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2007 SOE Fan
Faire Overview

by Machail

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style="font-style: italic;"> title="Welcome to Las Vegas"
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src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/welcome.jpg"
alt="Welcome to Las Vegas" hspace="6" vspace="2">Welcome
to Las Vegas Nevada!
Well, I'm back from a fabulous week in Las Vegas, and BOY do I have
some stories to tell!



I landed in Las Vegas on Tuesday night.  My guild was meeting
up with me on Wednesday and Thursday, so there was some time to kill.
 Believe me, there are plenty
of ways to kill time in Vegas, so I won't get into
too many details there.

Thursday night was the welcoming party at the Voodoo lounge, located on
the 51st floor of the
Rio, overlooking Vegas.  After we grabbed our badges and our
gift  bags,
we walked
through the casino to get to the elevator up to the Voodoo lounge.
 There are a few distractions here and there while in Vegas,
so it did take a bit of concentration from time to time to focus on
where we were and where we were going.




Now, I was supposed to meet up with Ashlanne to get
a bit of an introduction to the folk over at SOE working on Vanguard,
but I was unable to track her down all weekend.  In the end
though, it worked out fine anyway.  One thing about the Fan
Faire is that it really is a nice open environment and communication
goes back and forth at such a steady pace, you really are left with
little to no
questions unanswered by the end of it.



I ran into Michelle "Elionia" Butler at the Voodoo Lounge, and she was
kind enough to give me the formal introductions
to the team.  At the foot of the stairs for most of the night
were Darrin "Talisker" McPherson and Bill "Tagad" Fisher, who were
enjoying the view from the Voodoo Lounge.

href="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/taliskertagad.sized.jpg"> title="Talisker, Machail, Tagad"
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src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/taliskertagad.sized.jpg"
alt="Talisker, Machail, Tagad" hspace="6" vspace="2">

Shortly after, Lisa Boleyn came up and introduced herself as a quest
designer for the Vanguard team.  Lisa has worked on over
400 quests, including the newbie quests in Rindol Field, and
the Shadowhound and Unicorn quests.  She's also been doing a
lot of work on the upcoming Trial Island:  a secluded island
for free short-term trials of Vanguard.  Later on in the panel
discussions she took the event attendees through the creation process
of the quests.  When asked if there was anything she would
like to change about the quests if she had the opportunity (and time)
to go back and make adjustments, she told us that she has some regrets
about the shadowhound quests feeling a bit "too" grindy and she would
like to have the foals fixed up in the unicorn quest to be able to
easily identify foals with which one has already interacted.  



When asked if there were any plans to incorporate "epic" quests, Lisa
responded: "The shadowhound and unicorn quests seem pretty epic to me."
 It was mentioned, however, that with the introduction of the
flying mounts quests coming around the corner, that players can expect
longer, harder, and more involved quests, which will include components
from the Ancient Port Warehouse, Vanguard's 12-person raid dungeon
scheduled for release over the next few months.



To end off Thursday evening we ran into a member of the customer
service
department.  At his request, his photo and name cannot be
published.  But we did get a nice chance to sit down and
discuss how the customer service team does have a commitment to the
welfare of the community as a whole; particularly in regards to gold
sellers and
href="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/riocasino.sized.jpg"> title="The Rio Casino"
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src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/riocasino.sized.jpg"
alt="The Rio Casino" hspace="6" vspace="2">exploiters.
It was reassuring to know that the
team works constantly and diligently to help improve our gameplay, and
I, for one, walked away with a strong reassurance that SOE does indeed
put a lot of work into the customer service department.



The following day, Friday, we started the panel discussions.
 The first of which was the "State of the Game."  The
entire team was there for this one and walked us through the current
state of the game and some of the plans for the near and distant
future.  They discussed with us that they are well
aware
of the bugs in Vanguard, and have already fixed up over 1600 of them
recently and are working on fixing more bugs every day.  They
also confirmed that with Vanguard in its current state, they don't feel
it is in the best interest of the community, or the game, to push its
marketing.  They do have a "relaunch" coming around, which is
simply a loose term used to describe a re-marketing.  Once the
game has reached what they feel is a comfortable state of stability and
plain ol' raw fun, they'll commence a marketing blitz to get more
subscribers in
game to fill up the servers.



While there are no current plans on the internationalisation of
Vanguard, the team did note that it may be something that will be
looked into down the road after the marketing blitz.



