LAS VEGAS - Fan Faire 2007 was a blast. I've got to start by thanking my guildmates for nominating me and getting me into this thing since I never would have had the chance otherwise. Getting to not only pick the dev's brains, but also just to hang out and have some fun with them was an incredible experience. Pretty much everyone agrees that the game is in good shape now and is definitely heading in the right direction. Chapter 7 looks great, an update to the space game will be quite welcome, and Droid Commander should be a welcome addition as well.

A special thanks to Loche, Pex and GreyPawn for the amount of time they spent listening to us outside the panels (as well as during them) - they deserve a lot of credit for how much commitment they're showing to the game at this and no doubt the other similar events of this summer.

DISCLAIMER: UNLESS SPECIFICALLY WORDED TO INDICATE IT WILL HAPPEN, ALL OF THE ITEMS BELOW WERE REQUESTED, DISCUSSED OR ACKNOWLEDGED IDEAS. THESE LISTS ARE IN NO WAY A GUARANTEE OF FUTURE FEATURES OR CONTENT. BY READING THIS POST, YOU AGREE TO NOT RUN AROUND SCREAMING, "BUT YOU SAID AT FAN FAIRE...".

(It's hard to communicate on the forums the body language, tone of voice, nodding of heads while writing vs. just scribbling something down, etc. that helps me form opinions on what is or isn't as likely to happen or what ideas they liked and thought were reasonable, etc., but I feel confident many of these things will be addressed in some way, even if it's slightly different than the player-made proposals once they see what's possible and what the ramifications are.)

After arriving here in Vegas and checking in to the hotel, I proceeded to wait in an hour long line to pick up my event badge and gift bag (T-Shirt, beta keys, marketing propoganda, mints, etc.). On a side note, some of you people need to remember that, when leaving your home, you MUST SHOWER. But I digress.

The main (and only) event for last night was a reception at the Voodoo Lounge on top of the hotel, which had, as advertised, spectacular views of the strip and the whole of Las Vegas. It also had a lot of alcohol, the most prevelant version came in a HUGE fishbowl-shaped glass that was, I kid you not, 50% liquor. After wandering around for a bit, squinting at nametags with game, server, and handle printed in 10pt font, I finally stumbled on the corner the SWG folks had staked out amidst all of the massive groups of EQ and EQII players.

When I got there, Virrago, Loche and Dev-Vapor were hanging around talking to Yivvits (of "SWG with Yivvits and MrBubble" podcast fame) and a couple of other SWG'ers (pronounced "swiggers" in case you were wondering). Ashlanne, Valara, GreyPawn and Pex made appearances, and a bit later, Blixtev and Shadowbrak arrived (carrying the aforementioned fishbowls). In total, I spent the better part of an hour and a half chatting them up and listening for any nuggets I could get from their answers to the stream of questions they were getting from the other players.

Here's a bullet point list of some of the details I remember discussing:

