Vanguard's Community Summit and Fan Faire Adventure!

[Vanguard]

EQ2 Community Summit and Fan Faire 2005

Day 1 – Wednesday June 8th 2005

The day I was to leave had finally arrived. While I was excited I was also a bit worried that something might go wrong. As a result I left 3 hrs early to make sure I had enough time to jump through all the hoops. This was my first time flying since 9/11 and I knew security was a lot tighter and thus longer delays. I also decided to just take a carry on bag so that there was no way my luggage would go missing and that I would not have to hang around to wait for my luggage when I arrived.

I found the Alaska Airlines ticketing booth but no one was there yet, so had to wait 30 minutes before they arrived. Once they did arrive the nagging feeling I had that something would go wrong happened. They informed me that my flight had been cancelled due to mechanical failure. They said they were going to get me on a flight with Delta Airlines instead. Originally I was going to be flying to Seattle then to Vegas arriving at 5:30 pm but with Delta I would be flying to Salt Lake City and then on to Vegas and arrive by 3:30 pm. I was like ok cool my hiccup has happened and is actually in my favor.

My next task was to now make it through U.S. Customs. I was a bit nervous again as this is where Anyuzer had his problems the year before. When they asked me why I was going I just said to have some fun and they said go ahead. I am a pretty honest guy like Anyuzer is so if I had not read about his experience I probably would have ended up having the same problem he did and not being able to go. So thanks Anyuzer, your experience helped me to avoid any potential problems.

Once through customs it was then on through security which is always fun. Just once I would like to walk through the scanner without the buzzer going off. Once I found the gate where we were to board I decided to get something to eat as this would be my only chance until landing in Las Vegas. Of course there was yet another line to wait in. Get use to waiting in a lot of lines when you travel. You are also not allowed to leave your bags unattended so if you are traveling alone it means dragging everything along with you. <sigh>

The plane finally boarded and we took off bound for Salt Lake. It had been raining in Calgary the last few days, flood warnings where everywhere. I was really looking forward to going someplace warm and sunny. Landing in Salt Lake I only had enough time to quickly travel to my next departure gate for the flight to Las Vegas and 5 minutes later I was back in the air.

Landing in Las Vegas it was sunny and warm. I had to catch the tram to the main terminal. Once there if you had any doubt you were not in Las Vegas it was soon dispelled by all the slot machines. I made my way outside and decide the best way to get to the Las Vegas Hilton was to pay for one of the many shuttle companies they have there to take me. Once there I went to go check in with the confirmation code I had been sent via email. Only one problem, the code had two people registered to that room and neither of those people where me. I said ok can you look under my name then, thinking that I might have copied the confirmation code wrong or the one I was sent was a mix up. Again they told me they had no reservation for me. As luck would have it I also copied down the name of the person who had sent me the email, Lauren Zeiger. I had them contact her in hopes of straightening out the problem and luckily she was in her room. Lauren came straight down and then proceeded to work out the problem and I was soon on my way to my room. I just wanted to personally thank Lauren as well as all the other SOE staff that work behind the scene’s to put on an event like this. Your hard work and dedication was very much appreciated.



After checking in to my room I decided to go and wander the hotel and get my bearings. In my travels I ran into Blackguard, (Ryan Shwayder) it was really great to finally meet him in person. For those that don’t know, Blackguard and OnyxRaven started up EQII.COM and from that, Blackguard was offered a job with SOE on EQ2. I asked if there was anything happening that evening and he said that we would be getting together at Quark’s from 9pm to 11pm that night.

At 9pm I went to Quark’s and was told it was closed to a private function. I asked if it was SOE and they said no. I went back up the stairs and there was a small bar on the side of the casino and a fair amount of people standing around talking. I noticed a gentlemen with a EQ2 cap on and figured ok this must be some of the people for the community summit. I met some EQLive players who were there for their own community summit. After buying a drink I then proceeded to wander around more and see if I could find some EQ2 people. The gentlemen in the EQ2 hat turned out to be Mystikclaw who is the Community Sage on the official forums. He also was a former poster at EQII.COM before there were any official forums, so it was really cool to meet him. Soon Blackguard was there who introduced me to Mario Rizzo, Moorgard (Steve Danuser), Scott Hartsman, Owlchick and Matt Higby. I am sure I am going to miss a few people from that first night so forgive me. Some of the fansite people I met where Sassee from EQ2 Vault, Arminya from EQ/EQII Roleplayers, Tovin and Sylvene from EQII Stratics, Tamat from EQII Warcry, Berek_Halfhand from OGaming and Loral from EQ2 Castersrealm.

