The first day of Fanfest is in the books. First, a couple of general observations. Having a little advanced knowledge freely handed out by CCP is strange. Access to the press room where I can store my laptop and coat helps a lot. The press also got to sit up on the 4th floor balcony. I’m not so sure that was as much as to give the members of the fourth estate a good view as much as to make sure they don’t get in the way of the players who’ve journeyed to see the presentations.
Since I picked up my press badge on Monday, I could bypass the check-in and proceed directly to the press room for the briefing at 9:30am. Besides getting a heads-up on what CCP considered the highlights of the convention, we received a link to download the press packet. That’s right, no grabbing screenshots from the VOD this year.
A little before 11am CCP Grendel and his crew shuffled us off to the main hall for the opening ceremonies. We got to see the end of the practice session, which answered one of my long-standing questions: why do the doors always open late?
At the opening session, we saw the usual banter between CCP Guard and a streamer, with Bjorn Bee replacing Manic Velocity as the player presenter this year. The first bit of interesting news was that Andrew Groen is writing a second book and his Kickstarter campaign launched Thursday morning.
About 45 minutes into the presentation, Hilmar made his entrance to talk a little about what was going on with CCP. He started off by giving an update on the Serenity server. The future looks promising for a continued presence of EVE in China. Whether CCP retains its partnership with TienCity remains to be seen.
Next, Hilmar addressed the state of virtual reality gaming at CCP. He stated that CCP will continue to support Valkyrie, Sparc, and Gunjack, but that the market is not big enough to support continued development of new titles.
After the update about VR, Hilmar moved on to two games originally discussed at EVE Vegas: Project Aurora and Project Nova. The mobile game, as first reported by Venture Beat, was renamed from Project Aurora to EVE: War of Ascension. The game picked up a publisher, Kongregate, and players could download the latest version of the game and play in Harpa. I don’t recall Hilmar giving a release date, but the Venture Beat article indicated a 2018 release.
Hilmar began the segment about CCP’s first person shooters with a mention of DUST 514. He then moved on to discuss Project Nova. Hilmar reiterated that the game would be a PC-based game that does not connect to EVE Online. A piece of information CCP has communicated over time, but still news to people who don’t follow CCP closely. Hilmar also displayed a link to sign up for access to the game. In possibly the biggest news of the opening ceremonies, Hilmar announced the game would launch in months, not years. I expect the game to release sometime in 2018.
The next presentation of interest to EVE players was Andrew Groen’s announcement of his next book, Empires of EVE: Volume 2. The book is a direct sequel of Volume 1, picking up after the fall of Band of Brothers and ending in 2016. The good news for those awaiting the book is that Andrew says the book is already halfway done, with EVE screenshots provided by Razorien.
The Kickstarter for the book launched on Thursday and he found out from the audience at the end of the presentation that the $12,500 goal had already been reached. An hour after he left the stage, the amount had surpassed $30,000.
After attending the keynote and drinking a lot afterward, I decided not to publish my thoughts about the content right now. I think to fairly judge the keynote, I need to attend the Triglavian Domain and Ship and Modules sessions today and the Structures presentation tomorrow. Notably, we were told in the press briefing those were can't miss sessions. But the fact I'm not excited following the keynote is an indication I'm not really excited. Also, the audience response was really muted compared to past years.
I have to end the post because I have to get ready for the Triglavian Domain presentation, so I have to wrap up the post now. I'll try to write something coherent tonight as I don't plan on going on the pub crawl. Buses and Brennivin don't mix.
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