Las Vegas, Nevada July 29-30
Thursday
I was going to the Fanguard to fulfill three roles. I was an interested fan, I was a Vangaurd affiliate fansite member, and I was there as a vendor. I decided to arrive on Thursday, the day before the official start of events so that I could recover from driving in and be as prepared as possible for what I knew would be a busy and fun filled weekend.
My drive was hot but traffic wasn't *that* bad considering my route took me through heavily used freeways in Southern California and out to Vegas. Storm clouds greeted me as I came up to the high desert and continued as I drove through the mountain range by Las Vegas. By the time I had found the hotel, located quite far from the main strip, the rain and clouds had been left behind
I finally arrived at the Emerald Suites hotel, parked and got out of the car. Hot. Sunny. It was geek melting weather. And it wasn't even a dry heat. I hurried to get inside.
The lobby was nice and cool, small but nicely decorated. I checked in and was given a map and pointed out my room, the pool, and the laundry room "in case I needed it". As I was waiting for some paperwork I noticed a sign hung up on the wall to my right. As a rogue it gave me some alarm. Apparently the hotel will share your information with the authorities so if you aren't ok with that you can check out with no penalty. I'm not on Nevada's wanted list so I took the risk and signed in.
I got to my room and unpacked. Being an internet geek, I searched for the net connection, found it and decided to go with my cell phone modem so I wouldn't have to be tethered to the living room area. I logged in, made sure my supplies were on schedule for my table Saturday, and then logged out.
Now for some food. I knew others must have checked in early as well so I called up Glip (in case you are wondering, I actually do have an entry for "Glip the Gnome" in my cell phone) and found out a group was going to dinner right then and to come down to the lobby. I did as told and joined a small group of Sigil folks walking to a sports bar in the nearby shopping area. As time went on more fans trickled in so we started off with 2 tables put together then widened out to 4 and then eventually had that whole section of the bar covered with Fanguard attendees. For an impromptu group, we certainly took over the place.
Blurry Picture of Glip... maybe the bar was haunted?
What's amusing is that of the original 2 table formation, we had sat down with all females at one table (4 of us) and the males at the other. One of the females pointed this out and I joked that we were just trying to perpetuate the myth that no women play video games and that we would soon cast off from the other table. And who were these females? Stacy Scattergood, technical writer for Sigil, Michele Luna, Paul Luna, Assistant Producer's wife and avid gamer, Cindy Bowen, Community Manager, and yours truly. At the other table was Paul Luna and Glip, er I mean Nick Parkinson, Community Rep. This constituted the bulk of the early arriving Sigil employees. It was suggested that you could even call them the vanguard of Sigil. Ba dum bum - crash. What? It wasn't me who said it!
The fans in attendance had come from all over and had been following Vanguard for various lengths of time. One guy had only heard about Vanguard a few months ago but lived in Las Vegas and was asked to check out the Fanguard by a guild website. Another fan from Virginia Beach had been following Vanguard since Sigil had formed as a company. Other fans had come in from New Jersey, Washington, Missouri, and Texas. Later on I was to learn that one fanguard attendee had come all the way from Russia and then there's Safehouse regular Lenilya who came in from some small remote island in the Pacific. During the course of this early pre-event dinner it turned out that a table of 2 guys and 2 girls that had been seated before us were Fanguard attendees. They joined a table to our end of the configuration, and it turned out that they were current and former Monolith employees. From their conversations and my own observations, it seems that to work in the game industry you must own desk toys. The Monolith and Sigil folks traded stories about desktoy mishaps and abuse of posable figurines. It wasn't pretty. You can ask Paul Luna about his Spiderman figure if you'd like to know. Talk also turned to mutually known folks who had moved from company to company and industry "rumors" related to certain comic book properties. Nothing was neither confirmed nor denied.
By the time we left I felt that I had only seen the tip of the iceberg. Exhausted from my solo 5 hour plus drive that day, I crashed in my room relatively early. Well, early in Vegas terms anyway.
Friday
When I got to the Fanguard registration desk it was manned by Michele, Stacy and Paul. I received a packet which contained one raffle ticket for "Fabulous Prizes", my attendee badge, a GameWorks card good for an hour of free play and a wallet/notepad/business card holder souvenir that had the Vanguard logo on it. Some fans were in the lobby and a family arrived consisting of a mom a dad and two kids. They told a story about game life bleeding into real life when one child, seeing their mom in a bad mood, asked the other, "Who aggroed Mom?" Gaming families, gotta love 'em!
