Get the sick-bag ready, it’s time for Eve Vegas 2016 held at Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino! Of course, you’ll only need the sick-bag for the flight right?
With plenty of activities and lots to see all packed into one action filled weekend, sometimes it’s nice to have an itinerary to figure out when and where you’ll be purchasing your drinks fro-…er, what the schedule of everything is. All joking aside, the organizers of the EVE Vegas event have done a great job putting together an engaging itinerary, as well as getting a map up on their site in hopes that none of the out-of-towners will get lost. Without further ado, the event schedule:
Friday
Friday will of course be the day to get yourself all registered at the will call, which opens up at 11AM. Don’t fret if you can’t make it on Friday though, registration will continue throughout the weekend for any latecomers. 4PM is when the festivities officially begin, with the Welcome To EVE Vegas address, followed by the EVE Online Keynote presentation where the CCP representatives will give an overview of the many things happening in EVE Online, surely with lots of graphs and stats to accompany it for those interested in that kind of thing. Last but most certainly not least on Friday is the infamous Pub Crawl, which will meet up in the Planet Hollywood mezzanine at 7PM. You’re welcome to get crazy, but maybe try not to get too crazy because there’s plenty to do on Saturday!
Saturday
Saturday’s festivities will be split between 2 different halls, Ballroom 7 / 8 and Melrose 3. Ballroom 7 / 8 will be host to the brunt of the activities, while Melrose 3 will be where the various round table discussions will be had, highlighting topics such as Balance, Game Design, and Clone States, along with the CSM Panel at the end of the day. Ballroom 7 / 8 will be where the more presentation oriented activities will be going on, and is the part of the event that will be streamed on CCP’s Twitch which will be starting at 10AM on Saturday (Twitch stream coverage will be active through the whole event, starting at 3PM on Friday). Keep in mind that PLEX and SKIN giveaways aren’t just for the attendees of EVE Vegas, but for those watching on the Twitch stream as well, so it’s worth it to tune in and see if you can win yourself a little something for your curiousity. Twitch stream viewers will also have the chance to win themselves some new graphics cards from Nvidia, giving all the more reason to watch!
Things will kick off in Ballroom 7 / 8 with with The EVE: Valkyrie Development Story, which is an hour long session starting at 10:30AM, and will be followed by Wormhole Space From Scratch presented by Keskora Yaari. That will be followed by a 1 hour Game Design presentation by CCP as well as a break for lunch. Attendees will be welcomed back after lunch at 2PM by Marc Scarus with his presentation of Inside the EVE Media as well as Cultivating a Counter Culture in New Eden presented by the dynamic presentation duo of Mynxee and Johnny Splunk. Up next is the CCP presentation regarding the Clone States mechanics, which is one of the biggest changes being made to Eve in the upcoming patch, and arguably one of the biggest changes being made to EVE Online in recent memory. The Clone States presentation will run for an hour, and will be followed in the Melrose 3 room by the Clone States Roundtable, for those how may be looking to follow up the presentation with some questions.
Back in Ballroom 7 / 8 however, a presentation about The Nomadic Life will be given by Reza Najafi, followed by a presentation by Jayne Fillon on How to be a Content Creator. Given the recent breaking of the Olivia scandal on Imperium.News, it will be interesting to see if the presentation of EVE Online and Social Support Networks by J Mcclain discusses any of the points of that story, and how the video game world and the world of social networks have become intertwined. The final presentation for Saturday will be Rahne Chocolate’s presentation on Streaming EVE Online, a topic which has become increasingly popular over the last few years.
Attendees will have a couple of hours to grab some dinner and mentally prepare themselves for the open bar EVE Vegas party being held at Chateau Night Club, which will be the end of the official festivities for Saturday!
Sunday
Those still able to function on Sunday will have to be up and at ‘em by 10:30AM, as there’ll still be plenty to do! So much to do in fact, that the presentations will spill into 3 rooms in total to fit everything into the shorter day, with the Melrose 4 room being brought into the mix as well. Melrose 4 will be where you catch the various roundtables on Sunday, with the hour long Tournaments Roundtable being at 11AM, and the Lore Roundtable at 12PM.
The Melrose 3 room has a couple of presentations lined up for Sunday, starting out with The Rise of the Valkyrie presentation by General Stargazer starting at 11AM, followed by the Imperium’s own Scooter Mccabe presenting Scamming in EVE: The Man Who Sold The World, with a focus on the darker side of the game. The Melrose 3 room will be wrapping things up with an NPE Roundtable before lunch, where the New New Player Experience will likely be the primary topic of discussion.
Ballroom 7 / 8 gets things started off at 10:30AM with a 1 hour presentation on the New Player Experience, Inception: the NPE. The next presentation will be about the other steep cliff associated with Eve Online and that is Scaling EVE’s Social Cliff presented by Manic Velocity. The CCP dev team will follow that up with a presentation regarding the Art & Visual Effects Updates that have been going on in the game lately, of which there have been plenty! Once lunch is completed at 1:30PM, Elise Randolph will be running the Changing Your Playstyle presentation with some tips on keeping your experience in EVE Online a fresh one. Closing things up for EVE Vegas will be the infamous Space Pope Max Singularity, with his presentation regarding The Solar System, followed by the official Closing Ceremony at 2:30PM.
Ballroom 4 will be a hive of activity throughout the weekend, being the home of the EVE Store which will be open for a few hours on Friday, basically the entire day on Saturday, and again a couple of hours on Sunday. Ballroom 4 will also be where you find EVE PVP events, EVE: Valkyrie and Gunjack demos, as well as the EVE: Valkyrie Tournament Of Champions. As an additional bonus to the attendees, CCP has put together a Charity Giveaway with 4 Nvidia GTX 1080 Graphics cards as prizes in support of the Barnaspítali Hringsins Children’s Hospital in Iceland. All you have to do to be eligible is go and try the Eve: Valkyrie demo and score yourself a kill. If you’re in the generous spirit then you can pay the suggested $5 donation for each raffle ticket you receive.
So get out there and enjoy yourself folks, this kinda thing only comes around once a year. We hope to see you there!
