EVE Vegas 2018 Recap

Pandemic Horde Inc.
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#1
Hello everyone,
This thread functions as a quick recap of EVE Vegas for Pandemic Horde. The main purpose is to get people excited and hyped about upcoming events such as EVE NT (London) / EVE Amsterdam and EVE Canada and maybe deciding to make it over to for a meet near them (or not near them) as well. It also functions as an attempt to convince people that meeting us in RL is really not as scary as it seems!

It also functions as a way for me to take some time to reflect on the trip, I would like to ask everyone who went to share their personal experiences, what did you like, what did you not like, would you come out and meet us again? Anything really! Please respond in this thread.

Wednesday
Since I was travelling in USA for a short period of time, in a failed attempt to prevent jet lag, I came in from Atlanta on Wednesday after the flight was horribly delayed. Not the best start of a midweek in Vegas to say the least.

We organized a chill meal on Wednesday night, I had been eating american food for the last week and while that is not bad at all the greasers were getting to me a little bit. So I asked Graydor our Las Vegas local to find a nice European restaurant. We ended up at a French place with their own wine store. The food, view of a lake and atmosphere was really nice and it was a great start of the Las Vegas meeting.

Thursday
My FAVORITE DAY, it’s hard for me to explain over text for me how much it means when a member of our community decides to open their home to all of us. It helps us ease into the event and just have a chill and quiet moment to get to know all the new faces and catch up with old ones.

The food this year was even better than last year and we had A LOT of people over. We’re gonna be exploring other options for next year because it will arguably be hard to fit much more people next time. There are already some ideas floating around but I wanna see who the early bird hardcore Vegas 2019 goers are next year before we start announcing anything on this front.

Friday
Friday the main event started with a keynote, I honestly have to say I did not catch much of the actual event between running around meeting people, taking care of some things and trying not to worry about work, it was pretty hectic. Additionally, these days so much of the event is streamed that it’s really not that much of a shame if you miss some things. The NBI pretty much kept me updated as news came in (thnx guys <3)

In the evening the P(L)anfam dinner was organized at a Mexican or Brazilian restaurant. I honestly don’t know at this point anymore every time I would guess which one people would yell at me that I was getting it wrong so let’s assume its a Brazilian restaurant and get yelled at in this thread probably ;).

On a more serious note, it's been rewarding for me personally to see our attendance grow over the years. And like Elise and Hedliner put it best, it’s nice for everyone from all 3 communities (Waffles / PL / PH) to be in the same room even if only for a few hours. I had a quick check with Jaymere who organized the dinner as I had some concerns about our attendance growing even more next year. He indicated he didn’t expect this to be an issue so let's make sure we pack the restaurant next year!

The story Elise told about the hand-drawn autographs and a PL’s members health issues hit me quite hard. I don’t wanna go into too much detail on these public forums but I feel it's important to get a mention. EVE Communities are tight-knit groups, people have played, met and known each other for years. When tragedy hits people you know it’s not just some random 12 year old on the internet screaming into the microphone, its people we care about.

The member in question did a lot for Horde back in the early days, when we had a lot of PL helping us. I wasn’t really aware of his health issues as I never really wanted to pry, but it was rough seeing Elise tear up and it shows how much this damn game and especially the community means to all of us.

Saturday
More event stuff and at night a trip to a very nice nightclub on the Strip of Las Vegas. Before that though we decided to go get some quick food with a small group of guys. We sadly spend nearly 2,5 hours, between waiting for seating and their billing system going down I can say that we wasted quite a bit of time that we rather would have spent hanging out.

For me personally, especially the Saturday night event is especially fun as there is both room to dance but also a lot of room to just chill and talk with people. We sadly came in just as Permaband started playing and missed quite a bit of the chill portion.

For those not aware, the permaband is CCP’s band comprised of musically talented employees within the company. You can find of their songs / video clips and shows here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4ACF917EAB70339A It’s not a CCP party without these guys and girls turning up. I always find it hilarious that the dance floor is relatively empty when the warmup DJ is playing and suddenly a million nerds fill up the floor when a completely unknown band (to them) show up.

Really cool tidbit is Dylana got CCP Guard to wear our Scooty Puff Glasses on stage which was cool as FUCK!

Sunday
Sunday was a day of chill, I caught some panels for the very first time the Jetlag was not bothering me so I had a good night sleep (just in time to go home!) and Qymm and Roarch organized a nice meal at a buffet at the Mirage. It was a nice last evening supper and way to wind down and say goodbyes!

