Fan Faire was a blast as always. SOE employees worked our tails off but we had a lot of fun doing it too!

Wednesday

5:45am came quite early! I needed to finish the last of the packing, just a few things I needed to use like toothbrush and make-up. I also packed up my lap top and it's accessories since I use it daily instead of my desktop nowadays, I never travel without it if I'm gone more then a day! I made sure my three cats had plenty of food and water available to them and was out the door at 6:45am. My flight was scheduled to leave at 8:32am.

Well, the journey to the airport was frightening to say the least! It was pouring rain so my street was super crowded since all the junior high school students were being dropped off at the school across the street and down a block from my house. Certainly can't let the kiddies melt in the rain! I realized as I passed the school I had forgotten my watch so I turned around to go home and get it. Then set out again towards the airport. As I got about 2 blocks away I realized I had not put the rent check in the mail yet and it was the day rent was due so again I turned around and took care of business. Now it was about 7:15am and finally I was on my way.

Traffic was slow, as it usually is when it rains in San Diego; I swear most people forget how to drive when it rains. I got to the offsite long term parking area and drove around the lot until I found one of 2 remaining spots available. The shuttle picked me up and headed to the airport. I disembarked from the shuttle and approached the Sky Cap to check my one large suitcase only to be told I was too late to check for my flight! Almost in tears I go in to the ticket counter and check with the agent, sure enough I was 2 minutes late to check my luggage. The cut off time was 8:02am and I was there at 8:04am. The agent informed me that since 9/11 they are required to have all checked bagged in by no less then 30 minutes before the scheduled flight. I had no idea!

So I was bumped to standby for the next flight at 9:35am. I traipse to my new gate and check in there. Then I headed to Starbucks for some coffee goodness, hiding from the mongoose of course! About 30 minutes prior to the departure of this flight I was finally given a boarding pass! So now I knew I'd at least make it to Dallas. Boarding the plane and the flight itself was rather normal and boring.

Once in Dallas there was a long walk to the next gate at which I approached the gate agent to check in for standby again. I was told the flight was full but that they would call names of those on standby if they had room. Back to my seat and worrying about whether or not I'd make this plane. The other passengers started boarding the plane about 20 minutes before the scheduled departure time and no standby passengers were called, that is until the final boarding group had been called, then 6 of us were given seats...thankfully I was 5th on the list. Again, it was a rather tame flight.

I arrived in Atlanta at 6:30pm and joined the other SOE employees who shared my flight in baggage claim where we also met our transportation coordinator. She got us settled in a taxi and on our way. I checked into the hotel, lugged my belongings to my room on the 33rd floor and then made my way back down to the Garden Level to join my fellow co-workers for a Community Summit reception in the Champions Lounge - fancy name for a sports bar & grill.

Devs and Community folks chatted with all the Community Summit attendees for both EQ and EQII. We ate a bit and drank a little and had a generally good time. I toddled off to bed fairly early... it has been a long, stressful day!

Thursday

Thursday morning dawned bright and early, though not at 5:45am thankfully! I had a wonderful night's sleep in a very comfy bed and was up at 8am. Showered, dressed and ready for the day by 8:45am, I headed down to the Convention area and into the Summit breakfast buffet. Scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, thick crisp bacon, fat juicy sausage, fresh fruit and pastries... YUM! Add some coffee with cream and Splenda and I was set!

At 10am we all moved out and to the discussion room. It was set up as your usual convention room... several small tables and one long head table, each spot set with a pad or paper, a pen and an empty glass. The center of each table sported a frosty, silver pitcher of ice water and small silver bowls with various flavors of hard candies.

The first topic of discussion was Growing the Game: Making EverQuest attractive to new players and still remain appealing to current players. There was a ton of great discussion here, which I will leave the details to those who attended the Summit to share.

Then off to lunch at noon. Lunch consisted of cold cuts, cheese and other sandwich fixings, a couple of cold salads, some veggie soup, more fresh fruit and dessert was cheese cake and a fabulous flourless chocolate cake which was more like a milk chocolate fudge.

