Pikko's Write-up
With the Fan Festival and expansion release now behind us and all the details released from the panels, one of the many things left to do as the dust finally begins to settle down are to share the details of my wonderful Fan Festival experience.
Nearly three weeks ago I stepped onto an airplane at the Honolulu International Airport, anxious and excited to finally be leaving for the Final Fantasy XI Fan Festival 2007 in Anaheim, California. It was my first redeye flight at 10:45 pm and though I can usually stay awake 'til past midnight, I knocked out before the plane took off and woke up just two hours out of LAX, which was nice. I arrived at 6 am PST and took a Super Shuttle out to the Anaheim Hilton. Tomec was waiting at the lobby door for me. I'd requested early check-in and the hotel was actually quite awesome in that regard and let me check into my room at 8:30 am.
Imperial had arrived in LA the day before from London and stayed at a Motel down the street. He met Tomec and I in the lobby and we bought passes for the Disneyland shuttle. We headed out with plans to meet with Kappachan (Susperia) and Pachichachi from the forums to spend the day in the Magical Kingdom. We met at the F in California, took a few pictures and waited for Pachichachi. Once he arrived, we headed in for a day of fun. In case you weren't aware, Disneyland roller coasters with no lines is pretty win. We went on Space Mountain, the Matterhorn, Indiana Jones, Big Thunder, the Haunted House, and Pirates of the Carribean. We ate a lovely lunch at the Blue Bayou where I mistakenly ordered what was probably any Weight Watcher dieter's worst nightmare: a deep fried sandwich sprinkled in confectioner's sugar. It was yummy though!
At around 3:00 pm we started heading back to the hotel as booth setup was supposed to start at around 3. I called up the guys from Affinity that were supposed to meet us there and was a bit shocked to find they were still in Santa Monica. We headed up to the booth and hung out there to make ourselves look like we were set up. We met the folks from Wikia: Brook (Mieren) and Joel (Gahoo). The internet connection was an issue for both of us and though we'd intended to broadcast live for Online Gaming Radio during registration, the event staff told us we'd be unable to do so due to the patching going on for the Wings of the Goddess tour.
Matt Hilton came to get all of us to take us on a brief pre-tour of the festival. We got to go inside the ballroom and see the setup, look at the flags, and hear about what was in store for attendees. Registration opened then and we got to get our first taste of meeting a community face to face. Our first visitor, Deathblossoms from Shiva, was a bit aggressive, demanding to meet Allakhazam himself and asking why we hadn't hired him yet. He freaked us out a little, but eventually we found him to be an enjoyable person to talk to whenever he happened to be nearby. I got to meet several people from my server and I knew one in particular by name, Minimaru. I had a few people shout out my name and say hi, which was funny! We got to talk to a lot of people during registration and though we had plans to go out and eat dinner with a group from Allakhazam IRC, we ended up staying at the booth until registration closed, then Malgayne and Stephen left to go get us In-N-Out burgers for dinner. We broke down the booth and ate our food right there.
After showering, myself, Imperial, and Exodus met back at the booth to work on our developer team Q&A questions. We got there at somewhere around 12:30 or 1 am and stayed there having fits of giggles until about 3:00 am. I blame Exo and Imperial, who at one point started watching that "OVER NINE THOUUUUUSAND" video on YouTube. I sat there and stitched up my Nomad Cap all night. I finally finished it in my room at 3:30 am and went to bed.
The next morning we met for breakfast and headed to the booth. Fan Festival was about to start! Being media we were able to get front row seats for the opening ceremony, which was nice. The FFXI trailer music started up as they let people start to fill the ballroom. Tables were set up with signs for servers and people started doing shouts, which was amusing. The show started with a thank you video of Square Enix staff from around the world, which was cool because you got to see how diverse their team really is. The curtain hiding the stage dropped suddenly to reveal Tanaka-san, who opened up the festival. We were given some details and then they directed our attention to the screen which displayed the Play Online website and the person manning the screen appeared to have forgotten to shut down MSN. Then you can see that person messaging someone:
X: hey wanna play ffxi? Y: Already in. X: huh?!?
