More Activities & Contests at Fan Festival 2008!

In addition to the wealth of information and excitement we seek to provide at every Fan Festival, we also endeavor to give our attendees plenty of activities to take part in and opportunities to compete and win prizes. This year brought back Event Prize Categories, giving players who fulfilled certain criteria a shot at some special gifts! We had an amazing turnout for our Art Contest this year, and all of that player talent helped to make the Art Display Room on the 3rd floor one of this year's most popular destinations. And of course, no event would be complete without the popular Costume Contest. In addition to the many different contests and giveaways, we also gave players an opportunity to try out some brand-new content directly from the December version update in the form of "The Swarm." Below are further details on some of the more interesting aspects of what Fan Festival 2008 had in store for players.

Art Contest: Drawing Category

Both the Drawing and Crafting Art Contests returned to Fan Festival this year, but the entries were more numerous and impressive than ever! Our Drawing Category alone received almost 80 different entries, and players sent in 10 different Crafting Category entries as well. Attendees were invited to observe the masterpieces in the Art Display Room on the 3rd floor, where every entry was mounted for display. In each Gobbiebag were both a Drawing Category voting ballot and a Crafting Category voting ballot. Adventurers who had taken in the view in the Art Display room could use these to vote for their favorites and at the end of the day a final tally was taken. Amazingly, despite the sheer quantity of entries, the voting was very, very close! Our 1st , 2nd, and 3rd place winners are listed below. And in addition to these awards, the Development Team also selected a special little winner of their own!

1st Place Title Epic Artist Monty/Lakshmi

2nd Place Title La Theine Artist Turin/Alexander

3rd Place Title Light vs. Dark Artist Rioka/Ragnarok

Developer's Choice Title Cookout in Windurst Artist Calcula/Midgardsomr

To check out all the entries to the Art Contest: Drawing Category, click here!

Art Contest: Crafting Category

Our crafting entries were equally impressive with several different themes and mediums being utilized. Our Crafting Category winners, including the Development Team's personal choice for best entry, are listed below:

1st Place Title Chocobo Family Artist Roelon/Siren

2nd Place Title Mandy Bento Artist Pikko/Garuda

3rd Place Title Mithra Present Artist Emobi/Shiva

Developer's Choice Title White Rarab Artist Mewten/Midgardsomr

To check out all the entries to the Art Contest: Crafting Category, click here!

Costume Contest

Costumed players of myriad creed and job flock to our live events, and this year's Fan Festival was no exception. Indeed, this year's contest saw adventurers dressed as the Chains of Promathia favorites, Ulmia and Tenzen. Two players came dressed as Mithra in Savage Armor sets, and even gave away holiday gifts to passersby! The contest began with attendees strutting their stuff across the stage before entertaining all in attendance with a brief action befitting their costume. A BLM resplendent in a Morrigan's Robe posed ready to cast a powerful spell on the Fan Festival legions before him. A player donning a Culinarian's Apron even performed her own rendition of some on-stage synthesis! Our esteemed judges, FINAL FANTASY XI Producer Hiromichi Tanaka, Global Online Producer Sage Sundi, and North American Producer Yasu Kurosawa, deliberated intently before announcing the 10 finalists! The MC took a few moments to pick the brains of each of these celebrated role-players, and the top three winners were then chosen by the audience by the fairest of all means possible: applause! Using an on-screen applause meter displayed for all to see, fans were urged to cheer on their favorite participant. In the end, the winners were all commended on their high-quality craftsmanship, ingenuity, and attention to detail. And our judges also had a special little pick of their own this year as well. Check out all the winners below!

1st Place Title BLM Morrigan's Set Winner Primal/Valefor

2nd Place Title SMN with Carbuncle Winner Lerra/Leviathan

3rd Place Title Soulflayer Winner Saasuke/Carbuncle

Judge's Choice Title Moogle Baby Winner Dragonpixie/Phoenix

We'd like to congratulate our winners and all our entrants for their submissions. The multi-faceted talents of the FFXI player community are truly inspiring!

Event & Giveaway Prizes

It wasn't only our Art Contest entries that had a chance for great prizes this year. Every attendee of Fan Festival 2008 had a chance at winning something through both our Event Prize Categories and Giveaway Prizes! We created special behind-the-scenes categories for attendees this year, with some winners already decided before the event even began! Players who met the special criteria for these categories were each given a copy of the Wings of the Goddess soundtrack, not yet available in North America, signed by FINAL FANTASY XI Composer Naoshi Mizuta! The complete lists of categories and winners can be found below:

Event Prizes
First Attendee to Pre-Register	Tonzokukangen/Asura
Last Attendee to Pre-Register	Kitteneater/Carbuncle
Person Who Traveled the Farthest	Hereticdante/Cerberus
Person Who Traveled the Least	Daemian/Caitsith
Largest Attending Server: 11th Attendee	Germ/Carbuncle
Person Who Most Recently Registerd to PlayOnline	Kitteneater/Carbuncle
Person Who Was Earliest to Register to PlayOnline	Kismar/Midgardsomr

And of course, even if an attendee didn't fit into any of the above categories, we also prepared some special giveaway opportunities in which everyone could partake. Each Gobbiebag contained a Giveaway Ticket, and all players savvy enough to submit their Giveaway Ticket stub to our large wheel at the Information Desk earlier in the day were eligible to win some amazing prizes, including an Astro A40 audio system from Dolby, a Custom Desktop PC from our friends at AMD and Cooler Master, and for the grand prize, an Area-51® m15x Laptop generously provided by Alienware!

In-Game Activities: Moblin Maze Mongers & The Swarm

The debut of Moblin Maze Mongers and The Swarm proved to be extremely successful and were the crowd favorites by far. The queues for the events didn't die down until very late in the day after adventurers had given them their absolute all. There was certainly a good deal of talk concerning MMM, and many attendees could be overheard relaying their findings to fellow linkshell members and friends back home, and engaging in discussions about future possibilities for the fully launched system. First, party members worked together to set up their maze, carefully discussing what kind of effects, challenges, and monsters they wished to see within, before eventually diving in and doing what adventurers do best! The maze floor plan chosen for Fan Festival featured a single notorious monster whose difficulty depended solely on the attributes assigned to it by the party. The teams seemed to enjoy going through the various statistics to see what was within the realm of possibility before finally deciding on their final maze design. Once the parties entered, we quickly learned that most of the players were so skilled that the single NMs posed no significant threat...

The Swarm was a frantic, fast-paced event where everyone had a great time trying to exterminate as many pests as they could within the five-minute time limit using characters decked out from head to toe with mythic weapons and godly gear most players only dream about! The main goal for attendees was to compete for bragging rights over other party members, as each monster defeated by a player nets him or her individual points. A variety of strategies were employed as players realized that the weaker monsters, while easier to defeat, yielded lesser points than the larger, tougher monsters. It was a quick, fun event that kept a lot of attendees talking long after five-minute time limit had elapsed.