Friday afternoon's panels took us through adventuring content and game
design and gave us a bit of an insider's view on how content is
designed.  We were introduced to some plans for overland
 raid encounters and while there is no instancing planned for
Vanguard currently, the team is discussing possibilities of "lockout
timers" which would, in effect, prevent groups and guilds from keeping
an encounter on lockdown, preventing anyone else from getting the kill.
Steve "Aruspex" Williams also touched on his plans for diplomacy
"boss" encounters, including Eldor in Three Rivers.  These
boss encounters will include 50 lines (or more) of diplomacy text and
provide a
challenge for diplomats to develop highly attuned strategies to work
through the diplomatic encounter.  Eldor will be the first
introduced at level 15, but Williams has plans for adding many more
down the road across the world and level ranges.



At 5:30 the entire Fan Faire met up in the Amazon rooms for a special
announcement from John Smedley.  We were all pretty excited
and very curious about what kind of game could have been kept secret
long enough to only be announced one month before its release.
 As it turned out, the game was "Legends of Norrath" which is
a card game inside both EverQuest and EverQuest II allowing players
from both games to compete against eachother in a friendly game of
cards.  The rewards from the game also include in-game items
for your character, and the game will be free to all players of
EverQuest and EverQuest II, with decks and cards dropping in-game.
 Additional card decks can be purchased from the Sony Store.

href="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/poolside.sized.jpg"> title="Poolside Party"
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alt="Poolside Party" hspace="6" vspace="2">

Later Friday night was the pool-side party.  And what kind of
party would be complete without karaoke and an open bar?
 Also, as an added treat, guests could catch a glimpse
or get a photo with none other than Firiona Vie and Antonia Bayle.
 Fun was had by all and although none of the game devs were
actually seen in the pool, they were again readily available to sit and
talk with the attendees.

href="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/livequest.sized.jpg"> title="Vanguard LiveQuest"
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src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/livequest.sized.jpg"
alt="Vanguard LiveQuest" hspace="6" vspace="2">

Saturday morning was an early start with the Vanguard Live Quest.
 Participants went from NPC to NPC (played by various devs and
volunteers) and set about solving
quests.  The quests included puzzles, scavenger hunts, and a
one-on-one
game of diplomacy card-playing.



The afternoon continued with more panel discussions, and while
unfortunately Talisker was unavailable for the adventuring classes
discussion panel, Ten Ton Hammer was able to ask a few quick questions
about the classes that our readers wanted to know before he had to
leave.  Heavy fighter classes will be happy to know
that the intention for all tanks will continue to be balanced
in a way
that none will always be the "preferred tank."  However, there
will be some content coming around that will specifically be designed
for each of the three existing tank classes.  Psionicists can
also rejoice that the team hopes to incorporate illusions that have
various benefits pending
on the illusion.  While it will be nothing overpowering, they
will be able to look forward to things such as faction modification.
 It was also mentioned that there is no definite timeline on
this, but it is something the team wants to see in the
future. 
The balancing act of classes is a hard one to maintain, but the team is
dedicated to making sure each class has a good amount of desirability
to play behind it.



The final panel may have been the most fun.  Silas "Cylus"
Morse took us through some of the weapon designs that we have to look
forward to with the Ancient Port Warehouse.  Each has its own
particle effect, and they all look fantastic.  These items
will surely be something coveted on all servers.
href="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/costumes.sized.jpg"> title="Costume Contest"
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src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/costumes.sized.jpg"
alt="Costume Contest" hspace="6" vspace="2">The
weekend events ended with the grand banquet.  Attendees
were treated to real gamer food of gourmet hotdogs, hamburgers and
fried chicken.  Tradition offered up a
costume contest, and more fun events for all participants.
  Being Vegas, too, the events were not complete
without a wedding.  Storm troopers burst opened the
doors and led the
couple in.
 After the ceremony, the two newly-weds hopped on computers
set up in
EverQuest II and performed the ceremony in game as well.  It
was pretty
fantastic to watch, and the crowd gave them a roaring congratulatory
cheer.  Although a
little saddened by the end of the weekend, everyone left in good
spirits.



In conclusion, I highly recommend attending the Fan Faire if ever
possible.  It's a real treat to get to hang out with the dev
team and learn one-on-one about the game and its past, present and
future.  The developers are all extremely friendly and love
talking about the game.  After attending, it's hard to log
into the game without seeing it completely differently.  You
still may find bugs and other things that may be annoying, but after
understanding a bit of the process, and getting to know the
personalities behind the game, filling out that bug report
feels a lot
more fulfilling, knowing and having met some of the people that will be
reading it and getting it fixed.  I congratulate the Vanguard
SOE team in keeping such open lines of communication open to us, as the
community, and I am looking very much forward to what's in store.

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