• Yes, everyone asks about Hoth, but don't hold your breath. It'd be too boring, too painful to stare at a white planet, and there's no wildlife. (Ed. note: and without atmospheric flight, it wouldn't really capture the Ep. V feel, anyway.)
• The #1 problem appears to be a lack of artists. Whenever something new needs to be created (the specific example was saber hilts, since there's no new polearm saber schem) they have to wait on new art, and it's a constrained resource every day, so that explains why a lot of things aren't done. Nothing new here, just a little different hearing and seeing the slight exasperation on their part that they can't do more for us in so many areas because of art. (Ed. note: Here's a tip - hire more art folks!)
• Spice really isn't coming back. Lucas Arts refuses to allow any remote and/or vague references to drugs. Never mind that it was there before, it's there in the movies and we spend all our time in-game killing stuff, drugs are bad, m'kay?
• Smuggling needs definition - there's an understanding that we want to smuggle, and that what we have doesn't accomplish it, but there's been no "killer app" for smugglers yet.
• Everyone seems pretty excited about Chapter 7 (collection system/rewards and heroic instances). We'll see more on Saturday, I think, but one example of an heroic instance is going to be Ahxva Min - same cave, same protectors, only deeper and instanced with mini-bosses along the way.
• Space is getting some serious attention for Chapter 8. Dev-Vapor has been working on some stuff for that, though I have absolutely no details yet. There's a Space panel near the end of the day today, so maybe we'll learn more then.
• Shadowbrak talked about some system changes that they're working on as part of chapter 7, specifically the instancing system. The invitation and "yes/no" window system isn't ideal, so expect to see the first player to talk/interact with the entry method to "start" the instance and have others interact in the same way to "join" that instance. The Kubaza beetle cave (where you have to be sure to bring up the radial or you might get left behind) has invitation issues because it falls right on a zone boundary, so players standing around the door tend to be on different servers depending on where exactly they are, in case you were curious about that.
• Mustafar instance lockout timers apparently got shortened in the Bug Bash, but didn't make the publish notes because it'd been checked into the branch a long time ago and just never got reported. Someone check it out for us and post the new lockout times, please!
• Another tidbit from Shadowbrak regarding upcoming changes was that he's planning on removing cooldowns from droid commands that don't impact combat, like the overloads and such, to help space combat not require such a long downtime to get set up.
• There's general agreement that the UI needs help. There's also general agreement that no one wants to work on the UI because it's spaghetti code that barely makes sense. Not too sure we're going to see much love here very soon, unfortunately.
• Gardening is cool and fun, but it's hard to sell and get people excited about, but they're certain it will add enjoyment and be worth it, so if you had any interest in this, be sure to make your thoughts known!
• When asked about server mergers in the future, they said that although subscriptions were up, there were still a few low-pop servers. But while they didn't come out and say "no", they also said there were a lot of technical challenges, the largest of which is the way resources are spawned on a planet-by-planet basis.

Live Event

This involved 10 physical challenges and 10 puzzles that 4 teams of 8-10 competed to complete for prizes. Some of the challenges had pre-requisite items you had to earn, and the goal was to collect 5 ship schematics. Puzzles included decrypting a simple substitution cipher, matching planets/POIs, word finds, mad libs, etc. Physical challenges included using lightsaber toys (the collapsable kind) to keep a balloon in the air for 30 seconds, trivia, nerf gun shooting, etc. No team completed all 5, so they're tallying all the points earned for puzzles and challenges and will announce a winner tomorrow. Groundskeeper was our team leader, and we did pretty well, but might not pull out the win...  Hats off to Pex; this was really a lot of fun and worth the price of admission just to participate in this.[/p]

Bringing Star Wars to Life

Unfortunately, I didn't make it to this one since the line for the survey booth (where you get your preview tickets to see some of the new titles like The Agency and where you enter the raffle) took 1.5 hours to get through due to lagging servers (ROFL).
[/h2]What's your Story? (Storyteller, event planning)[/h2]
This panel was hosted by Tunso and Pex, and was a decent sized group. The intent was for us to learn more about the system itself and their plans, and largely to hear our ideas and comments about what could make it better in the future. Some of the topics player brought up that were kicked around and accepted at least as valid ideas included:[/p]

• "Protected" areas (possibly only within player city limits) where storyteller admins can "ban" players for a set time (like an hour) to get rid of troublemakers and griefers.
• Setting patrol points for storyteller NPCs
• Creating "no-drop" areas around controversial areas such as player bases
• Better/easier/faster ways to report people abusing the Storyteller objects
• Customizable rewards (banners, trophies, statues, etc.)
• Enterable POBs on the ground (the existing Storyteller decor items but with an interior like the YT-2400 in HK)
• Objective-based Storyteller items (like the old Capture the Flag)
• Similar to race droids, but a commander who gives a set of waypoints to follow and an inventory to reward those that complete the circuit, with the ability to place other Storyteller objects/NPCs at the waypoints for encounters
• Placeable, defendable structures vs. waves of NPCs for a set time
• Return of jukeboxes (this may only be outdoors items, they're not sure yet)
• Speak-through NPCs (aka ventriloquism for on-the-fly speech)
• "Triggered" storyteller NPCs so that they activate when you get in range
• Ability to "snapshot" storyteller setup into a tradable object so you can create and sell packaged events

ENT Session (Entertainers and Traders)

This was a very full session, with Blixtev and Loche hosting. It was a pretty free-form session for people to voice concerns and ideas to improve the non-combat professions.