Shoutouts
The issue with shoutouts is that I will forget someone and they will feel bad, everyone has been amazing this event, a lot of people stepped up and organized tidbits of the weekend. People spend a lot of their own money for others or helped out in other ways.

Without a few people stepping up and doing these things some people wouldn’t have been able to make it this year or would have had such a great trip. I wanna thank all of you for looking out for each other and showing up when it counts!

But I do wanna give some shoutouts:
@Dylana Aivo : Just like for Iceland you stepped up again to help organize the swag, it’s been amazing to see this sort of stuff take shape. We’re not the best at outward facing advertisement because historically we just don’t care that much. It’s been really good to see that grow and take shape and i’m very excited about what the future brings in this regard.

@Qymm Phyton : A relatively new face in Horde, first time event go-er for EVE who teamed up with Dylana and I want to echo the statements above! Thank you for taking care of everyone and helping with everything.

@Graydor & his wife: Thank you for letting me crash at your place in a very jetlagged state, and sharing your dogs with us. I honestly would take one home if I could! Again welcoming us the way you do every year is the best gift you can give this community and I am grateful we keep proving to be worthy of that trust.

@Alcoholic Satan : I’m so glad you managed to come, without you putting in the early effort and getting people hyped a lot would not have made it out. We need to do more of this, we need to do a better job of conveying the message that we are fun, safe and cool to come and hang out with and that everyone will feel included.

@Piratetrader : Thank you for opening up your suite to us! It gave people a place to go and chill for a bit and have a good time.

@Nidia Masters : Thnx for being so nice in RL <3 ;)


Personal Reflection
I put this open and for everyone to see because I feel it's important to be transparent about this. I’m just gonna not filter this at all in an attempt to convince some people why they should give these meetings ago.

I’m writing this at the airport while waiting for my first flight to be boarding basically just brain dumping my thoughts and feeling as they come up. I feel pretty socially and emotionally drained, it’s been a pretty busy trip for me. Going from full on working to vacation with only a few hours in between, was much rougher than I expected I had trouble putting that aside.

On top of RL with family, health situations haven’t been too great also taking a great amount of my attention and energy away from the game. This has been going on for a while and is becoming more and more normal where I had to take a day and just chill last Vegas this year. I felt a lot better! Much of that is also because I flew out earlier and took the time to wind down. Anyone who knows travelling will take a toll on them and spends a large amount of the aeroplane I advise to do the same. Come a few days earlier the event will be much more enjoyable because of it.

I’ve not been as active and present as I should be the last 3 months, my workload and responsibilities at work basically meant I had to take a step back from the things I wanted to do and required me to focus on the things I NEEDED to do. And while that isn’t a big issue I would lie if I said that wouldn’t eat at me at times.

However, one thing these trips are really good at is getting you hyped for EVE and everything around it again. I hope to take all of that raw energy back with me and after I recover start chugging away at the things we’ve honestly been neglecting.

That NEEDS to be more than just programming, there are goals and aspects we set out for Horde that are at a standstill or improving at a pace I am uncomfortable with. One of the main things we’ve always done and I’ve always gotten energy from is the fact that we’ve always been improving consistently. Every few months we’d hit a milestone looking back and thinking WTF were we doing back then. While a lot of aspects in Horde have that today, not much are within my sphere of influence and I wanna get the things I do care about back on track.

I felt like constantly juggling around my attention and time between different people and groups. This has been a big learning experience for me personally and I think there is much to improve here. But also took a tremendous amount of energy from me personally that I didn’t expect.

I’m not the biggest social guy, I need to put in energy and make an effort to be a social / energetic person. It’s something I need and want to work at for much broader reasons than just a computer game. And I hope I've been able to mostly be that guy the last couple of days :stuck_out_tongue: EVE is allowing me to learn a lot more than just computer games & technical skills.

One of the main concerns this event because we had so many people is that people didn’t feel included. I really really really hope this isn’t the case but I do want you to speak up if this is the case, either by posting here or pming me personally. It’s important for us to have that talk so I can see what we can do better and how to prevent that from happening. There were some times where I was wondering if someone was Horde or not but was just too tired or preoccupied to come and say hi. So I thought ‘i’ll just do it later!’, I hope later did not become never.

Yesterday I had a pretty rough moment, we had a good dinner the last night and I didn’t want to let the moment pass without at least saying something. Except I didn’t think of that until we were all sitting there having a good time.

