Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Fanfest - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Final post on Fanfest. My version of the good, the bad and the ugly which a few attendees have done since getting back.

The Good

Pretty much everything. The future is looking bright with CCP focusing on the Eve Universe and the PC as a platform. I still would like to see some proper mobile apps for Eve on the smartphone or tablet, but lets remember, the PC is where the best stuff happens.

Eve Valkyrie is amazing fun. Using your head as an additional controller is a weird feeling, but the experience is epic. Katie Sackhoff's video. Fracking awesome.


The fans. Met some fantastic people at Fanfest again. Some old, some new. People might be eternal enemies in game, but in person with a pint, we are all best buddies.

The development plans. Although you needed to speak to people as you didn't get all the information from the keynotes and round-tables, it appears the development of Eve-O is going the right way. Don't know why CCP aren't talking more about what's happening under the hood and the reasons why its being done Industry>POS>Corp/Alliance>New Space/Stargates. Anyway, its all looking good.

Permaband. Nuff said.


The Bad

The lack of promotion for the PvP available. We came across the Eve-O PvP by chance. It was a lot of fun. Would have been nice to have it better promoted. Come to the PvP Arena, murder some important spaceships and win prizes! That's all it needed in the brochure!

The merchandise. Might be my personal taste but I'm not a fan of the currently available Eve stuffz from Musterbrand. I don't want a fashionable tee with ship names printed on it. I don't want an overpriced hoodie that looks "cool". I want "Can I have your stuffz?", "You mad bro?" and "Go back to WoW" ;) Sounds like improvements will be made soon (tm).

No cocktail at the Blue Lagoon! But, but, but, you promised CCP!



The Ugly

Well unfortunately we had two very ugly incidents at Fanfest. First up was the vandalism of the Worlds Within a World Monument. Some dregs of human life thought it would be funny to scratch someone's name off the monument. Thankfully the three responsible have been permabanned, one 'helper' has got a six month ban and they've all been banned for life from Fanfest.

The next is the Red Fanfest. Now I believe CCP are doing the right thing dialling down development on a game on a dying platform. But, and its a HUGE but, telling the players this as they did was dumb. The Fanfest program stated that players would hear about the future of DUST514 at the Keynote. They didn't. The keynote was two parts - "Here is a look back over the last year" and "This is Project Legion!". They got the most unsubtle hint that DUST514 was being left on the vine to wither and die. Now this is bad, but if what I was told by certain people at the party that both the CPM and the CSM have been saying this was a bad idea for THREE MONTHS is very troubling.



So there you have it. Fanfest is an awesome experience and if you've not tried it yet I would recommend you do. Whether you have a large group that wants to go, just a couple of you or even if you are flying solo, just do it.

3 comments:

  1. And if you want your in game t-shirts then you need to login to the web site account management and claim your goodies there before they appear in the char selection redemption section.
    07

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  2. There were three uglies: IMO, the Pub Crawl flag thing this year got out of hand. Expect to see more rules around it next year.

    But one more good as well: it felt like there was a lot more access to the devs and the devs themselves were more open this year. We might not all have had what they liked to say -- see Neville Smit's article as a great example -- but at least they were talking.

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  3. I watched most of the sessions now. All of the "Dust" ones. Well I watched one's titled Dust but they only talked about this Legion game on PC that is coming out in a year or two.

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