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 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.

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.