Then they take what appeared to be the Vana'diel Live camera shot and re-size it to show that it's actually someone in game. It was a really creative way for them to announce the Windowed Mode and the room just erupted in cheers and shouts, it was very cool to be in the room. Following that, Kenichi Iwao came out and we were treated to a History of Vana'diel presentation, which while interesting, was something some of us had already read thanks to Elmer the Pointy's translation of a Vana'diel history book published in Japan. It was still interesting to hear about it in a nice big presentation though. Mitsutoshi Gondai, the developer who created the two new jobs, came out next to give us more details on Dancer and Scholar.
Once the presentation was over we were supposed to go head over and use our 1337 0001, 0002, and 0003 Wings of the Goddess Tour tickets to play the jobs, but not being used to having uber Media badges, we got discouraged by the huge line. Instead we walked around and talked to people, sat at the booth and talked to people, etc. Tons of people wanted to take pictures with us or me and it was really fun to meet people. One guy came and thanked me for my gardening guide because it helped fund his relic weapon, which blew my mind. We met and talked with so many people that it became hard to find time or to even remember to do the festival events. We missed the Tarutaru Marathon and Quiz Show, unfortunately.
Our developer team Q&A ended up getting pushed back a bit due to scheduling and so we went up somewhere around lunchtime to a suite. We got to speak face to face with Final Fantasy XI Producer Hiromichi Tanaka, Wings of the Goddess Director Koichi Ogawa, Battle Director Akihiko Matsui, Final Fantasy XI Planner Kenichi Iwao, Job Designer Mitsutoshi Gondai, and Global Online Producer Sage Sundi. The interview was translated by Koji Fox. You can view the full transcript here: http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/sdetail.html?story=11328
After the interview we headed back downstairs to meet more people at the booth and conduct a few interviews. The Online Gaming Radio broadcast never did work out for us due to bandwidth issues then software issues, so we ended up doing a podcast instead. IN was so dead tired he had to go take a nap until the movie contest came on. It was fun to watch, the video that IN had done the concept for came on first and it got good response. There were two comedy themed videos and those got the best responses, particularly "Invasion of the Tarutaru Marathon" by Tsuneko. It had voiceovers, which I think was what made it stand out a bit more from the rest. After the Movie Contest they had another presentation, which contained the very exciting job adjustments. Before that started, we went to the Media Lounge, which was an area with a few couches and drinks. I sat down on one with IN (please note that I wasn't BORED at Fan Fest, I was just tired) and I leaned my head back on those comfy cushions and I fell asleep. I'm told IN did as well. I don't know how long I was dozing there but it was long enough for this guy to start a thread on Allakhazam telling us that he was sitting next to us both sleeping and asking for suggestions on what to do to us. I was sitting right underneath the flash umbrella thing for the Mithra Photo Shoot and so when they snapped a photo I got a face full of flash. It was horrible!! It was just as well though, the job announcements were about to begin. I hadn't thought that job adjustments would be very exciting but it's quite a different experience from just reading a blurb of text on the forums. With each job adjustment announcement the room would usually erupt in cheering. (with the exception of the Samurai announcement)
They began the developer's panel shortly after that where they went over more details about Campaign, talked about a Lottery (the word Ridill was specifically mentioned), and revealed some new GM events besides weddings that would become available. The Q&A was an interesting part of the Festival. Square put out a box where you could write down questions for the developer's and they'd pick some out beforehand to answer in front of everyone. This was how the Cheese Sandwich was born, which left Exodus weeping tears of joy.
