"Fan Faire is by far the best vacation destination for SOE gamers, their families and friends," said Alan Crosby, Senior Director, Global Community Relations, Sony Online Entertainment. "This is the ultimate party for gamers and a great chance to meet up with their online friends in the real world."

GAMERS, GROUP UP: SIN CITY HOSTS SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT'S

FAN FAIRE, AUGUST 14-17, 2008

-Ultimate Vacation Destination for Online Video Game Players Features Colorful Costumes, Passionate Players and More in Las Vegas-

April 17, 2008 San Diego, Calif. - Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, today announced the date for its annual Fan Faire, a real-life social event where thousands of gamers from around the world gather with members of their online community to play video games and make new friends.

This year's four-day extravaganza, which includes gameplay tournaments, a costume contest, a silent auction for game memorabilia, real-life quests and exclusive 'sneak peeks' at upcoming products from SOE, will be held August 14-17, at the Las Vegas Hilton in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"Fan Faire is by far the best vacation destination for SOE gamers, their families and friends," said Alan Crosby, Senior Director, Global Community Relations, Sony Online Entertainment. "This is the ultimate party for gamers and a great chance to meet up with their online friends in the real world."

In addition to enjoying the whimsical game-driven environment, attendees at SOE's Fan Faire 2008 will be privy to the second ever live community address from SOE President John Smedley, as well as How-To forums, game development panels, a party for the players and much more. Fan Faire attendees will also have the opportunity to meet the development teams for some of the world's most successful online PC games, with specific activities and games being planned for each game. In addition, demos of the upcoming SOE titles, The Agency™, Free Realms™, as well as others, will be showcased. Fan Faire promises to deliver a weekend packed with activities and adventure for everyone ranging from casual gaming fans to entire guilds of vacationing gamers who can bring their families along on this quest for fun and excitement.

The only exposure I've had to Star Wars Galaxies, besides the awesome Fett's Vette video by Windspire, was via an old roommate, who was gone most of the day but would leave his mining bot on. Knowing that he was doing this, and that no one stopped him, and that many other people were probably doing it too...just sort of soured me to the whole proposition.

One benefit of WoW having such a massive market share is that they can afford to ban cheaters en masse, and overall I think Blizzard does a decent job of policing.

So this account of the rise and fall of SWG is fascinating to me. It's written in the style of a what-have-we-learned postmortem, outlining what SOE did right and wrong in dealing with the fans. It sounds like the developers are behaving in the same way as Lucas himself; taking something everyone loved just the way it was, and poncing it all up in the name of...what, exactly?

In Lucas' case, I think it was simple brattiness. In the case of SOE, their reasons for the total redesign that's going down right now are put forth in this statement from Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director, to the New York Times. Hit that jump.

We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base. There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves. [emphasis mine]

"Kill, get treasure, repeat." A more depressing summation of the games industry has never been issued. This sameness, and the conscious recognition by big developers that they are seeking more of it, is deeply discouraging to my jaded, freshness-cravin' self. Eliza "Progress Quest" Gauger

Read entire article here [HenryJenkins.org, thanks Seesar]

The news is that the Christian Science Monitor has gleefully latched onto (and who hasn't!) the unfortunately imbecilic remarks from the SOE Senior Designer who was trying to explain the reasons behind Star Wars Galaxies' New Game Enhancements.

Some choice quotes from the reponses:

"The Visigoths failed because the respawn timer on Rome was nerfed so badly."

"Every big MMO s main forums are intellectual wastelands. SWG just gave assclowns the tools to be better assclowns."

"If you build a sandbox game it s just a matter of time before someone s virtual cat takes a crap in it."

Good for a giggle over your morning porridge.

Broken Toys on SWG NGE [Broken Toys]