Fanfest 2011 - Incarna and the Captain's Quarters Reveal

Fanfest 2011 - Incarna and the Captain's Quarters Reveal

Fanfest 2011 ran 24-26 March 2011 in Reykjavik - the first spring Fanfest, after CCP had postponed the planned autumn-2010 event for more Incarna development time and better weather. The seasonal move turned out to be permanent; every subsequent Fanfest used a March/April/May slot.

The keynote belonged to Incarna. CCP Teemu Vilen and CCP Chiliad demoed the Captain's Quarters - the in-station avatar room that players would walk into when docking, with renders, walkthroughs, and a "this ships in summer" promise. The crowd reaction at Fanfest itself was broadly positive: the avatars looked good, the lighting was striking, and the years of "Walking in Stations" promises (going back to Fanfest 2007) finally had a deliverable date.

What did not land cleanly at the Fanfest keynote, but landed catastrophically three months later, was the parallel push toward the Noble Exchange vanity-item store and the infamous $70 monocle. When Incarna shipped on 21 June 2011 with Captain's Quarters and the NeX store together, the leaked internal newsletter "Greed is Good" turned the rollout into the Summer of Rage - multi-thousand-pilot riots in Jita, mass unsubs, the largest layoffs in CCP's history (October 2011), and the CSM emergency summit in Reykjavik. Crucible, the November 2011 recovery patch, was the apology.

So Fanfest 2011 occupies a strange place in EVE history: the keynote that sold the community on Incarna was itself unobjectionable; the controversy came from what CCP bundled with the demo, three months later. None of that was visible on stage in March.