The One About The East Coast Park BBQ

So. The BBQ at East Coast Park last Saturday was a blast! With about 40 plus people attending, all of us had such great fun making new friends, joking, laughing and just getting to know one another. It was nice seeing the different people from different servers coming together as one.

A reminder that despite all of us living in different worlds (servers), when we meet up in real life together, we are all united by the one thing we so love - Granado Espada. There were no 'clicks' or grouping of any sort. Everyone interacted with one another on an equal level, despite any sort of level differences.

A reminder that despite being in rival factions, all online disputes were null and void. These seem to be small and insignificant when real life comes into play. It was an endearing sight seeing members of rival factions joking and laughing together like old friends despite meeting each other for the first time.

It truly surprised me the amount of diversity there was that existed within our Granado Espada community. Our youngest comrade was 14 years old while our most senior was 36. No matter what hobbies, interests or personality type, there was such a good mix of diversity that you could always find someone you could you hit it off with there!

Having said that... No peekture, no talk!

Here are the floodgate of peektures from the event. First there was the setting up of the BBQ pit and the early birds that came to socialize...





The cooked food was hungrily gobbled up first since the BBQ pit was taking some time to heat up. Meanwhile, I was pretty glad to say that no one was poisoned by my curry chicken and mashed potatoes ;)

As the evening progressed on, more and more people arrived and the BBQ was in full steam.







One of our dear Cervantes players brought his laptop to the BBQ... to play GE of course...



We took some mass photos together:







And then broke into server-photo shoots. Here are the folks from Cervantes:



And here are the Caravaggians...



Pachelbel had the highest turnout. PWNage!



The Carraccians were too busy eating to gather together for a photoshoot. Not to mention it started raining halfway through the BBQ. With tons of food still left and the night still being young at 9.30pm, I invited the whole gang of 40 plus people over to my house nearby. It felt like a scene from Fast and Furious (the more unglam version that is) as everyone started scrambling to pack up. So we managed to squeeze everyone into bicycles, motorbikes, cars, taxis and the most hilarious sight of all - a pick up truck!



The eating session continued on at my house. Most people left just before midnight but a couple of them stayed overnight. Some played mahjong, others played cards, some watched T.V:

One read the latest Harry Potter installment which just arrived on my doorstep that morning at 8am:



Naturally there were those who were unable to resist the lure of GE:

And some who played my collection of board games. The one they are playing is one of my all-time faves, 'Betrayal of House on The Hill'



Another played with my bunny rabbit:



The fun and games continued all night till the next morning at 10am, at which I introduced them to my weekly Sunday routine - Macdonald Breakfast delivery!

More talking, laughing, joking till they left after breakfast at 1pm. The rest of my Sunday was spent on a flurry of household chores - vacuuming, mopping, trashing, cleaning up after my beloved GE community. Gee no wonder my favourite wizard costume is the Maid Costume! ;)

Hrin’s Updates: Weekly Colony Wars and V2.1.18 Patch Release Date!

Hi guys,

1) Weekly Colony Wars: Sunday Nights

There will be a weekly colony war held every Sunday, 2000hrs-2200hrs (GMT+8) starting from 29^th July 2007, Sunday onwards.

The colony maps will NOT be reset until the start of our commercial phase. On the first day of commercial launch, the world map will be wiped clean of all faction names and colonies will be reset to free for all. This is in consideration for some factions who are still affected by the ‘Declaration of war’ bug.

For the factions who are still affected by the Declaration of war bug, please report it here. This is the final call to all the factions who are still affected by the Faction leaders, please note that in the Declaration Of War Document, you will need to type in the name of the Faction you wish to declare war on and not the family name of the faction leader.

Discuss this here.

2) Latency Issue

Our technical team has been investigating the recent spate of latency issues and they suspect that the problem lies with the routing path of data packets since our bandwidth usage reports do not reflect any abnormal behavior.

In the meantime, our technical team has written a batch file to monitor this routing of data packets. For those still experiencing bad latency, please follow the instructions found here to submit your traceroute findings to them such that they may investigate where the problem could potentially be and execute the necessary follow-up action.