I don’t mind public speaking, I’m not nervous about it, I do it all the time for work. But here’s a big difference, EVE is personal, it's close, it's not for work or teaching it’s something that in my case I spend the majority of my free time on. And I had a rough time dealing with that, tearing up like an idiot. It’s easy to downplay that but I would rather do the opposite, I’m proud that I have a hobby I can be this invested in and that means this much to me.


Thank you all for making that hobby better every single day.
 
Pandemic Horde Inc.
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#5
Great post Kalbuir!


Here is my quick recap of my experiences in eve Vegas. But before I get into that, quick backstory.


Backstory
I have played eve off an on (usually a few weeks at a time, then winning for a few years) from around 2008. I was adamant that the only thing I wanted to do was mine (high sec at that! :joy: ) and refused to move to null. For variety's sake, I would do the occasional missions. Finally joined a high sec corp, and quit eve for the next 6 years due to how bad it was :stuck_out_tongue: . Returned in 2016 and joined a renter corp to...yes..you guessed it right..mine in null sec in the middle of BOT lands. I would have definitely won eve again if not for some random nuet who tackled one of my mining buddies...and I was able to kill him with my ratting vexor (to this day my actions on that day are a haze). All I remember is the feeling of my blood pounding (my first pvp kill!!!) and my hands shaking with excitement at the thrill of it. for once, in my whole eve life I was able to willingly pvp and win :smile: . The very same day, I created an alt (Bran Builder) and applied to Horde. Why Horde? it was right after world war bee, and everyone know that if you want to pvp and you are a newbie, Horde is the place to be. Sold all my stuff and moved to Horde staging. 2 years and almost 4k kills later, i'm still here and loving every moment of it!

Eve Vegas

I've never been to a MMO convention before (fanime in San Jose does not count!) , and especially not one for which I had to travel. I knew I had to go though, because for the past two years I've made so many good lasting friends in this game that they felt as close as my IRL friends and could not pass up on the chance to meet some of them in person. So I jumped on a flight and made my way to Vegas, from Bay area , a relatively short flight.
Met up with @Gareth Jax and @Dahntat Esubria and we made our way to the BBQ at Greydor's. Met a bunch of folks, some of whom I knew in game and some I didn't in person and made a lot of friends. The Food was amazing and I'm still in awe of Greydor and his wife's ability to throw this epic BBQ for panfam!

On Friday we had the Panfam dinner at the Brazillian place, and got to meet even more folks I've only heard of before. I had to head back to my room right after the dinner instead of hanging with the fam longer due to a work issue that came up (because there is always a dev who is willing to make a "small change" and break things for everyone in production :mad: on friday night ). Other than that interruption, most of Friday and Saturday were spent catching up with more eve friends, hanging out with a bunch of other hordelings at
@JohnnyCashRules room, which he had stocked with a variety of drinks, etc etc! Finally wrapped the day up with the event at Drai's before flying back out on Sunday morning.


During eve vegas I met so many awesome folks that It just reinforces what I've come to know over the past two years; that horde is the best alliance in eve! not just for brand new players, but also for those who have a few years under their belt. People were so friendly and helpful , regardless of where you are from or what you do. I know with certainty that I will be there for the next event, and if time permits, even check out other eve events as well.
There are so many people whom I want to list in this thread, but I cannot do them all justice. If any of you ever come by the Sf-bay area, hit me up! I'll treat you to a drink or two..or Boba (If you do not drink :stuck_out_tongue: )

Thank you Horde!
 
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Pandemic Horde Inc.
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#7
Hi Kalbuir, Great Writeup!

Backstory:

I started playing in 2014 completely on my own after years of seeing reports online about crazy goings on in New Eden. I started and played around in High Sec for a bit, doing the very basic, at the time, NPE, and then running around gaining standings by doing the Epic Arc and every faction's career mission from all three locations each. Afterwards I joined E-Uni but didn't get a chance to participate much with anything organized, just a player base to learn from and eventually teach.