• Beast master resource requirements were brought up, but Blixtev said they're happy with where that is and with the difficulty level of achieving a 60 point pet.
• A resource refinement process (similar to space RE'ing to combine multiple resources for better end result, with the cost of losing other stats or high quantity ratios.
• Favor of the Elders buff with addition of +Luck was requested.
• GCW banners for traders and entertainers was requested, but the response was that the better solution is to give crafters and ents a way to "earn" one using their profession (similar to the construction of the Restuss factional bases).
• Decay was brought up, but the panel and community agree that what's desired isn't actually decay, but rather a form of repeat business. Blixtev stated their goal was to give crafters new consumables and schematics in every chapter publish and find other ways to drive recurring revenue.
• Droid Commander is coming (Ed. note: Chapter 9, I thnk), and will include a revamp of some crafting professions so that Engineers are really back to Droid Engineers, not 50% weaponsmith overlaps.
• Droid Commander will be similar to Beast Master in that it will require expertise to use them, and the droids should be customizable in much the same way as ships are built out today.
• Blixtev also acknowledged the general uselessness of Weapon crafting, and said his goal was a return to the combat/crafter synergy of crafting good weapons with the addition of loot enhancers (the return of Krayt tissue??).
• He also hinted that one of the rewards in the collection system was going to be item storage in crafted clothing (belts was the specific topic when it came up) but he was very vague...
• The vendor creation process was brought up, and it turns out Blixtev had recently tried creating a vendor only to find out they're all fat and ugly by default and has intentions of giving us some level of control over their appearance in the creation process, but probably not full image design-type sliders.
• Another hint that was dropped about the future was that Weapon attachments might not always be only made by engineers (Ed. note: most likely part of the Droid Commander/Droid Engineer changes).
• Crate size increases for at least structures was discussed and acknowledged as an issue likely to be addressed.
• Chapter 7 will see LOTS (their emphasis, not mine) of new schematics for crafters based on the existing in-game art that's in NPC cities and houses but isn't currently craftable! Some of this will likely be rewards for the collection system.
• Storage increase modules will be obtainable through collections, as posted earlier on the forums by Blixtev. 100 items per module, stackable to a theoretical limit of 5000 total items.
• Stacking of glowy items was requested.
• Better vendor options for incubated eggs was also requested and they said they'd have DevH look at it.

We've Got Plenty of Space

The space panel was hosted by DeadMeat, ShadowBrak and Loche, and was mostly an idea-gathering venture for Chapter 8 content.

• Capital ships are not going to be part of this system, as it would be expansion-level effort, not chapter stuff.
• New ships (especially those already in the art files but not yet "hooked up" ) including new POBs.
• Atmospheric flight simply isn't possible in the game due to the 2-D collision system.
• A "Theme Park" in space was discussed, with missions from space stations, transports, etc.
• Craftable weapon firing effects was requested.
• Improvements to make the Firespray worth the effort were also requested.
• Quest-obtainable droid commands was another idea suggested.
• A missions system based on the iconic "Ben and Luke hiring Han and Chewie" concept was proposed.
• More high-level multi-ship content like Lord Zzyzzx will likely be included.

Smedley Speaks

After all the SWG sessions, John Smedley gave a presentation on the current, coming soon, and brand new (never-before-announced Legends of Norrath CCG for in-game EQ and EQ2 players) games in the SOE family. When he got to SWG, he spent several minutes thanking SWG players for sticking with the game and giving them a chance, and lauded the current development team for their efforts and reiterated his committment to this game for the long haul. After that, it was karaoke time at the pool party, where Squid did some Great White and Meiling performed a song that totally escapes me now..

Testing 1-2-3

This panel was lead by Dev-Vapor and the lead QA guy, and had three purposes: feedback and discussion on the bug reporting process, discussion of current bugs, and talks about what would make TC/TCP more useful for us and for them.