While in the lobby I noticed a terminal of sorts next to the counter area being used for Fanguard registration. On the molding around it it said, "Check your email". It was really a full computer screen with a browser. I think you were suppposed to pay for it. I pulled a ninja move and used it to check to see if my mobile blog pictures had been showing up on the site. They were. I was told a few minutes later that the password's log in feature wasn't working so it was just stuck in a "free"mode. Ah, such a waste of ninja powers on my behalf! 
The group in the lobby then had an Idea. Let's go to the Strip! Anyone want to go? I said I would. What the heck, they can't be all that bad, they're gamers right? I got in the car driven by Napolleon. Moren was in the back. None of us had met each other before. Napolleon's only trips away from his home town had been to Iraq, which had had come back from a few months ago serving in a combat position in the Army, and now to Vegas. He led the caravan to the New York, New York casino. At first I didn't really notice his driving too much. I used to live in LA afterall and have survived driving experiences in Mexico and Italy as well. His tactics to keep the other cars with us seemed a little unusual but it wasn't until he had slammed hard on the brakes and I was moved forward in my seat that I noticed that perhaps he was a little too used to Iraq driving or in having his life in danger. I half expected that the car behind us was going to rear end us. I was later told that they saw actual smoke coming from our car.
A picture taken during a rare moment of stillness while in Napolleon's car
Thraer smiles in the heat
Well we got to New York, New York without much further incident and then proceeded to walk the Strip. It was very hot. We guessed in the high 90's. We tried to go from casino to casino as much as we could. I learned that the guys in the group had come from Virginia Beach, Missouri, Texas, Phoenix, and Ohio most were former EQ players, some were currently playing WoWor EQ2, and one considered themselves more of a Final Fantasy XI player though they had played EQ as well. Two of them were going for job positions at Sigil. One of them, Napolleon, had only heard about Vanguard when Nenjin's Safehouse report had gone up. Eventually during our wanderings the goal to find a place to eat materialized. We ended up at a sports bar named Blondies in the shopping area next to Aladdin. A good number of the group had already eaten so they went to sit at the bar and drink. Four of us stayed at the table and ordered food. And water. And beer. And more water. And, "Could you get another water?" I felt bad for our poor waitress. Our timing was just odd, one person would finish their water just as one water had arrived for another one. It being Vegas and always on a water rationing system, the waitress didn't seem to want to bring us a pitcher to leave with us. I left at the table at one point and when I came back was told they guys had made amends with the girl. She even posed for a picture with Eelyen and Napolleon. Since were were in the shopping mall already we decided to check out this "rain storm" I had heard about. It was unimpressive. We did see a girl on a Segway though.
The Planet Hollywood dinner time was closing in on us so we made our way back to the cars by way of casinos and as much shade as we could get. Gambling was done on the way as well. Eelyen and Napolleon wanted to try the slots whenever the prize was a car. It turns out it may not have been a bad strategy, Eelyen won about $60 after putting in just one dollar. At one point we decided to duck into the Aladdin just for the airconditioning. Eelyen and Napolleon took off to find the car slots and they both came back with winnings. Lucky guys. Eventually we go back to the hotel to get ready before having to go out to Planet Hollywood for the official Sigil start of things. I had ridden with Napolleon again but he hadn't repeated his performance.
Planet Hollywood is located in the Forum Shops area of Ceasar's Palace. The whole top floor had been reserved for the Fanguard dinner. I had parked at the Bellagio and walked to Ceasar's (don't ask) so arrived a little late. Most folks had food in front of them already. I searched for one that didn't and found Darrin McPherson, Designer; Andy Platter, Director of Production, and his wife Monday; as well as Michael, Associate Designer at a table. During the course of the night, my table changed occupants a few times and got moved closer to the table to my right which at times was occupied by Hubert, Microsoft lawyer, Jon Grande, VP of Business and Legal Affairs, Brad McQuaid, Excutive Producer, Leon, Program Manager, RAT Studio Microsoft Game Studios and Travis, Vanguard Senior Producer.