Discuss this here.

3) V2.1.18 Patch Release Date: 16^th August 2007

The patch for V2.1.18 is approximately 200MB and will be available soon for download. However, it has been password protected for the time being because the server side V2.1.18 patch has not yet been installed. Please do not attempt to crack the password and install the patch to your current client as this would result in game client corruption and will result in your current Granado Espada client being unable to run. The password will be released on 16^th August 2007 for users to install the patch.

P/S: This is not the date that we are going into commercial phase, so please remain calm. :)

Discuss this here.

4) Forum Quest #1: RohNaga’s Challenge

From Granado Espada’s in-game quests to RAID party real life quests and now… to Forum Quests! We will be having a series of weekly quests on the forum. Each week will bring forth a new challenge issued by each of the Community Managers and the Gamemasters on a rotational basis.

This week’s Forum Quest #1 is issued by Singapore Community Manager, RohNaga. His challenge comes in the form of Creative Captions which can be found here.

The prize for each of these quests will be the event-exclusive Angel Wings.

Hrin's Updates: Examining The B-Files

Hi guys,

1. Revisiting The Botting Issue: The 3 Stages

Quite a few people have been asking in the forum about how we have been catching bots. After some internal discussion, we decided to reveal a little in regard to the ‘behind the scenes’ operations.

There are three stages which botting is detected. The first stage is an in-built technical system. Although the in-built technical system is highly accurate, we still activate a second stage of investigation – the human factor. This is where the [GM] team does their whole ‘invisible stalker’ thing in-game to verify if the player is indeed botting.

Upon the first two stages of detection, players gets banned. The third stage also known as log checking by the log team is activated at a later time as a means of review. This third stage takes about a week or so to investigate and it is a very tedious process by which the suspect is confirmed to be botting. In the event that players appeal their case through our ticketing system, we escalate their case from the review queue in order to deal with their cases first. We have indeed unbanned a few players who, when upon submitting their appeal via the ticketing system with their evidence why they were not botting, were cleared of all charges. For these few players, when we activated the 3rd stage of investigation, we discovered that they were indeed not botting and have unbanned them ever since. Nevertheless, there are still some players who were reported as botting. They remain on our 'Suspects List' which we are still closely monitoring.

Please note that we ONLY entertain appeal cases via the ticketing system found here. We do realize that bots will keep making a comeback via new accounts within 15 minutes of our banning their accounts and will continue this policing as much as possible.

Discuss this topic here.

2. The Ad-Hoc Colony Wars…

IMC (Granado Espada’s game developer) handles all the server side applications. This includes all the Colony War functions such as switching on and off the activation times as well as the resetting or wiping of colony maps etc.

Unfortunately, due to their hectic schedule lately in the past month having to fix various bugs amongst other new back end developments, they forgot to switch it off. The Colony Wars caught us all by surprise as well! Nonetheless it was a rather amusing experience which resulted in us converting it into a trial ad hoc war to test for any colony war bugs. It reminded me of Sun Tzu’s Art Of War whereby real wars always come with the elements of surprise and unpredictability. At the same time, it tested the ‘operational-readiness’ of everyone in IAHgames as well as every faction in Granado Espada.

Having said that, the real colony wars are usually automated by the system to activate itself once the timings are set. Due to this period of trial wars which requires manual restarts and manual clearing of maps, this is a new process to IMC themselves which needs some kinks to be worked out. So do let's give them some time to work things out amidst this hectic period. :)

Discuss this topic here.

3. Upcoming Events

[Malaysia] Roadshow @ Johor Bahru: SMM will be holding a Leveling competition during this event. Participants will have to level a team of 3 newly created Level 1 characters for 45 minutes. The person with the highest leveled characters at the end of the 45 minutes wins! Read more here.

Discuss this topic here.

