Archive for the ‘Community Harbringers’ Category

The PoxNora World Map

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

The PoxNora universe is filled with rich history, majestic creatures, and mysterious powers which create a world like no other. Torn apart by war, eight factions battle for control of Nora, the source of conflict among them. With our twelfth expansion, Dire Covenant, we are pleased to bring you an interactive experience which will take you from the winter plains of the Savage Tundra, to the dark home of Underdepths. What can you expect to see when this goes live? Today we’re going to look at what you can expect and what went into bringing PoxNora to life from the folks who made it happen.

Leaping off the Page

The first benefit players will see is bringing what was once just story to life. Lead Designer CorpsE explains what it was like to render PoxNora visually.

Biting off on the PoxNora World map was one of the first things I wanted our team to do when I arrived here at SOE Tucson. The PoxNora world has always felt a little ambiguous, and lacked form or definitive lore. Since 85 % of our players are full faction players and nearly every player has a favorite faction we really wanted to give an image that carried feeling for the world and a territory to identify with. Not only does this map help the player understand where his faction is located in the world it also gave us a great engine to flush out more of the culture, history and battles from the continent of Poxanthru. We’re extremely happy to present this to the PoxNora community and hope players enjoy interacting with it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to life.

As you can see, this map plays an important role in the PoxNora design process and adds depth. Followers of Forsaken Wastes have heard of the Elsarin plight, but now can learn about their city or what horrid beasts live in the Fetid Marsh. The lands roamed by the Exile are no longer just in text, but visually represented. Are you curious where the Ironfist Mountains are in relation to Forglar Swamp? It’s now plain to see which factions share borders and where bitter rivalries have begun.

Opening Up More of PoxNora

The PoxNora World Map may already sound pretty interesting, but its creation required our development team to go far beyond what was in place. Countless hours were spent creating additional lore to reveal never before seen stories about your favorite areas and heroes. Do you know the purpose of the Three Towers of Valdac or what they guard? Their history and purpose is clearly marked!

“Three observation towers, positioned within the Ironfist Mountain range around J’thir, the Elsarin-Valdac border, and the Shattered Peaks. These were made to watch over the Ironfist Mountain range. Soldiers and snipers were stationed on these towers, to guard against possible invaders.”

This is just one of numerous interesting facts you can learn about the environment and enhance your PoxNora experience.

Foreshadowing the Future

The PoxNora World map does much more than bring life to the game, it presents a window to the future. These lands could change and who knows what secrets await those patient enough to search carefully. Seek out each faction and every corner of the map to learn more about PoxNora, and who knows what you’ll find.

Look for this exciting feature November 11th with PoxNora’s Dire Covenant Expansion!

The Life of a Bug in PoxNora

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Most people consider bugs a mild annoyance, whether it’s a trail of ants from your trashcan, or a scorpion living in the closet. In the life of PoxNora, bugs are an unintended mechanics arising from abilities, spells, maps, or anything else that takes place in the game. Today we are going to delve quickly into the development world of PoxNora and explain the process for bugs and how they are resolved. For all intents and purposes we’ll lovingly name our bug Gnark.

The first and most important process of bugs is identification and that is where you, the community comes in. Ideally we would catch every single possible bug during our testing phase. While most are, there are always a few slip through the cracks. Our first and most widely utilized bug catching tool is the PoxNora forums. Every work day I, or a member of our Quality Assurance team goes through the forums and enters each issue into our system. We also take bug reports from the support system found on the PoxNora.com website which gives players at least two ways to bring our attention to Gnark.

The bug’s life continues as it moves to our Quality Assurance team who spend a good portion of their time trying to break things. Sometimes they are a little too efficient at their job (asdf actually giggles), but it’s always good to know they are ready to get down to business. When a bug report is received they go in and try to recreate the situation to see exactly what happens.

Once a bug has been verified, it’s up to either our Programmers or Design team to decide how to fix it. If there is a question about if something is working as intended, someone braves a trip to see CorpsE or Kaervas in hopes of not being hit with a wooden sword. If it’s an ability that isn’t operating the way it’s described, a Programmer goes in and does their black magic to make that happen. Once the animals have been sacrificed and voodoo dolls are put away, it goes back to Quality Assurance for testing. In this instance, Gnark has been fixed and will be put back into the live game.

