BATTLEBLOG - What a Great Time To Be A BattleTech Fan

[DeJaVu]

Wow...what a roller coaster ride the last few weeks. The products publishing by Catalyst as part of the anniversary year, the return of the unseen, the releasing of MW4 for free, launching of BattleTech.com and the announcing of work begun on rebooting/relaunching the entire MechWarrior computer game franchise.

I've been involved and/or aware of most of this and the fan in me (much less the professional that gets to participate in all of this) is squealing like a cat girl. Been building towards this for a long time and so I knew it was going to be a cool year. But never imagined it would be THIS cool. Now obviously some of this stuff will be years in the making; the new MW computer game is likely years away. But just to know it's in development...to see the crazy cool video and all the fun details...yeah...what a GREAT time to be a fan.

I'm particularly excited about the launching of BattleTech.com. Not just the obviousness of the removal of "Classic" and a return to form, but that we've been able to generate a portal site that'll act as a clearing house for all things BattleTech. A way to take the fractured fan bases for the computer games and the board game and the fiction and so on and start to unify them into a base that's aware of all the disparate parts. A community that is aware of itself only grows stronger when it knows its stronger. The boardgame and computer game BattleTech communities are immensely strong...what has allowed the boardgame to survive and thrive and what has allowed the online computer-game community (through such sites as mektek.net) to survive. To now pare those up and ensure everyone is aware of each other...that'll only grow that strength and allow BattleTech's rising star to rise all that much higher in the coming months and years.

There's lots still to do, of course...we've already seen the BattleTech star rising and this is a fantastic booster hit that I hope we'll ride up to new heights. For those fans that have stuck with us (again, either with the board game, the computer games or in what ever form), can't thank you enough! For the fans re-discovering BattleTech after a hiatus (or discovering it for the first time), welcome aboard the DropShip as we lift-off planet with a thousand worlds to invade, a million stories and adventure to have along the way, and the most important part, of course: to have fun!

See ya next time!

Randall