Eve Online Fanfest 2013. Day 1

Thursday - First day of presentations and Charity Dinner

Ouch. Seriously. Ouch. What was I drinking last night? Woke up after a night at the Celtic Cross with a mahoosive hangover.

Couldn't even manage breakfast. Slobbed around in the room before heading down the Harpa.

Weather was fantastic, unfortunatly. Why did I leave my sunglasses at home?

Queue wasn't bad at 11am so was in quick....

Unfortunately the queue for the pub crawl and info desk was silly.

Anyway, by then I'd had a proper English Breakfast Tea. S810 Jr prefered something more in character! We had a quick look around the retail area which had the usual Eve merchendise, a Razor stand and the tattooists!

After drinks, browsing and ogling the tattooists it was then into first presentation, Retribution Round-up!

As can be expected this was a round-up so not much new was said other than...

• We can expect an upgrade to the effects bar as this was something that got dropped due to time constraints.
• A possible new BS hull (being talked about internally).
• Possible new T3 line (ditto).

Next talk was ship balancing. As per last year we got 20 minutes of history which probably 99% of attendee's already knew back to 2011.

Interesting stuffz for Odyssey included....

• Tier 3 BC to get minor nerfs mostly scan res, speed and mobility.
• BS to be tiericed with weapons systems consolidated (as per forum posts)
• Navy frigates and cruisers to be balanced.
• The Navy Vexor will be able to field 5 sentry drones.
• The Republic Fleet Hurricane is basically the pre-nerfed Cane with.... wait did he say 50% more EHP or did I mishear?

Next up was future balancing after Odyssey.

• Command ships top priority.
• CS to get links and damage bonus to encourage them to fight.
• Dual weapon bonuses on CS and Eos, the least used, to become SUPER DRONE BOAT!
• Electronic attack frigates next.
• The HACS, may even get -50% MWD signature penalty reduction same as assault ships!
• Lastly Black Ops. Want to get them to fight. Might be two hulls, a bridging one and a combat one.

Next up was another cup of tea, couldn't face the Eve themed food due to hangover.

After that was Soundwave on game design. He did it in style bring a sofa rather than using the chairs!

A few interesting points....

• He wants POCO's in high-sec.... and for people to be able to put bounties on them,
• Walking in Stations..... wait for Eve Keynote.
• T2 Production. BIG changes from blue prints to materials.... wait for Eve Keynote.

Final presentation I attended was Low Sec PvP/Crimewatch.

Generally Retribution and changes to Crimewatch have been good.

Highlights for Odyssey:-

• On patch day your sec status and CONCORD standing will be separated in the database.
• Your sec status will remain.
• Your CONCORD standing will be set to 0.
• When ratting the timer between sec status gains will not be per system, it becomes global, and it will be reduced to five minutes.

Tags4Sec:-
Four new pirate NPC's to be introduced for each of 5 factions (so 20 new rats). Example - Guristas Negotiator.
Will only spawn in low-sec roid belts.
New types of rat have 100% chance of dropping special tags.
Tags can be traded at CONCORD low-sec stations in new "Security Office" to gain sec.
Each tag works for a specific sec status range.
To jump from -10 to 0 you will need a number of each.
No restrictions on how often you can do this.
Cannot use it to get above 0.

Then I had a break before the Charity Dinner. I got there a bit early so had a wander around and found some people getting a Eve make-over and some braver souls getting Eve tattoo's!

I eventually headed up to the restaurant and joined the queue to get in. Now I cannot lie, I'm very disappointed with the Charity Dinner this year. Last year we waited outside before being let in and were greeted by Hilmar and the team. Through the dinner Hilmar stood up thanked us for coming, said how much money had been raised etc etc. This year nothing. We turned up, no CCP in sight. We sat ourselves down and waited, then people had to be moved as there was no space at the table for a Dev. The Dev's themselves were fantastic, the food was great, the drink was super and the internet spaceship talk was amazing. But there was no sense of occasion. It was nothing more than if you had sat down at any random restaurant in town and a CCP Dev just happened to join you. A pale comparison on last year.

Anyway the actual meal itself was great and we got lucky with CCP's Solomon, Guard and Seagull joining us. Who else could you ask for?

Me and guard, second picture with 100% added monocle!

The table with (From bearded guy counter-clockwise to CCP Soloman)....

Low sec pvp fw (me, not shown)
Low sec pvp
Hi sec bear
"Ruthless industrial"
Capital/T2 Producer
Null sec logistics

Null sec logi's wife
NPC null pvp
Hi sec carebear
Low sec FW (CCP Soloman)

And the other good bit of the meal....

Looking forward to the keynote tomorrow. Sounds like Eve may be shaken AND stirred with the Odyssey T2 manufacturing changes and mineral redistribution. Especially the blue doughnut!

Eve Online Fanfest. Day 0

Today - Golden Circle Tour and #tweetfleet meet.