Once everything seems to be in working order, any necessary changes are put in the next patch. These are scheduled weekly to insure we provide an ample amount of downtime for you. If the change is a large one, we announce it in advance to see how the community feels. Otherwise, it’s slipped into patch notes and we move on to the next bug. At this point everyone is happy and there are balloons, elephants, and a great celebration. Gnark has been squashed.

How exactly do we decide which bugs are going to get fixed first? There are combinations of factors taken into consideration when prioritization changes. First of all, how much does bug impact gameplay? For instance, if Gnark is causing an even more annoyance than usual and teleporting across the map, he’ll be fixed pretty quickly. Next, how much goes into correcting this bug? Fixing a typo in a spell description can be done much quicker than correcting a complex ability on a champion. At that point, a list is made determining what can be done immediately, and what might be a little later.

We hope this gives you a rough idea about how bugs are caught and exterminated. While it’s not a step by step, this is an overview of exactly what happens every day in the SOE Studio. For now, keep submitting those bugs, because we want to keep fixing them.

The Life of a Tournament

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Have you ever wondered what goes into a PoxNora tournament? How do they run and is it as hard as it looks? I’ve run a few now and today I’m going to take you behind the scenes to show how it all works. There are probably more steps than you think, but here is the entire process.

Theme - Without a good theme, a tournament is nothing more than a group of people beating on each other until only one remains. Even the smallest variation in gameplay can add an additional layer of strategy or force players to think outside the box. It could be a battlegroup of one specific race, the exclusion of Exotics, or another limitation placed on a particular battle. Maps are a huge consideration as a poor map choice can give an enormous advantage to certain battlegroups.

Prizes - No contest or tournament is worth participating in without some decent prizes. We try to rotate things with booster packs, leveling tokens, and on a rare occasion spiffy runes. For the most part many players just compete for enjoyment but a decent reward for performance is never unappreciated.

Get Approval - You might think I just decide “Hey we’re going to give away booster packs” when I decide on a tournament but it’s not quite that simple. There is an approval process we go through to make sure we are following best practices and company policy. Once everything has been a green light we can make an announcement.

Announcement - Promoting the tournament isn’t a difficult step but you want to be sure to find the balance between excitement and using the word “unprecedented.” For the most part a locked thread is put in the Events forum with specific entry instructions.

Entrants - At a specified time, I unlock the entry thread and have players post if they are interested. They also send me a breakdown of which battlegroup they are planning to use in the upcoming event. I verify it to make sure it fits within the parameters established in the rules and verify their entry. I also have a system that can see the battlegroup they are playing before the game begins, so I verify things match up.

Seeding - If you aren’t familiar with professional sports, seeding is the process of making sure matches are paired to provide a fair and exciting finale. This can be challenging if the ranking of participants varies by a large amount. It’s mitigated as much as possible but there are times where a rank 1000 plays a rank 200.

In Game Announcements - This is where I remind everyone regularly that the tournament begins at a specific time. This is not only to make spectators aware, but to remind players who may have forgotten about the event.

Take Roll - It’s time to get things going, so we need to take roll and make sure everyone has showed up. This is almost never the case, so we fortunately have some alternative entrants ready to take their place. In some cases this means finding some last minute participants who want a shot at fame and prizes.

Initiate the Competition - This step might actually as easy as waving a Starting Flag at NASCAR, but it isn’t. Depending on the size of the tournament, and if entrants arrive promptly, this can take 10 minutes to accomplish. Even after the first round has begun, players complete their battles at various times so seeding must be done on the fly.

Prizing - When all is said and done, participants must be given their reward per the tournament rules. For the most part this requires a quick few commands in our system, but a large tournament can be time consuming. Our anniversary tournament for example had 17 prizes that were individually awarded.

Hopefully this gives you a little insight into exactly what it takes to create and run a tournament here at PoxNora. While some of it is less than glamorous, seeing some of the epic fights over the last few months has been worth every minute.

Discuss this on PoxNora Forums

CorpsE RadarX
Community Manager

Broodcall T Minus One

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I know I say it a lot, but it really is an exciting time around the office as the last pieces of the Broodcall expansion are falling into place. Everyone is working a little harder in anticipation of our early launch tomorrow morning. What I’d like to do is share what a few people around the office are doing right now. As you can see my desk is over with the folks who do our programming and testing. All of these guys are making last minute polishes to features and assuring things go as smoothly as possible tomorrow.

