Free To Play EVE

Here's the prediction for an announcement at Fanfest this year: As of Citadel's release we will no longer need to pay our monthly subscription to play EVE Online. Instead we will only have to pay for characters we want to train. If we don't want to train new skills we stop paying.

The evidence is from the dev blog FANFEST 2016 - BRING ON THE WRECKING MACHINE! where they list the cosplay PLEX prizes in terms of "years of training time" rather than years of game time. Check out the image to see it for yourself:

So, dear reader, what do you think? Is this irrefutable evidence that EVE is going free to play and pay to train in the near future? Answers on a postcard.

The main EVE_NT

This year seems to be packed with EVE meets for me. So far I have been to Fanfest in Iceland; I went to the Edinburgh meet organised by Glasgow Dunlop; I also went to his Glasgow meet more recently. Next I will be heading 'abroad' again to the #EVE_NT meet in Nottingham, England organised by my friend and Bastard for life Mr. Nashh Kadavr. The event itself (should that be EVE_NT, ho ho) takes place on the 19th of September at the Antenna Media Centre, Beck Street, Nottingham. It is scheduled to run from 11 am to 11 pm although it remains to be seen how much of that I actually last.

I'm really looking forward to this one. Whilst the Edinburgh and Glasgow meets were really good the EVE_NT gathering feels more like a mini-fanfest. There is swag for guests, a charity raffle, even a tournament. On top of that there's going to be a lot of other EVE players having a great time chatting about the game and comparing notes from opposite sides of epic battles in space. If you are in England in September and interested in going you should check out the website, buy tickets, and add your support to the EVE-O forum thread. For the first time ever my wife is coming to an EVE meet with me. At least one other corp mate is also taking his missus so hopefully they're going to have a good time too. Worst case, our hotel is quite near so I can always get her home then sneak back out for more shenanigans later on :-)

I look forward to meeting yet more EVE players there later this year. You should come too, you know you want to!

Fanfest 2015 - Prelude

I had thought 2013 was going to be my only visit to Fanfest but several months ago the group who met in Iceland that year started to make plans for a return. This time around Fanfest was held earlier in the year so it would coincide with the solar eclipe which was set to be 98% totality when viewed from Iceland. Combining that with a chance to meet up with my space buddies again how could I refuse? Tickets were booked relatively late meaning I couldn't take advantage of any Iceland Air package deals. It worked out much better for me to fly with EasyJet anyway as they do direct flights from Edinburgh and also fly at respectable hours. Last time I stayed in the Cabin Hotel which was a 40 minute walk from Harpa so I decided I was going to stay much closer this time. One of my friends was already booked into  Hotel Leifur Eiriksson so I managed to secure a room there as well. Only 10 minutes walk from Harpa I was in a much better shape should I need to nip back to my room at any point.

Abandoning my family on the Tuesday before Fanfest I flew into Iceland and was immediately captured by the CCP gatecamp at the arrivals gate. The CCP party bus took a coach-load of EVE players to Reykjavik whilst feeding us beers. I was sat next to CCP Archduke who made sure I had a beer in my hand at all times. He works in the Dust514 customer support department and spent a portion of the bus journey trying to convince me to update my Dust client and give the game another try. I promised I would. After a little confusion about where I should be dropped for my hotel I was left slightly merry in the town centre to walk up the hill to my hotel. After so many beers so quickly I definitely needed a walk to burn them off a bit.

I got checked into my hotel, dumped my stuff then headed out to meet my corpies at the nearby Cafe Loki. Sadly one couple were unable to travel to Iceland due to illness which left just five of us from the previous excursion to Fanfest. This meant there was plenty of space to fit around a couple of tables whilst trying some traditional Icelandic food. I stuck with the very tasty meat soup whilst others tried rye bread with some sort of hashed fish topping. Another beer or two was consumed before we decided to head down to the Celtic Cross. On the way we were treated to a nice show of the Aurora Borealis which I later learned was visible a long way south. As may be guessed from the name the Celtic Cross is an Irish pub and we were descending on it during St. Patrick's day. This meant much drinking and the night grew fuzzy rapidly. After talking with so many people I can't remember I eventually made it back to my hotel around one in the morning.

Inside the Celtic Cross was this blurry for me too!

