It is important to note that since this panel (Friday, August 15) Greg "Rothgar" Spence has posted some changes to guild halls based on player feedback. These changes can be seen here . Things which have changed since this presentation are indicated by an asterisk (*).

Attending:

Bruce "Froech" Ferguson, Jeremy "Jindrack" Gess, Greg "Rothgar" Spence, Noel "Ilucide" Walling, Bill Yeatts, Joshua "Autenil" Kriegshauser.

Froech teased that the Guild Hall panel was canceled, and we'd talk about cow tipping. A guild hall survey was distributed to the audience. The 2007 concept art and the current reality images were displayed.

Like other presentations at Fan Faire we were given a slide show presentation outlining the major points before the question and answer period.

Wow, is it almost August?  EQII Players has a preview of all the great stuff coming up in Game Update 48, "Breaking Ground".

Read all about it at EQII Players!

Wow, where do I start?

I got myself up around 8am. Bludwyng promptly texted me that he was going to breakfast, but I had work to do and passed. Around 9 Kiara and I met for danish, and we parked ourselves at a lovely wine and coffee bar in the main lobby and proceeded to inflict DPS on cheese danish and talk to several devs and gamers about Fan Faire.

I had signed up for the G.I.R.L. breakfast (I know, I just had danish, but I woke up starving!), so I headed to that while Kiara went to start her work day. As an aside, all the developers, staff and, community personel have really put the hours into this event. Sure, it's their job, but desipte lack of sleep and overload from taking mass quantities of player feedback you can really tell that they love what they do. If you're here, don't be shy. SOE people love their work and if they're too busy to talk right then they'll say so.

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.”

Most of us remember them. Our only hope if we got stuck in a zone wall, or somehow summoned our corpse under a hill, and a host of other issues that would take forever to get a GM to help with. The Guides . They're celebrating 10 years of service to the EQ franchises, and I just want to say THANK YOU!

10 years ago, while EverQuest was in beta, a group of volunteers came together. These volunteers selflessly gave their time to helping players in EQ with customer service issues and spent time participating in impromptu quests to bring more enjoyment to the game. The volunteers were known then, as well as now, as Guides. Guides started out making appearances in EverQuest and grew into EverQuest II.

Over the years the program has evolved from guides helping with customer service issues full time and impromptu questing to questing full time and helping with very minor customer service things on a part time basis. Whatever the guides' roles have been throughout the last 10 years, without their selfless giving of time and their tireless efforts, the games would not have been the same. Guides, on behalf of all the SOE game connoisseurs, SOE Customer Service personnel and especially the SOE Community Relations team, we thank you for all you do!

Look back on the program and what they did, with 2 retired Guides.