Slugbait - This champion of code is going through line after line diligently trying to make any necessary adjustments. I wanted to talk with him more but the sound of a whip cracking in the background spurns me on.

qwerty and asdf - This dynamic duo is doing their best to break everything now so the players can’t do it later. asdf wants to take a break to do some dancing, but the Trading System can’t wait.

Elrac and Paragon - These two are discussing the new Drums of War system and making changes to the website. They are using a lot of technical terms that I’m sure I can’t share even if I did understand, so I just slide over to someone else.

MaxGoliath - His work was on a number of the new abilities in Broodcall. One in particular he helped create was Stormwrack which you’ll see tomorrow. He’s wearing headphones so he doesn’t have to listen to me crunch Cheetos.

After this I make my way over to the designers who think all this stuff up. Now as you can see Kaervas, CorpsE, and Sir Quimbel sit in tight quarters for maximum creativity. It’s also so CorpsE is always in range with a wooden sword he has at his desk. I can’t show you the dry erase board behind me, but it’s safe to say these guys are already sketching ideas for the next expansion. What do they do the day before an expansion?

Sir Quimbel - This is our writer and he’s actively creating a compelling story to go along with Broodcall. I expected more quill pens and such on his desk but apparently that’s “really old school.”

Kaervas - Kaervas takes a moment from whaling on the AI to tell me what he’s working on. Balance testing on the Drums of War is currently a priority and I can see he’s tinkering with all sorts of abilities.

CorpsE - As I approach his desk I get the obligatory glare and reminder that he IS buffing Gnark. CorpsE is working on a lot as the Senior Designer, checking the adjusted Ironfist Stronghold map and the new K’Thir Forest map going into Ranked Play. He’s also testing the Full Plate Armor, and renaming a rune that was apparently going to be Nosferatu.

KaizerSozay - My last stop is with the Producer himself. The guy in charge believe it or not is just as busy as everyone else coordinating pieces and making sure everything is on task. While I’m standing there he is looking at some Broodcall assets to use on the PoxNora website. I didn’t stay any longer than I had to for fear he would start asking me to collect data on what the Community thinks on Broodcall changes. I’ll have plenty of reports to do in the coming days.

I hope this gives you an idea of what is going on at SOE Tucson today and the type of work we put into an expansion. Admittedly this is all from a Community Managers perspective, but if nothing else you’ve now seen a few pictures of our new offices.

RadarX
Community Manager

Fan Faire Day 2

Monday, July 20th, 2009

It’s the second day of Fan Faire and if things go anything like yesterday, it will certainly be an adventure. I’ve slept only a little so far and while I’ve seen plenty of these shows, I’ve never experienced it from this perspective. My day starts bright and early so I can get a jump on things.

6:25 AM - I head down for an early breakfast knowing it’s quite possible I’ll miss lunch.

6:35 AM - 6 extremely loud lawyers from Washington D.C. are eating at a nearby table. They have apparently been up all night gambling so this explains what I smell.

6:50 AM - One lawyer goes for broke and drops $2 on Keno. I shake my head, close my nose, and finish my food.

7:25 AM - Only a few members of the community team are in the ballroom. The EverQuest II Community Manager is setting up for her tournament.

8:15 AM - The tournament PC’s are all patched and ready to go. I have the list of entrants which are in groups of six (that I designate as waves) and scheduled to show up every 30 minutes.

8:50 AM - Time for the community team huddle. We take a quick moment to make sure everyone knows where they are supposed to be and on the proper medications.

9:00 AM - The doors open and a groups of people start to meander in. Some of the more exciting panels are keeping the crowd here manageable. The first wave of Tournament groups show up. One is missing two people.

9:05 AM - In the interest of getting things going I grab two people from the 9:30 group because they have no clue who else is in their group.

9:10 AM - The two missing group members show up. I cry on the inside.

9:30 AM - The Game Room is now completely full and I have people waiting to use machines. Wave 2 of the tournament has now shown up.

9:40 AM - Wave 2 sits down and an entire group hasn’t shown up. A group from Wave 5 desperately wants to move people out of their group to let a friend in.

9:45 AM - After plenty of debate I allow them to move two people.

10:10 AM - We’re a few minutes behind and groups are coming up to check in. I tell them to come back in a few minutes.

10:12 AM - One group comes back and I define “a few minutes” as 10 or more.

10:30 AM - 2:00 PM My time in the Game Room has blended into a montage of walking circles around the PC’s and ushering people into the tournament. The EverQuest II Community Manager gives me a granola bar and a little of Niami’s famous trail mix. It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

2:15 PM - I go to the restroom and remove my shoes. My feet have started swelling so I blame whoever makes Airwalks.