The following day was Wednesday and my little group had arranged to go horse riding. something I'd never done before. CCP had the great idea to start issuing passes early this time around so we met early at the Harpa to collect ours. I wasn't able to collect mine due to being on a Fansite ticket but everyone else got sorted out and we headed off to the collection point for horse riding. A short hop out of Reykjavic and we were at the Íshestar riding centre. The people there were wonderfully friendly and after a short introductory video on how to control their Icelandic horses we were fitted up with helmets and introduced to our horses. I managed to get up into the saddle without any of the comedic falls over the other side which you see in silly films. I was first to mount so had a decent time to try and become accustomed to sitting on the back of a living, breathing animal. It felt weird.

Before long we were off out following a soft trail laid over the lava fields. It was a little windy and snowing ever so gently but I was plenty warm. I'd by lying if I said I had any actual control over the horse. He know the route and followed it well. This became all the more evident when the five of us tried to line up for a group shot and my horse wouldn't move. If you're going to Fanfest and have a spare day you should definitely try some horse riding. These horses are small so even if you do fall (and nobody came close to) you don't have far to go.

Look at your man and back at me, I'm on horse

Dinner that evening had been booked at the slightly fancy 3 Frakkar restaurant. In 2013 we totally failed to get a table there so this time around we booked two months in advance. The focus on the menu here is traditional Icelandic food. I finally tried the fermented shark (Hakarl) I'd been avoiding and gagged on it. I tried smoked puffin which tasted smoky and mustardy and quite nice actually, I struggled with the raw texture though. I passed on the raw Minky whale 'cooked' in lemon juice. My main was Atlantic Salmon which was very tasty indeed. A slightly pricey place to eat but the food is truly wonderful. You should go.

Outside my hotel

With our many months old booking finally fulfilled we headed back to the Celtic Cross but the Tweetfleet meetup was happening so there was no chance of us getting in there. After the excesses of the previous night we decided that would be a good point to call it a day and head home for a sleep. Tomorrow was the first day of Fanfest.

Fanfest 2015

Finally, it is but two days until I board my flight to Iceland for Fanfest 2015. Those of you who've read my blog long enough will remember I went to Fanfest in 2013 with a number of my corp mates. This time around the same group were all booked to go but one couple had to pull out at the last minute due to ill health - get well soon Brodit! I'll be thinking of you, mate!

I fly out to Iceland on Tuesday and will be staying for seven whole days this time. Learning my lesson from last year, when I stayed at the Cabin hotel, I booked significantly closer this time around. With a bit of luck I should have a nice view of Hallgrímskirkja from my room or, failing that, at least a nice view when I leave the hotel to walk down to the Harpa conference centre.

As I went on the Golden Circle tour last time I was there I have Wednesday pretty free at the moment. The weather looks a bit crazy there so I'm going to play it by ear what I get up to that day. I understand early registration is possible so I should at least take care of that; standing in the biting wind in 2013 was not fun especially considering I was wearing my kilt!

Party at the Top of the World 2013 : No idea who was playing by this point!

I installed the guidebook.com app CCP are using this year to digitally distribute their schedule and I've marked down the things I'm interested in going to see. I can't figure out how to share this so other people can see what talks I'm going to even though it appears the app supports that. If I figure it out you should be able to find me on that with the unsurprising name of 'Oreamnos Amric'.

My rough schedule just now looks like this:

Thursday 19th:
12:00 pm : Welcome to Fanfest and the Future of VR
 1:00 pm : A Brutor Guide to Empyrean Health
 2:00 pm : Game Design Panel
 3:25 pm : EVE Fan Art
 4:00 pm : Bro, do you even test?!
 5:00 pm : EVE Online Keynote

Friday 20th:
 8:30 am : Solar Eclipse Viewing
11:00 am : Community Fansites
12:00 pm : Make EVE Real - Creating Planetary Civilizations
 1:00 pm : Crowd Science in EVE Online
 2:00 pm : Evolution of the CSM
 3:00 pm : Data Science Behind EVE
 4:00 pm : Zero to HERO: How to be an FC
 4:25 pm : The Importance of Building Relationships
 5:00 pm : Worlds Collide
 9:00 pm : Pub Crawl

Saturday 21st:
11:00 am : From Science Fiction to Science Fact
12:00 pm : Wormholes round table
 1:00 pm : Future Vision of Structures
 3:00 pm : CCP Security - Better Safe Than Sorry!
 4:00 pm : EVE: Valkyrie Rumble in Reykjavik - Semi-Finals and Final
 5:00 pm : Closing Ceremony
 8:00 pm : Party at the Top of the World

Sunday 22nd:
10:30 am : Blue Lagoon Hangover Party

To be clear, any and all of the above might change depending on what the people I am meeting up with fancy doing. In particular I'm still swaying over the pubcrawl with a dev and may yet buy a ticket for that.

