Leipzig Games Convention cancelled for 2009

by Shawn Schuster on Jan 29th 2009 5:00PM

Real life, Events, real-world, MMO industry, News items

Since 2002, the Leipzig Games Convention has been the predominant European expo for gamers, recently rivaling the Tokyo Game Show as the largest games event in the world. In a move contradicting that success, organizers have just announced that this year's Games Convention will not be held in its traditional form at the Leipziger Messe Fairgrounds. In its place will be Gamescom, which has been backed by Nintendo, Sega and Microsoft. Who could compete with that?

You may remember the importance of this Games Convention in recent years to such MMOs as Warhammer Online and Age of Conan. In fact, when AoC's servers merged recently, the EU servers fared a bit better than the North American ones. Not to fret though, as the organizers have announced an online version of the convention called Games Convention Online. "We will be combining the real fair, that is, the offline event, with an online event," says Wolfgang Marzin, Leipzig Trade Fair CEO. "This means that millions of gamers are linked in on the internet and can take part in the Games Convention Online in Leipzig live. The Games Convention Online will host tens of thousands of visitors in Leipzig, and several million in the whole world."

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Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, europe, games-convention, gamescom, leipzig, leipzig-games-convention, war, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (2)

In fact, when AoC's servers merged recently, the EU servers fared a bit better than the North American ones.
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It's all those buggers living in the North where it gets dark at 2 PM and they have nothing else to do but play stupidly difficult, unrewarding "games" that occupy all their time and effort while they wait for the herring they pissed on and buried in the garden to reach the point of rankness where it will be considered a "delicacy."

Oh and also keep in mind AoC has different language servers - English, French and German - which would account for the fewer server cuts. Essentially they have three audiences to cater to compared to the US, so I wouldn't read too much into it if you think AoC was "more successful" in Europe. Maybe it was but without hard subscription figures, it's easy to draw the wrong conclusion.