I was very excited (and a bit worried) about it, because it was the first time for me to organize an EVE Online player gathering. I simply couldn’t wait! I am now really happy and relieved, that it turned out to be a really good time for everyone present.

It’s that day!

Me and my wife have arrived earlier to set up a counter with ID cards and an attendance list. Additionaly, SokoleOko, a player well known in the Polish Community, wished to give a presentation to say a few words about the status of nullsec. So we’ve needed to set up a laptop for that as well. When we’ve arrived at Hard Rock, there was alaready a bunch of people waiting. We’ve quickly introduced ourselves and started giving out the IDs. People at Hard Rock are very helpful, so all the preparations for the presentation went smoothly. CCP Gargant showed up shortly after, and still well before 19:00. CCP provided an open bar for the participants, so everyone who picked up their ID could go and grab a beer (or in many cases, something to eat as well).

After half an hour we had 75% of the list already there, and we’ve decided to give it a go. SokoleOko started his presentation about why nullsec is broken, and how to fix it (you can see his presentation here). After the presentation, I went to the stage and welcomed our guest with two gifts, that Polish Community deemed the most appropriate. First was a bottle of vodka, re-branded as “Frachtówka” (polish for “Freighter Vodka”). I quickly covered the story of that label, and feel free watch that history here yourself. The other gift was a beverage as well (we Poles like gifts that are useful!), but it has quite a different story – it was mead, a drink that had been already known to humanity almost 4000 years ago. Afterwards CCP Gargant has officially confirmed that he will be the one running Alliance Tournament this year, and askedthe crowd if there will be any AT teams from Poland. There were two. So Gargant asked if BUFU is in C0ven. Kharim Katelo responded: “It’s not BUFU that is in c0ven, it’s c0ven that is with BUFU”.

With the official part over, people quickly formed into small groups (who know each other from game), and of course everyone enjoyed themselves.

Some time has passed, and Gargant asked me how we should proceed with giving out the swag that Guard sent over a week before the event. Having no experience with this I asked Gargant if he had an idea himself. He did. We had an attendance list, so we’ve asked the crowd to give out a number, and then asked that person to the stage. People were being asked some trivia questions (“What are the names of the new Sister of EVE ships?”) and given a reward when the answer was correct. Besides this, Gargant gave everyone a code for ship skins – either for an Iteron or Nefantar Mammoth. I don’t know how Guard knew how many codes to send, because there was 47 people and exactly the same number of those codes!

The official part ended at about 23:00, but this was not the end of the party. Gargant and a bunch of players went on a Pub Crawl, which lasted almost until dawn!

A bit of background

I first spoke with Guard about player gathering in Poland when my blog was appointed an official fansite. Polish Community is a bit fragmented: there is C0VEN and BUFU, there is Unseen Academy, The Nameless Alliance, Exiled Ones, and the rest is either people playing in international corporations, or smaller Polish ones. I wanted to do this, because integrating all these small communities would be really cool.

Guard promised to get back to me regarding this and he did. So I’ve scouted some restaurants and pubs around Warszawa Centralna, and forwarded their pricings and offers to CCP. We’ve chosen the most appropriate venue, and CCP Guard reserved it for us (remotely). When it was a week before, he sent over some swag by DHL. In the meantime, I’ve designed the ID cards (with some excellent feedback from both my wife and from the Community) and then written a script, which downloaded all Corporation and Alliance names from the EVE API for the registered participant’s character nicknames. This way all the IDs were filled automatically using Mail Merge 😉 Getting the gifts was the most tricky one, because almost all brands of vodka in Poland have some carvings on the bottle, so it’s impossible to glue a new label on them (and the gift would be meaningless if it weren’t a “Frachtówka”!).

Op success \o/

Everyone had a great time, and I’m sure we will repeat it in future! Organizing all this was a bit of a challenge (if you’ve ever herded a bunch of cats, you’ll know what I mean), and I’m really glad everything went so smooth. I hope next time we will see more familiar faces from CCP (yes Mr G. , I’m looking at you ;-))!

But wait, Lukas is retired as a player, isn’t he?

Well… I was. For the past six months I didn’t have time to play games. It’s slighly better now, so yes, you can say I’m back 🙂