• The /bug interface needs new fields and categorization. However, they don't care thar much what you put for categories.
• There will be an in-game web browser by the end of the year.
• When reporting bugs, any information is good information: your factional status, targetting mode, steps to recreate, known workarounds, etc.
• Automatic bug reporting information includes your server, character name, waypoint and date/time.
• Bugs reported (some in the panel, some directly to Loche, who was a real trooper about writing it all down):
  - Medic Blood Cleanser doesn't work on yourself.
  - Some specials still don't fire with corpses targetted (request was made to clear target when your current target corpses)
  - Heals firing without effect but still starting cooldown timer
  - Stasis not lasting for the full 15 seconds
  - Area heals not affecting some nearby players
  - Sound crashes/lag due to audio changes (DeadMeat said the bug bash should have helped this, but he'll investigate further)
  - Players getting stuck inside the YT-2400 exterior collision box in HK-47 instance
  - Datapad trading of vet reward pet exploit (yes, it's an exploit)
  - Unreliable pet combat and pet speed (will be addressed in next hotfix)
  - House unpacking not correctly adjusting to terrain
  - Jetpack speed and mounting delay
• Various Restuss exploits were communicated (in public - ack!) to the panel
• Lag was discussed in this and other forums. Blixtev's answer is that they're working to diagnose this and are going to do everything they can to discover the cause and either optimize code or fix the offending coding bug that's causing it. Shadowbrak has recreated the types of issues we see with 40 or so players, so they're investigating as much as possible.

Let's not Fight About Combat

This panel, lead by Blixtev, Shadowbrak and Loche, focused on the combat system, issues, and community requests for combat characters and abilities.

• Lag resulting from large player/NPC presence being investigated.
• Chapter 7 will include a particle reduction option to help client-side lag
• "Target Next Enemy Player" keymap was requested
• An option to lock the UI to avoid unintended movement/changes was requested
• Based on infrastructure being done for Ch 7, Blixtev briefly discussed his vision of a "meta group", or combination of 8-man groups for coordination, visibility, etc., as a next-step
• They acknowledged the weakness of our /assist command compared to EQ's pass-through targeting (target the leader all the time, shoot at his target all the time) and will look into ways to improve or add this type of feature
• Increased XP per creature was requested due to the increased difficulty level
• Much dissatisfaction with "mine wars" was brought up, and ideas like stationary, out-of-combat placement only was requested. Blixtev had several questions for the audience about the current tactics and use of mines, and agreed to look at ways to tweak them but indicated he was very concerned with keeping them viable.
• The ability to call pets while in combat was requested, and Blixtev said an additional expertise box near the end of the tree was being considered to allow this.
• Pet speed and unreliable combat in next hotfix
• Beast damage options in combat log was requested
• Vehicle combat was brought up, and although the team likes the idea and would love to see it in game, they're unsure about the effort and timing at this point
• Innate armor for jedi was requested; this is not on the horizon or very likely.
• Blixtev hinted that Chapter 7 would make jedi robes "more fun to use"
• New jedi crystals might be part of the Chapter 7 collection reward system (the old (but never implemented) village color crystals were what was specifically asked about, though that wasn't directly confirmed)
• Adding a "lightsaber" elemental damage type was requested, but Blixtev agreed to look at the possibility of shifting numbers from base damage to color crystal elemental damage to help get through energy-stacked armor
• It was requested that the elemental damage from the very-difficult-to-obtain lava crystal be increased so that it be commensurate with the effort
• The introduction of a 3rd faction (such as a real neutral option) is a HUGE challenge, and doesn't appear to be very likely.
• The BH/PvP zone challenges were discussed, and the team appeared concerned with the way it's being handled now. One discussion that we had after the combat panel focused on the ability for the BH to TEF his/her mark out of the zone if they were able to engage them in combat.
• Animations were brought up here (and in the next panel ad nauseum) and they're working on it. The issue with the speed of combat is that some of the old animations were 6-12 seconds long, and with the current system all that gets played is the first half-second of the animation. They're looking for a compromise, and realize the importance and desire of the community for this, but it's a difficult challenge because SWG uses motion capture, not CGI for the animations, so they only have the current volume of recorded movements to work with at this time.
• NPC AI and LOS issues were discussed, and some insight was provided on how the system works. The issue we see as players is that our combat checks on every combat frame to see if we can "see" our target, while the AI only checks every few seconds. They'll continue looking at ways to improve in this area.
• The fact that beasts stand directly on top of their targets when in combat was brought up, and they will be looking into ways to keep them far enough back to allow better targeting by others.

