We are all settling back in from Fan Faire. I want to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who attended the event for Vanguard. I had a wonderful time hanging out with everyone and it was great to finally put faces to names and get to know some of the bigger names of the Vanguard Community. We all had a great opportunity in meeting some of the true Vanguard Fans and I do hope they had fun with us. It was great seeing so many of our team in the main gathering area for most all of the event. Great to have them so willing to answer any question or participate in an on the fly interview.

Over the course of several days, Vanguard had six panels. Each panel had a brief presentation by each panelist.

The most popular seems to have been State of the Game Panel. All of the Vanguard team was present for this one. Over the two day period the team spent hours answering questions and losing their voices. The focus of this panel was a three part address: They started with where the game came from, where it is now, and closed with the future of the game. Dave "Hasium" Gilbertson and Ryan "Gebron" Elam did the major portion of this presentation. Both are very skilled on their fields and were never thrown by a single question! Poor Ryan attended the Faire with a bad cold, so I think he fun level was probably pretty low, he is a real trooper. The participants in the panel fielded a lot of questions regarding the pending merges and coming game update. Other development team members each addressed their own areas of expertise and I think everyone has their questions answered.

The next panel we had was hosted by Bill Fisher and Darrin McPherson. They concentrated their effort on Adventuring in Vanguard. Bill spent much of the time answering specific game mechanics questions as well as why something is the way it is and what the thinking process was.

The third panel was hosted by Steve Williams, Lisa Boleyn, and Silas Morse. The Game Design panels covered how make a quest in Vanguard with Lisa giving detailed explanation on the creation of the Shadow Hound quest. Silas covered quitw a bit about how items are created and gave a sneak peak at what is coming. Steve spent his whole weekend answering diplomacy questions for everyone.

The Live Quest was spectacular! I believe everyone had a great time in trying to solve the complex puzzles, and I know our live NPC's had a blast. Each team had the opportunity to play Steve Williams in a Diplomacy game with cards specific to Fan Fare. Thanks for making such great cards, Steve.

Check out these pictures from the live quest:

Throughout the whole event the Vanguard players continued to stick together and by the time things were winding down at the Banquet we all knew everyone by name. The food was great and the company was excellent. Thank you to all the participants who made this Fan Faire a great success for Vanguard.