Star Wars Galaxies: Back from FanFest!

As I write this column I am sitting aboard a American Airlines Super 80 jet. My flight, which was scheduled to leave LAX at 6:55pm had just made it into the air at 8:20pm. Although it seems like fan fest came and went in a blink of an eye, I am able to take home some very fond memories.

It all started very early Friday morning, 4:00am to be exact. I had gone to bed early the night before in preparation for my early flight. I picked up my friend ken and we headed to the airport. We had some very good luck getting though airport security (by that I mean it went faster and smoother than I expected, not that I managed to smuggle on a set of vibro-knucklers or a sliced pre-nerf FWG5, Although said items might have came in handy on my return flight). We arrived in LA early and grabbed a shuttle to the hotel.

Walking into the lobby I instantly felt at home with all the geeky star wars fans and frightened onlookers. We went up the elevators to pick up our badge and then headed into the "Bazaar Area". This is where a few dealers were selling their products and where SOE had about 25 machines set up for attendees to calm their SWG cravings.

Next up was the dev forum, it was a panel like discussion in the main ballroom. The devs sat on stage, welcomed everyone and opened the floor for some Q&A's. Now if any of you have read the official forums you have a pretty good idea of what this was like. There were the occasional compliments and even a few good questions, but for the most part it was a message board bitch fest, without the avatars. The devs took it all in stride and did a pretty good job at keeping most everyone happy and content. Throughout the day there were more panels on specific topics like "SWG Continuity" and "The galactic civil war". Nothing really groundbreaking revealed in any of these.

I spent a good part of the day meeting some guild mates I have known and played with since launch. That night SOE and Lucas arts held a reception and costume contest. I managed to get some pictures from the costume contest; however I have to admit I did skip the reception to get some quality SWG time in with my guild. It was a completely different and very rewarding experience for me to sit next to these people as we went through the geonosian cave.

Saturday morning the guild mates and I went to Denny's for some "breakfast". It turns out that "someone" had set my guild mate Gorba's alarm clock for 4am. Being half asleep and annoyed by the alarm he had some difficulty turning it off so it laid in pieces on the floor for the rest of the weekend. For the record when I say "breakfast" I mean bacon and cheerios at noon, and when I say "someone" I mean me =) (shhh don't tell him, hehehe).

I managed to make my way down to the ballroom for the 'Development cycle' panel. I found it pretty interesting, and the complaints were held to a minimum. Someone asked how many people were currently working on the game, and I found it interesting that they said they had roughly 70 designers / programmers on the staff, 30 working on stuff that was 'live' and 40 working on 'space'. Personally I think the devs do a pretty good job when it comes to rolling out the patches and the fixes. I, as a programmer myself understand how much work some of the smallest fixes can be so I make it a point to not get too worked up when they push back things. Hopefully the updates we get twice a month will double once JTL comes out.

After a little more quality SWG time with the guild, we made our way down the the buffet held by the devs. My server got some of the love, we sat front row center. The food was actually pretty good. After about and hour or so of eating, the devs gave away some door prizes. The gave some Lucas Arts prizes for things such as: Oldest SWG Player in attendance (67 Years Old), Attendee with the most active accounts (11), "Two guys that smelled like bon fires that traveled from the UK on a whim, with just the clothes on their backs", We had a group come up and sign the Star Wars version of Coca Cabaņa. Also they gave a prize to the only person to buy something from the company store with their credit card, and who also coincidentally forgot her card at the booth, so it looks like she bought dinner for everyone =).

After the awards came the fan film festival. Let me tell you something, It is never a good thing to receive a warning regarding the use of hot pants both before you are about to watch a film, and also after you just ate. All hot pants aside, The films were good. Thus bringing us to the big finale, the JTL demo.

The Jump To Light speed demo absolutely blew me away. They had 4 devs playing the game while Cinco gave us the play by play. I have the entire demo on video, and hopefully it will be posted for all of you this week. The ship customization is awesome, the graphics are awesome, and it will completely change the way you play this game, in a good way. If any of you have canceled your accounts, or if you are planning to, I beg you to stick around for this expansion.

I had a lot of fun, I want to thank Rhonda for putting together such a great event and giving me the opportunity to meet the people I play this great game with. It looked like everyone there was having a good time and you can definitely expect me to be in attendance next year.