eve-fanfest-2011
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EVE Evolved: Looking back at previous Fanfests
The annual EVE Online Fanfest is a massive event that brings together players from across the world to discuss the serious business of internet spaceships. It's three days of in-depth developer talks, sneak previews of what's to come, and roundtable events that let players discuss their ideas and feedback directly with developers. The EVE communty may not be as large as the community of games like World of Warcraft, but thousands of players pay a considerable sum of money each year to fly to the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik for the event. Fanfest started out as a very small and personal affair with just a few dozen people in attendance, but it's grown to absolutely massive proportions in recent years. This year's event promises to be bigger than ever as it will be celebrating EVE Online's 10th anniversary and the impending release of CCP Games' MMOFPS DUST 514. It's a special milestone for CCP and EVE fans alike, and tickets for the event have already sold out! If you didn't manage to snag a ticket, you should still be able to enjoy parts of Fanfest as key talks and events will likely be streamed live as in previous years and videos will be uploaded after the convention. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the highlights of the past two EVE Fanfests and the social aspect that makes it one of the best experiences and EVE player can have.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011: Final video roundup
Just over a month ago, the EVE Online Fanfest was in full swing and some exciting new information on EVE's future was being released. Massively was there to bring you all the big news as it came out, but most EVE players were unable to attend the event. Thankfully, most of the Fanfest panels and events were filmed and the main ones were even streamed live to viewers at home. For those who missed all the Fanfest excitement, CCP Games has spent the last few weeks preparing those videos for launch and uploading them to YouTube. The team has also sent us 150 professional photos from the event to include in our Fanfest gallery. In this final Fanfest roundup article, we've put together a handy list of every video from the Fanfest along with a handy summary of each. Not included in the list are the very technical Dev Tracker workshops designed to inform third-party app developers. Many of these videos contain swearing and some are definitely not safe for work. Talks definitely worth watching include the CCP panel, the EVE keynote, the content panel, incursions, words words words and live events. Things you absolutely don't want to miss are the hilarious but not work-safe alliance panel, the PvP tournament finals, the war on lag talk, guest lecture "Who Needs a CEO?" by Battleclinic founder Chris Condon, CCP Sreegs' talk on security, and of course, the EVE: A Future Vision trailer. Skip past the cut for a full roundup of all the videos from this year's EVE Fanfest.
Massively interviews EVE senior producer Arnar Gylfason on Incarna, PvE and more
Some fantastic news came out of this year's EVE Online Fanfest. CCP Soundwave's talk on Incursion provided some insight into past and possible future development of EVE's often-neglected group PvE activities. We also got a first look at the captain's quarters coming this summer as a first massive step toward full-blown avatar-based interaction with Incarna. Finally, CCP presented the company's vision for the future of EVE -- a video showing the potential interaction between Dust514's ground combat, Incarna's station environments and EVE Online's typical space-based PvP. In his keynote speech, EVE senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason brought together all the new information that had been released at Fanfest over the last year. We caught up with Arnar at the EVE Fanfest to ask some followup questions to his speech. In an EVE Spotlight article last week, he answered questions on the role of live events in future expansions and other topics. In this second interview, we asked Arnar about incursions, the future of PvE, captain's quarters, the new player experience, Incarna gameplay, and more. Skip past the cut to read our full interview with Arnar Glyfason, a man in whose accent the word "awesome" sounds seriously awesome.
EVE Spotlight: An interview with CCP Zulu
EVE Spotlight is a new bi-weekly feature in which we interview prominent members of EVE Online's player community or development team. Twice each month, we'll be shining the spotlight on a player or developer who has a significant impact on EVE to highlight the efforts of EVE's most influential people. It's almost an unwritten rule of game development that someone from quality assurance should never be promoted into a game design role. Game testing and QA are said to be so fundamentally different to design that it's argued the roles require incompatible skillsets. Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason has definitely proven that this isn't the case, successfully migrating from QA to game design and finally being promoted to senior producer on EVE Online. Taking over from CCP T0rfifrans, Arnar has become a very public figure for CCP in the EVE community. Older players will remember Arnar as CCP Zulupark, that horrible guy who nerfed their carriers back in 2007. Alternatively, you may remember a fantastic forum thread from 2008 in which he personally answered countless player questions on game design and balance issues. Since becoming senior producer on EVE, Arnar has been a strong advocate of this kind of heavy communication with players. Through devblogs, interviews and interactions with the Council of Stellar Management, he's helped to fill the information vacuum players have become accustomed to. We caught up with EVE senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason several weeks ago at the EVE Fanfest. In this EVE Spotlight, I ask him about communication with players, the role of live events in future expansions, and other topics.
EVE Fanfest 2011: CCP working on mobile New Eden functionality
Hopelessly addicted to life in New Eden, maybe to the point of wishing you could take EVE Online with you on the go? Well, that day may be closer than you think if one of CCP's EVE Fanfest 2011 demos is any indication. The Icelandic development firm showed off a new project designed to run a streamlined version of EVE on Nvidia-based Tegra 2 mobile hardware (that excludes iOS devices, for the non-technical Apple consumers in the audience). The demo was basically a render of EVE's ship fitting interface, shown running on a tablet and a phone, with the future intent being to provide limited functionality sans a PC (think market transactions and skill queue management). According to Gamasutra, CCP has yet to announce a release date for the project.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011 roundup: Day 3
The third and final day of festivities at the massive EVE Online Fanfest has come to an end, and it was definitely worth waiting for. There were several round-table discussions and events going on today, but the event everyone was looking forward to was definitely the "CCP Presents" talk in the afternoon. With yesterday's keynote speech wrapping up all the awesome plans CCP has for EVE this year, it wasn't certain exactly what had been saved for today's show. Yesterday we heard details of the Incarna captain's quarters, server upgrades, new turret effects, new nebulae and more. Highlights of today included a round-table discussion on how CCP would be linking EVE with DUST 514, the hilarious finals of the Fanfest PvP tournament and the CCP Presents feature. This was followed by the CCP panel, in which developers answered questions from the audience. Having spent three days watching developers talk about the future of EVE, I get the distinct impression that many of them have as much passion for EVE as even the most fanatical EVE players. Read on for a roundup of what happened today at the EVE Fanfest, along with detailed explanations of a few personal highlights from today and the Fanfest in general.