4. Commercial Launch Updates

Commercial launch is soon approaching. The commercial date cannot be confirmed at this time since there are still a few dependencies on the back-end which we are working on currently. The much-speculated business model will be officially announced in a few weeks time once we have finalized the last remaining details with our various partners. Personally, I’m really looking forward to announcing it since it is a business model that takes into account the different advocates of the various models and I find that it is a very fair system as well.

On an even more exciting note, we will be releasing Granado Espada’s V2.1.18 which includes new updates to the game! Think mercenaries! Think baron quests! Think Voting and Elections! We will be releasing weekly previews of the upcoming features so stay tuned for that!

Discuss this topic here.

The One Where I'm BIA (Back In Action)!

Yes... I do realize that it has been eons since I last updated my blog. It has been a hectic past month due to the backlog of work that had to be cleared after the Zouk GE RAID party. The preparations for it had taken my time away from a lot of other matters. Nevertheless, the exhaustion was well worth it and I definitely had a great time with the 40-odd GE members of the community who came to help out for the quest stations.

My senior cum mentor cum work partner cum beloved Product Manager was away on reservist for the last 3 weeks as well which meant... Hello Hectic Schedule 3X Boost. The recent spade of unpleasantries and rants being spammed in my blog's cbox hasn't helped much either. So you can imagine returning home late at night after a long, weary day of work and tough battling of behind-the-scene problems and trying hard to squeeze out a blog entry only to see your cbox spammed with even more problems! Which is why I am seriously considering doing away with that double-edged sword cbox. This GE blog which I once considered a haven and something I enjoyed doing in my leisure has now become a dumping ground for others. Which can only lead to activation of my favourite hotkey - ALT F4. ;)

Quite a lot of people have been asking me why I haven't been updating my blog in a while. Yup, hope this helps shed some light on my silence for the past month. :)

The One About Advertising For Diego (At The GE Raid Party)

The logistics after the GE RAID Party was a nightmare! A warehouse full of merchandise, banners, standees, signages, goodie bags etc to sort out. Only after a month were we able to finish the entire logistical nightmare.

For the GE RAID party, the segment that I was in charge of was the quest stations. I really wanted to bring GE's quests into real life and to stay as true as possible to the original quests in-game so [GM] Lorenza (who was very kindly assisting me in this mission) and I brainstormed often during the planning stage, late into the night.

One of the quest stations, Advertising For Diego, meant that you (the participant at the party) had to look for 2 signboards to post up 2 notices.
























The first signboard was our good ol' Cite De Reboldoeux Noticeboard. Participants had to design a faction emblem and post it up on the notice board. FYI, when your faction level reaches Level 52, your faction can design and upload your very own faction emblem in-game!
























Well, I just got the board back from the warehouse the other day and here are the emblems that were posted up during the party. Click on image to enlarge:



The 2nd notice board was the Port Of Coimbra Notice Board which consisted of our GE forum's all-time fave game... The 3 word game!
























None of the stories really made any sense whatsoever but it certainly shed light on which of the GE factions attended the event and even the sequence of when they came! Just read the stories and you will get the drift of what I am saying...

* * *

1. In the land there was a very large guy. There was also another large guy. His name was Exgalado and basically he live on a land call Cite De Reboldeux he was very happy and felt super. He looks like a very handsome. He might have gone crazy and kissed everyone. Such action may be considered crazy. Therefore, this shall be tolerable in whack by monster like he himself. One fine day, he met the large guy and felt like kissing a toad by the name of Lestat who is from Scarlet Rose.

2. Long time ago, there was a faction called Scarlet Rose who always lost to Destiny Faction. We owned them. However, they were always losing to the Templar-Knights Faction, with love peace. But they train harder and one day, they raged Destiny Faction a lot. Finally, they won the colony war with six forts. Come try us! And finally the world plotted against them. The end.

3. Two separated lovers, separated not by love but by laws of the passed down family’s custom but they miss each other. Sobbing in despair. By the Evening without the other beside him, she was devastated. She thought of him everyday and dreams of him when she slept. However, things changed one day they came up with a brilliant plan. They decided elope together to another country.

