EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

I first realized that my trip to the EVE Vegas was going to be light on EVE and heavy on Vegas when, while seated at the Baccarat Bar in the Bellagio, my newly-minted CEO Zapawork began instructing me in the fine art of whorespotting - how to distinguish the seemingly ubiquitous call girls from the merely tarted-up. It was a Thursday night. By this point we'd already discussed potential business ventures, downed a dizzying array of frighteningly expensive drinks, and stayed up until 3 AM waiting for our favorite Russian space-oligarch, UAxDeath - leader of Legion of xXDeathXx - to arrive on his red-eye flight from New York. Yet not a word had been breathed by either of us about spaceships, and I dimly realized through the alcoholic haze that I was committed to bashing out a column full of 'spaceship words' - preferably exciting, feature-laden ones - about an event that seemed to be devoid of anything of the spaceship variety.

Friday was no better. The first official event of EVE Vegas saw fifty people or so jammed into a dingy upstairs conference room in that dingiest of Strip casinos, the Imperial Palace. Its claim to fame was that it had the least expensive rooms on the walk, and it showed. Having wallowed in the splendor of the Bellagio all Thursday, the Imperial Palace added a dose of architectural whiplash to the mix of things already clouding my brain  - alcohol, column dread and the crepes we had for lunch. This three-hour 'meet and greet' had a cash bar that was substantially more expensive than the downstairs casino bars, resulting in frequent expeditions back and forth. This did not augur well.

Attempting to break out of the clique I had arrived with, I noticed a table full of goons hanging out with Avalloc. I approached, announced something like "And who do we have here?" only to discover that I'd blundered into the developers - Oveur, Alli, Soundwave, Navigator and the 'Mystery Dev', an as-yet-unrevealed CCP employee on the game design team. As my jaw dropped, I recognized the Mystery Dev as my old bete noir Seleene, infamous former leader of the Mercenary Coalition and for many years a staunch foe of the Swarm. I had staggered onto my first source of spaceship words, and found it extremely awkward.

However, through the magic of me drinking a lot, Seleene and I managed to hit it off famously. I have no idea what his incomprehensible "Dev Name" is, but I did learn that he had a significant hand in the design and conception of the wormhole space which has revolutionized PvE in EVE. Better still, he's working on a major reform of supercapital ships, coming up with multiple new superweapons in an attempt to deemphasize doomsdays on Titans and give motherships a purpose besides being just a bigger carrier.

After the meet and greet, we headed to dinner en masse. I sat down across from the devs, but rather than extracting spaceship secrets from them like a proper gaming journalist would, I joined in the group as we occupied our time shouting imprecations about Darius Johnson's peeling face down to the other end of the long table. We also speculated about the extent of Navigator's poker winnings and kvetched about seven-dollar macaroni and cheese. Navigator eventually joined the group, $500 dollar richer from winning his tournament. We moved on.

After 10 PM on Friday - time for some serious drinking. The party moved to the Rockhouse bar in front of the Imperial Palace. Expectations were in the gutter - this place was lame, the crowd listless, the space cramped. Then the organizer of EVE Vegas put our ticket money to good use, acquiring bottle service in a private booth for the group, service provided by a cage dancer - in a booth directly behind said cage. As soon as the Grey Goose was poured, a go-go dancer began swinging on a tire chained to the ceiling. I don't remember many more details besides the drinks being excellent and a significant amount of speculation about the exact wording of our server's partially obscured crotch tattoo - was it 'The High Life'? 'The Good Life'? 'Restricted Access'? Reports varied wildly. It probably didn't involve spaceships.