The podcast is humming along (with a roundup of the month’s news coming in the next day or so) and passed 15,000 downloads today.

I’ve linked another forum on the discussion forums page here on Gatebuzz. The 112th Stargate Expeditionary Force seem to have wisely made the decision to utilize the discussion forums on the main SGW site - driving traffic back to the main body of the community rather than siphoning it off from there. Other Commands on the SGW site look a little “dead” because their active community forum is hosted elsewhere.

The MMORPG.com newsletter had this to say about Stargate Worlds:

The MMORPG.com crew has just returned from the San Diego Comic Con and the general consensus is that Stargate Worlds was the highlight of the show.

The Stargate booth was a madhouse, with fans lined up around the corner. You couldn’t turn around without seeing some form of advertisement for SGW, in the form of water bottles, t-shirts, and full sized ads covering buses out front. Stargate Worlds also had a heavy presence at the premier of Stargate: Continuum, the latest DVD movie for the franchise, which was held on the USS Midway.

But what’s better than all of that is that the folks at FireSky were finally ready to grant us a glimpse of the game, with an in depth look at combat, mini-games, and more.

Very cool! Take a look at their website for details (that is, videos) of the in-game gameplay.

It’s been a while coming but WELL worth the wait. FireSky have released an official trailer for Stargate Worlds that consists of real in-game footage. (video hosted by Game Videos website).

I plan on sitting down tonight and composing my thoughts. Right now I’m all “sqeeee!”

Two nice pieces over on IGN regarding Stargate Continuum:

• SDCC 08: Stargate: Continuum Impressions
• SDCC 08: Stargate: Continuum Red Carpet

Oh, and 14,500 total downloads of the podcast! The 15k milestone is coming around fast!

Trawling through the various news postings, I ran across this image of the SGW booth, in a gallery on the IGN website.

That’s a NICE looking “live” startgate in the background, with (I believe) Chris Klug visible.

Khatie blogged about her arrival in San Diego for Comic-Con. Nice to see someone applying rules of spelling to create a word though: she mentioned the team “mantling” (as the opposite of “dismantling”) booth #3535 at the convention centre. Now THAT is my kind of word creation. It follows rules. It validates me when I talk about being a “gruntled” employee (the opposite of “disgruntled”).

Over on SGW-IRC there’s an interesting news post - SGWircTV - there will be either [a] a live streaming video feed direct from Comic-Con, courtesy of Gods-of-Valhalla.com and their on-the-spot reporter ooryl2.

Looks like an unofficial Comic-Con thread in the SGW forums will be pulling things together, definitely a place to watch, as is the more official thread.

Note: the SGW specific news page over at MMORPG.com looks to be a little out of date, but as a site they are usually up on the latest developments (coverage of E3 was good for instance). Its worth keeping an eye open for what they have to say about Comic-Con.

Looks like Chris Klug is getting in on the Comic-Con blogging action too.

(edit - 3:35pm)

Looks like a nice (but more film related) blog is covering Comic-Con - http://screenrant.com/tag/comic-con/

Not only am I offering an official Stargate Worlds beta key as the prize for the competition but I have also got the buy-in of a celebrity judge to decide the winner!

The official bio from the Wizard’s of the Coast author/artist bio page says:

Denise Graham is the author of two books in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series and a number of shorter works. She lurks in her supervillain secret lair deep in the heart of darkest mid-America with her co-supervillain, the inimitable Ron Morris, and their henchmen, er . . . henchdemons, Kafka and Morrigan.

The rules of the fiction contest:

1. Write a Stargate Themed story WITHOUT using any well-known cast members, except in a peripheral sense (pass them in a corridor, see them in the cafeteria, etc)
2. Only one entry per person
3. 500-1000 words in length, using proper grammar and spelling
4. Closing date for submissions: July 17th
5. Email entries to: gatebuzz@gmail.com
6. Entries will be judged by Denise Graham - a published fantasy author
7. The winner will be submitted to CME to receive a spot in the beta and further contact regarding the beta will be handled by them
8. The top 3 stories (maybe 5 if I am feeling generous) will be read on-air on upcoming episodes of GateBuzz

I look forward to hearing from you!

If you haven’t already read the news, Don Davis passed away from a massive heart attack on Sunday morning, June 29th 2008. He will be sorely missed.

I’ve created a page that the team here will attempt to keep up to date with what’s happening as far as the Stargate Worlds Beta Program is concerned. Add the page to your bookmarks. Visit it early, visit it often!

If you’re interested in the progress of the Stargate Worlds Beta Program, stop by the “progress of the beta” page here on GateBuzz!

Sneak peak:

Key points along the way:

• 04-17-2008, 02:42 PM - Khatie

  We’ll be sending invitations to REGISTERED FORUM MEMBERS in the next couple of weeks. Once you register you’ll be put into a database and from that database we will be pulling in early beta testers VERY soon!!

• 04-22-2008, 01:24 PM - Khatie
  

  Friends and Family beta began in the past couple of weeks with the company employees testing as well as a handful of friends and family.

  We will be ramping up soon.

  IF YOU GET ASKED TO REGISTER and/or JOIN the friends and family testing, please keep your NDA agreement. We will take action on anyone who is dishonoring this. Thank you.

• 04-22-2008, 03:01 PM - Khatie
  

  We’re gonna link to the registration page soon. When that happens you’ll all sign up and from that database we’ll start selecting users a few at a time and ramp up over the next weeks to more and more.

  Be patient guys. Don’t want to break our baby game eh?

Even I am going to have that page bookmarked!