SOE Fan Fair is exactly what it calls itself, a gathering of fans, run for fans, by the developers… who are clearly fans of their own work. Each game by SOE was represented from the monster that is Everquest (1 and 2) to the struggling PlanetSide.

While i was there, i met with 11 members of the Everquest Guild “Force of Valor”. This group came from as close as Washington, and as far as Germany to attend the event. For some, this was their first time seeing the true faces of guild members, though it was clear that they all considered eachother friends, and why not? Playing an MMO togeather for years will create a friendship and sense of comradery that will match any made in real life. Other people came by themselves, but quickly recognized others by their in game character names or met new people who shared a passion for the same game they loved.

SOE did their part with a well run convention. Events and panels were designed for fans, not media, as developers didn’t so much talk about how great they were, but interacted with their players on their thoughts and imput on ideas for the future of these games. There were also in game events specially setup for the convention, and even a live action event for players from Everquest 1 and 2, and Star War Galaxies, planned and run by the SOE staff, where players got to experience the enjoyment of working with other though simulated challenges that mirror their experience in their respective games.

The aptmosphere was excited but relaxed as the staff was well organized and i would go so far as to say this is one of the best run conventions i have attended yet.

I did note that this is not a cheap convention to attened, and despite the website listing August 2-5 (4 days) as the event, August 2ed was more of a “pre-reg badge pickup with evening entertainment” (with free access to the Rio nightclub VooDoo Lounge) and August 5th had listed “checkout” on the schedule which was a casual mingle session. The real convention took place primarily on the 3rd and 4th, reducing the important days to a 2 day convention.

Despite this, as a gamer I will give SOE Fan Fair a thumbs up to anyone who plays one of the MMO games by Sony. Also keep in mind there is a 50% price discount if you attend with a guild of 10 or more, so if this is you get online and start planning for next year. This convention happens only ONCE a year, and you will not be dissapointed.

This year the SOE fan fare was held at the Rio hotel casino and resort.  The ballrooms were huge and more than enough to host this years growing fan base. With over 1600 people in attendance the fans gathered to hear what new games or expansions that SOE will be releasing during the coming years.

The convention itself was pretty small and seemed weird that players will come from playing from their home…to play at the convention. One thing that was going on was an Everquest II tournament. Computers were lined up side to side and a giant projection screen was set up so you can see all the action going on. All that and an announcer telling you the play by play made the game room a place to go for excitement. They had other booths set around the area, mostly showing off some of the accessories to use for online games. On one side they had a show off booth with some of the new games coming out, including Pirates of the Burning Sea and Gods and Heroes.

Throughout the convention hall you can see the beautiful decorations of the casino. One of the best things to do was going up to the Voodoo lounge and checking out the view from the 54th floor. The voodoo lounge is one of the Rio’s best attractions and was used as the opening ceremonies for the convention. Within the three days of the convention I always found something to check out, so regardless of its small size I never got bored. I’ll say this, Sony knows how to throw a party. With the last day ending in a dance party with food and drink and the developers just mingling with all their online players.

The Fan Fare I can say was a big success. So much information in so little time. I hope that the SOE fan fare will keep growing in size and that next year it’s just as awesome!

Whats better than going through ancient Rome and battling monsters with the power of the Gods? Going through ancient Rome battling monsters with the power of the Gods with friends! I got to see some gameplay footage of this new online MMO and visually speaking it won’t perplex your mind, but you won’t get any closer to ancient Rome than this. It has awesome visuals and from the looks of it the enemies are massive. Minotaurs, Cyclops, even Medusa takes role and the things they do to you and your comrades are unspeakable. I didn’t get to see much of the environment, but the Colosseum was shown and what’s Rome without the Colosseum? I asked them if they would have old school gladiator battles and the answer I got was “with lions and all”, so that just brings the game up another notch. You gain powers depending on which God you choose to follow, and like I said before some of these enemies are huge. You will need help for sure. Not  just other online players though, you have the ability to acquire up to 4 units to go with you in battle. That’s only when you go up in rank of course.