If you want to catch up with me the above list is a good place to start. Failing that, send me a tweet @Oreamnos_Amric and I can let you know where I'm hiding. Above all, if you're going to Fanfest I hope you have a bloody good time. If you're not going, well, nya! nya! :-p

Edit : Just 'accidentally' bought a ticket for the pub crawl with a dev. See you there!

Fanfest 2014

In not very many minutes Fanfest 2014 begins. Sadly I am not there this year. I have paid for the HD stream from twitch.tv so I can watch as much of the event as possible. Even with PLEX prices as high as they are it was still worth splurging some ISK rather than real cash on this. I am looking forward to seeing whether EVE gets some more love this year than last.

For convenience I have added a page link at the top of my blog for easy access to the live stream. I encourage you to watch to while mentally preparing to save the cash to fly to Iceland for next year.

Alternative Fanfest Meetup - 2014

Unfortunately I will not be going to Fanfest this year. Last year I was lucky enough to go on a stag-do and wedding in Boston, shortly followed by Fanfest. Both trips were without my wife or kids. Understandably I am dedicating most, if not all of my vacation days to doing stuff with my family this year. Also, after two very wintry locations last year I want somewhere with warm sunshine and a relaxing pool!

I don't want to entirely do away the essence of fanfest this year so have organised a gathering in Edinburgh on Saturday the 3rd of May from around 18:30. I'm aiming for at least twenty others who can't make it to Iceland to stage our own mini-fanfest party. CCP have even promised some swag for me to give away (which I'll believe when it drops through my door).

What's not to like behind that bar?

Details:

What: EVE Gathering
When: 18:30, May 3rd, 2014
Where: Lebowskis, Edinburgh, Scotland (website link)

If you do plan to come please reply to my EVE forum post which should convince other people who are not sure to also come. Hope to see you there.

FanFest 2013: Party at the Top of the World

After the 'CCP Presents' presentation there were only two things left for me to do, party and go home. Unfortunately both these things were to run concurrently and test my stamina somewhat. I'm fairly sure a decade ago when I first tried EVE this would have been a trivial matter, but now I'm older and allegedly wiser. Although if that was true I'd probably have booked a later flight home.

A bunch of us went out for food together. It would be most of IoS's last meal together. To say meeting my corp and alliance mates was wonderful would be understating the point somewhat. They are all as great guys (and girl) in real life as they are as disembodied voices on comms. I'd happily go anywhere to hang out with them again. As a result of us going to eat we missed the first two hours of the party at the top of the world. Sadly this meant no Roxor for me. At least we got there in time for Skálmöld and I discovered a whole new genre of music to listen to. The harmonies, tempo changes and chanting without music really struck a cord with me and I've been listening to it since coming home. Seriously, go listen to Skálmöld now.

Skálmöld - The boys in blue

After watching Skálmöld's set we took a wander through the capsuleer's private lounge. As cheesy as it sounds this had me feeling as close in real life to pod pilot as I'm ever likely to come. No idea why, just knowing it was a private lounge was special. Maybe it's how I picture the clubs in the capsuleer areas of Jita 4-4 - dark room; banging tunes; full of eggers hanging out with their mates. There's an interesting video made it up on Facebook of me throwing some crazy shapes while bekilted. Thankfully I can't link it here to embarrass myself.

Continuing to drink £5 cans of Polar Beer and finishing the whisky in my hip flask I spent the rest of the evening bouncing between the two stages.

DJ set

I had never planned to stay to the bitter end of the party, knowing I had a very early flight home. Similarly I had no plans to get some sleep know I'd never wake up in time for the flight. Thankfully one of those plans worked and walking back to my hotel after the bitter end of the party saw me have almost an hour to stand in the shower and sober up before the bus to the airport. I was still in a bad state as I made myself some breakfast an hour later - my cup of coffee mostly ended in the saucer due to a rather shaky hand. Handing my room key in was troubling as I simply couldn't find it anywhere. The hotel clerk was okay about me losing it and said not to worry. Bizarrely, the key spontaneously appeared in my back pocket just before getting on the bus... WTF, I'd looked there more than once!??

