Fanfest 2015

Figured that I should write something quick about my time in Iceland at fanfest. My trip started with a very fun ride to Stockholm with buss taking around 5 hours to get to Stockholm from my city. I spent a night at my dad in Stockholm before leaving for Arlanda airport in the morning and flying to Iceland. On the plane up to Iceland I met Niden (@Niden_GMVA) and his friend and we pretty much spent the entire trip talking Eve, Fanfest and other things.


The first thing I planned to show up to was the Tweetfleet meetup at the celtic cross pub the day before fanfest started. I got there a little bit late and it was really cool seeing that many eve players in one spot. I think I met every CSM in Iceland except Sion. Talked to CCP Guard and said hi to Rise. All in all I had a great time at that meetup and it was quite strange to have so many people knowing who I am and coming up to me saying hi, buying me a beer etc. I couldn't resist taking a selfie with Xenuria.

credit: Mizhir

It was also nice meeting the csm members that I have talked to for a while. Mangala Solaris and Asayanami Dei especially were really cool guys. The atmosphere at this place was awesome and it was nice having so many people with a shared intrest at the same place and that you could easily go up to anyone and say "Hi man what do you do in eve" and instantly start a conversation. And people were less awkward then what most people have said it would be at a eve meetup. I somehow managed to get home without saying goodbye when Mizhir got me a taxi.

Day 1

I arrived kinda early to the Harpa as I had to find CCP Leeloo for my csm badge so I would actually be let into the event. After a couple of SMSes I find her and she hands me my badge and I'm ready for fanfest. I meet up with God's apples and Liam Inkuras and we chat a bit before heading up into the fanfest area. There were so many people at the Harpa and the whole place looks amazing. We head up and gets ready for the first keynote and presentation. While sitting there waiting we see Chessur and he comes up to us and says Hi etc and that we should meet up after the first presentation. 

First thing I wanted to try out was Eve Valkyrie so Me Chessur Gods and Liam head to the PvP room and gets ready to play some Valkyrie. First impressions for that game is that it is really super cool and also very hard to play for the first time. It was amazing to use the Occulus Rift and it felt really cool. They also had some Eve 5v5 battlecruiser pvp arena setup and we played some there and don't think we dropped a single match. For every win you would get a beer token and those were put to great use. I also met up with the Camel team and talked a lot with them. In general those guys were really cool and I had a ton of fun with them. 

I went into a super packed 0.0 roundtable just to hear the cries about supers being bad or trollceptors and it was kinda fun. but in general that room was way too packed and kinda warm. 

Then comes the keynote. It wasn't as exciting to me at it was for most people because I already knew the stuff. It was kinda sad not getting elected for the CSM but I won't stop trying and I hope that CCP will announce some of the stuff I did while on the CSM soon so I can actually say that I wasn't useless. It's nice to have skynet removed at least. After the keynote we decide to head out and check out Reykjavik. I go out with Chessur and check his hostel out after hearing stories of how shady it would be from Liam but it was actually kinda nice. We go out and have dinner at some random bar and I got a hamburger that was kinda nice. The water in Iceland smells really bad by the way. After the dinner we go out shopping some because Chessur needs his healthy (green) juice and at the store we actually meet some of the chinese players playing in the tournament and we chat a bit and wish them good luck.

Day 2

We meet up early at around 8 o clock at the Harpa to watch the solar eclipse. Me and Chessur grabs some egg and bacon sandwiches outside. After chatting a bit with the Camel guys we decide to head up with them to the roof on their hotel to watch the Eclipse. 

Not quite 100% but it was close. Day 2 was going to be the one with the most roundtables and presentations to go to. The first one was a 0.0 and sov round table and I feel kinda bad for tricking F4bske to come and listen to it with me. The second one was the Lowsec and fw roundtable and that was kinda interesting to go to and on a topic I actually know stuff about. 

The next one was the fleet pvp roundtable that me and the entire camel crew decide to go to. After reading in the guidebook app that it would be about large fleets we decide to talk about small fleets there instead. There were some cool ideas bounced here. The next big one that we were going to go to was the Ship and module balance presentation. I think it was a pretty ok presentation and they finally released the new t3ds (will post some fitting blogs on those at crossing zebras when Fozzie un-NDAs the full stats). 

I had to leave early and couldn't ask any questions. Because I had the CSM panel to attend to. I don't really know what I was going to do there since I only was half a csm member. But anyway I decided to show up and first thing that hit me was that I didn't drink nearly enough beers for this. 

fc pls kill me

Since I had stuff I wanted to say but quietly said them in my head instead of speaking out. I remember some questions like that the csm wouldn't have any small gang candidate anymore but really. It's not hard to message any of the new csm members with your questions and I know I will mail some of the candidates suggestions if I just dont go straight and message ccp directly. There was also a question about what the best and worst thing with the CSM was and for me that was: Actually having people listen to your suggestion and while it sounds selfish its also nice to be able to skip all the noise that is the eveo forums. The bad thing is obviously not having people listen to you but I think I did my best to argue for the things I believed in and that mattered to me and my community of small gang/solo pvpers. 