The game has a lo to offer with its 1500+ quests. I would be all over the Colosseum for sure. Nothing is funner than reliving the life of a gladiator and with God and Heroes: Rome Rising you will get that chance. A fall release was given for this game and the beta is out for those who are too impatient to wait. Check out the site at godsandheroes.com .

PlanetSide was released in May of 2003, and has since suffered issues of low player population and minor glitches. However, the development team is beginning to take strong steps towards resolving these issues. PlanetSide is a Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. Take Halo or Counterstrike, place it online with potentially hundreds of other live players in real time, and that was the concept behind PlanetSide.

Sadly, the major issue to the game continues to be the low population on the various servers. A First Person Shooter is only fun if you have actual people to shoot at. To resolve this issue, the development team for PlanetSide is under talks to bring back their “Reserves Program”. In this program, anyone can play PlanetSide for FREE. These players will have access to the full game, however their characters will not be able to progress beyond rank 5 (thus locking out the higher level equipment and skills). However, this still provides people access to the game and allows them to experience the scale of the game for themselves relatively risk free. If the full version of the game is purchased, then their characters can continue on through the ranks to make use of additional weapons, skills and vehicles.

FPS fans should keep an eye out for the Reserves Program, as it never hurts to give a free game a try, epically when its not just a demo, but the full game on the same servers as the paying players. As for the paying players, they get the benefit of having more targets to shoot at.

For more information on the game go to PlanetSide (warning, flash animation)

After 5 years in development, Flying Labs Software has found a distributor in Sony Online Entertainment. However, Flying Labs is quick to remind anyone that Sony is only handling the distribution, billing and marketing of the game. In terms of development, customer support, and any decisions regarding the direction of the game remain entirely in the hands of Flying Labs.

Set in the Caribbean in 1720, the area is just entering the age of piracy where nations struggled for power in the new world. The game allows players to side with one of three nations, Britain, Spain or France, or they can defy the nations themselves and sail free as a Pirate. Within these nations, players can take on the role of Naval Officer, the military life and a nations wealth (and military ships) to support them, Free trader , freelance sailors and captains who support their nation, or Merchants who control the economic side of ruling the new world. Finally there is of course being a pirate, with all the plundering and swashbuckling (and ship stealing) you would expect.

This said, one of the key reasons for being set in this time period was the economic opportunities for players. The entire economy is player driven, no NPC merchants here. From cannonballs for your ships, to wood for to build those very ships it must be obtained through player merchants. Of course this is far from a simple resource game, as if you can’t obtain wood for building ships, then stealing it from other nations is just as good. Part of the economy of the game revolves around taking over ports from other nations to alter the resources available to your nation. This is where the PVP aspect of the game enters. As ports become ripe for takeover, PVP areas open around the ports making travel risky as other nations and pirates will become drawn there.

This makes an interesting balance of the Naval Officers protecting the resources, Merchants providing resources and support, and Free Traders doing all the jobs to risky or to dirty for the others to touch. Finally throwing in Pirates to liven up the mix.

Currently in closed beta, the system requirements at the time of the interview sat at a modest 1.2 gig processor, 512M of ram, and a 256M video card. Of course this is the recommended settings, and doesn’t show the true beauty of the game.

The character creator mirrors the City of Hero’s system. For those not familiar with the game, characters are designed as you create them, and from then on thats how you look. No more getting the Ugly Green Boots of +10 agility. You look awesome right from the start, and aren’t forced to suffer the indignity of having your pants clash with your shirt. In addition, the ships that you sail are also customizable. Sails, hull color, icons can all be changed freely. Leveling allows access to increased skills, and gear does not have an affect on your abilities. In fact, character stats do not change as you level, only your skills. What this means is low level characters can still have an affect on battles even against high level characters.

At least as much of an affect a Schooner can have against a 106 Cannon Military Ship of the Line can have.

