EVE Guide Day 0+1  

Day 0+1

EVE Fanfest 2006

Day 0

It's the ninth of November, it's just past noon and the lobby of Nordica Hotel in Reykjavik is filling up with strange people. It's the sort of people that will argue over incomprehensible things, like the difference between House Kor-Azor and Sarum. They're EVE players, and they run the full gamut of the (western, mostly male) human spectrum. Between the FBI officer, the programmer(s), professional Hobo, dental engineer and a postal delivery boy, I was at loss who to spend my time talking to.



The registration day (or "Day 0" as I took to calling it), mostly featured jet-lagged travellers checking into their hotel rooms just to plop back down into the lobby for a beer or fifteen.

People got very jovial, very quickly.

Throughout it all, people spent some time getting to know the whole convention area. In the convention lobby itself you would find, among other things, the temporary EVE Store (next to the coatracks), the EVE-Radio Booth (who are broadcasting live), roving bands of EVE TV cameramen mobbing and interviewing random attendees, and the bar, beyond which you would find the entrance to the main auditorium, a large hall with three projection screens on the wall to the left of the entrance, a movable wall dividing the space into two halls.



One very definite tendency was the formation of huge groups (sometimes labelled "blobs", one of many jarring references to EVE that seem to have grown to be a normal part of the english language over the past two days), and it was with one of those groups that me and a couple of others attached ourselves to when it came to find some dinner. Somewhere around the early evening, a local resturant was invaded by a group of 18-20, most of them Mercenary Coalition but occasional stragglers from other alliances floating along (including me), just for them to discover that 400g steaks were served there. A herd of cows gave their lives to nourish this great ensemble of warriors. So did entire fields of barley, come to think of it.

Since there were no organized events that first day, nothing of actual significance happened and as such people simply got blissfully drunk and passed out hopefully in their own bed.

Day 1

The first actual day of the Fanfest opened into the face of the PVP Tournament, which got off to a slow start. The format, this time, were teams of two in tech 1 cruisers, on specially-made characters with maxed skills, using only tech 1/tech 2 items. EWar restrictions applied (no ECM), but other than that it was free game. A definite highlight of the Tournament was the fact that it was fought in the upcoming Revelations expansion, using the current test server patch. As such, people benefitted from increased overall ship hitpoints and vastly revamped gang system, along with a score of other changes from the current version of EVE on the main server, Tranquility.



To begin with, there was a heavy prevailence of Vexors, an incredibly versatile Gallente cruiser that specializes as a drone carrier, and Caracals, a Caldari missile boat. Ruptures, Minmatar gunboats, were also brought out to the fore, which made for a nice contrast to last year's Fanfest PvP Tournament where the vast majority of all cruisers used were Caracals.

Meanwhile, the Dev Roundtables were hitting full swing. Covering topics ranging from "Roleplay & Events" to "PvP Combat" to "Marketing for EVE Online", each roundtable was hosted by one or more CCP developers and attended by a dozen or more players, each chipping in their suggestions and grievances about the given topic. Like always, roundtables differed in their productivity, but the general mood was that most were going very well.

Again, wedged in between roundtables and the PvP Tournament, was the "Grudge Match" between CCP's Quality Assurance Dept. and their Content team. Both teams had apparently prepared, as the eight fighters came out wearing matching, custom soccer shirts with each individual's internet handle on it, to a chorus of cheers from onlookers. The match itself, though, was held up for fifteen to twenty minutes due to one of the large screen projectors dropping out until, frustrated with the holdup, they decided to go ahead with it with only two out of three screens working.



The match was different in format from the Fanfest Tournament, instead using the rules for the upcoming Third Alliance PvP Tournament. For those interested, Content decided to field an Abaddon (new tier 3 Amarr battleship), an Absolution, a cruiser that seemed to evaporate instantly, as well as two smaller ships (heretic and a frigate that apparently died too fast for me to get a glimpse of it), against QA's Dominix, Astarte, Curse and again, two random small ships that died without much consequence. The fight dragged on for a while, but ultimately the Abaddon, not doing a terrible alot of damage with it's four turrets and several Nosferatu's, succumbed, although not before bringing down the QA's Curse Recon ship. The fight was pretty much decided by then, and the lone Content Absolution was brought down swiftly.

An hour's break later (spent, again, in a huge blob of people at a local resturant to the general dismay of bovines everywhere), there was the EVE Collectible Card Game Tournament Finals, which came as a surprise to some who had not been, in fact, too much aware of the CCG Tournament going on behind the movable wall in the main auditorium. The table itself was being taped and cast on the large screen, but it didn't do much as all you could see were blurred cards and hands moving back and forth, while a well-meaning commentator did his best to describe the action.

Someone won, to the confused cheering of most everyone present, but unfortunately almost no-one present knew who he was, or how he had won. But we cheered on principle, and I'm sure he did it through skill and perseverence, even though the rather disappointing projectors made the whole match incomprehensible. All hail the victor.

Right afterwards, we finally got the final PvP Tournament fight, between the two teams henceforth known as Team A (Jorrel1 and Max Teranous) and Team B (Artemis Entreni and Dread Lord). The fight, interestingly enough, turned out to be between two Caracals, and two Vexors, respectively. But as these fights are wont to go, it wobbled first between exciting, then straight into one-sided, ending a rather quick Final with a sound victory by the hands of Team A, and their Caracal duo (interestingly enough, the 2005 Fanfest Tournament was also won by the virtue of the Caracal).



This was pretty much the point where people either left or got roaring drunk again to the local DJ Margeir, so stay tuned for Day 2 Coverage tomorrow.

-Ryan "Draknorr" Bohmann

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