The One About Lucifer Wings

I've got some pretty exciting news about My Bellem's Box Item Of The Month for November!

Only for November's Item Of The Month will there be a special edition Lucifer Wings which will last all the way up to 20 December 2007, rather than its usual 30 day time period! Yes, that's a less than subtle hint. If all goes well and no major obstacles crop up, we'll be going into V2.4 on 20 December 2007! ;)

Some people have been asking on the forums what will happen to the Lucifer Wings once the time period has expired. From what I have heard from IMC, it will disappear from your inventory.

I've also gotten some emails from Pinoy gamers asking me if My Bellem's Box will be coming to the Philippines. This will very much be dependent on your local distributor, which in this case, is E-games. Alternatively, you can also purchase from the online shop located here.

Here's some pictures of the upcoming Lucifer's Wings:

The One About Halloween In-Game Event - Tiburon's Scarecrows

We wanted to patch the Halloween in-game event patch today during server maintenance but unfortunately, there were a lot of bugs that could not be resolved in time. Nevertheless, all the bugs have been fixed as far as we have tested and after we do a final round of testing, the event patch should be in by this weekend, or maybe even tomorrow.

Here's a taste of what is to come:

The One About Sexyback

We've just finished recording the voiceovers for V2.4 and we had some really good voice actors this round!

I am totally mesmerized by one of the new male RNPC's voices, Edward Jameson.

Now here's a guy that does what Justin Timberlake does best.

Yeah. He brings sexy back.

Big time.

Here's a sneak preview of what Edward Jameson looks and sounds like:



Some interesting background to Edward Jameson is that he is an immigrant from Brestia, and 2nd Lieutenant from the Brestia Special Army.

And. He is the fiance of Selva! (If you have no idea who she is, check out my blog avatar.)

He lost a huge portion of his memory due to some traumatic events that happened to him (Do the quests in V2.4 to find out!) and all he remembers is that he has a fiance and a younger brother.

Discuss this here.

The One About Vergo... Cursed?

I've been hearing some players speculate that Vergo The Cursed is bugged and thus, un-killable. But this is not actually the case. There are a few things to take note of:

1) Vergo The Undead

Why is it that the HP bar of Vergo The Cursed gets to zero and Vergo is still not dead?

This is because he goes into an 'undead' mode, whereby he will start to regenerate HP at an incredibly fast rate. Once he goes into this undead mode, his regenerated HP will remain a ???? mystery. This is the case in V2.1.18. From what I have heard from IMC, in V2.4 onwards, the possibility percentage of this undead mode has been reduced significantly and most of the time, Vergo will die swiftly without going into undead mode.

Despite his HP reflecting 0, be aware that his HP is regenerating and you will need a VERY strong party to continuously hit him. If people start leaving, Vergo's HP regeneration speed will exceed that of the damage done to him and it will be back to square one.

And yes, the people who enter the scene when Vergo is in undead mode, will see Vergo's HP as being maximum, even though the people who have been there from the very start will see it as zero. Don't panic: This is normal. This merely means that Vergo's HP is regenerating and remains a ???? mystery.

2) Need Moar l33t 92 weaponzzz

Frankly speaking, you will need Elite Level 92 weapons to be able to easily defeat Vergo The Cursed. Vergo has a DR of 57, while the best Elite 84 weapons give an AR of 52. Except the fact when you +5 or if you manage to enchant the Elite 84 weapon to a +3 Attack Rating Option, otherwise it is not possible to efficiently damage him. FYI, Elite Level 92 weapons will be much more easily attainable once we hit V2.4.

Does this mean it is impossible to defeat Vergo The Cursed in our current version V2.1.18?

Nope, it is still possible. But you will need a very large number of strong players in order to take him down and even so, you might probably have to whack for about 2-3 hours after his first physical death before your party can take him down. The thing is, you cannot afford to have players leaving halfway through the raid because the HP regeneration which will restore him to his all-powerful self again.

Ideally, in order to prevent his insane rate of HP regeneration, it would be good to stun him with say, Wizard's Hole Of Darkness, and of course to have good tankers and many high damage ranged attackers to complement.

3) The Sweet Spot

Talk about backdoors that programmers just love implementing...

There is a certain sweet spot on the cliff that permanently stuns Vergo. If you are one of the lucky 1% to be able to find it... then it just might be time to buy a 4D lottery ticket.

I heard that one of the factions in Cervantes actually managed to find it once and only once. Their tanker fighter was never able to find it ever since. Nevertheless, despite being unable to find Vergo's sweet spot again, this same faction managed to take him down a second time using some extremely well thought-out strategies (which I am afraid I am sworn to secrecy about - after all, it's their secret, not mine). Even so, it took them 3 hours after Vergo went into undead mode to take him down.