Some of the players, I knew were coming, that I was looking forward to meeting were Kendricke and Darkfiend_Lightbearer. I did not run into Darkfiend_Ligthbearer that night and later found out it was because he had been delayed getting into Vegas until like 4 am or some such cazyness. How I met Kendricke was interesting because I over heard this guy saying "I am pretty sure I am the only one in EQ2 that has a roleplaying guild on a non roleplaying server". When I heard that I knew without a doubt that was Kendricke!

After much drinking and chatting and laughing it was time to call it a night and thus ended my first day of adventure.


Day 2 – Community Summit, Thursday June 9th 2005

The morning started off with picking up our badges so people would know who everyone was and I finally met Darkfiend_Lightbearer, who told me all about the problems he and his fiancée had in getting there. Soon we were allowed into Ballroom E for breakfast with the developers followed by our first Session, Population and Mechanics. The room we were scheduled to be in was far too small and after a bit of renegotiation with the hotel we where allowed to move to a much larger room that was not being used across the hall.



Session 1: Population and Mechanics

I found it difficult to really take notes here as this was more of an informal discussion between the attendee’s and the developers. Some people came with up to 11 pages of things they wanted to address with the developers. One thing was very clear, everyone who came had a very big passion for EQ2 and for wanting to make the game better. One thing that everyone seemed to be in agreement on was that the changes to the overland zones had gone too far in the direction of solo/duo mobs. Scott Hartsman promised that when they got back they would definitely be looking at this and making sure both groups and solo players have things they can kill for good experience. Another area that was discussed was making guild writs more dynamic then to just go and kill 10 badgers or 10 beetles etc.

Session 2: Raids and the End Game

One of the requests to the developers was to make the contested raid mobs respawn timer more random. Currently it’s on a 2 hr window and many were hoping to have it changed to 12 hrs to give more guilds a shot at actually getting some of these spawns. Also discussed was why have an 8 day lock out timer on instanced raid zones? Many guilds can only raid say on a Friday or Saturday night and with an 8 day lock out timer it means they can only raid every 2 weeks rather then weekly. This ultimately led to why does every player have to have access to everything? Scott Hartsman indicated that they feel there should be content that not all players will experience or items they will be able to get. In the past, especially with EQLive it was done via time investment and the ability to bring out large numbers. For EQ2 they want it to be defeating the encounter itself that’s the challenge and make certain items rare and prized for very difficult encounters where only the best players/guild with the best equipment are able to defeat them.

Many of the high level raids are currently too easy. With the combat rebalancing these encounters will be a lot more difficult. When that happens you will see the loot tables on the mobs get a lot better and you will see loot become mob specific unlike now where it’s a random universal loot table that all raid targets share. Also in the works is allowing players to have a choice of reviving inside or outside the current instanced raid zone. Last but not least it was announced that patch time is going to change from 9am PST back to 7am PST which should make game play for the Australian players a lot better.

Lunch

We then broke for lunch back in Ballroom E. The food was really great and a funny thing that happened at my table was this old guy came and sat next to me who was obviously not part of the Community Summit as his Badge indicated that he was with another convention that was happening in the hotel. Once he was informed he was in the wrong room he stated that he would eat what he had. I am sure the poor guy had no clue what was being discussed at the table as people shared their game play experiences. I am sure when the guy finally got up to leave he must have thought we where all quite mad.

Session 3: Expansion and Adventure Packs

I had brought up the fact that when EQ2 was in development they had talked about player owned boats and battling pirates etc. Many were hoping that the first expansion might include this and where disappointed so are we going to be seeing something like this for future expansion? Scott Hartsman was unaware of what those things had been so then asks everyone if they did something like this what would they like to see. Ideas such as, transporting cargo to make money, the ability to perhaps engage other players in their boats. Having Islands to discover and explore. Ships taking damage and having to be repaired by tradeskill people, etc.