The second discussion group which started at 1:30pm was about the Prophecy of Ro: A look at the last expansion; what went right, what went wrong, and what we can learn from it. Again, there were some awesome discussions which I will leave for the attendees to tell you about.

3pm brought a short break, then on to the last discussion at 3:30pm which was open discussion. This went until 5pm after which everyone broke up to relax and get ready for dinner.

There was a PR reception in the Grandstand lounge with appetizers. It was nice to sit back and have general conversation again after the more structured Summit discussions. Several people I sat with spent some time decoding an EQII sticker, after which I delighted in informing them just how geeky they were. I was impressed though that they did indeed work out the code. At 7pm we all hiked down the street to a delightful Italian restaurant called AZIO. I had a tasty Chicken Marsala and Caesar salad washed down with a couple glasses of Riesling wine. Dessert was a tray of small squares of tiramisu, cheesecake, chocolate cake and key lime pie.

After dinner I went with some other employees to a bar across the street from the hotel, but didn't stay long. The music was very loud and we could hardly hear each other talk. Instead I went back to my room and watched Doom. Entertaining flick, but that's about the best I can say for it.

Friday

Friday was the start of the actual FF. Up fairy early again, 7am to get ready for the day then headed down to the convention area to set up for the EQ Best of the Best event. The event was not supposed to start until 10 but my husband, one of the operations guys, mentioned that we had no computer set up to be plugged into the projector for the public viewing of the event. So I carted my laptop down to the game room and we set it up for that purpose. The event was a bit late starting because of some technical difficulties with getting the proper client running on my laptop, but we did get it cleared up and the event started.

There were 6 primary fights held in the Arena on Fennin Ro using pre-generated level 50 characters. Each participant was given the choice of using a Halfling ranger, Erudite wizard, Barbarian warrior, Vah Shir beastlord, Troll berserker, Human rogue, Dark Elf necromancer or Gnome shadowknight. I must say shadowknights were a very popular choice! Each primary battle lasted 20 minutes and during the last 5 minutes several Grand Champion tigers were spawned. Of course feign death was a popular ploy to avoid the tigers but a little knockback by yours truly helped keep the battle going. /snicker

We took a 90 minute break after the final preliminary battle to let the PlanetSide folks have some event time as well. The Best of the Best reconvened at 5:30pm for the final fight. The preliminary champions started off strong but I had a surprise in store for them... 5 minutes into the fight, Lord Nagafen came out to play! It was quite a sight to see Nagafen stomping off after the contestants. After a few minutes of play, I sent Lord Nagafen home again and we restarted the battle after rezzing the one poor soul who died and resetting harm touch for the 2 shadowknights who burned it in the start of the first fight.

The final battle was 40 minutes long and at 30 minutes in, I spawned Grand Champion griffins instead of tigers, just for something a little different. I thought griffins might bring back some nostalgic feelings of terror for those who recalled the early days of griffons in West Commons. I do not recall who the last three standing were but I do recall that the last 2 were a shadowknight and a ranger. The shadowknight fienged at the feet of a couple griffins and the ranger "kited" about 6 griffins. In the end the ranger won after leading his train to the shadowknight. When I get a hold of the names of the winners I'll post those.

After the Best of the Best was done I returned to my room to relax for a few minutes and change out of work clothes then headed down for the reception. By the time I arrived, Brenlo was on stage joking and harassing people, giving out prizes for dancing, singing and generally making a fool out of yourself upon request. It is amazing to see what people will do just to get a t-shirt!

After the reception we took off to the Tabernacle, the club where the off-site party was held. It was a neat place, a 3 story building with 3 bands appearing. I spent most of the time down in the basement section where there was a heavy-metal karaoke band. It was quite interesting to see karaoke with a band backup going. While they did not play my preferred type of music, it was enjoyable anyway, the 4 bottles of Bacardi Silver and 2 rum and cokes helped increase the enjoyment too! No I did not sing... I refuse to sing to anything I have to scream to 8-P. My husband signed up to sing, but never got a chance to...there were just too many people signed up so not everyone gat a chance. The club closed early... at least for this party hearty crew so many of us filtered back to the bar across the street from the hotel. Again it was loud but we had a good time watching the EQII crew doing "car bombs" I think they are called, a shot of Bailey's downed with a half glass of Guinness. I had stopped drinking by then, being quite happy from the drinks at the club. I got back to my room about 1:50am, we started watching another movie, Domino, but about 20 minutes into I fell asleep. My husband said it was a pretty good movie though.

