a quick introduction we shared some basic stories about the day. You know how these things go. However, the way of conversation already made clear that this evening was going to be held in a friendly, relaxed way rather than the usual professional (well "professional" for some) level you would see on live streams.We set up our things at the pc's. In the mean time Kai asked us if we could run a dungeon on the beamer as people were coming in. So we got to that, not realizing that this would set the very good mood the entire event would keep until the end.We we're going to the Ruins of Mazzatun on Veteran Hard Mode difficulty. Everything went great actually, but we had a death on the 3rd boss. While this person died I realized Mike Finnigan was standing behind me. With an extremely satisfied smile he said "Wow, did somebody die? Learn to play man!". At this point is was very clear that this evening was going to be awesome. I gave him a death stare, and he smiled even more. This would be the start of an entire chain of petty (but of course on a teasing level) insults that would go between the devs and us throughout the entire event.With no further complications we cleared the Ruins. More and more people were pouring in, so we decided to leave it at that for that moment and get a drink.So to get a little background about me (for you to understand things that happen next). I'm Woeler, the main tank of Beyond Infinity (now called Unbroken), an EU PC raiding guild and currently the only ones to have clear the Veteran Maw of Lorkhaj on Hard Mode. And while Mike was really exited that someone had finally taken it down, though I'm pretty sure a small piece of his soul died when his little baby winged twilight Rakkhat was killed. Of course, we we're all there to support him in this difficult time.But, I digress. As Beyond Infinity is one of the top guilds, there are also others. One of them is Hodor. @Paulington actually came all the way from the UK to visit this event. This was the first time ever two members of these rivalling guilds would meet in person, and it was simply awesome. We had great talks while having some whiskey-coke about trials, our guilds and our lives in general. It was the perfect example how rivalry in sports does not mean rivalry in everything else. As the evening progressed he quickly joined us in our mighty quest to make fun of Mike FinniganThen all of a sudden the microphone turned on, a screech filled the room and everybody's attention was immediately focussed on Kai. Who at the moment was standing on the stage. He welcomed everybody, said a few words about protocols that night, wished us a pleasant night and then introduced the man of the night, Matt Firor. After a quick --but I don't think needed-- introduction he went on to inform us about certain features that would be coming with update 12. You can read about this here Several applauses later, Matt wished us all a great evening and then left the stage to grab a drink, well deserved of course! Kai informed us that after a short break ArtcoreCosplay would come to the stage and educate us about cosplaying, what it takes, how it works and of course to show us her magnificent Dominion Elf costume from the Elder Scrolls trailers.We all shared some drinks, had some great talks and about 15 minutes later the next event started. ArtCoreCosplay walked on the stage wearing her Dominion Elf costume. One woudl actually think she walked right out of that trailer. She explained to us what it takes to start cosplaying, how she approaches costumes, what materials she uses and what it actually takes to make costumes of that calibre. Let me tell you, it takes a lot of hard work, but it definitely pays off! Most of her presentation was in German. Of course, all the guests had no trouble understanding her, also Matt, who speaks good German I hear had no trouble, but Rich and Mike were just staring a the costume and trying very hard to figure out what was being said. Oh these Americans and their one language standard! (I'm saying this btw because I know Rich is Canadian and he now has to come to this topic and reply "Dude, I'm Canadian!"). One could easily see this when they we're handed the sword of the costume and trying to figure out what to do with it.After the presentation was done there was time for questions, and there were quite a lot. So after a good hour the presentation came to an end. Again Kai joined the stage and said that after a short break the next and last event of that evening would be taking place. The event where Rich, Mike @Xantaria and I would talk about the developer/player experiences in dungeons and how designing a dungeons works.Some drinks and conversations later we joined the stage and we were actually doing a panel with the man himself, Rich Lambert andDungeon Lead, Mike Finnigan.We talked about what it takes to design a dungeon boss and what kind of thoughts go into that, and then of course what kind of approach we take in order to defeat it. We also explained what some key factors are when it comes to beating the hardest content in the game. How to works as a group, mentality, skills etc. Kai would ask us questions and we would then discuss the answer to that with Mike and Rich. We all got a lot of insight from them, and I hope a lot of players got some insight from us. mike and Rich also told stories about how they would join random groups and act like they have no idea what's going to happen. It either ends in a completed trial, or in them laughing at some miserable attempts. So mean.After we were done talking Kai wished everyone a pleasant evening. Now it was time to do two things, talk and drink, at least for most of us. @Xantaria and I were actually asked to run Veteran Cradle of Shadows on the beamer. So we got to that. As we were staging our group we actually did not notice that Mike picked up the microphone. So when we finally started the dungeon he would start commenting on everything we were doing. His first line were "Yes ladies and gentlemen, today you will be witnessing a no-death, no-lights speedrun hardmode of the veteran cradle of shadows dungeon!". "Did you just stand in the red?", "they're really try-harding now!" and "Lol, you died, you suck" were one of his inspiring and encouraging lines