Another possible expansion idea that was discussed was what if Faydark was rediscovered? This was met with mixed reaction as some felt this is EQ2 not EQLive and that new content should be added not just rediscovering what was there before. Scott Hartsman did point out that just because the name is the same does not mean the content is the same. Scott pointed to the first expansion as an example of using an old world area and then creating something new and amazing for the area 500 years later. I have to agree. Scott also had suggested that there would eventually be new starting cities added to the game. I suggested what if Faydark was discovered, but the players themselves had to defeat the evil that has taken over the area and once that was done the city would be rebuilt and become a starting city for players? What if anything will come of all this talk? Will have to see but it was fun to give some ideas of what could be done in the future.

One thing that was brought up was possibly adding more artisan or adventure classes to the game. That was kind of dismissed saying that they would prefer to come up with new advancement paths players could use in their existing characters rather then starting over a new character. Last but not least people asked to have the ability to alter your character after the initial creation stage. This is already in the works so look for that change in the future.

Session 4: Open Forum

This session was for us to talk about whatever we wanted to. One thing that came up was group exp debt which many feel is a barrier to pick up groups forming in EQ2. I personally would like to see them do away with shared debt all together and just go with a system that if you die you get exp debt based on the number people you happened to be grouped with at the time. So if you die solo you get 100% of the exp dept. If you died in a full group you would get 1/6th the exp debt. No more shared debt. Others liked the idea of the shared debt but wanted to modify the current system so that groups only share the exp debt if the person actually died in range of the actual group. So if you joined a group but were on the other side of the zone and died you would not end up giving exp debt to the other people in your group. Regardless of which you supported I think it was fair to say that most would like to see some kind of change come to this aspect of the game. Nothing however was promised by the development team.

Another area that was discussed was being able to revive someone outside your group. This had been worked on and was going to go live when a much more complex problem was found with the system so they have had to go back and are currently working to resolve this so it can be sent out to the live servers. No time frame was given, however I got the impression that they would like to have it done sooner then later.

That concluded the Community Summit and we were given an hour before coming back to have dinner. I do think the developers were really interested in what we had to say and the feedback we gave. I would hope that for future summits that they did allow for longer session times as the one hour limit did not seem long enough. The one nice thing is that the developers where around all weekend so that if your issue was not addressed in one of these sessions you could track them down to ask it later.



Dinner

Dinner was great and further gave you time to hang out with the developers. I ended up sitting with Moorgard, Blackguard, Higby, Sassee from EQ2 Vault, Berek from EQ2 Ogaming, and a couple of other very nice people however I did not get their names. They also had a free bar so we took full advantage of that! It really was a laid back atmosphere and was really great to just hang out and get to know everyone.



Karaoke

At 8 we then moved to the Baron Room for Karaoke! Mystikclaw kicked things off by going first. I ended up missing Blackguard singing however the highlight for me had to be when John Smedley got up and sang Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N’ Roses, he was amazing! It wrapped up with everyone dancing up in front of the stage. I then decided to try my luck at gambling at the casino. Needless to say I called it a night at 3am and down $50 bucks.


Day 3 – Fan Faire, Friday June 10th 2005

I went down around 10 am and the best of the best tournament was going on which was fun to watch. They had several vendors set up selling everything from art to the Ultimate Gaming Chair. They also had registration for the model search for Antonia Bayle. I checked the event schedule and there were three sessions I wanted to attend. These were open to anyone that wanted to attend.



Expansion and Adventure Packs

At the beginning of this Session Joe Shoopack who is the Art Director for EQ2 wanted to let everyone know what direction that game would be going as far as art direction. The game when it was first being done was created on being photo realistic. Joe wanted us to know that going forward the style will be High Fantasy. So look for art designed to be much more exciting.

- Buildings will have more of a High Fantasy look and feel
- NPC’s will be more sexy and buff
- More wild looking creatures
- Zones will have more high fantasy feel. Dessert of Flames is a prime example with lots of vibrant colors and Arabian Nights theme.

At this point the floor was open to questions. I asked did this new change in art direction mean that player armor would also start to take on this new high fantasy look? I was assured this would be the case going forward.