EVE Fanfest 2011: Closing ceremony video cluster shows off the future of the sandbox
Lots of super-cool stuff is coming out of this week's EVE Fanfest, much of it making sci-fi sandbox fanboys (and girls) weak in the knees. Possibly the slickest thing to date is a new video dubbed A Future Vision, in which CCP tips its hand for tying together the whole of New Eden across multiple gaming platforms. The clip is just under three minutes in length and shows off the integration of EVE Online's internet spaceships with DUST 514's ground-based mercs, war machines, and morally grey mayhem. While the footage is scripted and hand-made for the trailer, it was produced using CCP's proprietary Carbon graphics engine toolset (and is intended to represent what players will see and do in future versions of the EVE universe). A Future Vision is necessarily focused on expanding New Eden beyond ships, wormholes, and star gates, but CCP isn't neglecting its bread and butter either, as evidenced by an additional new trailer featuring turret upgrades to existing ships, as well as one featuring new nebula graphics. Check in with Massively all weekend as Brendan Drain, our resident EVE expert, weighs in on A Future Vision as well as all the exciting tidbits from EVE Fanfest 2011. In the meantime, you can view the trailers after the cut.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011 roundup: Day 2
It's day two of CCP's enormous party at the top of the world, and Massively is right here to find out what the future holds for EVE Online. In yesterday's day 1 roundup, we covered a fantastic presentation on Incursion by CCP Soundwave, an enlightening question-and-answer session with EVE's Council of Stellar Management, and the hilarious (but absolutely not work-safe) alliance leader panel. Today has been similarly packed with activity. We've seen some great presentations on what's to come in the summer expansion, and the keynote speech discussed some very exciting developments due to hit EVE in the near future. Highlights of today included a video of Incarna's "captain's quarters" that we'll be getting as part of the summer expansion, details of massive server upgrades heading to Tranquility, and details of some awesome quality-of-life changes coming soon thanks to Team Best Friends Forever. There was so much awesome information to share that we unfortunately had to miss the chessboxing match to get it out in a timely manner. We missed Icelandic game developers punching each other in the face to write this up, so I hope you find it interesting! Read on for a roundup of what happened today at the EVE Fanfest, along with detailed explanations of a few personal highlights from today's festivities and what we can expect to come later.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011: Keynote from the top of the world
It's an exciting time to be an EVE Online capsuleer, especially if you have the ability to make it to Iceland or are checking out the livestreams. For the rest of us desk-bound mortals who weren't able to hop across the pond to make it to Fanfest 2011, well... there's always next year! Even now, pilots are partying down with the CCP development team and talking all things internet spaceships while others are networking. We'd bet there's probably even a bit of setup for an in-game scam or two going on as well. We are talking about EVE Online, after all. Thankfully, we here at Massively have sent two of our own intrepid adventurers to get into the thick of the action: Shawn Schuster and Brendan Drain. These two brave souls are facing the crowds at the top of the world to catch all the myriad events this weekend and have sent us some Quafe t-shirts field reports of all the action going on at Fanfest 2011. First up, it's a tasty overview of this year's opening keynote. So grab your drink of choice and join us after the break for more!
EVE Evolved: Planning for the EVE Fanfest
Every year, the developers at CCP Games host the truly massive EVE Online Fanfest. Players from all walks of life and countries will soon gather in Iceland for the world's biggest event dedicated entirely to internet spaceships. Fanfest originally started as a small gathering for the game's most dedicated fans, but over the years, it has grown both in size and in its importance to players. CCP often uses Fanfest to give EVE players a sneak peek of what's to come and to showcase what the company has been working on. We look forward each year to CEO Hilmar's keynote speech, in which the year's big reveals typically take place. Over time, the EVE Fanfest has become an integral part of CCP's feedback-gathering mechanisms. Developers run a series of presentations on game design, work being done at CCP, and the lessons learned from previous projects or expansions. Round-table discussions give players the opportunity to raise questions directly to developers, and Fanfest in general gives players a way to mingle with developers in a very informal way. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how to prepare for the EVE Fanfest and how you can get involved even if you won't be in attendance.
Package deals for EVE Online Fanfest released
Every year, the EVE Online crew put on a massive celebration of the game and its players. Players from across the world fly to Iceland to take part in the largest gathering of EVE players in the yearly calendar. Fanfest attendees often get a sneak peak at what CCP has in store for the future of EVE. Through a series of development talks, trailers and announcements, players get a deeper look at upcoming expansions. The fanfest has always been late in the year, which has unfortunately limited the number of players that could attend and the amount of information CCP could deliver on the upcoming summer expansion. This year's fanfest runs from the 24th to the 26th of March 2011 and is expected to give players a deep look into Incarna, which is scheduled for a Summer 2011 release. The official Fanfest 2011 webpage has been online since early last month, and this week CCP has released details of the various travel plans, accomodation packages, fanfest tickets and Icelandic tours available to players. Of particular interest is the "PLEX for passes" scheme, which lets players pay for fanfest tickets with PLEX that can be bought in-game for ISK. The normal price for tickets is $99 USD, but anyone buying their tickets before the 26th of December will get them for only $75 USD. As the fanfest is in Iceland, however, flights and accommodation are sure to account for most of the cost.
