Luper’s 2008 Fan Faire Expedition!

On Thursday, I left my home to head to the fabulous Las Vegas! I had never been there before, so I was truly excited. I had previously decided I did not want to deal with baggage claim, so I packed all my things in a small carryon bag. The flight was alright. I got to watch Leatherheads, which is really not that great of a movie. I took lots of pictures as well, which you’ll see quite a few, If you check out our Voyages of Vanguard images.

Arriving at the air port in Las Vegas, one can immediately find slot machines! It was 108 degrees! I knew I was in the desert, but man… stepping outside was an adventure within itself. My cousin had picked us up from the air port and we were on our way to the Hilton Hotel.

When we arrived at the Hilton, we went to our room which was upgraded due to them giving our previous room to another person. They didn’t charge me extra, and I got a bigger bathroom, so I happily took the room. I dropped off my things, and we went to visit everyone. This was the first time I got to meet some of my guildies, and I was giddy. My guild leader, Thund, was there. He is indeed a very down to earth guy, and surprisingly everyone seemed just like they were online. It goes to show Vanguard folks aren’t fake. Hehe.

Anyways, I found myself talking to so many people, and it was really nice to meet them all. I even managed to get myself up on stage. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I guess it’s out there anyways. I did the /agree emote and head banged it out on stage. Yeah, I’m a dork. After the first day of meeting everyone and the introduction to Fan Faire, we were sent off into Vegas to either find some adventure or get smashed and party in our hotel rooms.

The next day, we had panels that started at about 3pm, so everyone was out and about. The first Vanguard panel was about “Classes, Combat and Development.” The panel included: Salim “Silius” Grant, Thom “Phathom” Terrazas, Nick “Glip the Gnome” Parkinson, Tiraslee, and Ichie. The hour was filled with many questions. There were a few questions about bank space and Silius commented that messing with bank space is a bit iffy because of the bugs that can occur when doing so, and everyone laughed it off. Another option that people were asking about was placing soul bound items into houses, or being able to place a soul bound chest that would work for only that person’s items, and they did say that was an idea they could think about. Even placing armor and weapons into houses was mentioned, and they said they were looking into it.

Crafters and high level quests were brought up, as well as Diplomacy. Silius mentioned that they were focusing on the adventuring side currently, but there will be more in the future for Crafters and Diplomats. The topic of Galleons was mentioned, and Silius said that they did not want to put in Galleons without any content. Many people argued that we can make our own content with the boats. Although Silius did say that he understood their opinion, he stated once again that they wanted to implement content that would offer a use for these large boats.

Of course once that was mentioned, fishing came up. Fishing will not be in GU6, but is currently being worked on. I’m interested to see what is going on with that. Silius also said that there will not be sea life when galleons/fishing are implemented, so don’t expect that any time soon.

Not that many classes were brought up, but Rangers were said to be getting their 6 new pets that they would be able to use, as well as the abilities going along side of them. They would also be able to set up camps. I’m interested in hearing what these camps do. Maybe if your group logs out at a ranger’s camp, they will get rest experience? Heh, just a thought.

A marketing question was also asked, and Silius did a breakdown of their plans for marketing. At the moment, it seems that their money is going mostly toward development and the people currently playing. I believe that they are relying on Isle of Dawn to bring in new people, and hopefully, it will do just that. They are not putting any more boxes on the shelves in stores. I found this to be a down fall of their marketing, but I can understand why they are doing this. They did think about perhaps having Isle of Dawn download CDs in stores, which I think would make up for not having boxes in them. They are going for a virtual market, which is plausible, but we’ll see how well it works for them. I know I will do my best to get the Isle of Dawn free trial out there to as many people as possible.

There was a lot talked about during this panel, and it even went a little bit into the next panel, which was the State of the Game panel. The only new addition to the panel was Moonlite, all of the former panelist were present. They started us off with a video about what they have implemented in the past, which included: Guild Halls, Ancient Port Warehouse, New Combat Particles, etc. Next they showed us the video of what was coming out in the near future. Both of these videos were made by Tiraslee. Tiraslee actually joined SOE because his videos he did when he was with Silky Venom back in the day. It’s nice to know where people started. He is a really neat guy, and I was honored to be able to sit down and have a talk with him about it. Anyways, the video went over Isle of Dawn, Player Models being revisited, and Pantheon of the Ancients. The final shot was of Nexus and had us all teased to the max.

I had already touched a bit on Isle of Dawn, but I guess I can go over it again. They want it to bring in people. It will be an easy download for us to show our friends, acquaintances, and family in order to give them a feel of what Vanguard is all about.

The new character models or the revisit as they referred to it seemed pretty neat. Once I got home, I was able to take a more in-depth look at it, and I was a bit unsatisfied. First of all, there is something weird going on with all my characters’ faces. Most of my characters are female, so I don’t know if that changes anything. Their mouths all seem off. They look like they are pouting or pissed off nonstop. I don’t really mind the pissed off look, but why does it look like they’re monkeys? The boob slider, no matter where I put it, makes the boobs look kind of silly. They seem really off, like they are going to shoot out and punk you in the face torpedo style. The shoulder pads seem to be floating on my characters. If they moved, I fear it might fall off of them. I guess I shouldn’t harp on all the bad things because they did put in some really nice changes. My Dark Elf now has her long ears back, and her eyes look more Elvin once again. I just feel that there should be a few changes.

Some people didn’t like the new gear that was given to the female characters. There were two sides to the story as there always is. Some like to have their female characters look more feminine in gear, where as others find it to look very slutty or too scandalous. Perhaps, they will try to put in different types of gear, so people can choose what they want. Silius did mention that they could try to do that, but they were trying to go for the more fantasy realm type gear for females. This is one of those situations where you can’t please everyone.

