We are pleased to present this guest Fan Faire review of The Agency, by Qwash.

At Fan Faire 2007, Sony Online Entertainment announced the start of a new project dubbed The Agency(TM) that would allow people to live the life of an elite agent in an online persistent world. In 2008, Fan Faire attendees were treated to another look at this new game that will be available for both the PC and the PLAYSTATION®3. The design team was there to answer questions about their game to those curious enough to step up to their booth, but the real treat was watching the "Sneak Peek" and picking the developers minds at their panel. The only question you have to ask yourself is, are you a UNITE or ParaGON agent?

There were many vendors at Fan Faire .  Among them was a new dating service for gamers!  Guest Editorialist Drew Taylor brings us the story.

According to Chris and Bill Forton of Gamer Harmony, a new online dating service available specifically to the role playing/online gaming community, there is...to the sum of 10 million online gamers! The creators of this new revolution in online dating was inspired after an article was posted on a popular website regarding a couple divorcing due to the habits of the World of Warcraft playing husband. This spark of revelation inspired Bill, the founder of the dating site, to construct a website for those of us in the gaming industry to find a partner who can share their love of MMOGs. This is a quality that many gamers relish, and some look for as a criteria in partners to have, offers the chance to find that special someone who is both attractive and sensitive to their passion for games. The dating world is still mostly skeptical of finding true romance online, but in recent months has replaced the bar with the virtual, and this is yet another marriage of the two industries.

The EverQuest II Expansion preview took place Saturday afternoon at Fan Faire. SOE staff attending were:

Jason "Fyreflyte" Woerner, Jennifer "Kirstie" Gerull, Emily "Domino" Taylor, Jeremy "Jindrack" Gess, Bill Yeatts, Chris "Aeralik" Kozak, Joshua "Autenil" Kriegshauser, Roger "Patherpanchali" Uzin, Greg "Rothgar" Spence, Carlos "Gninja" Mora, Lindsay Morgan "miss doomcookie" Lockhart, Paul "Cronyn" Molina, Noel "Ilucide" Walling, Bruce "Froech" Ferguson.

Ilucide presented the main points of the expansion with an accompanying slide show. Of note was an explanation of "The Shadow of Odyssey " which was trademarked accidently. The fifth expansion's name is "The Shadow Odyssey ".

The backstory, from the slide is :

For those who haven't been following the lore we've been releasing, the story of the expansion revolves around you, the players, studying the intrepid Ethernaughts and their exploits more than 4,000 years ago.

The void storms opening now have appeared before, and it's up to you to figure out how to close them once more.

You won't simply be retracing the Ethernaughts' steps though - you'll be tracking down a new way to close the portals, and perhaps even meet the old heroes and earn some of their treasures yourselves.

"Ethernaughts" is apparently not spelled correctly; Ilucide muttered something about trusting your spell checker.  The correct spelling is "Ethernaut".

For some, the annual SOE Fan Faire is a place to gather with friends from around the globe, catching up on old times shared within an online world.  For others, it's all about the panels and meeting the devs, community teams, and other players.

Then there are those who go for the events... such as the Live Events... hosted each year by the community teams for each respective title.  This year was no different.  There were Live Events for EverQuest, EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, and Vanguard, created by the community team for each game.

Just what is a Live Event, you ask?  Well... let me tell you!

For those who are seriously in to puzzle solving, riddles, and questing, Live Events are just for you.  That's right... it's a live quest.  You start with a quest giver who provides you with the necessary information for you to search out your next clue towards completing your task.  Be sure to ask the right questions, though, if you are hoping for success!

During John Smedley's Annual Address at SOE's 2008 Fan Faire we were treated to many game teasers.  For your viewing pleasure we present the EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey teaser!

Panels are one of the things about Fan Faire that often concerns me because it's always a challenge to wade through the biased pool of opinions and quite frankly the pointless questions that are asked to get to the meat of anything really useful. Don't get me wrong, panels have great purpose and are actually priceless when it comes to developers hearing feedback about changes needing to be addressed that may be completely new to the development team due to their sometime inside the box look at their project.

I think the best way to get my point across is with the use of a metaphor. Think of a panel as a telephone; on one end you have the community and on the other you have the development team. Some of the community is giving valid information, or asking important questions that are of great benefit to one side or the other. However, an even larger group of the community is seemingly acting as static that interrupts the communication process and breaks down the bridge between the player base and the people who can make us happy. Static like, "Why is my class lame? " or "Can you break wizards again so they're all mini gods? " also "Any chance of buffing this item I have from three expansions ago so it's as good as the stuff dropping now? " Now I'm not one to attack my fellow players but quite frankly, I don't think many understand how much less improvement we see because of the static.

Having said my honest opinion as a gamer -- I'd love to share with you all the great things that came out of the EverQuest panels during Fan Faire! My favorite panel out of them all was the expansion highlights. I don't want to get into specifics in this article but some of the assets we were shown made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In this article I will be sharing with you some of the highlights that came out of the General and Mechanics panels.

For as long as I've been attending Fan Faire, there has been the EverQuest Best of the Best, which was held this year on Friday in good ole Las Vegas. Over the course of the day 10 groups of players attempt to individually qualify for the final round by winning one of the 10 preliminaries. Rounds typically take 15-20 minutes to finish and usually require the spawning of Tigers, Lord Nagafen and sometimes even the Avatar of War to help speed things along. This year was no exception, with players doing anything needed to survive certain doom; within the rules of course!

The final round started like the 10 others before it. Players selected their character which consisted of a slew of pre-made level 50's. After everyone logged in, contestants waited for Alan "Brenlo" Crosby, who is always the master of ceremonies at this event, to shout "GO!!", which is essentially code for ‘kill or be killed'!

Alan, who constantly taunts the challengers, does a fantastic job of giving everyone enthusiastic play-by-play announcer style updates throughout the fight. Unfortunately for the players, being taunted over the big speakers for all to hear isn't the only challenge that they face. The battle is waged in a huge Arena that sometimes makes it hard to find someone to kill. Personally this is one of the things I've never liked about the process. Sure, it usually makes it so that the battles are 1v1 duel style; but it also makes it very easy for friends who may have both made it to the finals to gang up on individuals - not much skill in that. Additionally, as much fun as it may be to watch tigers, dragons and giants run after players, the Best of the Best should be a test of skill, not a game of chance; that's just my opinion however.

In 2007, SOE announced the beginning development of a new game entitled "The Agency".  In 2008, the developers of the game hosted a forum panel giving Fan Faire attendees the chance to see a sneak peek of the game in its current form.

August 15, 2008, SOE Fan Faire, Las Vegas NV

Tonight during John Smedley's annual Community Address, Jeff Moyer, President of the Zam Network announced the creation of Zam.com, which will combine all Zam Network sites such as Thottbot, Wowhead, MMO Interface, and the Allakhazam game sites into one complete gaming destination. He also announced that in partnership with SOE, the first game to get a full Zam.com site will be EverQuest II.

Day three started a little late for me. Well, 9am. Despite being up far too late, I just couldn't sleep in. I stayed in my room and worked a bit, then headed down to the conference area.

I checked out the vendors and Station Store, which I hadn't had a chance to do yet. I think the vendors were much better this year, we had a role play costumer, a new MMO magazine that Brasse is involved in, a caricaturist, and a game-oriented dating service to name a few.  Oh, that picture on the right is Mrs. Grimwell!