The return journey was Bus→Airplane→Bus→Train→Another train→Walk and merely 12 hours after leaving a massive party in Iceland I was home in Scotland. This ended the longest journey I've ever had home from the pub. It also ended a very fun week where I got to hang out with a lot of EVE players and generally have a fantastic time. Once I recovered from the journey home I declared to my wife that I'm taking the family to the beautiful and wonderful country of Iceland for a holiday. I've not worked out how to say I'd like to go to another fanfest though.

If you are thinking about going to fanfest I can offer one piece of advice - do it. You won't regret it in the slightest.

FanFest 2013: Saturday

Today was always going to be a monster day. Not only was there a full day of talks to go, there was also the famous Party At The Top Of The World to attend at night. To add to all that I had yet to visit the imposing Hallgrímskirkja church and was determined to do so before going home. With all this planned it was probably inevitable that I would sleep in and miss the EVE Movie Morning where I had promised to meet friends. This first I knew of that was a text message asking where I was. Oh well, guess I also missed breakfast...

I made it to Harpa in time to meet up with everyone at the end of the movie session. Apparently I didn't miss much. In my imagination I'd pictured the complete Clear Skies trilogy to  be played, but it wasn't to be. The EVE in China talk was very interesting. Their nullsec is even more homogenised that what we find in the west. Not only that but the price of PLEX in the China server is something like 5 times what we pay. This price pretty much matches up with inflated prices of minerals and battleships so life isn't as bad as it may first seem for our Chinese counterparts. The presentation from the Chinese team ended with a great clip of many players on the China server saying hello to us on the other server.

Next up was the final Make EVE Real talk. This one was from Michael Laine of LiftPort Group. The talk started discussing the difficulties of making a space elevator from Earth due to current known materials not being strong enough. The solution discussed was to build a space elevator down to the Moon from the Lagrange point between the Moon and Earth. This would have the two benefits of proving space elevator technology could work in practice while also claiming the microgravity environment of the Lagrange point for LiftPort Group. Truth be told, this second point seemed to be more of interest to Michael Laine. Out of the three talks this one set up the shortest timescale yet the speaker seemed the least confident that he would succeed. He started with talking about his failures and continued through the talk mentioning it and how close to running out of money his group is. The highlight of the talk was Michael announcing his EVE character name. Last time I looked the bounty on him was well into the billions.

I thought the Games as Art - EVE at the MoMA talk would be a nice change of pace. After grabbing something to eat I went in a bit late and missed the very start. I quickly decided I wasn't enjoying the "comfy chair coffee table chat on a stage" discussion and headed off for a walk to the Hallgrímskirkja church. Did I mention it was cold, windy and I was wearing a kilt? It didn't take too long to get to the church. There is a long road leading up to the imposing structure, which just keeps getting bigger and bigger as you walk up to it. Outside there is a statue to Leif Ericson who is regarded as the first European to land in North America. Inside the church you can pay to go to the top of the tower and look out across Reykjavik. Bizarrely, while up there I ended up explaining to a tourist who wasn't in Iceland for fanfest what EVE was all about. He said he'd give the game a go when he got home. Walking back to the Harpa attracted some attention to my kilt. Some kids stopped me to ask if I was cold - I wasn't particularly. Another car stopped when I was crossing and I got a thumbs up from the driver followed by his son shouting "Axl Rose" at me - I was in a red kilt and black leather jacket. I was glad to get back to Harpa though, I wasn't cold but I was definitely warmer indoors.

CCP Presents was the final presentation of FanFest. As with the previous end-of-day talks there was a certain feeling of surreality that I was there. This was the magical end to FanFest where CCP likes to tease with things that are coming and things that are dreamt of. Collectors Edition box set, Books, TV series, Player-built stargates. Wait... player built stargates? Holy shit!

FanFest 2013: Friday

Most of today's events that I was interested in were scheduled to happen in the main 'Tranquility' hall. The morning started with a talk on a decade of Eve's economy. It's taken me so long to write this up that I can't remember any specifics though. What I do remember is that the amount of analysis done on the economy of New Eden is impressive. Dr. EyjoG clearly enjoys his job and that came across well in the presentation he gave. I went to the talk on merging econonmies on Thurday as well and he gave a good talk then. I wish he put more stuff out in dev blogs but I can understand why he doesn't.