Woke up rather refreshed this morning after being a lightweight last night. Apparently those out on the town had a very good time. But I think I made the right decision as I was a bit burnt out from the UK trip in the previous four days. Anyway onto the Wednesday.

It started really good. So far I am loving the Radisson Blu 1919 especially compared to last years hotel*. Free wi-fi and BACON!

So far so good and out of the dining room window I should have a view of....... oh bollocks!

This strange white stuff is falling from the sky and fecking up visibility!

However you can never predict Icelandic weather. Here are two shots of the grassy knoll at 10am and 4pm.

So onto the Golden Circle Tour. First stop was where the North American continental plate hits the European Plate. Well they used to touch, thanks to continental drift there is 6km and a mahoosive lake in between then now! This is where the Vikings created the first parliament apparently. Weather was crap for taking photos.

Second stop was the waterfall at Gullfoss. The weather was even worse and the camera lense had more snow on it than me. I warmed up with traditional Icelandic soup and a very nice prawn sandwich in the cafe tho'.

Last stop was Geysir. Apparently the Icelanders gave us this name for erupting hot springs!

Very strange to see puddles and streams boiling in front of your eyes! I managed to get a few shots of one erupting!

So that was it and back to Reykjavik which had defrosted in the 6 hours since we left. I sorted these photos out and had a kip before ordering room service and getting ready for part 2.... the #tweetfleet meet!

 

Met ex-corpie S810 Jr at the Celtic cross who drinks BoB Bombs. What is a BoB Bomb? See above! He has to order the components separately and then mix together in a pint glass! There were Amarrian beer mats too!

Then Baghi turned up and found himself a special friend! Sindel was jelous of the bromance going on and turned it into a three-way. Hug that is before you comment Bucky! @DruurMonakh didn't fancy any exposure so hid behind S810 Jr.

This Testie wore an 'interesting' pony related t-shirt!

Soundwave arrived and he liked the look of what I was drinking so I bought him a cider! Here he is with said cider and S810 Jr!

Later on in the evening I asked Sindel if she would lick Bucky which she did! Then, well I'm not sure. Here are a few of the pics I found on the camera next morning...

I have a kebab wrapper in my room. There was kebab at least! God I feel rough, not even in the mood for bacon this morning! Urrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Anyway I don't think I spent..... WHERE HAS ALL MY MONEY GONE!!!!!

*To be fair to last years hotel, the Blu is about twice as expensive.

Eve Online Fanfest 2013. Day -1

I'm ashamed! It is 9pm in Iceland and I'm back in my hotel room. I'm knackered.

This year I went home to the UK for four days before moving onto Reykjavik. This is proving to have been a bad idea as friends and family I haven't seen in a while wanted to go out for meals and get drunk whilst staying up late. I've been pissed four days in a row and eaten far too much with minimal sleep. Therefore tonight I've retreated back to my room to get an early night before Fanfest properly kicks off tomorrow with the Golden Circle Tour and then the #tweetfleet meet.

Hoping to see some close ups of Icelandic scenery rather than just from the bus this time!

Having a walk around to grab some supplies I notice there is more of a presence for Fanfest this year around and about.

 Looking forward to it, just need to sleep now........... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Fanfest in Approach Range

So nearly there, tomorrow I fly out to Iceland ready for Fanfest!

 

 

I've not logged onto Eve since Thursday and Internet access has been limited so not really got much to say other than at fanfest I.....

 

....hope to see:-

 

Great presentations and some realistic plans for Eve in the future.

Cider.

Some good pew-pew action in the tournaments.

Vodka.

The usual CCP video that they have to play 3 times with massive cheers from the audience.

Red wine.

Some Icelandic scenery and get some good photo's.

More cider.

A lot of Eve-O fans having a great time.

More vodka.

Statistics and graphs!

Sindel in a dress.

The Tweetfleet getting drunk!

More red wine.

Permaband doing HTFU.

Amazing hotdogs.

Some hard partying.

A bright future for Eve Online.

Quaffe and Red Bull.

 

....hope not to see:-

 

Any presentations that are basically a dev reading out a previously released dev blog (like FF12 with ship balancing).

Sober people.

Crowded roundtables where everyone is squeezed in like sardines.

Tears (there were a lot of whiny bears at FF12).

A lack of bacon at breakfast.

Unrealistic plans that get the crowds worked up but in reality we're never going to see them come to fruition.

Rain.

Massive conflicts in the schedule (Doing well in PvP tourny means you miss key presentations etc)

I'm on the 1pm IcelandAir flight from Heathrow on Tuesday and can be found in the bar in a 2012 FF t-shirt, probably drinking a pint of cider. Say hi if you're there and I'll buy you a drink!

Expect daily posts on here of the shenanigans in Rekyavik with lots of photo's.

 

What happens in Iceland stays in Iceland......... and on Blogger, Twitter, Facebook.......