Fan Faire - Day.... Wait, it's Over??
Wow. That was intense. Two days of mingling with nearly 2000 gamers, developers, fansite people, and game characters. I have a spiral notebook full of notes and four hours of panel audio recordings to go through. Sorry folks, some of this will just have to wait until I get back to Alaska (but I'll be working on it on the plane).
My impressions of Fan Faire are still a blur. I spent time talking to Paul Molina, EQII Lore guy, about the new expansion (I had to swear on my NDA. This is going to be SO COOL!). Dan Kinney and I chatted about the Station Launcher. I hung out with the Free Realms guys and talked hard core gamers into giving it a try.
Friday I went to the EQ2 Potpourri panel, which was largely Q&A and much to my amazement the devs hardly said "Ask me after Smed's address." Then of course we had the Annual Address, followed by a party.
Many people seemed to be missing Saturday morning after the party.... We did our ZAM panel in the morning (thanks to everyone who came, you had great questions). I headed to the Crossroads room and had my backpack stolen by a Robgoblin. Eventually, I made the second screening of Evercracked, which you HAVE to see when it comes out in a couple of months. After making running jokes about having to clear the bathroom instance, I spent the next three hours in panels.
By mid-day Saturday I had completely lost my voice, which makes asking the tough questions REALLY hard. My husband and boss were endlessly amused by my frustration.
Then we had the grand banquet, which was Tex-Mex, and lots of people being humiliated by Brenlo. The costumes were especially good this year. You may know that Brasse retired from the costume contest. Well this year, had she chosen to enter, she would have had some serious competition. Hubby did the "burly guy in teeny t-shirts" thing and got a new video card.
As everything wound down and hubby and I are wandering around Paris looking for the economy size Eiffel Tower drinks we were stopped by some friends in Legion of Kithicor, who had a bone to pick with ZAM. They got stuck on the Live Quest and Kiara told them, "If you got stuck on a quest in game, what would you do?" But when they went to look it up on ZAM we didn't have it...