Around after the economics talk were scheduled two talks on Dust - Planetary Conquest and Advancing the core. The whole planetary conquest looked really interesting. This could be a great hook to differentiate Dust from all the other FPS shooters out there. The galaxy map they made for the PS3 also looks really sweet and a few EVE players were asking when we would get it on the EVE client. All in all, a lot of cool stuff going into Dust.

After two hours of sitting in TQ I really needed food and a beer and it was time to wander the halls again. Having seen it all the day before meant there were no real surprises. I'm sure the EVE Store was putting more, different t-shirts out which were testing my resolve. I held my will restating to myself that I would buy some when I got home. This decision is still haunting me as the EVE store still doesn't have them for sale.

The "Make EVE Real - Asteroid Mining" talk was another good talk. I'd not read anything about real world asteroid mining so everything I heard here was new. It was fascinating to learn about the abundance of what we consider scarce metals we could acquire from mining real asteroids. I particularly liked their design for sending out swarms of probes which would autonomously function together to scan and return data on asteroid compositions. I'd love to work somewhere involved in designing such systems. Something for EVE to consider bringing into the game? A mining scanner mini-game perhaps which increases or decreases asteroid yield depending on how well you scan?

The final event of the day was, of course, the EVE Keynote. Having watched this on a stream in the past there was something special about actually being in the audience. And, oh my the shiny eye candy. I think it's all out now in Odyssey but if you haven't seen the presentation, here's the Youtube video for your enjoyment.

FanFest 2013: Thurday

My halting walk home last night resulted in a rather late arrival to my hotel. This was exacerbated by discovering the alliance server was broken and nobody had Teamspeak, Jabber or our forums to communicate with. An hour spent fixing that and then I could sleep... Five hour later and I was awake again getting ready for day one of the actual Fanfest event.

In case you forgot why you were there. This was at the top of the main stairs.

There was no snow today but a pretty strong wind was making itself felt. This was particularly unfortunate as I had elected to wear my kilt resulting in a rather brisk half hour walk. When I got to the Harpa there was no immediate relief from the wind as I joined the queue about 100 meters from the entrance. Kudos to CCP for effecting such an efficient method for getting people into the event. I was sure it was going to take at least three times longer than it actually did. To be honest, once I got inside the door and away from the cold wind I wasn't particularly bothered about the queue anymore. Once at the front it was pretty straightforward getting my swag-bag, t-shirt and entry pass and then I was free to wander around.

Efficient registration table is efficient

Inside, a few things were still being set up. There was no sign of the Steelseries guys to collect the free mouse mat. Razor had some things out on their display but nothing I wanted to buy. The relaunched EVE store was well stocked with a wonderful variety of t-shirts which I foolishly decided to buy once I got back home. Foolish in that the EVE store isn't selling them, D'Oh! After wandering around the crush for a while the corpmate I was with had to head off to meet his partner and I was left to wander around on my own. Not for long though as more corpmates magically appeared and we got some food and beers.

The first talk I went to was "Make EVE Real - Bringing FTL to IRL". This seemed odd to be going to an EVE Fanfest yet starting at a talk only loosely related to the game. It was a rather interesting talk from Dr. Richard Obousy of Icarus Interstellar (now there's a cool name for your CV). He presented his very ambition timeline to make interstellar travel a reality by 2100. Interstellar travel on the scale of a human lifetime requires faster than light travel. Dr. Obousy's talk was based around past examples of the speed humans exploit a new technology - on average it seems to be about 50 years from discovery to widespread use of some game-changing breakthrough. The main thing I though he was missing in his talk was that Icarus Interstellar is yet to find this breakthrough. I guess they have about 30 years before their schedule becomes tight though. Other than that point the talk was very enjoyable but didn't really tell me anything new.

