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Fanfest 2008 - Apocrypha and Wormholes Teased
Image: CCP Games · (c) CCP Games (used under CCP fan-content policy)
The fifth annual Fanfest, 6-8 November 2008 in Reykjavik, where CCP revealed the Apocrypha expansion (wormhole space, T3 strategic cruisers, the skill-queue) for release in March 2009 - the announcement that lit the fuse for the Seyllin Incident four months later.
Fanfest 2008 - Apocrypha and Wormholes Teased
Fanfest 2008 ran 6-8 November 2008 in Reykjavik, with travel packages opened up to attendees from Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the UK in addition to the existing German, Dutch, and US options. The expansion about to ship - Quantum Rise on 11 November 2008, only days after Fanfest closed - was already largely a known quantity by the time the keynote ran, so the headline content was the next expansion.
That next expansion was Apocrypha, announced for release on 10 March 2009. Apocrypha was the introduction of wormhole space: unstable wormholes spawned across known space, leading to a previously unreachable layer of 2,499 new systems with no local chat, no stargates, and no sovereignty. It also brought Tech 3 strategic cruisers built from Sleeper salvage, the skill training queue (no more 3am alarms to inject the next skill), and the new probe-scanning UI.
The wormhole reveal at Fanfest 2008 set up the in-fiction event that opened Apocrypha four months later - see the Seyllin Incident for the mass-stellar-anomaly that lore-wise birthed the rifts. Quantum Rise itself shipped 11 November (Speed Trial chip, the Orca, the Primae) and served as a low-key warmup for the much larger Apocrypha that Fanfest had just teased.