It was an amazing time at Fippy Fest in beautiful San Diego. Now I’m back and finally caught up on sleep and emails!

So here’s a look at the recap (in photos) for the celebration of EverQuest and EverQuest II that was Fippy Fest!

BEFORE FIPPY FEST

My trip began several days before Fippy Fest started for most. I had to prepare for my hosting duties, and that meant most of the day at Daybreak Games studio for rehearsals and checking out the swag bag preps.

The badges are extremely high quality, metal badges with 2 lanyard holes for the Fippy Fest lanyard that was also provided.

(I actually received 2 of these! One for my official character, and then one for my hosting duties! More swag!)

Then it was off to the Comic Con Museum to get into the space to check out how preps were going, and get a feel for the stage and theatre set up.

The Comic Con Museum sits in Balboa Park, a beautiful and historic museum campus. It’s also where the San Diego Zoo is located.

The lounge was set up for arrival of Fippy Fest attendees the next morning! This was where folks could come and relax, have a beverage and relax a bit to chat with their fellow ambassadors or developers!

One quick stop at the venue “Prado” for a sneak peak at our amazing evening dinner the next night.

DAY ONE : IN-PERSON EVENT

Day One was ALL about the In-Person Attendees, called Ambassadors. They had a LONG Exciting Eventful day ahead!

But once they arrived, they had to check in and grab their Swag Bags!

Check In and Badge Pick Up

Check-In was located just outside the entrance to the Comic Con Museum. Here ambassadors grabbed their badges, their Fippy Fest back packs filled with swag, and headed to grab some breakfast in what would be our beautifully decorated outdoor dining area for lunch and breakfast both days.

Once checked in, you got a look at all the cool swag!

Swag! And More to Come!

The swag bags were Fippy Fest branded North Face backpacks of very nice quality. The organizers of the event made sure that all the swag the ambassadors would receive would fit completely into the Fippy Fest backback.

And though Ambassadors received a good amount of swag upon arrival, the event was designed to shower them with swag as the event progressed!

The bags contained a Fippy Fest water bottle , a luggage tag, a Year of Darkpaw pin, several game codes, a live quest scroll and a Fippy Fest journal!

Later, other items followed, including a sweatshirt, EQ vinyl, a t-shirt with our character name and server on it and a tube with 2 limited edition posters (one for EQ and one for EQ2) of the new Rick Schmitz Norrath maps that were commissioned for the Year of Darkpaw.

As host, I was also given a staff shirt and a few other nice items! Woot!

And then breakfast!

This was our cafeteria in the beautiful San Diego weather for breakfast and lunch for both days!

Each day a florist came in and checked on the flowers for the cafeteria, the stage and the lounge! Fancy!

Welcome Reception

But after breakfast it was time to start our amazing day! Up first, a Welcome Reception to explain What Is Fippy Fest and let our ambassadors know what type of adventure they’re about to embark upon!

For that we all made our way into the Comic Con Museum.

The Fippy Fest Lounge was set up as a place to relax and mingle when not in the theatre!

Just outside the Fippy Fest Lounge was the Gallery, which would be used later for the Signing Party!

But let’s get into the Theater for the Welcome Reception!

So…”What’s Fippy Fest all about?! Community! Celebration!”

Signing Party

First on the agenda was a signing party!

And what are the developers signing?

Limited edition, numbered, embossed and hand-signed (by Jenn Chan) posters. One for EQ and the other for EQ2.

These maps were created and drawn by Rick Schmitz, original artist on EverQuest and the creator of the original maps. The maps were commissioned by Darkpaw Games for the Year of Darkpaw and they look amazing.

The posters are very high quality and matte finish. And all the attendees were able to get all the developers of both games to sign the posters and the first chance to mingle with “Devs In The Wild!” Scary!

FIELD TRIP!

After the signing party, it was time to get a port from our druids and wizards (Load onto buses!) and port to Daybreak Games for our Studio Tour!

The Daybreak Games Studio is home to Darkpaw Games and there is a history timeline wall of the studio. And LOTS of art!

The groups were divided. Half took a tour, while the other half worked on the Live Quest, and received their sweatshirt and vinyl! Then they switched! Some lucky attendees received the 20th anniversary vinyls instead of the standard black vinyls. There were a few special ones mixed in!