Another question that was asked was monks for their level 20 armor quest get a gi but have nothing to upgrade to later in the game and they wanted to know if they would be adding in more to which the developers indicated there would be.

For the first expansion Dessert of Flames there will be 3 story lines that players can experience. The story lines are based on the three faction in the city of Maj’dul. Don’t worry though you can actually experience all three story lines and quest by changing your faction if you so choose. In fact that’s what they are hoping most people will do.

Another question that was asked was will there be some form of transportation added to the game such as reactivating the wizard spires and druid rings or some other form of travel. The reply was that yes indeed there will eventually be this type of travel added to the game but not sure at what point. They still want the world to have a sense of size to it.

With the expansion guilds will be getting additional levels and rewards. Also it was explained how the guild vault will work. There will be 3 bins in which items can be placed. Each bin can be set by rank as to who has access to it. For safety concerns there are limits to how many items can be withdrawn by a player as well as being a bin access log so guild leaders will know who put items and in and took them out.

Last but not least was the news that the SOGA models would be available to the U.S. based servers once they have been fully tested. Players will have the ability to select which models they see on a race by race basis. The SOGA models will not have as much variety as the original models however.

Tradeskills

Friznik has created a name for himself as the lone guy sent to try and fix the problems with tradeskills. He has had some success in making the community happy and had some very exciting news for players.

First off Friznik is looking at getting artisans out from their crafting dungeons. Some of you might have already seen some tradeskill equipment in Everfrost. This is to allow players to craft outside complete with merchant vendors. Additional zones will be Nektulos Forest, Thundering Steppes and Enchanted Lands. These areas will be safe out of the way places, so that no mobs will attack. Friznik was also able to get a level 3 adventurer all the way to Everfrost so it is possible, however it might be wise to get an escort. Also he is going to be introducing quests that artisans can complete that will help speed up the crafting process.

- Quest that once completed allows the artisan to make 20 items in one combine. This can only be done for the initial recipes using a raw component. For items like WORTS you would be able to create 4 times 20 if pristine. The trade off for doing this will be you only get exp as if you only did one combine.

- Quest that once completed will reduce the amount of processing in half. This can be done for all recipes.

- Quests that give armor to enhance tradeskill attributes.

To give you and example of how this can be used. I have a level 36 sage. When I make quills it’s a 2 combine process. First I have to refine the wood into lumber which now can be done 20 at a time. Once I complete the 20 I then have to make the lumber into quills. With half the processing time I will be able to do 20 in the same time it use to take me to do 10. Over all I can now make quills in ¼ of the time it currently takes me.

NOTE: I think so many people were happy to hear this news that no one bothered to ask when we can expect to see these changes? Later in the day I got a change to ask Scott Hartsman, he indicated that this change would be part of one of the live updates, but he could not say for sure which one.

Friznik also promised to try and do something for Sages. We have been left out in the cold compared to other tradeskill classes and he will work on trying to make us a bit more useful and our products more desirable. No information other then this was given.

Another area Friznik is looking at is making harvesting more interesting by possibly introducing tools that make harvesting easier as well as creating a drop down menu where you can select what you would like to harvest for nodes that have a chance of giving you a variety of items. These were not promises but just things he is looking at doing to make crafting more fun and less tedious for players.

I think we are in good hands with Friznik. His ideas are creative and he is the right guy to make tradeskills a lot better then they are now.

Gameplay Features

One person said that now that the froglok’s have been released they would like to see their frogloks flip when they cast spells like they do in EQLive. One of the other players suggested that perhaps SOE should have another live event to relock the Frogloks, which got a lot of laughs. The developers said they would look into possibly having frogloks flip but would not promise anything at this time.

The developers did announce that mobs will soon start dropping coin. Also items will drop from mobs that can be used in tradeskills as well as some items having clickable effects such as SoW or Enduring Breath.

Players also wanted there to be a way for guild symbols or hierarchy to be put on shields or BP’s or caps similar to DAoC. Scott Hartsman said that yes that’s something they want to do its just they are not sure when. He then went as far as to say upper management is putting pressure on having this added to the game as well.

