The SOE Fan Faire is a very busy time for everyone, Developers, players, fansite staff and press are all trying to cram as much as possible into two-and-a-half days of sheer, unadulterated, MMO overload.

Despite a very busy schedule I took my camcorder and got a series of mini-interviews with V.I.P.'s - Very Interesting Persons. You're invited to laugh at my truly amateur camera skills and enjoy a short video series called:

Three Questions With...

Our first victim is Tiffany "Amnerys" Spence, the EverQuest Brand Community Representative.

From the patcher: "All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be brought down at 4:00 am PDT on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 for a Game Update. They are estimated to be down for 8 hours. (PDT is -7 GMT: 5:00am MDT, 6:00am CDT, 7:00am EDT, 11:00 GMT) This information is subject to change in a couple of hours after we get confirmation of the exact downtime."

Panels are one of the things about Fan Faire that often concerns me because it's always a challenge to wade through the biased pool of opinions and quite frankly the pointless questions that are asked to get to the meat of anything really useful. Don't get me wrong, panels have great purpose and are actually priceless when it comes to developers hearing feedback about changes needing to be addressed that may be completely new to the development team due to their sometime inside the box look at their project.

I think the best way to get my point across is with the use of a metaphor. Think of a panel as a telephone; on one end you have the community and on the other you have the development team. Some of the community is giving valid information, or asking important questions that are of great benefit to one side or the other. However, an even larger group of the community is seemingly acting as static that interrupts the communication process and breaks down the bridge between the player base and the people who can make us happy. Static like, "Why is my class lame? " or "Can you break wizards again so they're all mini gods? " also "Any chance of buffing this item I have from three expansions ago so it's as good as the stuff dropping now? " Now I'm not one to attack my fellow players but quite frankly, I don't think many understand how much less improvement we see because of the static.

Having said my honest opinion as a gamer -- I'd love to share with you all the great things that came out of the EverQuest panels during Fan Faire! My favorite panel out of them all was the expansion highlights. I don't want to get into specifics in this article but some of the assets we were shown made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In this article I will be sharing with you some of the highlights that came out of the General and Mechanics panels.

For as long as I've been attending Fan Faire, there has been the EverQuest Best of the Best, which was held this year on Friday in good ole Las Vegas. Over the course of the day 10 groups of players attempt to individually qualify for the final round by winning one of the 10 preliminaries. Rounds typically take 15-20 minutes to finish and usually require the spawning of Tigers, Lord Nagafen and sometimes even the Avatar of War to help speed things along. This year was no exception, with players doing anything needed to survive certain doom; within the rules of course!

The final round started like the 10 others before it. Players selected their character which consisted of a slew of pre-made level 50's. After everyone logged in, contestants waited for Alan "Brenlo" Crosby, who is always the master of ceremonies at this event, to shout "GO!!", which is essentially code for ‘kill or be killed'!

Alan, who constantly taunts the challengers, does a fantastic job of giving everyone enthusiastic play-by-play announcer style updates throughout the fight. Unfortunately for the players, being taunted over the big speakers for all to hear isn't the only challenge that they face. The battle is waged in a huge Arena that sometimes makes it hard to find someone to kill. Personally this is one of the things I've never liked about the process. Sure, it usually makes it so that the battles are 1v1 duel style; but it also makes it very easy for friends who may have both made it to the finals to gang up on individuals - not much skill in that. Additionally, as much fun as it may be to watch tigers, dragons and giants run after players, the Best of the Best should be a test of skill, not a game of chance; that's just my opinion however.

LEGACY OF EVERQUEST ® FRANCHISE CONTINUES WITH ANNOUNCEMENT OF EverQuest ® AND EverQuest ® II EXPANSIONS AT FAN FAIRE

All attendees to Receive Both Expansions for Free as Part of Living Legacy Program!

LAS VEGAS , NEV. – Aug. 15, 2008 – Thousands of video game enthusiasts are in Las Vegas for the annual Sony Online Entertainment Fan Faire where the upcoming expansions for the online role-playing games EverQuest® (EQ) and EverQuest® II (EQII) were just announced. EverQuest® Seeds of Destruction ™ is scheduled to be available on Oct.21, and EverQuest® II The Shadow Odyssey ™ is scheduled to be available on Nov.18. As part of SOE’s extensive Living Legacy program designed to entice new and past EQ and EQII players into the games and reward the existing loyal playerbase, all Fan Faire attendees will receive the software for both expansions for free, an unprecedented offering.

“It is such a privilege to announce the upcoming expansions for two of our most popular games, EverQuest and EverQuest II, in a venue like Fan Faire where we are joined by thousands of our loyal fans, and it seems more than appropriate to give those fans access to both of the expansions for free,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. “Both of these expansions are rich in content and adventure, and will provide our players with hours of excitement as they explore the online world of Norrath.”