The Pantheon of the Ancients that we once knew as a newbie zone is now an elite group content area. This is similar to Old Targanor mobs for the griffon quest, etc. This will be challenging group content for players. They said that you would not be required to have finished APW in order to group in this area, but you may want to have decent gear, and know your class well. Once you get past the group content, there will be a raiding part of Pantheon of the Ancients! I was excited to hear that it will be a 24 man raid area. Silius did say that from now on they hope to be putting in all 24 man raid content. This is an exciting time for raiders in Vanguard. All we were told as far as content wise was that PotA will be giving us more of the inside scoop on Gods in Vanguard and what their role is in the world of Telon. We were told that there would be a new riftway- a black one. From what I gathered, this riftway would take us to the raid area of PotA, and perhaps, take us to other realms in the future.

Once we have finished the group part of PotA, we were told that we would choose our God and depending on our God, we would pray to him/her and they would give us some kind of blessing. These blessings would be given to us in buff form and last certain amounts of time or till our death. It was interesting, and I can’t wait to see how it all works out. We were told that some content would require these buffs, but most of the current content would not require that we have these blessings. I’m excited and can’t wait to see the new dungeon in action!

After the panels, we had a bit of time to sit down and hang out with the development team which was really cool. They are a great group of people. I learned a lot of information about how the insides of game development work and what not. I am convinced that the Vanguard team really wants to do whatever they can to make content fun and group oriented, but they have to work with the income that they are receiving.

At 6pm, everyone gathered into the huge ball room to hear John Smedley’s speech. For Vanguard players it was not the most memorable moment of being in Vegas. He didn’t mention anything that promoted Vanguard.

After the speech, people were invited to sing karaoke with a live band, get drunk, and hang out with friends and some of the development/community reps of the games.

I found myself playing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition with all my guildies, a few of the Vanguard development staff, along with some spectators. All I can say is that D & D that weekend was one of the best D & D experiences I have ever had. Everyone role played their part, and not one person was out of character unless they were speaking with the Dungeon Master or answering a question. It was good times indeed. We played every day until about 7am at one point. It was crazy, but fun.

The next day we had to be up and at the live quest event by 12pm. For some of us, it was a bit hard after being hung-over and tired. Ellyra had us group up in groups of 6 to 8. We were given a letter, which was poisoned. How lovely, eh? I thought it was a bit cruel of her to do that, but I really think she didn’t want some of us to make it to the ball. (I’m kidding of course. She loves everyone. Nice gal.) Anyways, off we were to do the quest. We went from NPC to NPC figuring out the mystery and finding items for new quests that we received along the way just to get a cure from the curse that we got from the letter. It was interesting, especially since all the developers and community representatives were playing the NPC roles. Very cool event. I’m glad I was a part of it. If you want to hear what our groups were doing and how we spoke to the NPCs check out Episode 52.2. It’s pretty funny.

After the live quest, we were welcomed to the High Level Panel. We had a lot of really good conversations going and Silius was gladly answering all of the questions. He even joked around a bit. I think after being stuck as a Raki all day he might’ve been a bit delusional. (haha) Anyways, we talked about a lot of interesting things. A few diplomacy and crafting questions were asked again, but not that many. Most of the questions were on the adventuring aspect of Vanguard. Most of the information presented was previously known. Pantheon would require players to work together as a team, and that is what they are going for- team work. They said trash mobs would be killable by most high level people, but the named would be challenging and require people to really work as a team. I brought up the idea of having a /anonymous macro for when I am playing on Sartok or even playing in general, and Silius said that Ikik would get on that a.s.a.p, which was really cool. It won’t be in GU6, but perhaps GU7. He also said they’d look into putting a Biography page in like there is in DDO, etc. It was wonderful to hear the developers speak so passionately about the game.

The final panel was the player made quest. It basically went over what was all needed in order to make a quest in Vanguard. They made it a bit more minimal than usual, so that players could get an idea of what goes into making a quest. During this time, Silius and the other developers were answering many questions from the players. I ended up talking to a few people from other sites such as Ten Ton Hammer and Allakazam. We all talked about how we try to promote Vanguard or what our restrictions were, etc. It was interesting and we had a very intellectual conversation that I enjoyed deeply.

Fan Faire was truly an amazing journey and I am so glad that I mustered up the money to make it out there. The “Grand Banquet” was a ton of fun and laughs. Beau’s team had won the live quest which was pretty sweet! I tried to gather as many pictures as I could of people at the Banquet sitting with their guildies, etc. After the Banquet, we had our final D & D night, which was sad, but lots of fun. We even had a few more spectators than in the past. My hotel room was packed full of people just enjoying themselves. If I embarrassed you by asking your name, I’m sorry. I just wanted to make sure I knew who was in my room! =)

Well, I guess that wraps it up, eh? I advise everyone to go to Fan Faire next year. Start saving up now! There are memories I made that I will never forget, and I wish I could share them with you all.

The final day, Vendolyn, Goblin, Merd, Barar, and I saw the Stratosphere, which was really high up in the air. At night, Xaices, Vendolyn, Merd, Barar, and I went to the Bellagio’s and watched the water show. It was beautiful. I stayed up talking to Vendoyl, Merd, Barar, and Beau that night. We had a lot of interesting conversations, and it was sad to see everyone leave. The next morning we were on our way home, wishing we could’ve hung out with everyone all over again.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures, and hopefully, you’ll be able to make it out next year! Maybe, we’ll be going to Europe. Who knows?

~Luper the Dragonslayer