Impressions of Fanfest

Hello, immense following of loyal readers!  I apologize that content has been hard to come by.  I've been entangled with RL events (week-long swim meet in sunny Florida) and other Eve Projects (now writing for Eve Report; expect articles soon).

Before I embark on FanFest coverage, here is the equivalent of a Facebook status update:

StevieTopSiders is focusing on two areas of skill training.  The first are the skills needed for Core Competency Elite; the second are the skills needed for an Amarr BS to do ratting, allowing him to finally make some money.  Additionally, he has done some home defense PvP, but without scanning skills, he is pretty much useless.  Stevie has lost many ships inattempts to engage bigger ships alone in his Ares.

Now that we have that out of the way, what about FanFest?  Sadly, I am not in Iceland, so I can't speak from personal experience.  What I do know, however, comes from fellow bloggers, EN24 liveblogging, #tweetfleet, and the free streaming.

Null-sec stuff seemed pretty boring.  The only big announcement (which wasn't really a FanFest announcement) was this: the appearance of Havens and Sanctums will now depend on TrueSec.  According to Ripard Teg's conspiracy theory, this is an effort by CCP to get the rest of Eve to break up the DRF, who have numerous hi-value systems.  He cites the placement of Technetium moons in NC space as precedent.  By making NC space more valuable, CCP hoped to give the players reason to break up the NC.  As we all can see, this failed terribly.

One interesting tidbit I learned from a YouTube comment is the return of new ships models.  I have been obsessed with this dev blog, dealing with the textures used on ships, for ages.  I have made post after post in the Eve Forums, scrounging for information, but no one seems to know.  Luckily, when I commented on the new turret video, an entrepreneurial commenter informed me that the ship models had been discussed at an art presentation this morning at FanFest.  Hooray!  Apparently the first ship in the pipe is the Raven.  Meh, would have preferred something not Caldari, but progress is progress.

Finally, make sure that you have all watched the Eve: A Future Vision video.  While I, a huge console FPS fan, am excited by DUST 514, I don't think any of this will affect Eve too much.  Again, we see rendered footage of Incarna, but nothing that couldn't be done from the NeoCom.  Also, we learn that the mercenaries have been hired to attack an installation on the planet.  Will losing a PI center really be that bad?  An interesting point was the capsuleer's death by pistol.  Again, what does this do for us?  Now, instead of losing your ship and implants, you just lose your implants.  Being able to kill people in stations really adds nothing to the game, as far as I can see.

For those of you in Iceland, I hope you've enjoyed your trip.  I would like to go next year, depending on how the college situation works out.  Speaking of which, I have been accepted to Washington University in St. Louis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Virginia, Carnegie Mellon University, and Centre College.  MIT is my first choice, but it remains to be seen if I can scrounge up the 50k.

Fly safe!

-Stevie