Community Team Talks SOE Fan Faire Details

If you watched yesterday afternoon’s SOE Fan Faire webcast, then you already know that Linda “Brasse” Carlson will be stepping up as this year’s official Host of Fan Faire. A Jace Hall-free weekend in Vegas  is certainly something to celebrate with lots of Dwarvish Ale. 🙂

I’ve been wracking my brain on stuff that I can say that won’t get me fired! We’ll see how that turns out. I’ve already got approval from Legal on a couple of them. Now we just have to get approval from Community and Smed.

According to the Webcast, we can expect SOEFanFaire.com to be updated sometime today with an updated schedule or events. Thus far, the online schedule has been rather light on detail, with no mention of when any of the EQ2 panels will occur except Live Quests and Tournaments. Traditionally, Friday has been Art & Animation panels, Community panels, etc. with Saturday panels reserved for Expansion news and looking to the future of each game.

One of the things I’ve always liked about Fan Faire is we do not keep the developers behind the velvet rope. They’re encouraged, mandated actually, to spend time with the players. They’re there to talk with you, to discuss ideas with you, to hang out with you in the hallways and the Crossroads Bazaar area, at the Banquets and all that sort of thing.

So far we’ve got over 50 developers slated to attend, with 11 each for EQ1 and EQ2. DCUO has 6, FreeRealms and Clone Wars each have 5. There will be lots of devs, please seek them out. They’re easily identifiable on their badges.

This year’s Fan Faire partners/vendors include nVidia and Alienware, as well as fantasy artist Larry Elmore who has created paintings for SOE of in-game characters and storylines for many years.

The SOE Webcast answered some player questions. First up, Will Fan Faire ever move from Las Vegas to, say, the East Coast?

We can keep the price of Fan Faire down because it’s cheaper to haul out SOE employees. Even though Vegas is not in the center of the US, it’s very centralised for the airlines and easily accessible. For now, it’s definitely something we want to keep stationary so people know where to go. If it’s in a stable location, it helps in the planning and logistics as well. The first year at Bally’s, there were all manner of internet problems. Last year there were a lot less and this year hopefully there shouldn’t be any problems. We’ve done Polls and Vegas always wins. It’s a fan favorite. Players tend to plan their vacations around it so they can go see Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil, etc.

Prismatic Cloud Mount?

When asked about more specifics of the EQ2 Fan Faire mount the “Prismatic Cloud“, there was more merriment and jokes, but not much more to be said. We’ve been told to wait for a screenshot of the new mount. Expect rainbows!

EQ2 Tournament Takes to the Sky

Each of the Tournaments will be a bit different this year, and the Live Quests have been redesigned to not have bottlenecks, so they won’t run over their 2 hour time limit. The EQ2 Tournament will break with the tradition of involving a new dungeon and instead measure players on their flying skills in the Aether Flying Races event. During the E3 Expo, the Aether Races tournament course will make an appearance on Test so that players can practice.