Fanfest 2012 - What Day is It? 2?

Kryten: [waking up after a night of partying] Oh, my goodness... Oh... my head. Oh, what happened to me? Damage control report. Oh! Dehydration level, 45%. Recall of previous evening, 2%. Embarrassment factor, 91%! Advised repair schedule; reboot startup disc, offline for 36 hours and replace head. Boy! What a night! 

- Red Dwarf: The Last Day

Well it's the morning after the "Pub Crawl with a Dev". Ouch! Photo's at the end of this poor write up! If you are a blogger who covered day 2 properly please post a comment and I'll link your blog here. This write up is going to be crap due to PvP and vodka.... oooooh so much vodka......

Yesterday started slightly later for me (morning after the Charity Dinner) and I caught the last of the economics talk. ISK faucets, ISK sinks, inflation etc etc. 

Next up was the ship balancing, which was a bit of a disappointment as it was just a Dev going through the ship balancing dev blog that was already released. If you read that blog, then you know pretty much what was said. Only bit that was new was "... yes there are concerns that with the new skills being easier to train capitals for we might need to look at increase some of the capital skills to make caps harder to climb into. Last thing we want is noobs  in smart-bombing titans and loosing them in Amamake!"

Next was the PvP tournament which we thought we'd enter for a laugh. On the first day, ex-corpie and now Wolfsbrigade member Koratte came up to me and s810 jr and said they were entering a team, but as it was teams of 3 and there were 4 of them, did we want to form a team with him. Hence team "PLTitan Killers" were formed.

It was a capture the bunker match. You had a few minutes to buy and fit ships off a specially seeded market and the choice was frigates, destroyers, assault frigates and tier 3 battlecruisers. S810 jr had a nice tactic that involved a Hawk which is one of my favourite ships to fly.

The match got under way and I burnt for the bunker to start capturing it whilst Koratte and S810 jr in tier 3 BC's laid down the pain. The other team, Vietcong, were all in tier 3 BC. Not great against a speed/sig radius and active tanked Hawk. We won!

Next match was against Tribe, we did the same tactic and won again! We were missing the FW presentation  but PvPing our hearts out.

3rd round was verses "Crazy Bastards" who might have seen our tactic, or were just lucky to bring the perfect counter fleet. We DIAF in round 3 (quarter finals) as we missed the Eve Key Note.

The Crazy Bastards that Knocked Me Out in Round 3

Korattes corp mates in Wolfsbrigade actually fought them next. Some how WBR brough the perfect counter for the "Crazy Bastards" gang. How did they know?

Mad props to our mates in W-BR for getting through to the final, who died to Hydra Reloaded. No shame in the guys! Well done.

So I've missed most of the presentations and round tables thanks to the PvP tourney, but had fun! CCP - Can we have the first few rounds on the Thursday next year? Make the semi's and final on the Friday! Being in the tournament means you miss too many other things!

They did put the Key Note on the big screen as we couldn't get in to see it. I missed the first part as I was PvPing but caught the last half.

Segregated hangers look cool! Charges in one tab, modules in another along with space remaining icon and ISK value of hanger (based on average market price!)

UK "Mini-Fanfest" is no good for me! But paying in £ is! Nice one CCP

New drones coming out like different sized web drones, the micro jump drive (click, 10 seconds later you jump 110km straight ahead, resistance mods that calculate incoming damage type and adjust automatically but not as good as active mods)

New Stealth Bomber models as SB's should look awesome and new turrets for launchers....

Then it was onto the Faction War round table which was in fact full of whiny pirates "If I'm -10 the militia's should be red to me so I can shoot them without GCC? Neutrals - "The idea that militias may be able to cyno jam systems going to stop me carebearing". Oh and a few FW players. I'm going to write this up properly in the week giving my views on the plans for "0.0 Lite" sorry, I mean Faction War.

By that time it was after 7 so I headed back to the hotel, quick shower and change, something to eat and back for the "Bar Crawl with a Dev!". Not going to do a write up as doing a write up about a piss up will be boring. In short, great convo with a lot of people (a lot of wormholers come to Fanfest), met CCP_Guard, found out that Icelandic girls wear less than Essex girls when out on the town, @Sindelpellion likes a drink, @baghi flies crap supers, Mittens is a very nice guy and you can spend a LOT of money when drinking heavily in Iceland. Sorry about the quality, was a camera phone!

