Antonia Bayle and the Festival of Unity – Part I

The GM’s have been very nice in aiding with the festival, adding tents to the celebration areas in Antonica

Last night I decided to take a break completely from things. I was going to work on L&L for Stargrace, and decided not to. I declined power leveling and guildies. I decided to say no to crafting. So what did I do? Well, a few guilds on Antonia Bayle have been hosting the Festival of Unity. It is a week long event located mostly in Antonica so that people from various factions can attend and not worry about the guards. There are games, contests, prizes to be won. It was one of the best nights I’ve ever had in EverQuestII. I’ll be posting my role play version of this event a little later today, but in the mean time here’s an overview.

At about 8:15pm EST, an auction began in Windstalker village. Nice of the GM’s to erect a stage and some tents for the festivities.

The crowd was huge, there were people of all factions, races, and guilds gathered together. The bidding began at 10g and went steadily up from there. The funds went half to the festival community to help pay for things like food and drink and costumes, and the other half went to the people auctioned. It was all in good fun, and it seemed that most people enjoyed themselves. It may sound a little weird, auctioning someone off in an MMO, but they were “dates” for the night, for the tavern event that was to follow the auction. Everyone volunteered themselves, no one was forced. Some people went for as high as 10p. Misako herself tried to make a few bids, but it was a little to steep for her pockets.

Afterwards the Fellowship of the Dragon hosted a fishing competition on the docks in Windstalker village. The winner was Shirrar, who got some nice prizes. Other prizes were donated to the second and third place winners. I had a lot of fun playing a reporter, and wandering around the event in general. There were peddlers selling their wares, froglok totems made from by real frogloks, dresses in case you had nothing to wear to the event, food and drink abound. There was also fortunes told, by Drakael – or rather, futures told. Misako got in on that as well, as there was a huge line up. The event was quite popular. The auction itself went on for nearly three hours, while people wandered around the event. After the auction and while the fishing competition was finishing up, Annwen gathered a crowd beneath a huge old tree to talk about some old Norrathian stories, her tale of the night was about Mujaki the Devourer – I couldn’t listen to the entire story though as it was Misako’s turn to have her future told.

There were drinking competitions hosted along with the stories, and at midnight EST there were card games. My eyeballs were threatening to close by 11:30 though, so I had to call it an early night. I really had a great time. If you’re looking for more information on the festival, you can find it here there are events like lemming cliff diving, there were jousting tournaments, and there’s so much more. There is an event schedule as well. There is also another post with some screen shots of the event here in the offical AB forums. If you’re on the AB server, I suggest you check it out and embrace what a wonderful server you’re apart of, and even if you’re not from AB I’d suggest rolling an alt just to see the events.