I think everyone really enjoyed the tour, and of course, the best part was seeing the Keith Parkinson Art

An Evening To Remember!

Finally, our evening took us all to Prado, an incredible venue back at Balboa Park.

It was almost time for our Fippy FEAST.

But first, in the courtyard we had some drinks with our renaissance entertainers, “Courtly Noise.” AND they learned the EverQuest Theme just for us!

FIPPY FEAST!

But now, it’s time to go in, for our Fippy Feast!

And one final piece of swag before the end of Day One…

Each Ambassador was given this special plaque, with their own unique player name on it. What a way to truly show each ambassador a personalized touch for this amazing event!

DAY TWO : LIVE STREAM DAY

While Day One was all about the in-person attendees, Day Two was all about the Live Stream for viewers all over the world. But our ambassadors got a front row seat.

The stage is set for the stream. But what to wear?

How about this? The original cloth maps make great pocket squares.

Up First, a Welcome Address, with some announcements by Jenn Chan!

Welcome Address

Come on live audience! Bring the energy for the live broadcast!

Announcements!

Once Jenn Chan came to the stage, we learned quite a few things…

• The EQ2 Origins Server Anashti Sul will launch on June 19th at Noon Pacific!
• The 31st EverQuest Expansion will be called “The Outer Brood”
• The 21st EverQuest 2 Expansion will be called “Scars of Destruction”
• New cloth maps (large and great quality!) will be available in the swag store immediately. These are the same that were revealed in the social media contest, and that were on the posters the ambassadors received. They are created by the original map artist, Rick Schmitz.

The best part of an EverQuest convention can be the panels! We had an amazing Making Of Expansions panel as well as an Art Panel.

The Making Of Expansions Panel

This panel consisted of Adam Bell, Alan VanCouvering, Kyle Vallee and Nathan McCall.

The devs went through how they go from design document to finished product, but the highlights were the teases about the EQ and EQ2 upcoming expansions that Jenn Chan teased.

For EverQuest’s “The Outer Brood” we got video of this HUGE dragon, supposedly one of the largest NPCs in the game (next to Mechamatic Guardian). This is the “something big” that Adam Bell teased at Pax East.

I’ll be posting the full screen video of what was shown in the panel on the upcoming Fippy Fest Recap video, up soon.

And EverQuest 2 got crabs. Well, it’s sorta a crab….walrus…bug?

Right after the Making of Expansions panel was a very visual Art panel…consisting of Kevin Lydy, Tim Heydelaar, Dave Brown and Tom Tobey.

The Art of EverQuest Panel

Up first was Kevin Lydy with a look at how zones in EQ1 are created. Kevin has created 50 or more zones for EverQuest!

You can check out the Fippy Fest recap video for the full panel!

This is a look at how Shadow Valley was created in EQ!

SLIDESHOW: Creating Shadow Valley

And EQ2 got the same treatment. This time it was a look at Aether Wroughtlands provided by Tim Heydelaar.

SLIDESHOW: Creating Aether Wroughtlands

Next up Tom Tobey and Dave Brown hit us with all the cool imagery of new things that may be coming. Were they supposed to show us this?!?! Oh well! Here it is!

SLIDESHOW: Concept Art

Fireside Chat Panels : Community Q&A

And of course, it wouldn’t be a fan event without Community Q&A for the devs! There is to much here to cover explicitly, but the entire panel videos are available on the Fippy Fest Stream!

But the big , somewhat surprising bits of news were the following:

• The Teek server is the most populous EverQuest server ever
• The Origins server (Anashti Sul) in Beta is the most populated current server. Even more than Live servers.

Not bad for a 25 year legacy!

BattleMage Brewing Company

Finally, the finale of the event for a chance to relax at Battlemage Brewing Company for a chance to taste a beer brewed with assistance from Darkpaw developers called Corpse Run!

The Community!

But of course, the highlight of the event is meeting the fans and devs. And connecting in real life!

It was a very busy few days for me, and I certainly worked hard to make sure my part of the show went off the best it could, so I didn’t have as much downtime to chat as I would have liked.

At the end of Day Two, I found myself quite sad that the first ever Fippy Fest was drawing to a close. It had been 10 years since the last gathering.

But given the success of Fippy Fest, I hope it won’t be long before the next one!