Our Dev's, the "Excursions Girl" and players

Eve Players Mass Buying on the Market

The Dev's and our Guide

Have you seen Kyle? He's about this tall!

Now that is a suit!

Hotdog break! Bill Clinton had one here!

Discarded the first two ideas for captions, third was worse, giving up.

The Dust Girls and @Sindel

The Wolfsbrigade puppy and CCP Punkturis (sic)

Sindel doing CCP Diplo for TEST

Baghi

Sindel doing RAIDEN diplo for TEST

Quaffe Cocktails and "someone"

Sindel doing GOON diplo for TEST

Me and Mittens!

The Party is rocking....

..... though the night!

P.S. I'm not a Sindel stalker! That's Bucky O'hairs job. Just so happens the best photos were in the last bar of the night, and she was around..... :)

Fanfest - Day 1

"It's lunch time"
"No it isn't, it's sleep time"
"Nope defo lunch time!"

After half an hour of my brain arguing with my body I got out of bed stupidly early. I wrote the day 0 blog post and then went for breakfast. NO BACON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Start to head down the Harpa and it's a "lovely" brisk sleaty morning!

Get to the Harpa and it's queued! Very, very queued!

Get to the top, register and hear "Drack! Drack!" which I feel is strange because only S810 jr really knows me and would call out my name like that. Turns out to be an ex-corpie, now with Wolfsbrigade who recalls my face from the "Who are we?" thread on our forums. They've had specail T-shirts made up following our "little gank" last Friday.

Few nice things to look at upstairs including the Lego Rifter and plenty of Eve goodies to buy!

I went to the Crimewatch talk. Appears the system that handles everything from who can shoot who, to bounties to LP payouts for faction war kills is a mess. The recent bug where only the person who gets the final blow on a rat gets the security status increase was due to a slight change in how killmails are formatted. Touch one thing and you'll break another. So it's going to be re-writen. Below I've listed some points there were discussed. This is all likely to change before we see it, but these are the current "ideas".

• Fixed 15 minute time - If your agressed/GCC and your timer said 4 minutes, if you log out you'll spend 4 minutes in space. No more resetting.
• Safe Log Off - Potentially your client will still run after you emergency warp and you can watch. If you get probed down you can re-log in/reactivate to try and escape.
• Remote assistance now gives you same "No dock/jump" timer as if using offensive mods (logi will have a one min countdown)
• There will be 3 actions you can do - Legal (shooting a rat or WT), misdemeanour's (looting from a can or wreck that's not yours) or felony (ie to go GCC)
• Committing a misdemeanour's flags you as a suspect where EVERYONE can shoot you for 15 minutes. Can-flippers, you are *****'d.
• You assist a suspect, you also get the suspect flag too for 15 minutes!
• CONCORD ships MAY be replaced by the "CONCORD DEATH RAY". A ker-splat insta kill lasoooooor fired from millions of KM away?
• Pop-ups will be used to stop people accidently going suspect or felon, but you can deactivate these safeties.
• Next bit I was a bit confused on. If you kill a +5 character you go to -10 immediately?
• If you kill a pirate player (-5 or worse) CONCORD give you sec status (ratting players?). This is not seen as good for pirates who kill pirates and I hope they look at this more!
• Commander and Officer tags will be able to give you sec status up to -5 (you can buy your sec status up to -5).
• New "War Reports" which can combine new battle reports with campaing and give you loads of stats. This will include how much logi pilots repped!
• Better UI showing all timers and more accurate.
• Players asked for logi repping -10 not to go immediately GCC, Devs to think about that.
• CONCORD delay on "mega super death lazooooor" will be the same as ships. Instant in a 1.0, delayed a few seconds in 0.5's
• Players asked for self-destruct killmails (huge cheers) CCP said they'd look into it.
• Already planned for KM's for reinforcing structures.

Potential of how the aggression timers COULD look

Then I tried to get into the black-ops round table. No chance! Only just managed to squeeze into the fleet combat after that. CCP, we need a wider selection of interesting RT's at the same time otherwise the most popular is a bun-fight!

Finally it grew near to the DUST514 keynote, but delays were caused by the technology (I hear getting the PC and PS3 feeds onto the big screen together was a challenge).

It was crammed. So I started humming.

Goons to the left of me....

Eve Uni to the right....

Here I am, stuck in the middle with W-BR!

Anyway I'm sure other blogs are covering DUST514 better than I would (meh, don't really care).

