Unhelpful

A thousand Everquest players descend upon a Baltimore hotel, but the city’s biggest news of the weekend is that a something smelled bad on an airplane that wasn’t scheduled to land here in the first place. Verant, unlike British Airways, came out smelling like roses for the most part.

[Included in its entirety in the extension for your convenience.]

I headed up to the EQ Fan Faire on Friday at about 6:00 pm. As registration began at 1:00 pm, I was afraid that I may had missed some of the event. Arcadian Del Sol assured me that I hadn’t missed much; most of the players were having a good time socializing, but for those of us who really don’t have a foot in the EQ community, there wasn’t much to see.

The reception began at 8:00 pm, and Cindy Archuleta, Everquest’s Community Relations Manager, made introductions for all the staff members of Verant Interactive. Verant’s staff were, to a person, very accomodating and eager to talk to the players. One thing critical to note here is that the hors d’oeuvres served during the reception were excellent - it would be a crime to come to Baltimore and not have crab balls. Excellent choice on behalf of Verant or the Airport Marriott. Hopefully, most of the players from out of town actually had a chance to see some of Baltimore on Sunday.

One of the common complaints about the EQ Fan Faire I’ve heard from players is that Friday wasn’t used to the extent it could have been. Given that that’s the biggest grievance I’ve heard to any real degree is a testament to the overall success of the event. Still, it’s something to keep in mind when planning these gatherings.

If the players’ reaction to representatives from the Website Formerly Known as … can be described in one word, that word would be “huh?”. If any of us is known for covering Everquest, it’s certainly Lum, and not Arcadian Del Sol and I. Furthermore, as came up a few times, the players who are looking for news about current events in the game, they often find sites more focused in on the day to day happenings of the games themselves. There was a tag ritual which involved peering at the wearer’s name tag to see if you knew them, but aside from the disappointment that more than one player had at realizing that Arcadian’s tag didn’t say AllaKhazam, there wasn’t much of a response. “Uh… Delusion… ok…” I probably looked out of place without a robe.

Saturday was the day of the Faire Proper(e). After a quick run-down of what was going on and when, something called Real Life Quest began. I could make a hundred jokes about the name, but I’ll just make one and leave the rest to you: Real Life Quest involved obtaining candy from the babies of hotel patrons, running around the halls with nothing but towels on and occasionally taking those towels off to snap one another in a sporty “I’m not attracted to you, I’m just wacky and fun-loving” kind of way, and denial-of-service attacking the front desk phones. Honestly, it involved none of that (to my knowledge), and although I’m not exactly sure what it was (remember, I’m a bit of a stranger in these parts), the players seemed to enjoy it. It gave the Verant staff a chance to talk to the press as well - the usual suspects as well as print media and radio.

The vendors and some of the more prominent EQ sites were introduced as the Faire opened. There were a few vendors there, including Everlore, RPGwear, and Verant’s official EQ product vendor, dubbed “Phat Lewt”. It seemed to me that there would have been a lot of interest in more vendors. I’m not sure if the number of vendors was limited by size of the venue or expense or some other concern, but for future events, I’d really encourage Verant to do as much as possible to get more turnout. From the vendors’ point of view, they seemed to be doing a brisk enough business to warrant having more sellers the next time out. Verant’s official product table had quite a number of eight inch figures which seemed to be one of the more popular offerings. Why Firona Vie was absent from the figure collection is beyond me. The model who plays Firona for Verant’s events was in tow, so it would have seemed to me to be a bit of a no-brainer. Then again, I’m sure she had to sign enough posters as it was - adding a figure likeness to this may very well have caused the line to back up into the parking lot.

The abundance of t-shirts with the “got SoW?” line emblazoned upon them reminded me that I was a Stranger in a Strange Land. I was going to bring a Basque dictionary to use as a prop for when the jargon flew too fast, but I didn’t get around to getting one. One of the Stratics staffers explained the SoW reference, and I’m assured that it’s considered incredibly funny in some circles. I’m taking his word for it. My confusion aside, the shirts were a hit, as was one for a perscription for “clarity”. Again, right over my head. Speaking of clarity, Wives Against EverQuest, an organization I suspect has a basis in humor more than reality to begin with, made news by not showing up. Truly an envious position to be in.

One vendor that probably could have stayed home was White Wolf. Of all the vendors introduced during the faire, White Wolf was the only to receive no applause or cheers. To clarify, I don’t mean “not much”, I mean “none“. Whether this is a reflection of the lack of interest of the EQ community in White Wolf’s product or a broader indication about the EQ community’s interest in pen and paper RPGs isn’t exactly clear, but I’m assuming the former. They couldn’t give their product away. In fact, they tried. They had a stack of free Introductory Kits for their game Vampire: The Masquerade which they were giving out - a sampler to the game, of sorts. There were a lot of these left lying around in a distribution which can only be described as pathological. Most occupied the center of a zone of uninhabited area with an average radius of five feet. These things, perhaps appropriately, shunned life - or vice versa. On the bright side, no impressionable young players were tricked into Vampire LARPing.