3:00 PM - The Game Room has slackened a bit so I’m able to move back and forth between it and the PoxNora display. Hawkfain and PoxVega are talking with prospective players. I shuffle a few old media contacts over their way. Poxvega has not screamed “POXVEGA!” all day so my fingers are crossed.

3:30 PM - During a lull HawkFain sits down to try out Kung Fu Hustle. He’s brutalized by the game, but to add insult to injury, one of their developers comes over and makes playing look easy.

4:15 PM - I sit down for the first time in 8 hours, and 5 minutes later I can’t feel my legs.

4:20 PM - One of the community team tells me to stop sitting cross legged.

5:30 PM - We’re pushing in the last groups for the tournament. There have been a total of 23 which translates into 138 players and only 18 are getting prizes. Some of these guys are taking things pretty seriously so I want to help and offer advice.

5:35 PM - One guy snarls at me that “More DoTs!” is not being helpful. Apparently he’s a Paladin or something.

6:25 PM - We wrap up the tournament a bit late, clean things up and head for the Community Address. I already have an idea of what they are announcing, but haven’t seen the specifics so I’m a little excited.

7:05 PM - 1500 people pack into a large ballroom and the presentation begins. Free Realms is adding more to Go Karts and putting in soccer.

7:25 PM - One of the speakers goes up on stage in a banana suit.

7:26 PM - I start texting to find out who he lost a bet to.

7:30 PM - 8:30 PM - Exhaustion is setting in. I know they announced the next EverQuest and EverQuest II expansion but the rest is hazy. What I also thought was pretty cool was every attendee was getting a free copy. PoxNora gets some face time and the video looks amazing.

9:00 PM - ???? - I make a few notes in my organizer and eventually drift off to sleep. Once again no idea what time my roommate came in.

Fan Faire: Day 1

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

FanFaire is over and it was an amazing event this year. For me however it was quite a bit different than any other I’ve ever attended. In the past I’ve been there as media and walking around covering events. Of course I made a lot of assumptions about how things were organized and set up but I ad admittedly was wrong about much of what goes on behind the scenes. What I’m going to do today is give you an inside look at exactly what we do and what the PoxNora team. Welcome to Fan Faire

8:15 AM - Arrive at airport and wander over to Hawkfain. PoxVega arrives and we both notice we are basically one of the last people to board. HawkFain was “responsible” and checked in earlier but boards with us. We board the plane in separate rows but fortunately there was a middle seat for most of us. PoxVega sits next to a very loud woman who insists it is her birthday and wants a drink.

10:25 AM - We’ve left the plane and I’m the only one who checked a bag so we start following PoxVega to baggage claim. After grabbing my stuff we queue up (see I like Europeans) in a long line for cabs. You see Las Vegas is kind of like a 100 degree theme park. PoxVega spends the next 10 minutes scaring HawkFain about cab drivers.

11:00 AM - We arrive at Bally’s and toss our bags to a bellhop. Having no idea where to go we head for the nearest ballroom by the longest possible route we could find in the casino. After ascending two levels and almost wandering into some type of medical convention, we make our way to the actual area SOE is setting up in.

11:40 AM - We aren’t on the setup crew (that’s right SOE employees do a lot of the manual labor) because we have to run the late night gaming, but these guys have already been working diligently. A team has been stuffing swag bags for hours and a small team has set up almost 90 gaming PC’s with networking for players. It’s time to grab lunch.

12:15 AM - We wander through the Paris hotel for roughly 15 minutes before PoxVega points out a buffet we should go to. Being indecisive we decide to move on and walk to the end of the hotel where we find a quaint restaurant with $50 hamburgers. PoxVega tells us I told you so and we make our way back. Buffet wasn’t bad and had fancy schmancy French desserts. They even had snails and goose poop.

3:30 PM - We make our way over to see if we can check in. HawkFain grabs a passing bellhop to find out our luggage was on it’s way up to the room of someone else. I check in and we make our way over to the large room which contains a dozen different displays of different games. PoxVega and HawkFain man the PoxNora display while I take my post at the gameroom.

4:00 PM - 8:00 PM - The gameroom didn’t necessarily need me there so I made my way back over to the PoxNora display and started grabbing by passers to show them the wonders of the game. We showed quite a few people including media what PoxNora was all about.