Then it was off to the dinner. A fine four course meal with Helmar and Soundwave to great us. We had CCP_Veritas and CCP_Diagoris on our table. Plenty of great conversation and a really great night.

Twitter was buzzing about @SindelPellion's cocktail dress. When I said it was rather nice I started to get DM's!

Drackarn! Your covert ops mission - should you choose to accept it (you don't have a choice) GET ME A PIC OF SINDEL IN HER COCKTAIL DRESS!

Just ask to have your picture taken with her :-) than send it to me and bucky....THIS SUCKS BEING STUCK AT HOME!!!

Plus many public ones -

After hearing talk about this dress the last couple of weeks I demand pics.

We better get a pic at some point! I want to see this bikini dress!

we want pics :)

And just as I was leaving I was typing a message to say "Sorry guys, not seen her in a while and off to the Celtic Cross so you....." just as she passes. So I ask if I can take a picture OF her in the least stalker-ish way possible and she suggests.....

What a day! And all rounded off with a few drinks at the Cross. Great!

Fanfest - Day 0

My day 0 actually started at day -1 at 10pm (6pm GMT) with a taxi ride through the desert to the airport, some waiting, an 8 hour flight, land Heathrow T5, get the wife sorted with hire car, she drops me at T1, wait some more, finally check-in desk opens and I'm in the Tin Goose with a pint!

I've been Tweeting @geddonz and he joins me for a refreshing beverage and we start to spot other potential Eve players and invite them over.

Whilst we're waiting Crucible 1.5.something is deployed. I start to patch (yes, of course I've got my laptop set up in the pub playing Eve!).... and by the gods it actually works! May be as it's only a 3.9mb download, may be it's a different ISP.

So we get on the plane and a few hours later we're in.... BLOODYHELLITSCOLD!

Get to the hotel and this is the view from the front -

Best. Shower. Ever. God I was looking rough!

Now I've been on the go 24 hours and I need a drink. No idea where I'm going so I exit hotel and turn left. A few minutes later I pass this....

And then this.....

@scatha was trying to help me find my way around but I was tired after 24 hours of travelling (was 25 probably by then) plus my first drink had been lunchtime the previous days (plus some in the first airport, and on the plane, and in the second airport, and the second plane....). So I wasn't really with it!

Anyway somehow I make it to the Celtic Cross. Met some very fine upstanding people, got my T-shirt from @mandrill, got my Templar One book from the beautiful @sindelpellion, ex-corpie, ex-enemy, ex-titan killing bro Korratte and his Wolfbrigade chums including Crimper. Oh and some of PL too. Not sure s810 jr helped there....

The note under his scarf states "Will kill another PL titan for drinks!". A nice lady from RAIDEN came up to us to stress we'd better not think about trying that one on of their Titans! However plenty of others say it and congratulated us on a job well done.

By this time it was 11pm, I'd been going 30 hours without sleep (other than cat-naps on the plane) plus I'd had a skin full. So whilst s810jr got into a shouting match with the guy in the Transformers t-shirt above about faction war plexing and missioning mechanics (s810 jr wanted nerf, other guy was Amarr mission farmer apparently) I made my excuses and left. Really disappointed, but I was dead on my feet. Next year I'm coming a day early so it doesn't mess me up like this!

Good night, props to @mandrill for sorting, and looking forward to day 1 of Fanfest!

Unfortunately I didn't take many photo's last night and the ones I did take don't show how many people were there! It was packed.

PL Titan Kill - The Aftermath and Answers

I don't know if people have heard, but we killed a Pandemic Legion Titan at the weekend (OK! OK! I'll shut up about it.... after this blog post.)

I'm amazed at the response we got. The vast majority of the response has been "Way to go! You lot have got balls!" and that included PL themselves. Now, as reported here there appears to be some grumbling in the militia especially something in the Amarr militia.

I'd like to clear up some things that are being said around the internet as well as how this week just got better for me on the final countdown to Fanfest 2012.

But first, the video of the Titan fight and us going down in a blaze of glory (I'm the 6th Moros from the left I think!).....

Clearing a Few Things Up....

Secondly I'll list the common statements/queries we're seeing and give a quick TL;DR response. If you are really interested, the full responses are below these. By pure coincidence one of the two architects of this plan, First General, just Eve mailed me to ask if I'd post this official rebuttal to some of the crap that's circulating about this op, http://wolfsbrigade.org/?p=722. Very close to what is below....

