Fanfest Perspectives: The First Timer

Normally I’m a shy guy. I don’t do well in crowds and in the past I’ve actually backed out of going to Eve Meets at the last minute as I just wasn’t sure if I would fit in.

I’m not the best at shipfitting, I’m not massively involved in the politics of the game and more often than not the intense meta discussions around this game go over my head. I’m what you would call a normal player of Eve: one of the line members, one of those guys that logs on, gets in fleets but is often a bit shy to speak up.

So it took a bit of persuading to get me to take the plunge and go to Iceland. Thankfully a Xander and Jeg from CZ and a real life friend convinced me it was the right thing to do and I’m glad they did.

The flight from Iceland to Aberdeen is still fairly new and as such I didn’t really expect much of a crowd from the northeast of Scotland to be heading to Reykjavik, but I was wrong. It was great fun to watch Xander approach and introduce himself group after group of obvious Eve players (sorry guys, we tend to have a standard look about us). Roughly half the flight must have been fellow capsuleers.

Ask the community for tips before you go.

Having Fanfest veterans along with me was certainly a massive help, and if you’re planning on going next year I can’t recommend enough asking the community for tips before you go. Without the CZ guys I wouldn’t have booked myself the Flybus. Hell, I also wouldn’t have realised that I was flying into the main airport 50km (31.4 miles) away from the centre of town.

The moral of that story is try not to plan too much ahead. Next year i’ll be leaving my plans a little more loose.

My original plans for the actual Fanfest presentations quickly went out of the window. I had every intention of watching as many of the big presentations in the main room, as well as getting along to a couple of the round tables, in particular the NPE and the PVE sections. Although I did manage to get to the opening ceremony and the keynote on the first day, I instead spent a fair bit of time of the Thursday queuing to try the two new projects, Gunjack and Valkyrie. On other days the combination of chatting to people, hangovers and just bad time management meant I missed out on a couple of things I wanted to see.  The moral of that story is try not to plan too much ahead. Next year i’ll be leaving my plans a little more loose.

I did make some other mistakes. Next year I’ll stay far closer to Harpa and there’s no way in hell i’ll be flying back at 7.45am on Sunday morning. Even 24 hours later returning to work I felt like death. I’ll also be ditching the cash and relying purely on my debit card/credit card next year!

If you do decide to take the plunge in 2017 grab yourself a Pub Crawl ticket.

If you do decide to take the plunge in 2017 I can’t stress enough how important it is you grab yourself a Pub Crawl ticket. The best night of the entire week wasn’t the Party at the Top of the World, although that was incredible, it was the Pub Crawl. Everyone got a little (or a lot) drunk, people chatted spaceships, devs unwound, CCP Seagull danced on the stage. Everyone really let their hair down and let loose.

Overall Fanfest was an incredible experience, it brought me out of the shell, it got me to meet even more incredible people within our unique community. If you spent another year sat on your arse in front of your PC watching the stream on Twitch, I urge you to get yourself some accommodation booked, look at flights as soon as you can and get yourself to Iceland for 2017.

And to everyone I met, the GMVA Guys, the devs (in particular SnowedIn and FoxFour), Galendil and his lovely wife, the ex-RNK pilot and his wife whose name escape me, the CZ guys and especially Joe, and anyone else I’ve forgotten, thank you for making it an incredible, unforgettable experience.