If someone wonders why I checked my phone and smiled a lot it's because my corp kept pinging me stupid questions and apparently Twitch chat asked why I represent a corp that supports ISIS ingame and I have to say that I am also a big fan of the interbus ship identification system.

After that I went to the streaming community roundtable since I couldn't find any of the camel dudes or chessur. It was actually kind of a good roundtable and it was fun meeting and talking to those dudes. We brought up the topic of streamsniping, streaming in general and other things related. It was extra fun for me since I actually streamsnipe a lot of people and I have met all those guys there at least once. 

The next big thing coming up was the Worlds Collide tournament. I sat next to chessur gods apples and Liam and they didn't say shit about anything before the tournament (I got some small hints but thats it). But as soon as it started Chessur started talking about all the setups and what their thoughts were etc and CCP Rise came up to us and we talked a bit and Rise managed to get Chessur up on the stage to do a interview between the matches and that was cool. The first match was really fun to watch and despite what people said Camel did def not throw that match. I know a lot of people got scared when Fisty screamed at a round table that they are going to throw the first match but it was only a joke. We talked a bit about my blogposts and they told me that a lot of things were actually correct and I am happy that I managed to predict the 3-1 victory and its a good result since a 3-0 match would be to fast. 

Credit: Lord Carlos

I'll just use a picture Lord Carlos took since mine weren't that great. After they won we all went up on stage and talked a bit. Me and Chessur decide to head out and grab some food and we find a place called "American Hamborgararararar" or something that served great burgers.  I got a lobster burger that was awesome with a milkshake that was so thick it was hard to drink. 

After this it's time for the pubcrawl. It went as you would expect, playing chess at 4am with Chessur at his hostel and helping gods apples hit on 14 year old girls on Tinder in Iceland. It was hilarious and we managed to get God's apples three dates in one day at the same place. Sadly the first one no showed and he wanted extraction from the second one. 

Day 3

I wake up with a slight headache but manage to grab a taxi to get to the Harpa early. The first session that I wanted to go to was the ship and module balance roundtable. I meet up with Gods and Liam outside and we grab some blue doughnuts

They were surprisingly good. The first roundtable was actually kinda empty and I bet people were still out pubcrawling or trying to crawl to the bed at 11am. CCP Rise also couldn't make it and its understandable as the last thing I saw at the Harpa was him marching out with a big bottle of brennivin in his hands. 

We spent some time talking about supers and Rorquals and general mining stuff that doesn't really matter that much for me but its still good to know that ccp is working on it. Chessur asked what Fozzie were going to do with medium autocannons since they are pretty bad at the moment. Fozzie pretty much told him that they are being used... We also talked a bit about hmls, battlecruisers (fozzie gave me a shoutout here \o/), Assault frigs vs T3 destroyers and Liam had to leave so he asked the quality question if CCP Fozzie wanted to buff the Chameleon powergrid and Fozzie responded that he actually wanted to do a pass on AT ships some week. This followed up into the next question when a guy wanted a logi ship for his black ops drops and Fozzie told him to stop being poor and buy Etanas.

After that I headed up into the pvp room and me and some camel dudes played a bunch of matches in the eve 5v5 tournament and Chessur got drawn for the Valkyrie tournament but he sadly lost his first qualifier by 1 kill. Something nice was that during the last day they handed out pirate noobships to people winning in the pvp tournament and well 

The funniest thing here was playing with Fisty who blasted taylor swift and singing loudly while fighting people and owning guys. He also went up to ccp and asked if he could have some more noobship codes and they handed him like 20 of them. Something bad was that me and Liam pressed the enter captains quarter button that bugged the shit out of their tournament client and we delayed everything by 20 minutes or so.

The next roundtable me and my friends went to was the Future of evesports roundtable and we had some really good discussion about making tools for people to run their tournaments and maybe adding some UI elements to display ewar effects applied to a target from someone else. 

After that we tried to get into the second ship balance roundtable but it was way to crowded and we werent let in so we formed our own roundtable outside were we decided to check out the icelandic dating scene like proper nerds

Liam and Fisty doing some elite Tinder pvp.

Our entire group decides to head out for some Camel empire victory dinner at a fancy restaurant. We formed quite a big blob and hit a really good place to eat.

After this it's time for the party on top of the world. The whole party was awesome and I might have had a bit too much to drink as my friends maybe can remember. I talked a bit with some csm members and I had some Vodka or something that a Camel guy smuggled in. I also met and talked a bit with Tinkerhell who promised me a AT ship while drunk (nvr 5get) I had to get back a bit early at 2 am because I had a plane to catch tomorrow

Day 4

Time to leave Iceland sadly. I went to the airport and meet up with Niden again since we share the same flight. I manage to meet Liam for a bit and say goodbye to him and meet his dad as well.

One thing is for sure and that's that I am definitely going to fanfest next year and this was one of the best trips I have done and I had a ton of fun and it was great meeting everyone.