So I was just messing around tonight seeing how cheap I could get to Vegas and I figured out that by using Expedia and booking the airfare and Vegas Hilton together I could save $300 vs. booking the two items separately. There must be some kind of promotion going on but it worked out that I got 3 nights at the host hotel for a grand total of $150. Their normal Fanfaire rate is $139 per night, as far as I can tell. That's pretty sweet!

I wasn't going to go this year but the wife is going on three beach weekends with the girls and I just as well take a break and jet to Vegas for the weekend to chill in gaming land. I'm messing around with EQ1 and VG at the moment and of course still have my EQ2 account. I think it will be interesting to see the Star Trek exhibit, check out the unveiling of the EQ and EQ2 expansions, hear what the future holds for Vanguard and check out all the new games. I'm going to fly solo this year. Anyone else want to go out there and hang out? It would be cool to havea a few EQ2 daily people just to go drink with.

Laz

Man I'd love to make that work out again this year. Last year was a blast and enjoyed hanging with you guys. Unfortunately, I should have preplanned a couple of months ago to get a kitchen pass. I am not able to make it this year. Have a great time man and bring back tons of info!

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Please do man, feel free to start your own thread with details also, would love to hear about upcoming stuff.

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"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" - Laz must be taking this mantra to heart :)

He lives! Sorry for the delay on the updates. We just wrapped up and I'm back in the room. There is a ton of coverage this year in the media so I don't know that I'll have anything to add other than a few observations. First of all, this year was much more organized and professional than last year. The schedules were solid and the facilities were an improvement over the Rio (with the exception of the Voodoo lounge party on the rooftop.) It was a little strange this year as I didn't really know too many people attending and I registered as a Vanguard player (where I have two level 18 newbies at the moment.) I'd say the turnout was very strong with a huge EQ1 and EQ2 contingent. Behind those two juggernauts, SWG had a lot of people attending and they seemed very energetic and enthusiastic about that game. Lightsabers were everywhere tonight.

SOE continues to hype their new products including DC Universe, The Agency and Free Realms. I saw a good bit of all three and for sure DC looks the coolest. Graphically, I think it's stunning and you can interact with just about everything in the world. Most everyone I saw playing it was using a PS3 controller so I'm thinking that might be the controller of choice. I think SOE is on to something with a DC / Agency PS3 launch. That's a whole new market of players who will be exposed to the "pseudo" MMOs. Free Realms is ok I guess. I mean you log on to the web site and create your account. No credit card is needed and while you are creating the account the client streams in the background. It looks like WOW, which is pretty good actually considering the thin client but it's targeted towards 9-14 year olds and young Hannah Montanna type girls. It doesn't do much for me, but again like DC and the Agency on the PS3 - SOE seems to be venturing out into new areas to grow.

The convention hall, where they had the game room set up was pretty cool. There were large displays for EQ, EQ2, SWG with even bigger areas set up for the new games. Vanguard, Matrix, Planetside and Pirates shared a little 4 computer kiosk which was pretty disappointing. It was interesting to note how low key pirates was this year after walking down the red carpet into the conference room last year as it was getting previewed before release. Like Vanguard, it's somewhat spooky to see how quick games with lots of potential can tank. In Vanguards case, they have made tons of progress in the last year but it remains to seen whether or not they can get people to return in large enough numbers to warrant additional investment by SOE.

A few notes on the expansions / upcoming new content:

EQ2

Guild Halls were shown in much greater detail than last year. The high end houses look very cool with some neat features like a portal druid and a raid guy that you can set to port people from your guild hall to just outside your raid zones. The bad news is that you have to have a uber high level guild to get one which turned off lots of players. To me, it reminded me of the mythical weapons. Everyone loves them but very few can attain them. Regarding the expansion, of course one of the biggest things is that there is no level cap increase. You have 60 new AA's (taking you to 200 total) and they have redesigned the trees so that you don't have to train in things you don't want to use just to get the skills at the top of the tree. Many familiar sites are in the expansion - with Guk and Befallen among them. They have the LDON like system as well as a daily quest type thing called missions I think where you get one for each dungeon per day.

They say they are addressing itemization issues when it comes to raiding - we'll see. I think there are some more heritage quests and some type of epic long quest chain that will be in game per class. They are tweaking class roles a bit to make more classes useful - i.e. you might have a reason to bring multiple tanks to raids etc... I also got to play the Veksar new group instance with a pick up group of blubies and that was interesting. Overall, the expansion looks interesting - it's supposed to come out 11/18 I think.

EQ

Many of you know that I recently picked up EQ again and dual boxed a mage/cleric to 40. In the next EQ expansion, they are adding minions to the game. This is similar to Guild Wars I guess. You basically can hire either a tank or a healer npc to follow you around and help you level or get through group content. Each player can have one minion so if you are dual boxing you can have two minions (a 4 man party) They are working on the minion AI but it looked cool. The healer minion would rez you if you die etc... You can switch between defensive / offensive and passive and you can define roles for each character. The minion shares exp like a party member and levels with you. You have to pay a fee up front and then an hourly maintenance fee. They aren't allowed in raid content.

