On April 5, CCP Falcon posted a comprehensive blog about Fanfest 2018, which is occurring on April 12 to 14. While this information comes to us later than usual this year, it is filled with both the expected goodies and some more interesting offerings as well.
For those of you travelling to attend Fanfest 2018, the schedule for presentations, roundtables, and other events can be found online here. For the larger numbers not trekking to Iceland, you will have to make do with the sessions CCP choose to stream on twitch, though CCP has yet to give us with a schedule for remote viewers. We will update this piece when that schedule materialises.
The Usual Fun
The standard fare of Fanfest obviously starts and ends with the opening ceremony, the keynote speech, developer presentations, and the closing ceremony. In between the developer-led fun, there will also be several player talks from the likes of Elise Randolph, ExookiZ, baltec1, and Makoto Priano, among others.
A notable change to the standard setup, however, is that Fanfest is opening earlier on the first day (11:00 UTC) this year, and there will also be less ‘headline’ presentations throughout. This change has been made to provide a more relaxed environment for players, with room for beer-run breaks between sessions.
We also have CCP’s charitable events, with the CEO charity dinner and the returning silent auction, with all proceeds from both going to the Icelandic Children’s Hospital. One of the most prized items available from the auction are two server blades from Tranquility that ran the game through a full six expansions from 2006 to 2009, including Revelations, Empyrean Age, and Apocrypha.
Of course, no mention of Fanfest would be complete without the Party on Top of the World, the final part of the proceedings! This year, the party will go on for an hour longer before hitting the after-parties and will see performances from local DJ Atli Kanill, a re-united Permaband, and world-famous DJ Basshunter, who is also a fellow spaceship nerd.
The New or Unexpected
There are some new things happening at Fanfest 2018 – for one, we have an ‘EVEprov space satirical’, which best as we can tell here at INN, means there’s a pantomime that is portraying various historical moments in EVE, and that attendees will all get to shout “he’s behind you” at least once. Along with this, CCP has set up an EVE museum, allowing players to step back in time and experience at least a part of EVE Online’s fifteen-year history.
Another new addition to the Fanfest schedule is a three-day long 3v3 player tournament hosted by Nashh Kadavr’s Plus10 Gaming/EVE-NT crew. This all-new “Caldari Corporation Cup” will see qualifying rounds over April 12 and 13, with the finals fittingly occurring on the final day of the festival. Prizes will include Nvidia graphics cards, Razer peripherals, and PLEX prizes from CCP. Tune in to Plus10 Gaming’s twitch.tv channel for live coverage across Fanfest.
All told, Fanfest 2018 looks to be filled with fun or amusing (or both) events and promises to answer many recent questions regarding the future of EVE Online. We will update you with any new information that comes out between now and Fanfest and will have articles on all the announcements and key happenings at HARPA.
