Mass Effect Marathon 3 Scheduled for October & November

For the past two years, Mass Effect Marathon has sought to celebrate our love of Bioware’s epic space opera, and to raise money for Child’s Play Charity.  This year we plan on holding our biggest and best event yet.  Re-live the thrills of the Mass Effect trilogy, and donate to a wonderful cause while you do it!

Mass Effect Marathon 3 will be broken up into two weekends, making it easier to watch the entire trilogy from beginning to end.  On October 20, we will play through all of Mass Effect 1, and on November 23 we will play through all of Mass Effect 2 & 3.

Viewers and fans will be able to decide how we play through all of the Mass Effect games, through a series on online polls that anyone can vote in.  Those polls will help us determine Shepard’s path, including gender, love interest, alignment and key decisions throughout the trilogy!

As always, the Mass Effect Marathon team will be on hand to interact with you in chat, play multiplayer games of Mass Effect 3, and perform various challenges in return for donations to Child’s Play Charity.  We are willing to sing, dance and generally embarrass ourselves for your entertainment.  Oh yeah, and you can win prizes by donating and watching!

Why is the event split into two different weekends?

• As much as we love doing the marathons, what we have learned about ourselves is that it is very possible for us to burn out if we take on too much.  While we absolutely respect and admire the various marathon teams that are able to play for 5-7 days straight, our crew just doesn’t have that much flexibility.  It was with that in mind that we wanted to split up our play through into two different weekends.
• October 20, we will be playing Mass Effect 1 to competition.  This includes the Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station DLC packs.  We will strive to do every possible side quest in an effort to have a complete Mass Effect trilogy play through.
• November 23-25, our normal post-Thanksgiving / post Desert Bus time slot, we will play Mass Effect 2 & 3 consecutively.  This will include all DLC available at the time, including the Extended Cut endings for Mass Effect 3.

How should I prepare for the event?

• Vote in the Polls to determine how we play the game
• Check out the Donation Goals, to see how your donations will force us to save crew members in Mass Effect 2, and do very silly challenges for your entertainment
• Read up on our Prizes, which will get get updated as we get closer to the event.  You will have a chance to win great raffle prizes, or bid on unique auctions so keep checking back.

What’s new with the Polls?

• This year we have added the ability for you to vote on Shepard’s gender.  Depending on which gender you choose, all of the polls will reflect that choice and only show you relevant romance options.  You asked for it, and we gave it to you so go Poll voting!

What service are you using to livestream MEM3?

• We have switched to Twitch.TV for this event.  Twitch gives us a lot more flexibility in the quality of the stream, smaller amount of advertisements, and better format in how we archive event footage.  Also take into account though that we will not be using the TwitchTV chat as it has proven to be unreliable from time to time.  We are going to be using the ChatAbout IRC service that is dirrectly on the MEM Home Page.

Can I RSVP for the events on Facebook?

• Of course you can!
  • Mass Effect Marathon 3 – Part 1
  • Mass Effect Marathon 3 – Part 2

I heard a rumor that this will be your last Mass Effect Marathon.  Is that true?

• It actually is true. This will be our last Mass Effect themed charity event.  We’ve had a really great run with the Mass Effect Marathon, but we think it might be time to move onto other things.  With that being said though, we do plan on doing other charity events in the future so fans of our antics should be happy with that.  While we are going to retire Mass Effect Marathon after November, let it be known that if / when a new Mass Effect game is released, it is very likely that we would come back for another marathon.

If you have any other questions please feel free to leave a comment on this post and we will answer it as quickly as possible.