EVE Fanfest 2007

Well I figure it’s about time I dropped a note about what I’ll be up to this year in Iceland during Fanfest 2007.

Some may remember my Fanfest Galleries from last year, consisting of a pile of photos I took while in Iceland during Fanfest 2006. This year I’m going to be doing the same, but instead of waiting until I get home to prep the pictures for viewing online I’ll be doing more of a live thing this year.

I kinda got the idea while I was doing the photoblogging of the EVE 4th Alliance Tournament, putting stuff up almost as it was happening on a special Flickr gallery. I wanted to do something like this last year but the missing link was having no hardware while on site.

Well, I just received a brand new Dell Inspiron 1420 (separate blog coming with specs and pics and stuff), which means I’ll have a PC with me in Iceland to do this with, which is something I didn’t have last year. This will let me blog the events and get pictures up in a much more timely fashion. Now it’s not like I’m going to be a gargoyle or anything (reference from Snow Crash if you’re scratching your head), but time and alcohol permitting I hope to have pictures up as rapidly as I can for folks who are unable to make it to the party this year.

I really enjoyed being able to bring the close-up Tournament experience to folks who were only able to watch it via the EVE TV camera streams, and the response I got from players was nothing short of amazing. I only hope this year at Fanfest I’ll be able to help bring the experience home for those who aren’t able to join us in Iceland.

Back to All The Brightness

Temporarily back in Empire space, need to get my Empire jump clones all settled. They got a bit jumbled up when I first headed out for the last contract.

I used to be an Empire player, but I enjoy the challenges and rewards in 0.0 a lot more. I mean there *are* things to do in Empire space, I enjoy doing some level 4 missions with corpmates and such. But overall it’s much more interesting when the next jump you make could be your last as you stumble into some wolfpack out for random kills.

Of course that situation can happen in Empire too with people doing suicide ganks. However, that’s pretty rare for the average joe unless you’re dumb enough to haul a lot of really expensive things in a flimsy ship. It’s not uncommon to undock in a pretty populated system and be scanned by someone looking for an easy suicide kill.

Not that I’m doing any kind of hauling of rare items or anything, in less than 24 hours I’ll be snug as a bug in a rug away from all the madness that Empire space can be. But it’s nice to see some of my personal fleet that I don’t get a chance to fly much. Good ol’ Corvus… maybe it’s time to blow the dust off for comedic purposes. 🙂

The Art of EVE

If you listen to this week’s Warp Drive Active podcast, you’ll hear a brief rundown I give about The Art of EVE, an amazing art book that has been produced by CCP’s Atlanta offices, the White Wolf folks. I was lucky enough to receive the book to look through, and the podcast goes into some details about what the future holds for this particular copy.

As I’ve stated in the podcast, any pictures do not do this book justice. It’s sized perfectly for the coffee-table, hardcover bound, and encased in a very pretty plasticy slipcase. Inside, the design is beautifully simple, the dark pages are filled with gorgeous artwork and photography chronicling EVE Online’s inception. There’s a lot of love here if you’re a fan of concept art, and EVE’s is certainly some of the best that I’ve seen.

The book continues, showing designs as the game has evolved, goes into some aspects of the CCG, and goes into some elements of the game’s future, showing off some of the goodies just over the horizon.

I can only hope that we see more efforts like this in the future. The folks at CCP/WW, MMM Publishing, and all the folks at CCP Iceland who collaborated on putting this together have really created something that a fan of EVE will absolutely love. One gets the feel by going through the book that a lot of time, effort, and love went into creating it. In that regard, it’s the perfect companion for a game like EVE.