It's so disappointing that it's not a legit FanFaire. I mean I know those are probably expensive and a pain to do but it would still be really cool.
Am I understanding correctly that this virtual one is basically people paying for the opportunity to have a question answered but they will reject any questions they don't like?
The true fun of the old FanFaires in Las Vegas was getting to meet up with your guildmates and friends from in game. My brother and I enjoyed the living hell out of going to FanFaire the few times that we went. The panels were ok, scavenger hunts were fun, and getting to meet and chat one on one with devs/designers in person was fun if not eye opening when you realize that some of the ones you thought were cool end up being idiots and some of the ones you thought were assholes end up being pretty damn cool in real life.
For me, some of the things I looked forward to every year was getting to see what was coming in the next expansion, buying the DayBreak Cash cards at a discounted rate, and buying all kinds of EQ merchandise (to this very day, I still wear my EverQuest hoodie I bought at one of the FanFaires).
Ultimately, my main highlight from every year was getting to hang out with my guildmates for a few days. We would get our rooms at the hotel obviously, but then we would chip in to get a suite for everybody in our guild to meet up in through out the convention. We would go sight seeing in Vegas and have big get togethers at restaurants. It was a blast.
Some highlights that I will never forget is getting to meet Larry Elmore, hang out with Brasse (note that dwarf can out drink you easily), getting a Nagafen hat randomly popped on my head by Absor while waiting inline for a panel, and meet Brad McQuaid. I would put meeting Holly on that list, but to be completely honest, that was probably the most "meh" encounter I ever had at one of these events. I don't know if she was just the kind of person that didn't like talking to others or was having a bad day, but she literally was like "hello...", I told her that I liked the work she did on crafting in EQ2, she was like "ok", and that was it.
The developer Q&A panels were golden. Nothing like listening to the devs own people asking stupid questions. I remember asking at one year if we would ever get armor drops again like we had back in the day where when you saw someone wearing it, you knew damn well what they had done to get it. For instance, if you saw a tank wearing blue armor, you knew they had Cobalt armor on. It was a status symbol. You knew they were a badass just by what they were wearing. One of the devs said he knew exactly what I was talking about and that he wanted that to be a thing again and was working on it. Then he quit DBG to be a jet test pilot, so it never happened lol.
Point is... the FanFaires were fucking great. The game has not been the same since Fanfaires ended, Brasse moved on, and Ponytail tried to destroy the future of EQ with Minecraft Meets Norrath that ultimately failed horribly.
Bring back real FanFaires. Bring back the drunken dwarf. Bring back EverQuest!