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Fanfest 2004 - Inaugural Reykjavik Convention

The first-ever EVE Fanfest, held in Reykjavik on 22-23 October 2004 at the Nordica Hotel, where CCP and roughly a thousand pilots invented the format (roundtables, dev panels, alliance panel, pub crawl, top-of-the-world party) that every later Fanfest would follow.

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Fanfest 2004 - Inaugural Reykjavik Convention

EVE Fanfest started on Friday 22 October 2004 at the Nordica Hotel in Reykjavik. CCP had been running the game for less than 18 months and had no real precedent for a player convention in Iceland - but they flew in roughly 900 paying guests, peaked at around 3,000 bodies in the building when the closing party opened to the Reykjavik public, and ran two full days of dev presentations, roundtables, and the first-ever Alliance Panel.

The headline content was a semi-launch of the Shiva expansion (player outposts and conquerable stations in 0.0) and the first sneak peeks at Kali, the multi-stage expansion plan that would eventually become Revelations. Side events included the inaugural Charity Pub Crawl, the first Quafe Queen contest, and the Minmatar games - corporation, ISD, GM and dev teams shooting each other in test scenarios on stage.

What 2004 mattered for, in hindsight, was format. The shape of every later Fanfest - Friday opening keynote, Saturday alliance panel, Sunday wrap plus a top-of-the-world rooftop party - was set here. It also set the expectation that EVE expansions get announced at Fanfest first, which shaped CCP's release calendar for the next two decades.

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