The expansion itself is a retro expansion - revisiting important events in EQ history. It looks more interesting to me than the EQ2 expansion but time will tell. I was really suprised by how many EQ players were here and how passionate and knowledgeable they are about their game. I think this expansion comes out late September / early October - can't remember.

VG

In the next few weeks, Vanguard will have GU6. It's a huge update with over 2,000 bug fixes, a free to play trial island, new character models for all races and some class tweaks. You will be able to download a 900 meg file and see the best VG has to offer content wise and performance wise. I hope some of you guys check it out. The lead dev wore his Sigil hat all weekend, that's got to be a weird feeling. Anyways, these guys are super passionate about that game and have worked miracles over the last year and half. They are working on Pantheon of the Ancients - a new raid dungeon and are about to tell the story of the gods. I hung out with 4-5 guildies from the Seradon server and we had lots of fun.

Freebies / Misc

Everyone who attended FanFaire this year will get free copies of both the EQ and EQ2 expansions as well as being able to participate in both VIP betas. I thought that was pretty sweet. We got Free Realms beta keys as well and various other assorted SWAG. On a random topic, they pulled some WOW player up on stage tonight and humiliated him. He made some shout out about the Lich King. It was all pretty entertaining and he left with a copy of EQ2 and a SOE t-shirt. The food was better this year and the drinks were flowing. So much so that I had a terrible hangover this morning and didn't get downstairs until 2pm. Oh well, better get to packing - have to fly back in the morning. My wife wouldn't part with her digital camera and the Best Buy Machine in the Houston airport (connecting flight) bugged out when I tried to buy my own camera. In other words, no pictures this year. You'll probalby see a few up on voyagesofvanguard.com. Louper got some of us tonight at the banquest. Till next time...

Laz

The mercenaries / minions or whatever they were called were indeed very sweet. It will be interesting to see how they are balanced so that clerics and tank real players can still get groups. The sound pretty powerful, getting a full slate of spells and the one we saw (a cleric) was running around with epic 1.0 and 2.0 equipped. She was also a siren so it was easy on the eyes. They summoned a dragon minion too so they are pretty creative when it comes to what the races/appearances will be for these things.

I'm pretty happy that there is no EQ2 level cap increase. I hated solo grinding to get to 80 so that's a sigh of relief. Also, I think it will allow the mythical epic weapons to retain their value for another year. DC got much more hype than the Agency this year - not sure why, maybe it's further along in development. The gameplay was fast and furious and I'm not really into comic book stuff but this game looks fun. The guys I saw playing it were using a PS3 style controller and it was coming out of the display booth next to a keyboard. I'm assuming they were using a controller on the PC. It seemed easier to fly around etc with that vs. a keyboard and mouse.

On a side note, I didn't realize airports have free wi-fi. This is pretty sweet, I can just kill some time before my flight by catching up on the forums etc...

Laz

I am so glad I picked up EQ again after hearing the news about the ability to have minions. If done correctly, I feel alot of potential for EQ1. The ability to experience an MMO in a solo setting and actually being able to accomplish something in a heroic instance will be awesome. I am wondering if you can only hire 1 minion or more than 1, etc.. I'd love to be able to go back and do LDON missions, etc... without having to try to find a group for it.

I am VERY excited about the EQ minion implementation.

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I did make one yes, but couldn't find you that day on, and then after hearing about you back and forth between games, I have stayed on Tunare for now, just because I have 32K plat someone gave me and I have nothing on Luclin. Though I am more than willing to roll on Luclin if you are planning on staying there. I just hate to lose what I've worked up for so far, join the server, and poof goes everyone...lol But I could definetely use having the people around. It's a little lonely out there.

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I'm surprised they've added something like this to EQ being that its a big new feature, I'm wondering if SOE are going to treat EQ as their testbed MMO for ideas and just put tried and trusted ones on EQ2 now. If its implemented similar to Guildwars then real players will still be a preference although in there you could get a full team of henchmen (and lose miserably when you tried the harder stuff!), it still sounds a good idea, I just wonder though if they can be used in PVP too?

Its a relief too on no level cap increase for EQ2, plus if this shards system is implemented the same way as the WoW badge of justice reward system (it sounds like SOE have stolen one of the good ideas) it should solve the gear gap problem of the new content needing players to raid through the previous expansion to get into it (if the expansion is done as a step up as I guess it will be). In the WoW system the rewards you could get were on par initially with the early raid drops which worked well with getting people into raiding and got a lot more people grouping up to do the harder dungeons.

Its sounding like all good stuff for EQ2 a least.