4. A beautiful girl comes from GE. She is a fighter level 99 who like to wear new clothes. Every day she fight monster in the rion dungeon. But one day she slept in town next to port of Coimbra. Suddenly it started, a tsunami came and she run away from the Phoebitian Chieftain that appeared that day with the ferocious tsunami. So she ran and ran and finally ran to tetra ruins and rested there, suddenly Gracielo appeared and started to attack the girl. She ran and ran and hide. Gracielo decided to chase and chase. Finally they came to visit Singapore.

5. A rainy day of raid party at the Zouk, a pretty girl, in a pretty dressing wearing a elegant boots meets a guy in long black coat meeting at a corner with grenades which almost explode in their face, severely disfiguring the face, leaving them scarred for life. The pretty girl was crying at the centre of the city square when a hero walks up to the pretty girl and says to her ‘don’t cry’, to which she replied ‘who are you my hero?’

6. Panfilo visited nick and said to him in a friendly and polite manner ‘how are your pet chicken? Can we eat?’ And I started to cry because my pockets were empty of Vis. Therefore I decided to find a place to farm for more vis and more items. I had to go to a boss-hunting at tetra golden road and loot everything that Is on the floor and worth of many vis otherwise wait the item to be yourself to keep. Then one day, sell everything away and earned big cash and assets and be retired.

7. How are you? I am fine. What are you? I am pig, Said Dion the sage. I am hunthing boar for a unique item call angel wing. Where can you find the item? Near Cite De Reboldeaux, somewhere at the stone pit. Suddenly I died.

8. In Granado Espada, I am fighting a pretty frog and I won. Then came a very big dragon, I kill it. We claimed the dragon body parts at tetra hills. I think I can summon it. I tried to summon it but was not able to do so. So I tried summon something else but failed again. So I saying it and say what a bad day I had that the end.

9. On board a ship, Adelina say ‘what a nice rifle it is to be owned. Once in a jungle, Adelina had a locket to unlock. So she decide to look for a head to talk to. Suddenly there was a mob that wanted to kill and smash her. The violent mob was killed after with mu dual saber with two hits.

10. One fateful night, claude ask adelina for a good time at the park in Coimbra to have tea while eating bread. After reaching there, they noticed something. It was a large ugly monster. They had drawn out their weapon to fight it. Seeing the size of the monster, they ran away hectic without thinking. When they looked back, they were slashed and got knocked down on the floor, Claude got a injury so Adelina had no choice but to shoot him in the head. Suddenly, the gun exploded in her head but she survived. The end.

11. Royalists and republicans implosively exciting battle drove the crowd to gather arounf to watch what determine the outcome of the battle. Suddenly a fireball was shot at a Coimbra guard. Yakisoba won it but Blizzard ultimately ahead. Ricardo was being trashed badly too. More soldiers were killed and slaughtered but they move onwards to attack. The attack guards killed them all.

12. Adelina and Grace are best friends, they both love to play games. They met on the lush greens. Then they went to have picnic and with each other suddenly Andre comes. He started attacking them because he drunk and angry. Adelina defended his attack and they started to run. However something happened, a tall and dark blood red, monster with a super pig head and a big body fall down.

13. In Tetra Ruins, there was a evil prohibitain warriors. Who has a very big hand and scaly armor. He Kill people, Chop people, whack people and steal item. He also was ugly, fat and is a hot sexy LvL 20.

14. Once upon a time there was a butt-ugly fighter, he went to the city of Reboldoeux to buy a sword from clued and buy a glass of milk. After which he went to enchant his armor at a person beside who his friend. The friend was his father’s nephew, His nephew was ugly also and his son is a carpenter and his mother is a cook. End of story.

15. Ramiro was bored~ so he went to the playground to play sand, he use the sand to built a big sand castle!. Suddenly a bad wizard came quick and send everyone flying in the direction of bernelli. He proposed to her and she shot his hand. Then idge come repair the head. Claude witnessed everything, si bei buai song, then go baron ran up to idge, wielding silver baron and used already worn on her, But he missed and idge punched him.