The Gathering

The largest SWG panel at Fan Faire, with Shadowbrak, Tunso, Loche, Dev-Vapor, DeadMeat, Blixtev, Alex(don't know her handle, she does the art), Jake Neri (from LucasArts) and John Smedley presiding focused on the state of SWG today, the upcoming releases and our overall thoughts, issues and requests. There were trivia questions for rewards and a raffle. Prizes included some retail boxes of compilation SKUs, t-shirts, small-scale blaster replicas, a poster and some small-scale lightsabers.

It included a just-recorded rough film of the first real combat in an heroic encounter, namely Axkva Min. The story behind the encounter is that she had a falling out with the Nightsisters and has been locked in a crystal deeper in the NS cave. There will be 5 total bosses in the progression, each with individual abilities, tactics, art and proc effects. Expect approximately 5 total heroic encounters such as this one, each with very different elements and designs. Shadowbrak dropped a hint about another specific one in development involving Tuskens where you control an army rather than being forced to engage in combat directly (though it sounded like you had a choice). It was also hinted that one of the encounters might involve an arena that could be re-purposed for player events such as tournaments. In addition, the framework from this system should allow them to add new encounters over time much more easily as another way to bring us content on a publish-scale level.

Additional discussions, comments, issues and hints about the future included:

• Smugglers requested a way to provide a livelihood, specifically discussed was the ability to slice weapons for alteration and/or small increases - elemental damage type or value were specifically suggested as sliceable features
• Ch 7 highlights:
  - Heroic encounters (5 instanced dungeons)
  - Collections system (hundreds of objects, badges and rewards)
  - Species Origin concept for getting additional modifiers and skills based on a once-per-character-lifetime choice
  - Imperial Theme Park
• A new jewelry slot will be unveiled for earrings (this was an inadvertent hint that wasn't supposed to be release yet - thanks Blix!)
• The return of the meditate skill or animation (details are unknown) will be a collection system reward
• A jedi belt with item storage will also be included as a collection reward
• House packup as a regular feature, including condemned buildings and potentially shorter abandonment times should be coming in the future
• There are no plans for an expansion or a new planet in 2007
• The return of languages was requested and seems likely to be re-introduced
• For those concerned about wookiee roar for non-wookiees (Blixtev loves wookiees!), a substitute such as "battle roar" might be provided
• While faction pets may not make a comeback, the AT-ST as a factional droid commander pet is one of Blixtev's ideas for the Droid Commander publish.
• The old village rewards themselves will not be re-used for heroic or collections rewards, there will likely be new versions released as part of these systems (the Aurellian Plant was specifically mentioned by Blixtev)
• There will be some Beast Master-based rewards in the collection system
• A polearm saber hilt on par with the ORH/Jinsu is a potential collection reward (apparently there is a saber object collection in the works)
• DeadMeat said that server mergers were unlikely, though Blixtev indicated the only thing technically stopping them was the fact that resources are unique to servers. I got the impression DM doesn't want to, but Blix does. For now, it's not possible and not an immediate concern.
• More unending repeated and rehashed animation questions... (good thing this was a 2 hour panel!)
• The ability to have ST events in a private instance was requested and the team appeared in favor of this as an idea
• Smedley was asked about SOE's commitment to this game, and the answer from him was that they are very dedicated to this game and will provide whatever resources are needed - all the dev team has to do is ask (time to get those new artists you need, DM, so half the answers won't be "it's an art constraint".
• The original origins concept had the experimentation cap being raised, but Loche replied he wasn't sure if that would be the result or not at this point
• Assembly rating should see increased value and emphasis in Ch 7 - be sure to visit the Junk Yard for your RE modifier bit recipes J
• The issue of credit spammers came up a few times over the course of the weekend, and Smedley said there would be an announcement within 2 weeks regarding some new ways they're developing to counter it. They also ensured us they work as hard as possible to remove them, up to and including legal action.
• Food and drink stacking was requested, and Tunso (I think) indicated he wasn't happy with the way it currently works and will be researching ways to improve it
• For those with older cities that are trying to rank up but have been unlucky due to the first-come, first-served logic used to determine who gets the next available slot on a capped planet, using city age as a factor was requested and is going to be researched