After some wandering around, meeting up with more corpmates, watching people play the very cool, very R-type-like EVE arcade game, and drinking a few more beers, we headed up to queue for the Dust 514 keynote. I've played a little of Dust and have my character in Dust Uni but I don't really have that great an understanding of what's going on. I run at people, shoot them and die, rinse then repeat. They announced new drop suits, new weapons, new vehicles and a much needed new skill tree. The best thing they announced was the updates to the graphics. I was glad to see this because I find Dust looks a bit dated compared to other shooters like the new Halo. Hopefully these new graphics would polish it up a bit. Still there were enough bitter EVE players mooching around complaining about Dust 514 taking dev time away from EVE. You'd think that would make them happy as anytime CCP make changes in EVE the forums turn into a war of "how dare you change stuff".

After the keynote we headed back to the Celtic Cross to find it packed out the door. Someone made a very ill-advised comment to a corpmate about her height and received a well deserved kick to the shins. Deciding that it was too busy we went elsewhere for a quiet drink then actually had the early night I had planned for the previous evening.

FanFest 2013: Wednesday

Um, well so much for my plan to write up Fanfest in a week... There's a lot of stuff happening in-game just now that I'll try and write about later. For now let's get on with the story of my Iceland adventure.

After waking from not enough sleep I got myself ready and fed then headed off to the Harpa conference centre. There was a bit of a shock as I went outside and discovered it was snowing. This is what I had hoped for in Iceland so I wasn't too unhappy with this turn of events. After a thirty minute walk I met with some corp mates and we all piled onto bus number one. I'll probably remember that was the bus number forever as it was repeated many, many times by the guide. After a rapidly abandoned attempt to check our tickets the bus set off.

Our first stop was to be Þingvellir, a rift-valley where the original Icelandic parliament used to meet for two weeks each summer. It is also one of only two places in the world where you can walk between two continental plates as all other such gaps are underwater. We were told that this is a lovely place to come camping in summer with temperatures reaching as high as 20-30°C but it was hard to imagine that in the snow and wind. The scenery was beautiful thought and I would love to go back there in summer with a tent and try the camping.

America to the left, Europe to the right (or is it the other way around?)

Leaving Þingvellir we got back on our bus and headed for a long drive to the Gulfoss waterfall. On the way we were told a wonderful story about the rescue of this gorgeous waterfall from being used to generate electricity - something that would have ruined the beauty of the area. Gulfoss was first saved by Tómas Tómasson and then by his daughter, Sigríður Tómasdóttir. His daughter even went to the extreme lengths of threatening to throw herself into the falls. Thankfully she didn't have to go that far to save this picturesque spot in Iceland. We didn't really have enough time to visit the waterfall and enjoy lunch. Choosing to visit the waterfall first left us with about four minutes to eat. Another corp mate promised to web and scram the bus to give us a bit longer.

Gulfoss waterfall

Our final stop, Geysir, was only a short hop away and as you can possibly tell from its name is where all other geysers are named for. There is something odd about walking around in the cold with patches of snow on the ground while watching boiling water bubble away naturally in holes in the ground. I previously saw a cold geyser in Germany but that was just a piddly little thing compared to these giant erupting pools of sulphurous water. There is something rather compelling to standing around waiting for hot water to fling itself into the air in a gush of water, steam, and sulphur pong. There is also something rather eerie about being in a landscape with all the steam drifting around. I think the eeriness would have been wonderfully enhanced had I not been surrounded by hundreds of other people.

Did you bring any teabags?

That night a number of us had tickets to go see the Iceland Symphony Orchestra playing songs from EVE. After grabbing some noodle soup not to far from Harpa we headed back for the performance. I was happy to find our seats were almost right at the front of a very packed theatre. It seemed to take ages before the orchestra were ready, everyone quietened down, and we waited. The big surprise for me was watching the conductor shuffle to his position whilst also playing a didgeridoo. The whole event was magical. A large screen behind the orchestra was showing footage from various EVE promo videos and the orchestra played maybe nine tunes from the game. Most of them I recognised but a couple were not so familiar. It's been a long time since I last turned the music up in EVE. Maybe I should start turning it up again when I'm doing solo stuff.

After heading off for a couple of drinks the icing on the Iceland cake came in the form of getting to take pictures of the Aurora Borealis - the Northern Lights. We just on-spec headed down a pier at the harbour to get some black sky between us and where the Aurora should appear. We were almost about to give up and head back to our hotels when a green ribbon appeared in the sky. Cue furious long-exposure photography without a tripod. I suspect there may be a couple of humerous pictures of me sprawled flat on the ground propping my camera against rocks and anything else I could find. After leaving everyone it took ages for me to get back to my hotel as the display lasted over an hour and I kept finding new places to stop and take more pictures.