I stopped playing when Destiny came out and got deep into that game for about a year and a half until I returned to Eve in the spring of 2016. There I went out to a Summer Camp put on by Digital Vendetta. I liked it so much I decided to drop out of E-Uni and make my home with them. We had a good run and quick expansion which gained us a good amount of members and notoriety. It also led to me making it out to Eve Vegas in 2017. Just after that is when we got involved as the DCU. We faced an invasion by GotG just as the Eve Vegas ceremonies began and that was the beginning of the end for us out in Drones. Following quickly on GotG's heels and retreat was Volta and Skill Urself's successful campaign of smashing the great paper tiger of the east. Just as Permaband took the stage in Reykjavik, XIX folded and DIVE was evicted. We tried to regroup in Low Sec, but it wasn't to be, leadership became too invested in real life projects and that was that. I followed Entriri Crendraven over to Horde in late August and have been trying to contribute and enjoy the game with the rest of you. And I am. :smile:

Eve Vegas 2018:

I arrived in Vegas on Friday this year with my wife, and we stayed at the Venetian. While I do love the hotel, it was obviously removed substantially enough from the Linq that it was hard for me to coordinate things with the Horde attendees whom I unfortunately didn't know well yet. I'm sure this will change for 2019. Friday I was at the Opening and Keynote and got to meet some Horde members face to face, Nidia, Qymm, Dylana, and some others, but didn't get to hang out much after that. I don't drink which made me sort of shy away from drinking centered gatherings during Eve Vegas. I did attend the Panfam dinner, but arrived too late to be seated with the group, we were just outside the party area though, but everyone was too busy eating I didn't want to intrude too much. Saturday I was there for the duration, checking out the new structures, project nova, and ships and modules. Again didn't really get to interact with the group on a smaller level. Couldn't find the group for Drais and didn't stay too long, probably 9pm. Sunday my wife and I drove out to Valley of Fire for the morning and I was present for closing ceremonies, but that was about it. My wife and I had fun, and she even created a character in Eve on Saturday, I'm hoping to persuade her to keep playing going forward :smile:

I will definitely be there next year and flying the Horde flag high, the small flag is now a permanent fixture on my camera backpack.

Next year I would definitely try to make the BBQ as it seemed to be the best place for Horde members to really meet and interact without other distractions.

Also, as a suggestion, more flash presence at the event itself, perhaps a spot we could carve out that we could all meet in between the different panels and presentations to commiserate.

All in all, glad I went, see you guys in space until next time.
 
Pandemic Horde Inc.
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#8
Good feedback so far guys! What really sucked this year is that in the linq there really wasn't much space for people to sit down and chill so carving room for any group above 5 was a challenge.

The Book (the sports bar was interesting) and we could have probably done more with that.

Next year we might have another hotel / casino for the event or maybe we'll put horde itself somewhere else. We already had some discussion on this during the event. And we:ll pick that back up in a couple or months.
 
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#10
Let me start by saying... this weekend was a very memorable and awesome weekend with the group.

I joined horde 13 months ago. I started playing the game full time at about the same time.

@Gareth Jax and I have been real life friends for over 25 years. I find it a little amusing that that is longer than some people in the Corporation have been alive (@Alcoholic Satan)

Prior to playing this MMORPG, we were playing Dark Age of Camelot for many many years. He is the one that introduced me to EVE and this Corporation.

In the last year, I have learned a lot about the game and met some pretty cool people on coms. This conference made the game even better because I was able to meet 25+ of you in real life putting a face to a name. As well as meet other non-Hordlings that also play the game. I even ran into my college roommate at Drais. Unfortunately, he is truly an enemy in game. Oh well.

I have to say, IRL, I don't drink alcohol; however, this past weekend, I drank everyday! I was 6 drinks in by the time we got cut off at Drais! A great night! =)
 

Qymm Phyton

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#11
I needed to take some time before writing this out. As everything winded down on the last night, I was still so excited and filled with mixed emotions. And sugar.

Only when I sat back down at my desk on Tuesday morning could I really reflect fully on what the fuck had just happened, and it's taken me until now (Friday) to put it into words. I had no idea that the weekend would end up being, no doubt, one of the best times of my entire life. Vegas has never been a dream destination for me, but being with new friends and getting to go to, see, and eat whatever we wanted was the absolute best way to do it.

Seeing and talking to devs was super fun. Seeing art that I had created on an absolute whim for sale to a thousand people in a store was super fun. Being on stream was, if a little nerve-wracking, super fun! I cannot WAIT to do all of this again.


Thank you so much to @Graydor for welcoming us into your home on the first night.
Thank you to @Kalbuir Skirate for getting up in front of everyone in order to deliver some tearful speeches. :stuck_out_tongue:
Thanks to my partners in crime, @Dylana Aivo and @Jinto Lafiel for making Horde swagged up, decked out, and photogenic.
And thank you to everyone who was there to make this trip so special for me.
 
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