At one point Todd Masten, Sigil Audio designer stopped by our tables and I got to talk to him about the music in the game. Each city in Vanguard is going to have it's own special theme. Todd is very proud of the major city themes but they won't be fully unveiled until the game goes live. I've heard some of the music currently in the game and I think it's very impressive and, importantly, it's not repetitive. Each theme is designed to blend with others and the current system is actually a layered composition where one theme, let's say intense combat, will dominate others as the occasion demands.
Darrin McPherson and Todd Masten
My fellow wandering travelers of earlier in the day came to the tables a few times. Eelyen had said he would buy us all a beer with part of his winnings from earlier in the day and he was true to his word. He had a few beers himself and at one point came over triumphantly to tell us that he had just spoken to Brad McQuaid!! He was so excited that we all laughed at his enthusiasm. Then he implored me to take a picture of him and Brad together to commemorate the event. I did and decided to get one myself. After that, thinking of a certain design I had created with this Fanguard event in mind, I made Eelyen promise to bring $2 with him to my vendor table the next day because he had to buy "something".
Lenilya, Fricka and Glip
I had mentioned that my table's occupants had changed during the night and that it had gotten moved closer to the table at my right. After Eelyen's visit, action moved more to the right side table (I was seated between the two). A highlight of the dinner was when Lenilya found me and Glip managed to get away from his adoring fans (who knew gnomes could get so much love?) and we got to hang out and be the Safehouser contingent (Wix, we missed ya!). Len even showed us his White Man Dance moves while still sitting in his chair. It caught Travis' eye.
Travis Williams tells one of his famous stories
In terms of game information I'm afraid that while sitting with the folks gathered near by table did bring many interesting things to light... they weren't exactly repeatable. I will be sharing some rogue information though in a later article in which I talked at length to designer, Darrin McPherson. The night did bring on more talk about the industry. I talked to Thraer for instance who was in school for game design. He had been let out of class with the promise that he would come back and give a presentation on the trip. His concerns echoed others I had heard. How did you get into the industry, how competitive was it, and could you work your way up. Personally I've met more than a few example of folks who started as GMs then went on to design related positions. Another gaming industry conversation, one of Travis' repeatable stories, was one about the language of comptuer design and how with such a new industry such s gaming and especially massively multiplayer gaming, one was pretty much still communicating with cave man pictures to express design ideas.
Saturday
Saturday was the big day for many. A number of attendees were vying for various positions at Sigil. At the same time a group demo of Vanguard was being given throughout the day and a room was set up where folks could purchase Vanguard shirts of the same design given to press at E3, Ben Thompson's art, and OffLine Tshirts goodies. Eelyen came up to my table to fulfill his earlier coerced promise made when he was enthusing on about meeting Brad. What I had him buy was my Rabid Fanboi Alert button. It was a design (and I also have Danger: Rabid Fanboi) that I had thought of just for this event. He bought it and wore it proudly. Actually, even some Sigil employess bought some too. Another popular item was my "I'd rather be on Autofollow"license plate frame which I only had one of and Andy Platter snatched up but allowed me to keep on display.
The vendor room was also the staging area for folks waiting for their interviews as they were sent off to various rooms in the hotel to be interviewed. I felt sorry for those who had to wait outside wearing a suit jacket in the heat. Some folks hoped to get walk up interviews for the GM positions and were hanging about the vendor room. This is where the magic of my Rabid Fanboi or Rabid Fangirl button came into play. It's a well known fact that wearing one of the buttons got you points during the interview. But it was a special one time use only feature of the Rabid Fangirl button that if you were a male and wore the Fangirl button it would get you an interview even if you didn't have one to begin with. This lucky fellow bought the button and it did indeed get him an interview...with Glip! The fact that Glip doesn't have hiring powers is irrelevant.
I was able to slip away only briefly from the vendor room at lunch time to see the demo. I thought the set up was a great idea, four people did the demo so there were two screens viewable to either side of the room. They did group encounters. The demo group consisted of Paul Luna, Jeff Butler, and Brad McQuaid when I popped in. The fourth position was taken by a lucky fan who got to group with them briefly before being rotated out so another could try the game. An aspect noted by many right off the bat was the smoothness in the animations. I didn't get to note much else at the time but I did take a few pictures.