The Grand Banquet

The grand finale of Fan Faire, this was a huge buffet dinner where they had award presentations, a costume contest, a wedding IRL (and in-game during the ceremony), and some outrageous stunts to give away prizes (gaming keyboards, headphones, clothing items, etc.) Some highlights:[/p]

• Jordano took his shirt off and donned a pink baby tee that said "Discover my talent" to win a pair of headphones (pictures to follow in a separate thread after I get home!!)
• Wookie roaring
• Dialogue quoting
• Game-style dancing (complete with flourishes)
• Announcement of the SWG Live Event team winners (our team won! I picked up Anakin's JSF and a $100 gift card as prizes)
• Introduction of the Players of the Year, complete with beauty-pageant sashes o_O
• Costumes of a dark jedi, pirates, elves, and a kick-* dward (who won $500)
• Invasion of the Bria table by the Naritus (et al) table
• Seating was arranged by game/server, but they actually forgot to put out placards for any SWG servers. Jordano and I took over an EQ server's table and removed their placard and we filled the table up with SWG'ers. It was right by the buffet, so we were first in line for food, too Then when they finally resolved the issue (the SWG devs/community folks were pissed!) we got to move to a new table up front AND free drink tickets for the bar (thanks, Pex!)
• PvP IRL with the Bria folks, followed by Meiling and one of their players doing "The Worm"
• Pictures with the SWG team members who were still hanging out with us
  

In addition, a few of us (Jordano and myself, especially) spent most of our free time hanging out with Loche, Pex, Valara, GreyPawn and Shadowbrak (among others) so we had the opportunity to discuss a few other ideas, concerns and questions we and the community have had. Some of the random thoughts that were brought up included:

• Isomerase cap at 90% in-game, but the expertise and legacy pet bonuses can drive that up, so an 80% isn't good enough to count the same as a 90 with those bonuses
• Beast Master crafting currently weighs the quality of your fixtures very high, and the quality of your consumables very low. This is backwards from their intention and Shadowbrak is going to investigate the logic here to see if there's a bug that needs to be fixed.
• DNA quality affects lots of stuff, including stat distribution and mutation chance, so definitely always use high quality (forget the theories that low-quality DNA is more likely to mutate - this was definitive).
• Although they said a fix to the baseclubbing exploit was expected between Ch. 6 and 7, they haven't come up with a viable alternative. I talked to Blixtev about the ideas we'd kicked around in the "GCW Bases" thread, but he's still convinced that there will be collusion between the factions to get points handed out, which is the exploit part of baseclubbing.
• Factionally aligned cities are not in the cards.

Two of the new games coming out that look really cool are Pirates of the Burning Sea and The Agency. I probably won't be doing pirates personally, but The Agency looks like one of the most innovative, unique and amazing games I've seen since SWG (and after 4+ years of playing only SWG, that's saying something). I'm going to be counting the days (once they announce it) to Beta and assuming all goes well, I'll have to learn to split my time. I can't say enough good things about this game, and after spending an hour in a demo with the Executive Producer and Lead Designer, these guys have their **** together.

So in conculsion, they listened a lot, took LOTS of notes, acknowledged existing issues they'd been looking at and took home a lot of new issues they didn't seem to be aware of that we really assumed they would have, so I'm looking forward to the next bug bash.