We showed up for the Grifball panel about a half hour early to set up and were greeted at the top of the elevator by Blade and Zeg holding hand-drawn signs promoting the panel. Further into the hall, there was a queue stretching around 2 sides of the Serpent Theater and it took me quite a while to realize that this line was actually people wanting to go to the Grifball panel. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty shocked. We ended up with a final count of approximately 240 attendees.

The best part, not only of just the panel but of my entire trip, was the premier of the new Pup and Friends video. Considering that the projected avatars were quite literally larger than life and the swing of a gravity hammer shook the floor, it was about as close to being physically in an actual Grifball game as you could ever get. The music selection was perfect and probably the best part of the whole thing was the audience. They cheered and clapped and laughed and were completely into it. I’d seen the video in advance, and although they’re all good clips, they are things I’ve seen before. However, it was really refreshing and exciting to watch as people reacted to seeing their first hawk dive or ridiculous matchmaking launch. 90% of the crowd had only played DXP and it was definitely amazing to experience those “holy shit how did he do that!?!?!?” moments vicariously through them.

The panel itself was great with lots of trashing of MooCow and the Q and A section was filled, surprisingly, with good, legitimate questions. Questions actually had to be cut off because we had already run almost 30 minutes over our time. There’s already talk of what to do at next year’s PAX and I overheard a panelist or two discussing a PAX 2010 Grifball tournament.