I'd told everyone that they could go out to eat without me because I wanted to watch the University of Hawaii football game on ESPN in my room, but then decided that I was way too hungry to stay behind. I know, I'm a terrible fan, but it all worked out in the end!! Susperia led our group to Downtown Disney and then steered us to this restaurant called ESPN Zone. I was in heaven! Not only were there TVs everywhere, but several were on the UH game. We sat down at our table and Susperia told me I had to go to the bathroom there because apparently each stall has a TV in them!! (I forgot to go look ; ;) IN ordered an appetizer of honey wings plus some ribs, not realizing that in America appetizers have large enough to have Group Food Effects. The food there was pretty good and I loved the atmosphere.
The game was terribly close with Colt Brennan playing in only two plays and I felt a lil silly cheering by myself at a table full of gamers wearing my Colt #15 jersey. A waiter passed by and said he liked it though, so that was cool. Eventually they started shifting the tv screens around and my neck started to hurt and I saw a guy at the bar watching it on the widescreen TV and cheering. I went over there to watch it with him and funnily enough, he was from Hawaii visiting and lived just about 10 minutes away from me. We watched the nailbiting end of the game together, screaming and cheering and clapping hands when we won. It was very cool!
Saturday started out fun, IN and I had breakfast with Christine and Ray, two members from Allakhazam. We ate at the restaurant in the lobby area and drank $4.25 glasses of orange juice. It was great to finally meet them both and hopefully I'll get to hang out with Thumby again soon! After breakfast we had to jet upstairs for the opening ceremony, which was basically just a review of the previous day. The day was pretty much open to us so we spent that time finally taking our Wings of the Goddess tour, which was really fun. We actually used our media badges for once to get in past the line and got to play the new jobs. I died while I played Scholar and IN hasn't let me forget that yet. He even took a picture of it... Pachichachi found a couple of people for us to do the Heroes combat with and we failed pretty badly, killing only Ajido-Marujido with Bio! We did video interviews, audio interviews, took pictures with people, took pictures with people, and took pictures with people. I got to meet two people from my linkshell Imperial, which was SO great!! They're wonderful people in game and wonderful in person as well! Somewhere in the middle of all of this we got to meet the infamous Taj. We were walking into the ballroom and some guy says, "You're Pikko, right? It's Taj." I didn't hear the last part of what he said until Exodus told me and we ran back to catch up with him and make him do a radio show drop for Online Gaming Radio, just cause. ;)
The lunches at Fan Fest were box lunches and they were really good. They had sandwiches with salad, an apple, chips, and a dessert which on day 2 was a brownie! (oooo!) At around 2:00 we went into the ballroom to get seats to watch the Cosplay Contest. This was probably one of the best events at the Festival, though I was a little surprised at some of the people chosen in the top 20. The judges for the contest were Hiromichi Tanaka, Yasu Kurosawa, and Sage Sundi. First place ended up being Cid and while he did have a really great costume and a perfect beard to go with it, I felt really bad for the cosplayers who said they'd spent 3 months working on their costumes and didn't make it to the top 5. The puppetmasters all looked incredible!! The GM costume of course got booed, which was hilarious. Kam'lanaut gave a hilarious interview.
In the early evening they had their second developer's panel. One of the first things they go over is the Special Task Force and what they do. It was really interesting to see their progress charts and to hear about how hard they work to help this game stay free from the reaches of RMT. It helped you to understand that while it sometimes seems like things aren't happening, there's just so much to investigate that they can only do so much so fast. One of the most exciting features they described was the possibility of creating your own dungeon to adventure in. They said it's still possible it won't happen, but they seemed excited enough about it to mention it even being in the planning stages. It's something that has a lot of potential and hopefully we see that implemented in the coming year.
One section of this presentation included trivia bits from the developers. My personal favorite was the story of the Brown Mage in Lower Jeuno, who apparently will give you a special title if you are either the 10,000th person he succeeds or fails on. During my CoP static we used to joke around and call Thayos a Brown Mage, which was why I found it so hilarious. The Brown Mage was Sage Sundi's trivia tip. They did another questions segment and they answered an Almighty Apkallu question and the answer was the same that we had received at our interview the previous day.
