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Sorry for the late posting of this, it’s been a day of recovery. 🙂

Day three, the final day of Fanfest, has now come and gone. It’s an important day in many ways, which will come to light as I go through this writing.

Got up at a decent hour, went down to get some breakfast at the Grand’s breakfast buffet (which is pretty decent, but I think Nordica’s was better overall) with my in-game boss. Afterwards we headed to the Venue and met up with everyone. This was the day of all the big presentations.

Reynir was first up for the day, with an awesome presentation on the History of CCP and EVE. We were treated to a timeline, complete with pictures and videos, of CCP’s beginning and EVE’s designing, from the past to the present. It’s was a great presentation for those who haven’t been privy to the story thus far, and was a brilliant retrospective on a unique company.

Next up was the Trinity2 discussion, where the big brains responsible for the engine revamp dished out some details about the improvements we can expect with the first of the engine upgrades. Now, last year’s FF presentation on this subject showed a lot, and there’s not a lot from that first presentation that is repeated here. Instead we were given a rundown of how the project has progressed, and were shown screens showing how the 3D technology improves the visuals, effect by effect. Scaling is being looked at to make sure big stuff looks BIG like it should, hundreds of objects in the game are getting an incredible remodeling and look insanely detailed.

Effects and such are getting tweaked later, so don’t expect turret effects to suddenly improve vastly with this first iteration. But they’re taking a staged approach, focusing their efforts on getting the base enhancements down before moving on. The photos from the session I took should speak volumes.

Oveur was up next, giving a sizable presentation about coming features for EVE. This talk included new tweaks to Heat, including increased module HP and heat attentuation, which allows you to create buffers using deactivated modules to soak damage from overheated modules. This way you can protect other modules from damage. Pretty funky. A pile of new missions are coming including mining missions. Then he showed a series of videos, due to be available online soon, in which various developers describe new coming enhancements while videos of the new engine play behind them. Oveur showed a bunch of outtakes from the filming of these and they’re a riot. He’s such a trooper that the biggest chunk of outtakes were his own screwups. 🙂 Not only did these videos give us some drool-worthy glimpses at what some of the new objects look like in the new engine, but you could really get a feel for how excited the developers themselves are about the whole initiative.

Last but certainly not least, was the big man himself, Hilmar’s keynote address. This was not so much a keynote to go into the various graphical mindblowers that had come before, but more to go into how EVE’s growth has progressed since last year, and give an indication of what the future holds.

Afterwards MC headed to figure out what to do for dinner. At this point the issue of a zillion EVE players hitting the local restaurants at once to make sure they could make it back to the party became an issue, as almost every restaurant was filled with people. We managed to find a spot in a Pizza Hut which has to be famous for having some of the worst service in the world. We noticed as we were leaving that there was a table of Devs, including Hilmar, who were just finishing up and getting ready to go to the venue. I left them a present at the till. 🙂

I worked my way back to the hotel to quickly change and headed to the Venue for the epic Party at the Top of the World. For those unfamiliar with Fanfest, this is the cherry on top of the whole experience, where CCP pulls out all the stops for a gigantic party, EVE style. Great looking beer girls dressed up with EVE makeup, amazing lighting, and of course RoXoR’s amazing performance. RoXoR is the dev’s band, and let me tell you, you will never look at these people the same way again. I had no idea Pann could sing like that. Good God.

As the evening went on, things got fuzzier and fuzzier. 🙂 Much alcohol was consumed. I lost count of how many Tuborgs I downed, and most of MC was pretty messed up by the end of the night. But it was awesome meeting so many EVE people just cutting loose and having fun.

Anyway, this is a pretty brief writeup of what is a pretty busy day, but I hope to go into some more details on specific things in the near future. I’m still in Iceland until the 6th, will see what other goodies I can bring for everyone on this blog before I leave.

In the meantime, check out the Flickr photos, I dumped hundreds up there from the party.