Beautiful Aurora Borealis

What a magical end to the perfect day of sightseeing around Iceland.

FanFest 2013: Tuesday

After dispatching my wife and children to work, nursery and child minder respectively it was time for me to make the long pilgrimage to Iceland. This would involved walking, trains, buses and hopefully just one aeroplane. The one and a half mile walk to the train station struck home to me that it had been over ten years since I went back packing around the globe and I was long past accustomed to carrying such weight. It felt like I would never get to the train station but, of course, I did. There then followed an almost perfect set of connections which got me to Glasgow airport, through check-in and security with almost no delay, and before I knew it I was sitting with some corp mates and some Zebras drinking in the airport bar.

I'm not used to lunchtime drinking so after only two lagers I had a bit of a buzz going on. The flight to Iceland was rather boring although another fanfest attendee commented that the landscape while descending to land was "like landing in Mordor".

I did my shopping in the arrival duty-free area to get some wine and a bottle of whisky for my hip-flask. Two top tips: 1) When buying wine either make sure you have a cork-screw with you or pick a bottle of wine with a screw top. 2) When buying whisky buy something nice, don't pick a blended malt just because the name makes you think of Game of Thrones (King Robert the Second was the whisky). The final bus journey of the day seemed to take forever but I was finally at my hotel and in a pokey wee room. Hotel Cabin would appear to be so named as the rooms are the same size as the inside cabins in a ferry. An added feature was my window which opened inside the hotel.

Those blue curtains protect me from the hallway

After dropping my stuff and calling home I had a brisk walk to the Harpa conference centre followed by random direction changes trying to catch up with corp mates to go have food. While waiting outside Muan Thai on Laugavegur for more corp mates to find us we were treated to a display of how Icelanders handle shoplifters. An old, drunk guy had pinched a sandwich from the supermarket under the Thai restaurant. After a discussion with a large store employee the drunk guy decided to take a cheeky bite from his stolen sandwich. This resulted in the employee picking the old guy up by his armpits and bodily hauling him back into the store.

Tasty Thai food consumed and it was time to park ourselves in the Celtic Cross so the rest of my attending corp mates could find us. Over a short time everyone turned up and we parked in the little booth just to the left inside the door. We designated it a C3 as there was only one way out and in but we couldn't decided whether the rest of the bar was hisec or lowsec. Yes it's sad but yes we were drinking (and drinking, and drinking). It was brilliant to finally meet these people I've been hanging out on comms with for almost two years for some of them. Also spoke with people from other corps who were filling the rest of the bar. The atmosphere was great. Eventually we realised we were the last people in the bar and thought it might be a good idea to head home. We all had to be up for the Golden Circle tour the following morning.

Geyser campers

Still on the golden circle tour. It is amazing how compelling it is to hang around for a jet of boiling water to shoot into the air.

Snowfest

Iceland clearly felt my disappointment at the lack of snow when I got here yesterday. This morning all has been changed and I'm walking in a winter wonderland.

Almost There

This was my phone's satnav signal approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. Yes, I truly am there. My mind is in awe of where I am.

Fanfest: 2013

Dear Reader,

I am off to fanfest. I hope to return with tales of the wonders of Iceland, photos of CCPs outstanding hospitality, anecdotes of hilarious exploits and news of what's coming in the next expansion. Chances are, however, that I will be drinking far too much to remember anything and I'll be using the photos as much as you to work out what happened.

I'm actually quite nervous about the whole trip. I've never been to any sort of fanfest thing before. I've certainly not been to anything even close to this alone. To be honest I hate travelling alone as I find it is much less enjoyable when there is nobody to share it. Although I have a number of my alliance also going they generally have their partners with them so I don't expect to intrude on their holidays too much. My partner is stuck at home with our two children. Yes, we did consider all going until my wife learned what the average temperature would be and said "Sod that!".


                                                                                  See you there?
                                               Orea

More Fanfest 2013

Hot on the heels of buying tickets for flights and accommodation for Fanfest 2013 comes an email to my inbox. The email tells me that tickets for the event itself are now on sale. Not only that, the tickets for excursions and evening events are also on sale. I quite fancy the golden circle tour with the devs followed by an evening listening to the Iceland Symphony Orchestra perform some of the tracks from EVE Online. I think the pub crawl with a dev will also be on the cards.