Back at the vendor room folks had been gathering to enjoy the air conditioning and chat. Listening in to conversations you soon discovered varied backgrounds. Zack Karlsson, Director of Business Development for instance has traveled around the world including spending time living on a sailboat as part of his travels. An interview hopeful spent his time growing up in England and Tokyo and was *not* in a military family. Another fanguard attendee was the star soccer player of his team and used to live in Costa Rica.
Finally, it was about time to pack up to get ready for GameWorks in the evening. I decided to try and get one last shot at seeing more of the demo and booked my way over there. Scott, a fanguard attendee who had been at my vendor table followed me. There was a stream of folks coming out of the room but I begged, borrowed and stole my way in to get to one of the machines and play a little while. Scott took pictures so they wouldn't kick him out.
I get to play!
I was hurriedly playing since they were literally taking down the demo around me but here are my impressions: Character creation was easy, no choosing of stats before hand is nice. I picked the Qalia Barbarian as they said it was closest to the EQ Barbarian which of course is what Fricka is based on. Rogues aren't in the game yet so I chose a ranger as another light offensive fighter. I logged in and moved around the world. Unfortunately it was night time so I couldn't see very well and, more of consequence to those reading this, the pictures Scott took of the monitor did not come out so well. My character's torch was not working as well.
In the world I stood amidst tall grasses which swayed in the wind. A gnome was near me but I paid him (her?) no mind since, well, it was a gnome aftearall! I did see sheep in the field with me. My blood lust raged. My first action in Vanguard was to slay an ewe. I'm not sure how I did it but I did. There is an auto attack of sorts but it doesn't stay on permanently. Around this time one of the Sigil folks, Doug Cronkhite, Associate Game Designer, noticed I was having trouble getting things done in game so he suggested I talk to the gnome. Reluctantly I did and chose to go "adventuring" when asked by the gnome. I then went down into the town below. I passed some chickens and, well I couldn't help myself, I killed one of those too. So far in Qalia: Fricka 2, Farm animals 0. Down in the town Doug told me where my trainer was and I spoke to him. He had great facial features, by the way. I would have tarried longer but since in the real world almost everything had been disappearing around me I figured I better get to some action quick. Out I went and towards a beach area. I found very large and nicely animated spiders there as well as some other unsavory creatures which were sometimes hard to see in the tall grasses near the beach. After training I had gained an opening move. I used that on the mobs and generally finished with auto attack. The interface got a little crowded at one point with the dialogue box, the autoattack countdown bar and the opening move countdown square in one place. I moved things around a little with Doug's help.
During combact I had trouble getting the timing down at first. I was watching the purple auto attack timer go down thinking it was for the special attack. More than once I unknowingly had stopped attacking because I had let auto attack expire (and I was distracted havign to prevent Andy Platter from taking away the box I was playing on). I started to get the hang of it though and was soon slaying like a true Barbarian and dinged level 2. Huzzah! Flush with my success, I went after another spider... and died. "What happened?" I asked no one in particular. Doug said, "That's what happens when you don't rest between fights" Oh. Well at least I went out like a true marauding Barbarian, slaying till the end. We'll see what happens when next I log in.
Next event was GameWorks. I had offered a ride to my cameraman assistant Scott and stopped to pick him up at the lobby. Turns out Travis and Jeff, "The ATI" guy also needed a ride so we piled in. Travis kept up a running commentary on things we saw which kept us entertained. He also knew the primo way to park to get into GameWorks which included parking on teh 5th level for easy access to the bridge from the parking structure to the GameWorks building. See, it's things like that that let you know Travis is just on-the-ball.
We got into GameWorks and found that the designated room was not going to be available until 8pm. It was 6 pm. We decided to use our hour's worth of free play card that we had gotten with our registration packets. I found Glip and he, Scott, and I raced each other in one of those games where your "car" is moved around as you play and steering is difficult according to how you are driving. We did one round with Scott in first place, me in 2nd place and Glip in 3rd. Then it turns out the guy to my right was also a fangaurd attendee and so we had the line of all 4 cars in on the races. We did a bunch of races ending with the advanced track. It was a lot of fun. We ended up playing a basketball shooting game, a regular arcade shooting game (which was broken) a tennis game, a skiing game (another one with physical involvement) and then a really neat fighting game. This last was one of those precursors to the holodeck. It was a two player street fighter type game but to control your character you had to physically move. You would punch, kick, crouch, jump and step forward to control your character. The set up was like a giant light box with lighted walls near the two players who were required to stand inside a circle on the floor so the game could determine when we stepped forward. Unfortunately for me, it didn't seem to register my punches. Just my kicks, jumps and step forwards. I got trounced. The theory was that my arms were too short. I'm thinking thought that either the machine on my side was broken or possibly that it wasn't so much that my arms were too short but that they weren't casting enough of a shadow on the light wall. At any rate it was a fun game. I would've tired it again but others were waiting.