Well, day two was survived by all, more or less. 🙂

First off, the bits that I was able to attend. First off in the morning was a brief introduction to the Council of Stellar Management. This is the player council thing talked a while back. The introduction didn’t have too much concrete information other than indicating a full white paper will be given out on the forums at some point in the near future for review by the players. So far it looks like they’re going for a democratic system of not only representative election, but also for what issues should be brought to the attention of the council. One vote per account, so even if you have 30 characters on 10 accounts, you’ll only get 10 votes. I didn’t get a chance to check out the following panel though, which probably went into more detail.

The EVE Artwork Demo by Borkur (probably butchering his name but..) was amazing. He’s the guy who does the artwork for the chronicles and EON stories. Just like last year, the guy doing the demo went through the process of creating a fantastic bit of EVE artwork. It was incredible to watch the talent in action. Wish the print was available like it was last year, but you can’t have everything.

Ambulation. Holy crap. Things have come a long way, and there’s a ton of information, but to cover it briefly, CCP’s hired architects to do fancy drafts of interior spaces, translating the fancy concept art into livable spaces. Costume designer’s been hired to make decent clothes for everyone. I’m not kidding, they’re really getting into the details on this one, making it more and more into a living, breathing experience. Still won’t totally affect primary gameplay of course, but it’s astonishing we’ll be getting it for free.

Socialized a TON, meeting all sorts of interesting folks from different alliances. Hung out with the EON guys who have a nice little area all to themselves near Jita 2. Jita 1 got too busy, so they sharded it. (rofl)

MC went to Red Chilis for dinner again, the 200g cheeseburgers there are simply awesome. A few MCers like Dinger got the ribs, which is a plate of ribs the length of your forearm. Decently priced too, I just pity the kitchen staff there when we roll in with 30+ with miscellaneous allies. 🙂 As we were about to leave this small group of three utterly gorgeous Icelandic women came to the restaurant. I wasn’t lucky enough to snag a picture, but Lowa did so I’ll have to wrangle that from him.

At 9PM we all headed back to the Venue to attend this crazy silly Developer Show. I’m totally abbreviating the title here, they came up with some insanely long and crazy title for it. Essentially a game show, two groups of three devs competed in trivia questions, a variation on rock paper scissors called Cow Lake Bomb, some “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” improv stuff, and general silliness. Hopefully a video of it comes soon, it’s *hilarious*.

Afterwards the MC group and friends went back to Nordica to blob their lobby like last year. Lots of alcohol was consumed, various EVE people came and went including a hilarious batch of Goons. Hilarity ensued, including but not limited to the combined flag flying of MC and Goons banners, and Suas serenading Seleene to the tune of “I’m A Loser” with the Goon guitar.

Great stuff, was a late night for me getting all the photos online but they’re there. Sorry the descriptions weren’t all complete and stuff, but it was 3 in the morning. I’ll get to it when I get the chance.

Day three awaits. 🙂

It’s early morning and I haven’t gone for breakfast, but CrazyKinux asked for some more info on the EVE novel. 🙂

There wasn’t a lot of information on it given for obvious reasons, but here’s what I can remember.

• Final submitted manuscript was over 500 pages long
• There are 74 chapters (!!)
• Conflict between the factions, especially Minmatar vs Amarr, is pivotal
• Jove apparently play a small role, but no information could be given as to what that is
• Meant to coincide with game enhancements, though no definite answers given as to which enhancements those are (for obvious reasons)
• CCP apparently has laid the legal groundwork just in case the book is optioned for a movie, so hooray for thinking ahead and lets be hopeful
• Some kind of teaser copy will be available at Fanfest for day 2 (gotta get my hands on one of these
• Open-ended, leaving room for potential sequels though none are being planned at this time

That’s about all I can think of. Rest assured I’ll be picking up a copy or three. Tony’s reading was, as I stated in my last entry, gripping. The man’s amazing, and even the preview reading of one chapter shows that the quality of the writing is going to be top notch.

Going to run and get cleaned up now, get something to eat, then get ready to head out. More later as I can get it to you. 🙂