Today is the first full day of Fan Faire. Attendees from all across the world have traveled to be with SOE at Las Vegas, and today everyone comes together to kick things off in style! It's already been quite an event, just with registration and the welcome reception yesterday, and I'd like to share a bit of my experience so far with you.
If you don't remember, this is my first Fan Faire ever! Naturally, I'm very excited and have been having a great time meeting with folks. The Rio is packed with MMO gamers and everywhere I look I find someone from EQII. In the last 24 hours I've meet with people from the Legion of the White Rose, and Mistwalkers for example; as well as individuals from pretty much every server.
The EQII press and media folks are here in force as well. I've already chatted with Calthine from EQII Allakhazam, Valarious from EQ2-Daily, Coyote and Radar-X from Ten Ton Hammer, Luxx from Online Gaming Radio, and Gethani and Dellmon from their EQ2's-day podcast! These folks have all been great and are here to gather all the news and information that spills out; ensuring that even the folks who couldn't make it to Fan Faire will be able to stay on top of everything.
The folks from Online Gaming Radio have some very exciting coverage plans for Fan Faire this year. You can learn the full details by following this link to their site, but the meat of it is that in addition to providing daily podcast coverage of all the fun and hilarity at Fan Faire; they are also looking to provide streaming video from of the action today! How cool is that? It's like a virtual Fan Faire for people everywhere! Be sure to keep an eye on their site for more information about that later today as they kick things off.
The Rio hotel itself is very impressive. The Carnival theme pervades from every corner, and the live shows of with dancers throwing beads to the crowd stops even the slot machine raiders in their tracks to watch it. There is also a pretty cool looking bowling alley that I'm targeting for some after hours fun. The food at the restaurants is great as well. Oh, and yes they do have a ton of gambling options.
Better than everything else though, has been the opportunity for me to meet with the players who have managed to make it out to Fan Faire. MMO's like EQII are all about people at the end of the day, being able to meet and chat with some of those people from the other side of the Internet, and share stories about the fun times we've had in game has been awesome. I'm just a gamer after all, and Fan Faire is a slice of gamers Heaven.
That's the initial report from Fan Faire. Check back tonight and I'll see about sharing a photo montage with everyone! Are you at Fan Faire and reading this from your hotel? Share your stories in the EQII Official Forums with me!
--Grimwell