The awards ceremony was a half hour away and we had hoped people would vacate a specific area so that we could get better seats but unfortunately people were too smart for that and we ended up staying on the right side of the stage area. They gave prizes away to the winners of the Tarutaru Marathon and the Atomos Challenge, which was basically a "get the highest level" kind of challenge with a hidden element. Most of the parties that participated seemed to go with a strategy that involved one person doing all the playing while they supported that person. The hidden element to earning points was the person with the most deaths! I wasn't really sure I understood why they chose to do the Atomos Challenge the way they did as it seemed odd that only 2 groups of people could participate for the entire Festival. I guess it's still appropriate to spend your entire time at Fan Fest playing FFXI though!! It would definitely have been more playtime than I can get in at home. ^_^
To close the Festival they had a special surprise and you could tell everyone was still holding out for a "third job" announcement. We were treated to a concert by The Smash Brothers and though the music was enjoyable, I'm sure everyone has heard from attendees that the sound was terribly high. We were initially sitting right under a speaker and when the music started I felt like it was right by my ear. I had to listen to the concert with my hands over my ears and even then we still moved to the middle when we could and it was much better after that. Kumi Tanioka played really beautiful piano numbers but it was oddly placed in between Smash Brothers songs. I'm not sure why they did it that way, but the sound was really high for her as well. Her musical performance was entrancing to say the least.
Overall the concert was very nice but it was still really sad; very final. Fan Fest was over. *sob* I ran around looking for Square people to give cookies and say goodbyes. Matt Hilton was hiding from me in some room, obviously snubbing me. When I finally did find him it was thanks to Franko, who let me into the mysterious Green Room the devs kept popping in and out of during the festival. I gave him my cosplay Nomad Cap and took one last photo, said a last goodbye to the dev team, and then headed outside to find IN and Exo and the rest of our group.
I kept running into people on my way down to them and one included the entire group of Pet Food Alpha, which was cool because they all had matching shirts. I didn't realize there were so many of them! I finally found my way down to our group and we chatted a bit with a big group of people from Siren.
Our party was your typical party in-game, taking forever to decide where to exp. We ended up going to some place called Chomps, but there were too many parties there already so after chocoing around some more we ended up eating at IN-N-Out again, where I was introduced to animal style burgers and fries. Unfortunately, when the fries came I was so grossed out that I ended up trading mine for Exo's plain fries, which he thankfully didn't mind. The burger was of course yummy though! We spent a while laughing and giggling outside the IN-N-Out and then finally said our goodbyes to some of the group who were heading different ways. We took a nice group photo before we left!
Back at the hotel the three admins met in my hotel room to film a wrap-up video, which we discovered was easier said than done. If you've heard our radio show you know that sometimes we get stuck in fits of giggles and the making of this video was no different. In fact, it was worse. IN has put together an outtakes video in addition to our Fan Fest wrap-up video and I'm sure you guys will get a kick out of that one, though it's got some colorful language in it, so parents beware!
I spent the next day with my cousin at the California Adventures Park and actually braved the Tower of Terror, even though I swore off dropping rides after a ride on the Big Shot in Vegas. I totally chickened out on the California Screamin' roller coaster though... -_- We went to the Aladdin show, which I hadn't really wanted to go to, but it turned out to be the best part of the park! We headed back to the hotel to pick up IN to give him a ride to the airport and it turned out that his gate was right next to mine, so he got to stalk me all the way up to my boarding. D: I fell asleep before takeoff again and woke up in time to watch Transformers.
When I got home I felt rather melancholy. Fan Festival was so much fun and it was so great to meet ImperialNinja and see Exodus again. I'm glad we did our wrap-up video so that we could keep those memories forever. I hope everyone was able to experience Fan Festival in such a fun-filled way as I was lucky enough to do. Thank you to everyone who came to say hi to us, it was such a pleasure to meet so many community members!! I hope to see you again at the next Fan Festival!