Another thing players were requesting is to make HO’s better for raids. HO’s work great for solo and group play but don’t really work that well for 4 groups in a raid. As such they would like to see something incorporated for this. The developers said they would look into seeing if they could incorporate something that would take better advantage of HO’s for raids. This was the end of the sessions I attended for Friday. Next up was the Grand Banquet at 8pm.

Grand Banquet



The Grand Banquet I ended up sitting with Mystikclaw, Darkfiend_Lightbearer and his fiancée, Nocte and his girlfriend Alisen, Moorgard and Sassee from EQ2 Vault. I enjoyed the food and the company. Brenlo was the MC for the evening and they announced the winners of the EQ2 Best of the Best competion from earlier in the day.
Congratulations to DragonSeekers13 who won the event. Also they held the costume contest. There were some great costumes and in the end I believe 2 people tied for 1st place. Forgive me for not getting the names of the winners. I did however get some pictures. Once the banquet was over I decided to call it a night and went back to my hotel room and thus ended day 3.



Day 4 Fan Faire, Saturday June 11th 2005

Day four marked the last day of Fan Faire for me as I had to fly out the following morning as my flight left at 11am. Again I wanted to make sure I was there 3 hrs early so had planned on leaving the hotel at 7:30am. This is important because that’s not what ended up happening.



EQ2 Expansion Demo

I woke up and decided to go for a nice swim in the hotel pool and layout in the sun and work on my tan a bit. The morning was for the EQ2 mob madness that they had sign ups the night before at the banquet. The afternoon was were the information sessions started. The night before Moorgard let me know they had a media room set up in conference room 3 as I had wanted to see some stuff on the new Adventure pack “The Splitpaw Saga”. So I poked my head into conference room 3 at noon, an hour before the EQ2 Desert of Flames Demo was to happen in Ballroom E. In the room they had 2 PC’s set up and on one of them was Mario Rizzo demoing the expansion to a guy in a blue SOE staff t-shirt. I was allowed to sit in and watch as Mario showed off the expansion. The monitors where 24 inch widescreen and the expansion look totally stunning on them. Joe Shoopack, Art Director for EQ2, said the game would be taking on a high fantasy look and feel and he was not joking. One of the critizism about EQ2 was the world was very bland and boring. Well there is no way anyone could say that for this first expansion. The colors are very vivid and it is hard for me to describe it other then to say this is one expansion I can’t wait to play. As time went on it became apparent that they where actually setting up the computers, as there had been a change in plans and the conference room was going to be where they allowed players to have a hands on demo. I moved over to the couch that was in the room and sat quietly watching as they went to work getting things up and running. Bruce Ferguson came in the room and started to assist Mario in making sure the computers where set up and good to go. It was fun to sit there quietly and see some of the back ground stuff that goes on. Others tried to come in the room and where promptly kicked out. While no one asked me to leave I decided I best not overstay my welcome and I move out into the hall where I ended up in line with Mystikclaw.

I tell you Mystikclaw was everywhere that weekend participating in anything and everything. The guy tired me out just watching him! Finally we where allowed to come in and actually get to sit down and run around a bit to see what we could see. I ran up to a strange mob that looked like a strangely deformed cow. Turns out this demented creature is just a place holder mob. Someone at SOE has a twisted sense of humor. After only a couple minutes I quickly gave up my spot, since I had already seen tons, and I knew there was a long line up of people wanting to see the expansion. I want to thank Mario for letting me come in and check things out for an hour while they set up and stuff, it definitely made me feel like I was part of the team for a short time.

After that there was a bit of time to kill until the next information session started at 3pm. It was on Spells and Arts and I almost did not go because all weekend long anytime someone had a question about this it was responded to by saying that everything is currently being changed with the combat revamp. I expected that to be pretty much the answer to everything. I am glad I went because there was a lot of information about what they are actually doing.

Spell and Arts

First question that was asked was will they be doing something to make the Scout classes more viable soloing? The answer I am sure will make players who play scouts very happy. With the combat changes scouts will be able to stun their opponent and then move around behind the mob in order to inflict their high damage arts.

Dot stacking will be allowed to happen. Each class will be allowed to put their own dot on a mob independent of what other classes have put on the mob.