Saturday

Saturday did not have an early start for me. I was free until the start of the Live Quest. So I lounged until 10am then got ready for the day and headed down to get the Live Quest set up. I met with the guides who volunteered to be quest NPCs. This year's Live Quest was a journey across Norrath in which each group had to visit with high profile NPCs from in the game and complete a tast for them to get a quest token. There were 14 quest tokens possible to obtain and the winning group was the one who retrieved all 14. The tasks were a variety of puzzles, collection quests and role play tasks. I'll post in another thread more detail about the Live Quest and the winning groups later. After sitting down with Ngreth who helped me count the quest tokens and platinum the 23 groups gathered, I then retired to my room to create certificates for each member of the three winning groups. A quick trip to the business center of the hotel and I was done. I returned to the convention area where one could find the bazaar selling all kinds of EQ, EQII, PlanetSide and other various goodies, the game room with 40 or 50 computers set up for folks to play EQ, EQII, EQOA, PlanetSide, or SWG, a lounging area with small tables, several big, fluffy bean bags and a bar not far away for people to sit and visit and several vendors including: Caster's Realm, Fellowship Foundry, Safehouse, Larry Elmore, EQII Art and an EQ Caricature artist. (My apologies to any vendors I may have missed mentioning!)

At 8pm the convention area closed and we all met in the banquet room for dinner and more fun watching Brenlo ask people to do embarrassing things for prizes. It was also Brenlo's birthday so we had signs that Ashlanne had folks help her make throughout the day that we held up about 30 minutes into the dinner while he was in the spotlight and then after singing Happy Birthday to him, he was presented an ice cream birthday cake. The next embarrassing prize award was then to sing Happy Birthday Marilyn Monroe style to Brenlo, Heath (from PR) & his twin brother (who celebrated their birthday the day before) and Mike (another PR guy).

There was also the costume contest. Wow folks sure did get into dressing up! The winner was a lady who dressed up as a troll, she had an awesome costume! Of course it was hard to pick between the troll and Brasse who, as usual, had a fantastic female dwarven costume complete with mustache and beard.

After dinner and the costume contest the floor was turned over to a DJ and dancing. Some folks stayed to dance or chat and others filtered out to head off to their own private parties. With is being the last night, everyone wanted to get the most out of every last minute. I didn't do too much, just hung around listening to the DJ's tunes and chatting with players here and there. Then we hung out with some friends for a while in the hotel. About 1am I went back to my room and we watched Night Watch.

Sunday

Sunday was another early day, up at 7am and down to the convention area at 8am to assist in packing up all the convention things to ship back to San Diego. We had most of the packing up done by 11:30 so I returned to my room to grab my suitcase and check out of the hotel. I caught a shuttle to the airport with many other SOE employees at 12:15 and we were heading to Chicago by 1:30pm. The flight was pretty dull, just a quick 90 minutes. Then an 90 minute layover before the 4 hour flight to San Diego. Well we thought it would be 90 minutes. It actually ended up being 2 hours and 30 minutes because the original plane we were scheduled for was pulled out of service about 20 minutes before boarding was supposed to begin. They found another plane and had us change gates but it delayed the flight by an hour. Back in San Diego I met up with my husband (who was on a different flight) in baggage claim and we boarded the shuttle back to the long term parking then on to home where we were greeted by 3 very relieved cats, who were thrilled to see their humans had returned to fill their food dishes and clean the litter boxes.

Thus came an end to another fantastic Fan Faire! We were exhausted but had a great time. It was awesome meeting so many new Fan Faire attendees and catching up with many old faces again from previous Fan Faires. I am looking forward to the next Fan Faire and hope to meet many more new attendees at the next one.