8:30 PM - With only 90 minutes before late night gaming we make our way to a restaraunt for some hamburgers. Our waitress isn’t bad looking and PoxVega orders his hamburger with “Abuhhhh” on it.

10:00 PM - We are ready for late night gaming. HawkFain and PoxVega hang around for a while to answer questions but most people are trying things out or playing other Trading Card Games.  HawkFain spends a few minutes playing Kung Fu Hustle and is shown up pretty quickly by another SOE employee.  We finally shut everything down around 1AM and I make my way to the room. After jotting a few notes in my organizer I laid down about 2 AM.

2:00 AM - 6:00 AM - My roommate came in at some point. I was that tired.

So this was Day 1 of Fan Faire and now you have an idea of what we do at these events.

Discuss this on PoxNora Forums

RadarX
Community Manager

Meet Tony Jones: Community Manager

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Everyone knows what a game designers, artists, and programmers do but what about a community manager? A number of you have asked me this question over the past few weeks. What do I do for SOE Tucson, and more importantly how can I help you as a valuable member of the PoxNora community? Community Management is complex and varied enough that it’s difficult to find someone who hasn’t been in my shoes that understands what it entails.

My primary function is to help gather feedback from the player base in order to help the development team. They are capable of digging through hundreds of threads to find out what is on your hearts and minds. Wouldn’t it be better though if they were doing something like fixing bugs or enhancing game mechanics? It’s my job to know what all of you are thinking, or at least what most of you are thinking. Should this be nerfed? Should that be buffed? Is this spell bugged? Do you hate a particular rune and why? I read all this information, compile it for easy digestion and present it to the developers for their assessment.

Being the voice of the community isn’t my only job however, as I spend quite a bit of my time promoting different events. This can be as simple as letting all of you know about patch downtime and posting the notes. Other times SOE has major events like the launch of a game they want everyone to know about. Generally however it’s about making sure everyone sees things like the Weekly Rune Discussion Thread, the Player Spotlight, and anything else exciting happening in PoxNora. The Message of the Day and website news doesn’t update itself!

The lifeblood of a competitive game like PoxNora is tournaments and it’s my job to make sure you guys can beat each other silly on a regular basis. It might sound pretty easy to pick 16 players plus alternates, put them in a bracket, do announcements, officiate and observe all the matches, and write up the championship match. Ok maybe that doesn’t sound easy, but when you add it in with everything else, things can get a little crazy at times. There is comfort however when I see how excited many of you are to participate and I’ve watched some incredible matches just in the two I’ve run so far.

Finally we have the less glamorous task of chatroom and forum moderation. Yes there are days I feel like I’m a crossing guard with a big red stop sign and whistle. We do have a number of rules to and generally they are followed but every now and then, people have to be reminded to wait for the Walk sign. I’m lucky enough to have a few helpful moderators but for the most part I enjoy the time I get bantering and listening to all the players.

So there you have it. That is pretty much what I do in a given day, you just need to imagine it all happening at the speed of light.

June Casual Tourney Final Match

Friday, June 19th, 2009

If you missed last weeks casual tourney, it was quite a show to behold. Eight players of different factions went head to head with only one walking away as Grand Champion. The final match between high ranked DevilsRath and Sepulcher would take many twists and turns, but in the end one Avatar would fall. Fortunately for you we managed to put together a summary which gives a blow by blow of what happened and some strategies used in upper level gameplay.

Both opponents faced off in the K’Thir Forest map with DevilsRath having the first move. His first champion, a Battlemage, is matched by Sepulcher’s Jakei Elder, Norabeast, and Warbanner. DevilsRath begins his Nora gathering strategy by placing a Nora Mine and a Deep Miner. The next few turns have both sides spreading out but eventually Sepulcher takes the offensive. Advancing a Lonx Recruiter and Jakei Frostbow across the northeast bridge, he casts Ice Block to contest his opponents Nora Font. DevilsRath moves his Battlemage in obliterating the Ice Block but Sepulcher isn’t ready to let up and advances his Jakei Frostbow to reblock while deploying 4 snowcats.