With a player economy, PVP and PVE elements and a progressive player driven world, Priates of the Burning Sea is definitely set high on my watch list.

To learn more, check out their website at: Pirates of the Burning Sea

A new game that’s coming out soon from SOE is Free Realms. An online game made for the kids. Well, technically for the kids, but the game is fun enough for everyone to jump in.  Instead of the dark and gory tone of the other games like Everquest this game has a light tone to it. It’s whimsical and humorous, a goblin that steals your clothes then wears them comes to mind. It’s free roaming and very sand boxish, meaning there’s a bunch of things to do and there’s no real way to do them all. You just go out and have a blast. The customization looks great. You have a wide variety of characters to choose from and many different parts to each character. From the looks of it you have the ability do things like open a tavern and run it,raise animals,play go-karts Mario  Kart style. The list goes on and on and the best part is that its FREE. It won’t cost you or your kids a dime to play it. Keep a look out for this title and make sure you give it a shot. Sometimes it’s not always kill, kill, kill, but just to have a good time.

Whats SOE without Everquest? This year’s announcement was for the two new expansions coming out. Before I go any further, SOE announced that expansions will now be released in a yearly basis. One because developers would like more time to work with them and two so everyone else can fully experience previous expansions without having to constantly change to the next. That aside, the new Everquest expansion has a few new things to it.  First of the level cap is now at 80. There are new heroic items and apparently an island where there is a gnome launcher? So have fun checking that out. A total of 15 new zones will also be available. For the new players there will now be a retelling mode with every new expansion that way everyone can get caught up to date. Expect this expansion to be centered around Meldrath. The Secrets of Faydwer beta release will be on November 13th.

Up next is the Rise of Kunark expansion. Beautiful and vibrant visuals, new adaptive combat music, and a brand new fanfare song. Thats the tip of the iceberg. A whole new race has been added for good measure and the developers promised plentiful items and armor for each class. More spells were promised of course, but also the ability to merge spells if possible.  There will be a change in crafting products as well. A quest storing system is being added, which I assume lets you continue when possible.Last but not least expect 24 epics that are unique to characters and believe me they kept throwing out the words crazy effects. That should have everyone anticipating this release for sure. Unfortunately a release date for this expansion wasn’t said.

So here is the big news. The brand new game that everyone was waiting for. What could it possibly be? A brand new online experience? No…a card game. Ok, so the hype on it was far too great for what it was, but it has it’s up side. The new game is called Legends of Norrath. A card game based in the world of Everquest. The cool thing about it is that you can play with anyone from either Everquest or Everquest 2 and everyone that plays either game gets a free deck. The first set coming out is called OathBound. The game itself can be accessed anytime with the press of a button and if you have no one to play with then the AI will take over. Basically a game to just kill some time whether your healing up or just in a tavern. It features 375 cards with awesome illustrations by over 50 artists. All the art on the cards is original. You can gain rewards by playing the game as well and if you play the beta version you get to keep all your items and cards as well. So while the game isn’t exactly what everyone was hoping for it is a good mini-game to have when your bored. Some may say that it’s comparable to Magic the Gathering. Expect this release to be out late August.

The Agency is a new game from SOE that puts you in the shoes of an elite agent. It was one of the biggest games talked about at the fan fare this year. The premise is simple, inspired by movies like James Bond or the Bourne movies. The game works as an action shooter in where you choose between two agencies. U.N.I.T.E. which is the type of agency you would see in any movie. Sophisticated, gadgets galore, and stealthy to boot. Then you have Paragon, which to me was like a mercenary group. Brawns for sure and tough enough to go through any enemy. Stealth is not in there ways and as far as gadgets go, they probably work a lot with ducktape, don’t expect high tech goodies. Don’t let the different agencies fool you, while they are rivals they are not enemies. In fact, the developing team wants you to work together to take down the evil minds threatening the innocent. Certain missions may take more than one person to complete and with a rating system for each level you’ll want to make sure to go back and get that S ranking. Whether it be tearing down a madman in the jungle, or a high speed vehicle chase, or maybe a covert mission expect to be enthralled by reliving some of the scenes you’ve grown to love in your favorite movies.