We got Lucky and We Jumped on A Target of Opportunity - This op was planned the weekend before and a good 6 days planning and preparation went into it.

We Lost the ISK War - The dreads were insured and we ninja looted the titan. That is about 40bn back from our losses without counting the suicide carrier and battleship insurance.

The Quick PL Super Response Shows it was a Trap - PL had their super-cap fleet out on a fishing op at the same time. When we landed they were only a jump away waiting for their scouts to find something to drop. We timed it at the worst moment possible.

The Mastermind of the Plan - "Lets kill a PL Titan" is not a copyrighted plan! Apparently Predator Elite resurrected, and recently suggested, a very old plan. Generally most FC's agreed it wouldn't work. The Wolfsbrigade CEO and a Shadows Director/FC got taking about it and came up together with the plan we executed. The link above (Repeated) details this more!

We've Ruined the Original Plan - What? The one to get 300 enemies from 4 factions and countless corps together, keep PL spies for finding out when 300 people are telling their mates, hope nobody see's it as an opportunity for some smart bombing/destroyer lolz, hope the torps get through the wall of smartbombs AND convince a 0.0 bloc to hotdrop PL in their own home system? Never going to happen!

I'm head of this or that in the X militia, I should have known about this op! - This was not a militia op. It was a SoTF/WBR joint op and in the fleet of 86, less than a dozen people actually knew what was happening even up to the point where the FC called JUMP!

If that is enough for you, scroll down until you see the "Implied Facepalm" picture and the /end slash. If you want a more detailed explanation of the above points, read on my friend!

/start_TL;DR_explanations 

Secrecy.
I am one of the few people who knew it was going to happen in advance and had a very minor role in the whole thing (I'm not saying I'm special! I didn't know that much, just what I needed to know!). The people who had the major roles were 3 or 4 from Shadows of the Federation and a number of Wolfsbrigade plus a couple of trusted friends outside those corps. It's fairly easy to see who was involved in this op, check the kill mail!

We knew PL have one of the best spy networks in game so we kept it strictly on a "Need to Know" basis. We had some real fun convincing our own members to undock from our home system in their pods and fly to a strange destination without telling them why. It was like herding cats.

Yes, all this did mean some people were left out of the loop. Some of the other Militia VIP's, who some people could say are quite understandably upset at being left out, are not happy. I've apparently upset even more people in the militia some how, for which I apologise however I did it (I really should not post anything when "tired and emotional"). However, we have a lot of corp members in SoTF complaining that they logged off an hour before but would have stayed on if they'd known what was happening but weren't told. It's unfortunate, but without this level of secrecy, PL would have found out.

Please remember, this was not a Militia op. This was SoTF/WBR op (with help from a few others, see FG's post for more).

Opportunity.
This was a planned event and not a "target of opportunity". A sub-cap fleet had already been moved into bridging distance earlier in the week. Dreads had been bought and fitted just for this op. Hell we even had an expected time the Titan would show up on Friday night and we planned to be in place an hour before (PL aren't the only people keeping close eyes on Amamake). As it turned out, he arrived 14 minutes earlier than expected, but no matter, we'd been ready for the previous hour and those in the know had been working to get things ready for the previous 3 to 4 hours. The whole thing was arranged 6 days before for that precise time (well, who is going to argue over 14 minutes!)

ISK War
As for the ISK efficiency. We knew it would be close. I don't know if people are aware, but WE HOT-DROPPED PL IN THEIR OWN HOME SYSTEM. We knew what a huge super-cap fleet they have. We knew we'd not have long before the sun was blotted out by Nyx and Avatars. That's why the Dreads were gank fitted and insured. We expected to DIAF if the "gank and get out" didn't work. We went for one reason, to down a PL titan, and the cost be damned! As someone commented on a forum something along the lines of....

In a month from now the only thing that will be remembered is that the faction war guys killed a PL titan.

Each Dread cost around 2.5bn (I know, I bought one in the week for this op, T2 fitted, for 2.3bn) and Platinum insured (1bn ISK back if you deduct the cost of the insurance from the payout). Therefore for each one that got popped we lost 1.3bn to 2bn depending on the fit. Or another way of looking at it is we got 1bn ISK back for every dread popped.

I'm told Erebus prices were as high as 105bn now for the hull due to mineral prices increasing (although I am now told that is dropping following Titan nerf announcement). Eve Kill is a bit out due to prices being unable to sync'ing like market rates do. Maybe they should ask Chribba daily? :)

Finally, we ninja looted 9bn ISK from the Titan wreck and got away with it.

