Between the 12th and 13th November a horde of EVE players descended on the city of Amsterdam in The Netherlands to take part in the largest player hosted EVE meet in the world, Evesterdam.
The event was the 4th of its kind but the 3rd to be hold in the Compagnietheater. This year it was held later in the year in mid November prior to the one last year during the warmer and sunnier September. However, this did not deter players from descending on the venue in droves as 300 tickets had sold prior to the opening day on Saturday 12th November.
Over the course of both the Saturday and Sunday a range of presentations took place including those from CCP and capsuleers such as Killah bee and Kamar Raimo. CCP sent CCP Terrorshark, CCP Quant, CCP Mimic and CCP Fozzie to represent themselves and provide further insight to the game for those in attendance. This included some “on-the-fly” SQL coding by CCP Quant, a hastily put together yet awesome presentation by CCP Terrorshark and a Q&A session by CCP Fozzie and CCP Mimic. Alongside the presentations there was also a demo of EVE Valkyrie and EVE Gunjack for attendees to enjoy, though it was not advised first thing following the end of the pub crawl on the Friday night.
The alliance with the most notable showing was that of Goonswarm Federation who arrived in a swarm in their clearly identifiable clothing. Though thankfully we as players put the game aside when we meet at events and there was many laughs and drinks shared by allies and enemies alike.
As with previous years this weekend had a range of prizes up for grabs ranging from ship packages and plex to the ultimate prize of a Chameleon alliance tournament prize ship worth approximately 140 billion ISK. These prizes were provided by entities such as EOH Poker, EVE.PICS, Macabre Votum and players such as Lenny Kravitz2, Corebloodbrothers and mercfromabove. Alongside the EVE online prizes there was also t-shirts given out during entry as part of the sign up “swag bag” and photo books up for grabs from CCP. However the requirement to claim your prize was being present at the end of each presentation for the draw, if you weren’t it was passed on to another.
Overall the event provided a wide range of content with a good amount of people to enjoy it from across all aspects of the game.
Dierdra Vaal, the organiser of the event had the following to say:
I could say that Evesterdam has built up a proven track record over the past several years, and an amazing reputation that we constantly strive to improve on with giveaways, presentations, and developers. We try to emulate the feeling of Eve Fanfest, and it isn’t a coincidence that Evesterdam is the largest player hosted eve meet in the world. But more important than the goodie bags, trying a new virtual reality demo or seeing CCP unveil something new is simply meeting so many other people who all play Eve Online, and being able to swap your war stories or forge new friendships or alliances. We are drawing a bigger crowd every year, and this year especially a few alliances brought a lot of their pilots. It really adds a new level when you can just have a beer with your corp mates or have a chat with one of the developers from CCP. Eve Online is ultimately a social game and in Amsterdam, Eve is real.
Personally it was my first ever trip to Amsterdam and I thoroughly enjoyed it all as the event alone is enough to make me want to return. The organisational team were superb in putting the event together and seem to keep doing better and better as it continues to grow in size and reputation. I would highly recommend it to all players in the future if you ever find yourself with an urge to travel into Europe this should certainly be on the list as a stop.
