by Cali Girl

Las Vegas, Nevada Airport
On Thursday November 4th, I arrived at the Las Vegas Airport a little after 2:30pm PST, there I met the driver, Johnny. He was an adorable older man who looked like George Burns.

While Johnny was driving me to the Luxor hotel, he talked about the late night shows he does at certain Clubs in Las Vegas. One of the shows he mentioned was where he sings the Blues, the other show was where he does impressions of George Burns from the 'Oh God' movie. He picked up a picture off the front seat of the car to show George Burns and him standing together. As I glanced at the picture, I noticed that he did look a lot like George, the only difference is George Burns has a very original smile and is much shorter.

Luxor Hotel
While pulling up to the Luxor Hotel, I felt like I had came into an exotic Egyptian movie set. The outside had a black pyramid with two separate hotels on the right side, and the front entrance had a huge Egyptian Monument. Johnny drove up to the front of this magnificent hotel to drop me off.

As I entered inside the hotel, it expressed everything to do with Egypt and the Egyptians. The front had two huge Egyptian Monuments which looked as though they were guarding the entrance to the Casino. To my left was another entrance to the Casino. To my right, I noticed a nice waterfall with many Egyptian woman standing. The woman looked as if they were servants to one of the Egyptian Male Monuments that were sitting down.

My eyes drifted around to see where to check in at the Service Desk. But, I was overwhelmed of the whole scenery and started looking at the paintings on the wall. Each painting throughout the whole area were detailed with a story. One of the paintings that caught my eye was an Egyptian woman surrounded by men. To me, it looked as though she was being guarded while she was walking to her destination. She was dressed like an Egyptian princess but her clothes looked more like an exotic dancer.

There were more creative peices of art in other areas but I knew I had better check in or I would be standing there all day observing the uniqueness of the Luxor Hotel. The rest of the Egyptian monuments throughout the hotel were very creative and most of them were huge.

While opening the door to my room, it had another Egyptian theme. The room looked as though it was beautifully designed for an Egyptian princess.

I called Westwood Studios to confirm that I was checked in. A woman at Westwood Studios answered the phone and said everyone except for one person had checked in. She then transferred me to Westwood Studios' Public Relations Coordinator, Chris Rubyor. 

During my telephone conversation with Chris, he mentioned the people who were also attending the Westwood Studios tour:

Gaile Grey of DiabloII.net
Paul 'Sabre' Sottosanti of Yeggs Tavern
AJ 'Azrael' Thompson from DiabloII.com
Jim 'CyberMan' Stillwell of Westwood Underground

Chris also mentioned to call Paul to see if all of us could meet each other at a certain time that evening.

Meeting Sabre & Azrael
At about an hour and half later I was to meet Paul 'Sabre' Sottosanti of  Yeggs Tavern and AJ 'Azrael' Thompson of DiabloII.com near the front service desk of the Luxor Hotel. However, in my own error I didn't ask for their description so I had no idea what they both looked like.

As I was waiting, I noticed a very tall man walking around looking for someone. I thought he might be Paul so I walked up to the gentleman and said, "Are you Paul?" The guy in return gave me a look like he didn't seem like to understand what I was asking him. He then replied with a French accent, "Oui Oui?"  I then replied, "That's ok." 

By then, I thought to just not walk up to any one that looked like they were looking for some one else.  Oh my... Then there were two other gentleman looking at the time as if they were searching for someone too. But I was relieved to know that it was Paul and AJ.

We walked to Pharaoh's Feast Buffet to have a nice enjoyable dinner. At the dinner table, we discussed our favorite games, movies and upcoming ones. Most of us enjoyed the same type of movies which was another reason why we all got along so well. Two movies Azrael and I did want to see were Sleepy Hollow and Messenger. Those two movies look like they will be very entertaining.

Meeting CyberMan & Gaile
After finishing up our food, we met with Jim 'CyberMan' Stillwell of Westwood Underground, Gaile Grey of DiabloII.net and her husband, Photographer Gary Grey. As soon as Gaile walked up, she had a burst of energy from all of the excitement. All of us discussed games such as; Age of Empires II, Diablo, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament Demo and other games most of us in the group enjoyed playing. That just wasn't enough though, we really wanted to talk more. Standing where we were, we were just too loud. Put a whole bunch of Gamers together, and we sound like we are having a party. So, we went to the food center in the middle of the hotel to go talk and grab something to drink.

Cyberman and I had previously attended Westwood's Nox Preview Party which was recently held in San Francisco, California. We discussed a bit of the gameplay of Westwood's upcoming Nox game. To me, Nox seems to have more action in the multiplayer mode than most role playing games, the game is much like a third person shooter.

After a while, I mentioned to Gaile about a doll shop. I was previously told it was is in the MGM Grand Hotel. Some how we ended up talking about Madame Alexander dolls which we both still have a collection of. 

After about ten minutes of our Dolls discussion, I noticed complete silence from the group around the table. As I looked around at the guys, I noticed that AJ had his head on the table as if he was sleeping. Paul had his eyes in a gaze looking off in the distance, as if he was sleeping with his eyes open. Jim was just sitting there looking like he was waiting for something. So, we stopped and started talking about the gaming sites we run. Right there, brought up AJ's head, snapped Paul out of his gaze with Jim gave his attention once again to the conversation.

Arcade Time!
AJ, Paul and I went to go get in a few games at the Arcades before the night ended. The first game they played there was Mortal Kombat II, AJ said the keys and Joystick were messed up on that machine, so we headed upstairs on the second level of the Arcade zone to find another game.

All three of us played a game called Gauntlet Legends. I have only heard about that game on the net. It was a lot of fun, I liked the way three people could play it at once. Most games in an Arcade rarely let more than two people play a game. I picked out a female Archer in a green outfit. I could tell Paul had played the game before because he was constantly trampling down any enemy in his path. AJ and I were still trying to get used to the game.

After finishing a couple of games of Gauntlet Legends, we went over to play Azrael's favorite fighting game, Killer Instinct II. I have played that game a couple of times with my brother, Darkviper. After many games of Killer Instinct II we heard an announcement over the speaker, saying that the arcade would be closing in 5 minutes. We ended up playing one more game and headed back to our rooms so we could get rest for tomorrow, our big day to see Westwood Studios Headquarters.

Westwood Studios Tour ->