There are select locations from the real world in the game that look absolutely beautiful, unfortunately there’s no way they can fit EVERY location out there, that’s just too big. Costumes also play a big part in the game. The way it works is you pick a job (costume) for example maybe stealthy or combat, or anything appropriate for the job and then you pick an alias. Something that will get you into places without raising suspicion. In the gameplay demo I saw you were playing a guy agent wearing a tuxedo and a girl agent wearing a nice dress. When they get to the nightclub they were to meet a client at(they get there with a car that was called in from the base and dropped from the sky…AWESOME!) and then you see they change into their other suits. Their “Job” suits. They then go down and start mauling enemies left and right. Gameplay looked smooth and most importantly FUN. Third person and first person can be changed on the fly so those of you use to the FPS way of shooting will have no problem. Voice chat and text chat will be available in the game as well. During the demo a part came up where the two agents jump on a merry-go-round and start shooting everyone around them. This is called an agency moment, triggered by going up to the object or area and choosing to do the action. It’s almost like a smart bomb that takes everything out or cause a scene that is scripted in the game. They’re actually pretty cool and was a good idea to implement. Ah yes, I forgot to mention the skills that you learn through the game. Skills come with the costume you pick and more are learned as you progress. It’s all in what you feel is needed through a mission or maybe just what you feel like being for that particular day. Those that are new to the game can take their time getting use to controls and don’t have to be bombarded by the veterans. The point that was being aimed for was to have a fun environment and have to worry about not being good enough. Take your time and get use to the controls at your own pace. The crazy part of the game is the fact that even when you’re logged off it still runs in real time. If you ordered a car in the game and it says it will take a week, then it will take a whole week. That just makes people giddy to get back on-line after they sign off though. It’s also awesome because you can have it so that a text message will be sent to you when it arrives. One of the last things said was character customization. Although the customization is very basic as it stands. Body, head, hair, etc. Environments and costumes people thats where this game shines.

Whats this? Is there any PVP in the game (player vs player)? The answer to that is a big YES! It’s a different version of PVP called “PVP anytime.” You can randomly go into any PVP room and shoot away and switch back whenever you please. Unfortunately the one thing I wanted to know the most, which is a release date, was not given out. The Agency is to be released for both the PC and the PS3 with a T rating and is going to be one of the coolest games to grace the PC and console.

After Vanguard shipped in January, it was obvious that the amount of bugs in the release told us that the game was not ready to be shipped at all. Unfortunately, money and time were not on the developers side. The good news is that Sony has acquired the rights to Vanguard and now the developing team can now focus on the game without worrying about making payroll. The developers also love the idea of working with Sony. They do have years of experience and right now thats what is needed if Vanguard is to be as successful as they want it to be. The developers are even interacting with the community via the forums at VGPlayers.com and solicit more input and feedback. They’ve already added item preview and a hide cloak option. If you have an opinion to voice go and check out the forums.

So what has been going on to improve the game? For the last two months developers have been upgrading performance and fixing thousands of bugs. They are leaving no stone unturned. The game is massive and the complexities are great, so there’s a large amount of work being put in. A release candidate for update 2 is on the test server and the merges that were promised will be implemented after the release of update 2. New features that are being added include things like fishing and apparently helmets, but they’re not the major focus of the game. In the future with enough items there will be a marketing blitz. Referred to in the past as a relaunch it’s really a marketing plush. Don’t worry you won’t be player wiped. They do have something called trial island which is a free download that lets you try out the game before you decide to invest any money. That’s a great idea, everyone will be able to see how much better the game is when it’s not as glitchy.

No release date was given only the fact that it’s still not done. Expect for Vanguard to be in top shape when it comes out though. With the Trial Island idea you can make sure it’s exactly what you were expecting. No surprises this time around…well, technically the surprise will come when you see how much better the game is, but no GLITCHES.