Side note: Glip's really good at air hockey. His family owned a table though.
Jeff Butler has the microphone
Soon it was time to head to the party room. Cindy had all the Sigil employees in attendance get up at the front of the room and introduce themselves. I got a bit of it on camera. They then proceeded on going straight to the raffle. First numbers drawn got a set of the Vanguard posters featuring the artwork of the characters we've seen on the website. After that it was matted and signed concept art. They were prefaced with, "You will be killed many times at this location" which brought a chuckle from the crowd. Then up next were ATI video cards. 3 were given away including one of their top of the line cards. It was joked that Jeff, the ATI guy had his luggage full of them. Well since I had given him a ride to GameWorks and he had brought his luggage since he was leaving directly from there to the airport, I secretly decided to take off early with his luggage still in my trunk.
The last few raffle drawings interested folks the most. They were for beta slots. A voice in the crowd asked which beta and we were told at first they were for Beta 2 slots. But after some whispering going on between Jeff Butler, Brad McQuaid and Zack Karlsson, Zack announced that they would be for Beta 1 slots. Anticipation was heightened. Person after person was called for a total of 10 beta slots. I noticed that of the group I had walked the Strip with on Friday, two of them got beta slots, Yaladan and that lucky Eelyen (who was now wearing his Rabid Fanboi button by the way). When they finished drawing for the Beta 1 slots. Zack again took the mike and announced that everyone who had registered for Fangaurd would be getting into Beta 2!
Eelyen and Yaladan, 2 of the Beta 1 slot winners
The official festivities ended at that point. I stayed and chatted with some Sigil folks, then turned down an offer to go out clubbing by some of the fans because I was on a quest for food. I had, apparently erroneously, thought that the mention of Gameworks for "games, food and drinks" meant that we would be eating as a group during the raffle. This was not the case and I was starving. I recruited Scott and Glip with me on this quest (Lenilya had left to see his favorite band play). First I let Jeff, the ATI guy (that's just his name from now on in case you haven't noticed) get his luggage. I would've kept it but well, he said there weren't any more vid cards in there. Then our party of 3 went walking on the strip. We ended up at the Paris hotel and casino and I had an expensive but quite good chicken salad sandwich. We ended up stayting there for quite a while really talking about the game industry etc. We went walking again and Glip admitted he'd never seen Vegas at night. Poor gnome, always inside tinkering I guess. We couldn't go and gamble yet though since the Gnome is just under age. Next year I think he Gnome will be in trouble.
Back at the hotel eventually we saw other folks hanging out at the hotel and then we saw Lenilya coming back to the hotel. We made an impromptu party in Glip's room out of it. Side note: Len is fast. He went out, went to his room then bought some soda at a gas station next to the hotel and was back in the space of time we figured he had just run down stairs and grabbed some ginger ale from his fridge.
Conclusion
Fanguard Beta was a blast but like a beta it had a few bugs that needed reporting... perhaps a better location next time? As always the highlight of these kind of events was in the people you got to meet. In my case it was as rewarding to talk to the Sigil employees as it was to talk to the fans in attendance. Topping it all of was getting to harrass Glip again and meet up with one of my "sister" rogues, Lenilya. Vanguard itself is coming along nicely. I've seen it progress for a long time now and even from E3 this year which was only in May, to now, it has come a long way and looks like it will go even farther. Rogues aren't in yet but I will be posting an in depth article on them based on an interview with Darrin McPherson. Watch for that in the next few days. Additionally I'll be uploading a recording of Vanguard pronunciations which will come either today or tomorrow.
EDIT: Link to the full Safehouse Gallery of pictures: http://www.thesafehouse.org/mugshots/fanguard
Link to the mobile blog I was doing live from the trip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/e3fricka/tags/betafanguard/
Fricka
Safehouse Forums Administrator - Wielder of the Whip of Administration (TM)
Fricka curtsies elegantly...while picking your pocket!
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