during that run.We whiped once at the endboss in hardmode. So when that happened I immediately got a microphone shoved in my face "DID YOU JUST WHIPE? WOW L2P." I immediately replied with "Shut up Mike!", but his face said it all. He likes it when we die.So after that there were lots of interesting conversations. People asked me a lot about tanking and trials in general and I really had a blast answering them. Our guild was represented by at least 10 people, and Rich spent quite a lot of time at our table. At some point I'm pretty sure he thought "This guild cleared VMOL Hard Mode? How on Earth...". At this point I did not see Matt Firor anymore, probably he had to fly back to the states in the morning. Mike was also walking around, talking to a lot of people and signing some merch (or as I like to call it: finding a next soul to torment).The event was supposed to end at 00:00, but we were actually still talking and drinking at 01:30, but then we had to call it a night.Our second day in Cologne. Unfortunately @Xantaria and I were not able to get any tickets for the Gamescom on Saturday, but that was no problem for the Man himself, Kai Schober. He hooked us up with two exhibitor passes! We could go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted and even skip a few lines. We went to see a lot of games that day and of course we visited Kai in the afternoon. He was helping out at the Elder Scrolls Legends booth.At 6pm the tavern would start again, so we arrived a little early to set up our things. We we're quickly joined by Kai, Rich and Mike again. We ran into some trouble with one of the PC's. The framerate was horrible, but after some time I was able to fix this before we had to start. So again we were asked to run a dungeon as people were pouring in. We ran Veteran Cradle of Shadows (again because Shadows of the Hist was basically the theme here). No big troubles, I believe we had one death, Xantaria. And Rich was standing next to him and asking him questions and then of course laughing as he died. Mike of course had to make comments as well.After the dungeon Rich joined the stage and started talking about update 12. A lot of new things where announced, one of the biggest was duelling, for which they got a big applause. Here is a video of everything Rich told us. sorry for the potato quality, I streamed it, and apparently Periscopes quality sucks.So after Rich finished we had a short break that would be followed byDesign a Trial Boss with Mike Finnigan. Mike was basically sitting on stage while interacting with the people in the room. Piece by piece we came up with ideas as to what the boss would look like, what mechanics he would have and what the map would look like, but it took some time as people first started suggesting mudcrab bosses. This event took actually quite long as there were a lot of people with great ideas. Everybody who helped design eventually got a t-shirt from Kai. T-shirts for everyone!After that Kai told us that from now on it was down to talking and drinking again, but before I let him leave the stage there was one thing to be done. I got on the stage, took the microphone and asked everybody for a few seconds of their time. Kai had organised all of this, and since I was invited by him I felt this was the least I could do. So I quickly told everyone about the fact that if it wouldn't be for Kai, we wouldn't be together here, celebrating. I asked for a big applause for Kai, and of course he got one, the biggest of the entire evening. Now that that was settled, we could get back to the drinking.So, now we decided it was payback time.No crime can go unpunished, so we asked Rich if we could run Veteran Imperial City Prison on the beamer and use every single bug/exploit we knew about. He said "Go ahead!". And so we did. "Are you going to run another dungeons", Mike said with a smile (that would not last much longer). "Yes, are you gonna comment again?" we said.So there we went, into the prison, without a healer. 2 Stamina DK's a DK tank and a magicka nightblade. "What are you doing!" Mike said, followed by Rich's "You're going to fix this, right?" as we prevented the Flesh Sculptor from going to the atronarch pool and burned him to ashes in one go. We skipped trash after trash by "using" the environment to our advantage. At this point the bartender probably knew he was going to need a lot more whiskey-coke. Eventually we ended up completing the run without a death as well, so Mike could not throw insults at us. It was great.Shortly after the run he asked "WHY DID YOU DO THIS?". I pointed out that if he could see his own face right now, he'd know. I remember Rich looking at him with a rather questioning look, he was probably thinking something along the lines of "Did I hire this guy?".Sadly, Mike did not tweet about this. I wonder why.So for me the weirdest thing happened right now. I got asked by people if I wanted to sign their ESO merch. I really had a WTF moment for a little while, but of course signed all their stuff. I still really can't comprehend that actually happened, but it was really fun!Of course I also had some ESO merch which I asked Rich and Mike to sign. So in the end I ended up with this:But then again, things could be worse @Paulington Now that that was all done I had some lovely talks with a lot of people from a lot of different guilds and platforms. You guys are all awesome! I also spent a quite long timeframe talking to @Paulington from Hodor. Occasionally others would join in as well. Here are some more pics.We were still going to be there for a few hours, but time flies when you're having fun. Everything went so fast, and around half past one Kai started cleaning up, so I helped him a bit. About ten minutes later we would all leave the tavern. There were about 15 of us left plus Kai, Rich and Mike. We actually sat outside on a bench for another 2 hours! Laughing, taking pictures, just having fun. Here are some pictures of that:Well, if you've made it all the way to here, thanks for reading and make sure to be there next year! You don't want to miss this!And of course, again @ZOS_KaiSchober The man of the weekend. Thank you so much for this awesome event. You my friend, are legendary!It was awesome as f***! You don't want to miss this next year!