It was brought up that there is a limit to the amount of buffs that can bedisplayed in the maintained spell window of 15. The developers will look into seeing if they can expand this number.

Another issue brought up by priests is that when members of their group have negative effects on them they show up on the player window but there is nothing like that for themselves. Developers said they would look into seeing if they can add that to the character window. They also said they would look into trying to organize spell effects in more organized way or by creating individual windows for certain spell effects.

Another thing that was asked was for the ability for players to toggle off world damage and healing numbers that you see in game over players and npc’s heads. This is something they want to do but no time frame as to when that would go live.

Druids in the game thus far generate a lot more agro then other priest classes. With the combat changes druids will see a reduction of agro from their heals. The other side of the coin is that other priest classes will actually see agro if they heal too aggressively.

Someone asked if spells visual effects would be looked at as well? It was stated the first goal is to get the mechanics of the spells balanced and tested once that was done then they would go through and look at the actual spell effect and make sure its what they want. That ended the information sessions that I attended for the day and pretty much was the end of Fan Faire for me other then the party at “The Beach” night club that SOE had reserved for the evening.

The Beach



I went and had dinner and then watched the movie “Back to the Future” in my hotel room. I then changed and headed down to “The Beach.” Did I mention that from 9 to 12 there was free booze? It started off a bit slow but in no time at all, the place was full and people were dancing up a storm. The highlight of the night had to be Kendricke tearing it up on the dance floor. I especially want to thank Mario Rizzo for his candidness in answering some personal questions I had running in the back of my head that night, it was very much appreciated.

Thank you SOE for an awesome experience. Thank you to the developers for answering as best you could all the questions people had and for making yourselves available for that. Thanks to all the other community fan site people I met. Your all great people and we share a sense of community that I find refreshing. Thank you to all the players I met and discussed the game with. Last but not least thanks to all the SOE staff that work behind the scenes to make everything happen.

Day 5 The morning after Sunday June 12th, 2005

I awoke in my hotel room and looked at the clock which said it was 1:34 am. I could tell by the light coming in from the window that that could not be right. I jumped out of bed all hung over and look out and it was full day light. Panic set in as I realized I had no clue as to what time it was. I could have missed my plane! Quickly I dial the front desk to ask what time it was and they said 9:24 am. OMG! I quickly jumped in the shower got dressed and headed out the door. I dumped my key cards in the quick check out box and headed to catch a cab. Only there was no cabs! No this is not happening, I said. Quickly I spotted a shuttle off to my right and I quickly ran over asking when he was leaving for the airport and he said 5 minutes. I got on and there were 2 other people already onboard.

Silently I sat there all hung over, praying somehow I would not miss my flight. Soon the driver jumped in and we where heading to the airport. The driver then tells us he is going to take us to the VIP entrance for the airport and that would save us 20 minutes. As we went up the ramp he pointed off to the right to all the cabs and shuttles lined up waiting to get a chance to unload. “That’s where I just saved you 20 minutes.” We got to the VIP doors and no one was there. He said go through the doors and up the escalators and we would be in the main terminal. I then had to run to the far end of the ticketing section to find Alaska Airlines. Ever notice how everywhere you have to go in an airport it’s always at the extreme end or maybe it’s just me? Of course there is a line up. Finally I get my boarding pass and the lady says you will have to hurry your boarding at gate D10 which is at the far end of the terminal. (See there it is again! Grrr.) I quickly run as fast as I can until I hit the security check for D terminal. OMG the people and the line up! This is looking very bad for me again despite my earlier luck with the shuttle driver. Suddenly I hear a gentlemen shout out if you where first class you could go in the first class line which was much shorter. I remember when I looked at the flight itinerary before I left with my wife that she pointed out I would be flying first class from Vegas to Seattle. I quickly confirmed I had a first class ticket and then moved to the shorter line bypassing the huge congestion. That indeed was the second miracle that happened that morning to allow me to make my flight on time. Once through security I hopped on the shuttle to take me to the D terminal gates and ran to the far end to finally get on the plane. The rest of my flight home was uneventful and I got home ok to my wife and 3 kids. And thus ends my first Community Summit and Fan Faire Adventure!

Vanguard

[Mystikclaw]

[Darkfiend_Lightbearer]