Everything started around the 1st of December 2008 when Destiny took us to read an email from Forggo ... looking for the head admin of TibiaMx...

Why Tampico? Well, it's known as the city in Mexico with the highest concentration of players of our beloved Tibia. They have an internet cafe called Kazor'don, and many of the cafes themselves advertise access to: Microsoft Office, Printers, CD Burning and TIBIA

We first tried to arrange an event in Tampico, Mexico in 2007, but failed, leaving the idea floating in the air. However, Forggo was committed and took the initiative to keep the door open with new ideas for a future event.

Forggo, my contact in Tampico, was determined to organize an event, so I decided to try our luck again, sending emails between TibiaMx & CipSoft, with detailed information about the event and looking for help.

We had only a month to plan the event, including finding a place in which we could make everything happen, making it all logical with what we'd offer to the visitors and how they could be entertained. However, having some experience with five conventions organized in the past at Monterrey city, we had a vision about this event.

January started, the winter holidays were almost over and we had support from CipSort! They were most generous, providing us with:

1 Mexcalibur
1 Medal of Honour
1 Gray Tome
1 Yellow rose
5 99x runes
6 Golden Goblets
6 Silver Goblets
6 Bronze Goblets
3 Premium Accounts
3 Autographed journals

We were rich in prizes!

Also Bcompra joined in, sponsoring extra prizes in the form of 3 Premium Accounts. Now all we had to do was provide the games and events where these prizes would be won ... that was our challenge!

We created some mini games like Hit the Target, Snakes & Stairs (adapted here to Carpets & Skulls), etc. We decided to split the visitors into teams of 5 to compete in the games, and at the end the winner was the one who got the most points in all the games combined. This was only the elimination round, however, because the players with the best score joined another team to compete in a game called 100 Tibians Said (similar to the Family Feud TV show). Our original plan was to expect around 350 visitors…

We move our stuff from Monterrey to Tampico and finally the convention day arrived! We started very early (8:20 am!) on Saturday the 10th of January. The first visitors were waiting for us at that time, though the event itself didn't start until 10:00 am. You may ask why there was such a long and early line ... there was a raffle to win a 90 days Premium Time for the first 100 visitors. By 9:00 am the line was 70 people long!

By the time the event started, we’d set up our projection area, the mini games area and a place where we were selling souvenirs and sodas.

By 12:00 noon, nearly 350 visitors had arrived! We never thought we'd have such a large turn out in a single day, but we worked to adapt to the situation. We figured what we'd heard was true ... Tampico really was the Mexican city with the largest amount of players!

It was a busy day! We had everything we could think of there: conferences in which players stated some of their gaming experiences, questions and answers to some "well known" players, etc. For some people in this situation, however, the experience turned a little uncomfortable, suddenly there they were in front of 350 people yelling BOTTER at them! (we don't know if it was truth or lie, but with the new anti-bot feature, they may well be banned by now!) It was actually sort of fun to watch their frustration and desperation (check out the image below!).

Lunch arrived in the form of hot dogs, and we all had the chance to talk with fellow players, receiving both positive and negative feedback about the game and the convention, and became a very friendly "meet and greet" session for a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, the games were going on. 100 Tibians Said was especially fun, since we asked 100 Tibians questions related to the game. We received interesting replies! Some made sense and others ... well, not so accurate. Here is a link to the games and how they work (however, it is in Spanish, so you may need some translation assistance!).

And so the first day finished and we went to sleep, we really needed it!

The next day was calmer, and we had our first Gotcha Tournament, the teams formed lines and the shots started! It was a great thing, many got harmed in the battle, others not. But the victorious who managed to survive received Goblets signed by our beloved CM Rejana.

We also had a mini contest in which we showed the following image to our visitors, it was a Ferumbras made of runes and you had to guess the total amount of runes used on the picture, with the one that guessed right or managed to be so near to the answer winning.

Here's the image, and before you see the answer, how many runes will you say the image has? Maybe you could have won!

The right answer was 919 runes.

We also had our first outfit contest, people had asked for it before, so we implemented the idea. We had a Jester, Magician, Oriental and Citizen with his Dragon-Dog, with the winners being the Oriental girl, the Citizen and his dog and the Jester.

We’d our last 100 Tibians Said game, and called on 35 winners from this game to take a Tibian test based on knowledge with questions about old days, current times and the supported/promoted fansites.

The five finalists from this were entered into a Tibia Jeopardy game o a Tibia Jeoprady which had categories like Old School, Tibia Today, Items, NPC’s, Fansites and Mexican general culture. To our surprise, we had a Swedish finalist among the other 4 Mexicans!

In the end, the winners were:

Mexcalibur and Medal of Honour: Avartax Chimera
Gray tome: Kolor Cris Chimera
Yellow rose: Loyd Falcon Crest Chimera
Magic wall rune 99x: Ke Keme Luminera
Paralyzed rune 99x: Sailor De'Sade Titania

This was the last activity for the event. After this, we were finished with 48 hours of pure Tibia. We learned a lot and invited our staff to go to dinner where we had some nice tacos! Yes tacos! You read well!

“Before closing the article, I want to thank all those who came to the event, the contestants, the staff & CipSoft, as well to Forggo and everyone who contributed directly or not to help this event and made it a success where 552 souls could share some time and hang out with their Tibian friends ... thanks!”

Want to see more pictures? Check out the gallery here!