Fanfest 2012 - Day 1

Due to some internet connection problems, this post is a day late so I'm posting on a Saturday to try to catch up.  Since this Fanfest is not my first gaming convention, I looked at the schedule and figured out I didn't need to get my badge as soon as the doors opened.  I think people had the same idea as there was still a line starting at the bottom of the stairs.  I think I only had to wait 10 minutes to get my access badge and sign up for a group for the pub crawl Friday night.

I got to the first presentation, "Shoot The Shit w/Unifex", before the hall filled up but there was a problem.  Apparently Eve Online's Senior Producer, John Lander (aka CCP Unifex) was unable to make it.  A bad beginning for the con.  CCP Guard and CCP Darth Beta filled in and instead gave an introduction to what was happening during Fanfest.  That lasted about 30 minutes, with a lot of time to wait for the next event, a discussion on Crimewatch.

Crimewatch is something I think players will begin to hear more of.  A function that controls aggression flagging, global criminal cooldowns, loot rights, kill mails and a bunch of things I didn't have time to write down.  Basically the function is a mess and needs to be rewritten.  The work is just beginning with the first changes occurring in April (probably with the pre-patch for Inferno) which we won't see because they will be back end processes.

Some of the changes include the creation of a single 15 minute aggression times, an option to keep the client open until fully logged off, and a weapons timer that means that someone assisting with aggression will also receive a cooldown timer.  Or as CCP Greyscale said, God hates station games.

The biggest change will be the creation of a third state of criminal activity, "suspect".  Basically suspect status is like committing a mistomeanor, like shooting at someone in low-sec.  If you kill someone while you are suspect your security status can't go below -5.  Also, players will be able to raise their security standings by killing players with negative security status.

I know that I didn't get all of the details so go visit the forum thread or make sure you watch the video when CCP posts it on YouTube.

At 1500 I went to a round table called "Black Ops and You".  DNS Black alsong with two other members of Dirt Nap Squad along with a dev talked about ideas on fighting with stealty ships while DNS Black passed out Jim Beam.  From the Golden Circle tour the day before I knew he couldn't get any of his favored Jagermeister because the duty-free store ran out.  It was a pretty good back and forth with DNS Black and his crew looking at maintaining the elite (or niche) status of black ops within Eve.

The final event I attended was the CSM panel.  Quite frankly I could have done without it but there was nothing else to attend.  However I did come up with one interesting statistic that I found on the slide with the vote totals from prior years.  In last year's election, 49,096 votes were cast for a voter turnout of 14.25%, meaning that there was a pool of 344,533 accounts that were eligible to vote in 2011.  This year, 59,109 votes cast represented a 17.49% voter turnout.  That means that this year 337,959 accounts were eligible to vote, a decrease of almost 6,600 from the year before.  I will have to look up to see if the voting eligibility changed, but just from those numbers it appears that CCP did not recover all of the accounts that left after the Incarna launch last year.

After leaving the site I went to a place called Hlölla Bátar.  It is a nice little sandwich shop right outside the doors of the hotel that I have become quite fond of.  After that I stopped by The Celtic Cross for a drink and then it was time for bed.  The economy presentation was first thing in the morning, and since I couldn't hook up to the internet and blog I got some needed sleep.