After the teams finished up the Real Life Quest, the event Balkanized into many different discussion panels. Not being a native speaker, the specifics were lost on me, but the overall thrust was not: these are developers and gamers with a lot to say to one another and they’re eager to say it.

With limited exposure to the game, to me the most interesting part of the Faire during the discussion panels was the quest panel that was being held in the ballroomm, but it wasn’t a discussion panel about how quests are run. It was an actual quest. I stepped in during the quest, but it was run again on another server, so by the time it started over, some of the players were able to fill us in on the basics that we weren’t familiar with. It seemed to be a low-level quest designed for just a few participants. I take it Misty Thicket is a halfling-friendly area, because the quest involved Fuzzy the Bear being saved from disease, and in each case, the participants were halflings. I was distracted for a bit until I realized I wasn’t watching a trailer for the Lord of the Rings movie. The bear was played by one of the Verant staff and his screen was being projected onto the main viewing screen.

The decision to hold this part of the Faire in the main lobby was a good one: it was packed. The players were enjoying watching. During the first run of the quest, the players were cheering on the halfling who was rescuing the bear - stay with me here, I’m not getting into specifics on accident. Near the end of the journey to the destination where the bear was to be taken to, the halfling turned to the bear and gave it some food. This wasn’t necessary to the completion of the quest, and the audience cheered on the halfling some more. It was a transforming moment; no more than fifteen minutes before, this same audience was shouting to the person controlling the bear “Kill him! Kill him!” when the halfling first appeared. I’m not exactly sure how to read that, and I’ll avoid trying to ferret out a general humanist truism out of it. It was, however, a very encouraging thing to see, and goes a long way toward demonstrating the emotional connection that drives people to play these sorts of games with more personal involvement than what you usually see in single-player games.

The discussion panels concluded, and the participants gathered together for another game, this time, a trivia contest. Between the Real Life Quest and the trivia contest, the players had once participated in events divided according to the server on which they play and once by the character class they play. This seemed to be a good way to mix the players and get them involved in events with people they otherwise may not have had the opportunity to meet. It struck me as a good move. It also reminds me of something that was missing from this event that I’ve seen or heard about at Ultima Online events: the schism between the “PKs and RPs”. I can almost visualize a bunch of UO players working together based on server preference rather than extremist PK/RP partisan playstyle preference, and it’s not pretty.

A few of the participants were in costume, so I was surprised that there was no official costume contest. Notable participants would have been Karana Abdul Jabar and his Basketball of Slaying, Pelvis Man - the only person whom I have ever seen use a pelvis as a fashion accessory, Laefaethasha Third-Elven who pulled off the look a lot better approximately two seconds before this shot when she wasn’t in the middle of blinking, Chain Male with not-quite-matching wristwatch and cell phone, and his friend who doesn’t want to be Elfstar any more. She wants to be Debbie.

There was a fair bit of idle time between the trivia contest and dinner, so at about 6:30, the masses began to camp the food spawn. Forgive me for such an obvious joke. It was extremely packed during the wait, which for whatever reason was a little longer than anticipated. They were serving drinks once the lines were moved forward, at least - I can’t begin to tell you what perfect timing that was. There was an extremely small minority complaining (after the fact, on the boards) about the prevelance of alcohol at the event. Frankly, this baffles me. It’s a hotel. It’s a convention. It’s social. It’s a weekend. The overwhelming majority of attendees were old enough to drink. It’s not 1923. To address said grumblings delicately: screw ‘em. There was still a bit more waiting to do, and in close quarters.

On to dinner. The staving peasants rush in! By Saturday evening, we had lost track of the Stratics folks we had spent much of Friday evening with. You can see us toward the left side using Arcadian’s hat to try to lure them into our trap. Sadly, they didn’t fall for it.

Dinner included carrots, rice, stuffed chicken breast, and a red disc. I was expecting pickled beet, but it decided to be spiced apple. The spiced apple was good, but it’s surprising as hell when you’re expecting something vinegary and tart and end up getting something cinnamony and sweet. The rice was putatively saffron rice, but in the absence of any saffron flavor, it could best be described as “yellow rice”. If it were snow, I would have avoided eating it. The pastry mushroom-stuffed chicken breast was delicious, and I don’t say that lightly - if any web site will take you to task for abusing breasts to your advantage, it’s this one. Sorry, Grath.

The after-dinner entertainment was informal. There was plenty of schmoozing (not that we hadn’t availed ourselves of a lot of that beforehand), both the hotel bar/restaurants were packed, and a lot of groups were forming up for various scheduled and impromptu player/guild/server/etc. gatherings. It was also characterized by someone - an event participant, not a hotel staffer - playing the same three songs on the piano as he played Friday night. Amidst all the EverQuest paraphernalia, I had what could be described as a very Ultima Online moment as I resisted the urge to scream at him “STOP PLAYING THAT DAMN THING” - a refrain familiar to anyone who played UO and ever had the displeasure of encountering someone in town with a real lute fetish.

I came away from the EQ Fan Faire a much wiser member of the gaming community. This wisdom can be summed up pretty neatly: 800 speed film really isn’t sufficient for taking indoor non-flash photography, no matter what the box may say.

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