30 dead dreads and the loot = 40bn ISK cashback = Cha-ching = Win!

The Swift PL Response
The plan was drop the Titan, melt it in 30 seconds and GTFO. It didn't go exactly to plan but we are happy. In convo's with PL after the event they said we got really unlucky with the timing as their super-cap fleet was active only one jump away on a "fishing trip". When we dropped all hell broke lose apparently.

If it had been a trap, surely that Titan would have had a tank!

The Mastermind of the Plan
As for the brains behind the plan, it's worse than a smartphone patent dispute out there!

"It was my idea to kill a PL titan!"
"No it wasn't I had that idea 10-years ago!"
"You idea-robbing bar stewards! That was my idea!"

Really? Nobody else in Eve has had that idea? "Lets drop PL and kill a titan". It doesn't matter whoever had the vague idea to drop PL (and there must be hundreds who can claim that), we actually did it! It would appear plans stretched back for many years when PL were first in Amamake before they moved to 0.0. Preditor Elite recently raised the idea again and suggested 300 militia stealth bombers and convo's were held with all four militia's. The general consensus was that the plan clearly wouldn't have worked as involving that many people would have tipped off PL. That's IF you could get 300 enemies together without all hell breaking loose! Oh yes and lets not forget, it was a faction smart-bomb fitted Titan. Torpedo's.... vs that? Firewall on an EPIC scale. Most DPS would be destroyed by the smartbombs.

One of the SoTF directors/primary FC's and the Wolfsbrigade CEO were talking about it, agreed it wouldn't work, and cooked the dread plan up together.....

• A small fleet (sub 100) split over several systems
• An even smaller number of people in the know (Less than a dozen trusted people)
• 40 Glass-cannon Dreads
• Get in, nuke it, get out all within a minute before PL could respond with their supers.

And you know what? The plan worked (ish.... the get out bit sort of failed)!

Ruining the Greater Plan
One of the accusations levelled is that we've spoilt the surprise. Now PL are going to be careful and the original plan of 300 bombers (of course firing torpedo's of which many would have been destroyed by smartbombs) plus batphone that would have wiped out PL and destroyed their super cap fleet and scattered them to the corners of the galaxy, is now no longer viable.

Really?

If one of the big null-sec blocs wanted to drop PL they would have done it by now, and the offer of 300 militia pilots in stealth bombers would have been unlikely to change their minds!

"We are not dropping PL in their home system. It's not worth the hassle"
"You'll get 300 'faction war noobs' in stealth bombers to support you!"
"REALLY? Why didn't you say that in the first place! Light the cyno!"

/end_TL;DR_explanations

Blog Stats and Fanfest

I usually get 200-300 hits on this blog each day. Whilst I wish they were all Eve players, I know many come here looking for Chuck Norris, demotivationals and lol cats (oh and occasionally "Minmatar tits"). Damn you Google!

Anyway on Saturday, when I went to bed (still smiling over the Titan kill even though I'd just lost two ships to TEST and Blue Fed and been podded in the 30 minutes before) I'd had 675 hits in 24 hours. More than I had ever had in a single day before.

The next morning (Sunday) I saw a lot of comments had been made. So I checked the stats from the office on my phone (Sundays are a working day for me) and saw it had spiked! I was expecting over 700, triple my normal traffic. Nope, it wasn't in the 700's.

W.....T.....F......?

Must be some error! Bots? Check traffic sources! They are mostly coming from Facebook? Still WTF? Why Facebook? Better click the link.

Oh..... right..... Engage "childish excitement mode".... "childish excitement mode" engaged.....

OMG OMG OMG OMG The Eve Online Facebook page just linked my blog!

It's a pity it would be inappropriate to do the "Happy Dance" in the office.

500 hits in 48 hours is normal, 600 is a good weekend. This weekend it was....

And best of all, I'm off to Fanfest tomorrow. What more could you ask for (other than Megan Fox, Angelina Jolie, Catherine Zeta Jones in stockings and suspenders plus a family sized tub of banana yogurt?)

See you in Iceland if you're going!

o7

Drackarn


P.S. We're updating our recruitment thread to include the question "Are you a PL spy?", so don't even think about it guys :o)

P.P.S. I'll be at the Celtic Cross on Wednesday night at the #tweetfleet meet. First person to tell me where I crowbared a nod to Clear Skies III in the above post gets a drink!