This is all getting exciting and it's still months away. Maybe my credit card will recover from all the purchasing of tickets to afford me some beer tokens so I can actually drink whilst there.

Fanfest 2013

Okay so I did it. I didn't expect to this far in advance, but I have. Flights, accommodation and time off work are all booked and I will be attending Fanfest 2013. To be honest I am slightly stunned that I'm going. I can't say I've ever attended anything like Fanfest before, certainly not travelling there by myself. To be fair though, there are so many people going from my corp and alliance that I shouldn't be alone for long. This is going to be some party to celebrate ten years of EVE and I am really looking forward to it.

About a year ago I went to the EVE meetup in Edinburgh which was an interesting experience. Somewhat early on in the evening the group was split in two due to differences in opinion as to where to go next and it appears I ended up in the group who had less fun. I'm sure Fanfest will be a million times better than that experience though.

I'm a little concerned about the timing of the flight home though. It leaves rather early in the morning after the big party. I'm not expecting to make much use of the hotel bed on that last night.

Hypocritical Idiocy

Hopefully this is the last I'll have to write on the whole Mittens Fanfest controversy. Actually, I'll state it now: This is the last I will write about that whole pile of fail. Three posts is way too much.

On Friday night DJ Funky Bacon on Eve Radio¹ hosted a show dedicated to the whole Mittensgate issue. On the show while I was listening were Seleene and Two Step. To be honest I wasn't paying that much attention as the show just seemed to be going back over everything I've read since the whole thing kicked off. Also it was way past bedtime and I was tired.

The interesting part happened after I headed off for some sleep. The Mittani himself appeared on the show and during the interview someone decided it would be a good idea to post the alleged real address of one Alexander Gianturco, aka. Mittens. This was not the wisest thing that someone could have decided to do, but this is the internet and stupid things like that happen from sub-par intellectuals (or drunk people). The really, really dumb thing happened just after when some other twit decided to post an incitement to go visit said address and "rape [Mittens'] wife".

Now I'm not sure if suggesting such a thing could ever be deemed acceptable. Even amongst my close friends where a certain level of personal insults can be freely distributed we would never veer within a hundred miles of  such a sick suggestion as that. And that's where we all know exactly how to take each other. An in-game chat room full of random people? Really?

Whatever came before that statement with Mittens' ill advised comments at fanfest this guy should not have ever suggested such a thing. I'm glad I didn't see the comment or know the character name; I personally don't ever want to know if I'm online at the same time as that sick guy. I really hope he gets a permanent ban to remove him from the Eve gene pool forever. I also suspect someone may also have to give the guy pointers on why his actions are more than a little hypocritical.

¹ If you don't listen to Eve Radio you should. The music tends to be good, the DJs I've heard are a high calibre and they sometimes organise roams or other events².
² Why yes, I am flirting with Jester-esque footnotes.

Unrepresentative

The final result is in for The Mittani's punishment against his ill advised comments at fanfest. To limit the damage Mittens had already apologised to the victim, as he should have, and donated a significant sum of ISK to him as well. Additionally Mittens decided to step down from the position of CSM chairman with the intention of retaining an ordinary place on the CSM.

It appears this plan had failed to succeed to appease CCP. Yesterday CCP issued a statement that Mittens would be receiving a 30 day ban as per their Ts&Cs. As a result, Mittens would not be eligible to sit on CSM7 at all.

So, what does this mean for the CSM? Well, CCP and the CSM just lost one of the most successful CSM members to date. They have also just removed the single most popular candidate ever, regardless of behind the scenes machinations. Let's look at the numbers:

This CSM had the highest turnout of any CSM vote so far at 16.63%, which equates to 59,109 votes. Mittens himself received 10,058 votes which was more than double any other single candidate and around a quarter of the total successful votes. With Mittens' participation excised from CSM7 we might as well cancel out all ten thousand votes he received meaning a equivalent voter turnout of 13.8%.

This equivalent voter turn out is less than the turnout for the highly effective CSM6 but still more than the less effective CSM5. The main thing I understand from CSM5 is that they apparently built a solid foundation for CSM6 but did little else other than mass-resign. So, let's see if CSM7 has the player support to actually do something useful this term now that CCP has removed 23% of their influence. It will also now be interesting to see who takes the position of Chair - Two Step or Trebor.