With his font contested, DevilsRath is on the defensive and deploys a Barbarian Elite and Dwarven Sharpshooter to provide sorely needed firepower. The Jakei Frostbow takes heavy damage but the Battlemage takes much more and is reduced to a meager 2 hit points. If this weren’t enough, a Jakei Extinguisher and Elder cross the south bridge. This is now a clear press and it will take a significant turnaround for DevilsRath to hold Sepulcher back. He moves a Siege Engine into position and advances his Barbarian Elite hoping to keep the northeast font contested. Sepulcher now enjoys his advantage and takes the time to deploy more units including a powerful Angel of Perseverance. The Barbarian Elite manages to take out the Jakei Extinguisher before expiring, but Sepulcher moves to secure to the northeast font. In a desperate attempt to prevent total nora control, a Deep miner moves in to contest the font once more.

DevilsRath hasn’t had his Nora Font in some time and is under constant pressure at this point. Sepulcher brings out Tracker Gnark and in a surprise move charges DevilsRath’s avatar. There is nothing but a Siege Engine and a Warbanner standing between him and victory. In a more surprising move, DevilsRath plays Divine Dispersal buying himself just a little more time to regain a foothold. Sepulcher however still controls both fonts and immediately redeploys Tracker Gnark, 2 Jakei Elders, and a Lonx Recruiter. DevilsRath responds with the mighty Euan Ironfist and a powerful Groble Piledriver to hold his position. What happened next would surprise almost every member of the audience watching the game.

Instead of fortifying a secure position at the northeast Nora Font, Sepulcher continued his assault against DevilsRath’s avatar. Tracker Gnark moves in and gets off at least one attack while Euan proceeds to pound on him. He is stunned but not out of the fight. The two Jakei Elders make a rush for the shrine as well. Tracker Gnark gets off one more swing before Euan eliminates him and DevilsRath transfigures his avatar. It probably should have been over by now, but DevilsRath refuses to give up. Sepulcher loses a Jakei Elder but at this point owns all the Nora Fonts giving DevilsRath nowhere to deploy any other units. He’ll have to rely on spells and equipment now. The Angel of Perseverance returns and with him comes an ugly ally, an Ice Golem.

For now it appears DevilsRath has held up against the merciless onslaught but Sepulcher continues the push on him from all sides. The fight was valiant and there were quite a few times the crowd expected at turnaround but the final victory goes to Sepulcher. Be sure to look for more tournaments in the near future where you can not only observe but get in on the action.

Discuss this on PoxNora Forums

RadarX
Community Manager

What does SOE Fan Faire Mean for PoxNora?

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Fan Faire is approaching, and while you could be sitting on the fence or even wooed by larger venues, today we’re going to tell you what you could be missing. In the past, I’ve had the good fortune to attend a number of shows including Game Developer’s Conferences, the Leipzig Games Convention, and even E3 (when it was awesome). I’ve also had the pleasure of attending Fan Faires, so it’s easy to explain the differences and why they are worth your hard earned dollars.

First, this show isn’t in traffic congested Los Angeles or across the world in East Germany. It’s in glorious Las Vegas; home to everything fun. Do you really need an excuse to visit? Dozens of casinos light every street, the food is outstanding, and there are plenty of shows to take in if you have the time. The airport is only a short distance by cab and all the Fan Faire events are either held on site or within walking distance, so transportation costs are negligible.

Unlike every other event, Fan Faire provides almost non-stop activities the entire time you attend. Bigger shows do the typical 8am – 5pm where you can check things out but at the end of the day are left to your own devices. Of course you’ll see all the SOE products represented, but there is a banquet, at least one amazing party involving karaoke, and a silent auction for unique items. It’s like nothing else I’ve experienced.

In recent years SOE has used one night of the event to make major announcements involving their products. Just a few years ago I was there when they announced Legends of Norrath, and even caught a glimpse of EverQuest and EverQuest II expansions. This means you have the opportunity to see and hear about things that no one else has. It could be a new product or an expansion to an old one but being there live when they show it for the first time is exciting.

This brings us to one of the most important benefits of attending Fan Faire, meeting the developers. As seasoned media I can’t tell you how many interesting conversations I’ve had over a meal or drink during the show. There will be panels when you can ask very pointed questions which we’ll try and answer, but sitting down and finding out that we’re just ordinary people is a rewarding experience. Do you want to ask HawkFain what his favorite faction is or pitch PoxVega rune ideas? This is your chance.

So why haven’t you signed up yet? Airlines are desperate for your business and we’ve got some great rates for the hotel. We hope to see you June 25 - 28 in Las Vegas for the 2009 Fan Faire.

Discuss this on PoxNora Forums

RadarX
Community Manager