Well, hope that helps answer some of the burning questions on your mind regarding Vergo.

P/S: Just for the fun of it, I tried using Irawan, equipped with a Level 100 Knuckle of 3 Kings to solo Vergo on the test server. It took me a good two hours after he went into undead mode to take him down. ;)

The One About Halloween & Ops Black

Halloween is just round the corner and we'll be having a Halloween in-game event from 25 October 2007-8 November 2007! It's gonna be one of those special event type of quest issued by an RNPC. The most exciting thing about it is that this is the FIRST time ever that kGE and jGE are holding the exact same event as us concurrently! kGE-jGE-sGE FTW! Talk about MCC, bond of trinity baby! More details will be out early next week once the patch has been uploaded to our test server and we have finished testing the event patch out.

Vanity Extravaganza has been extended by another week and male costumes at 20% discount will be added in as well. So you can look forward to that happening next week.

On a sadder note, Reborn Faction from Caravaggio, one of the very first pioneering factions in Granado Espada has disbanded on 14 October 2007. Although I don't play on Caravaggio, I read quite a bit about them here and there on players' blogs and on the forums. They wrote an entire history of their interactions with the various factions in Caravaggio. You can check it out over here.

For those in Singapore, here's something interesting that is an absolute must-go! A murder mystery Halloween party! It's known as Ops Black and held at Settlers Cafe. Settlers Cafe is a place I hold dear to my heart as it was a place I worked part time when I was still a poor struggling student in National University of Singapore (NUS). It's a boardgames cafe and they have over 200 board games, mostly imported from overseas. I recall my days of overnight board-gaming with my ex-colleagues and how it had such a warm, family feeling there - pretty much like how it is at IAHGames. It's like 'Cheers' (the comedy)... where everybody knows your name type of place.

Anyway, its menu looks like a Monopoly board and if you look real closely, you would notice 'Granado Espada' as one of the MRT stations on the food menu!





Tickets are REALLY limited so better buy them soon!

The One About My Bellem's Box

I was looking at the November poll for My Bellem's Box and was pretty surprised to see that Lucifer's Wings vs Karjalainen's Accessory Boxes are having a close fight of 106 vs 139.

What really surprised me was that people actually prefer Karjalainen's Accessory Boxes over Andre's Costume Boxes. I would have thought that Andre Costume Box is a way better deal in comparison with Karjalainen's Accessory Boxes.

I was having a casual chat with one of the IMC programmers on MSN and he was telling me that in our current version of V2.1.18, Andre costume box drops everything cosmetic - hair costumes (wigs), back costumes and body costumes.

Once we hit V2.4, Andre Janzur would have come to the conclusion that fashion diversification is a no-no and decides to go down the road of specialization and focus solely on body costumes. Thus, Andre costume box will no longer drop all things cosmetic but will only drop body costumes while Karjalainen's Accessory Boxes will drop back costumes and wigs.

Well, I guess the reason why people are voting for Karjalainen's Accessory Boxes could possibly be that it might drop other hairstyles and back costumes not yet available in our current version. But hey, V2.4 is just round the corner! Just 2 months more. We have already begun work on localizing the new text and probably will be going down to the voice studios next week to begin work on the voiceovers. Tentatively, we are trying to get V2.4 released just before Christmas, so keep your fingers crossed! V2.4 is a whopping 1.2GB patch so you can imagine how many more updates there will be!

Anyway, not to digress, coming back to Lucifer's Wings, it gives an ATK rating +1, ATK +10%, Max HP +1,000, Additional ATK +10% against Humanoid and Beast, Restores HP by 5% of each damage done to enemies.

What's not to love about that? I do love cosmetic stuff and all... but I love power and pwning even more.

And Lucifer Wings pwn. Big Time.

The One About Vanity Extravaganza

Vanity Extravaganza is commencing on 18 October 2007 and in the words of Robinsons... "It's the sale worth waiting for". It's unlikely we will be having another costume sales for the rest of the year so go nuts and start buying costumes. We'll probably be having other types of sales in other categories like.. perhaps a Potions Sale?

After all, it's reaching the end of the year and well, let's just say Hrin's potions have an expiry date and we erm... ordered an excess of stock from IMC so now we have an imaginary warehouse of potions that are smelling weirder by the minute. ;P

LOL. That's kindda funny actually. I'll probably propose this as a mini storyline for a Potions Sale. Hey, c'mon. Any excuse is good, as long as we have sales and discounts, ain't it? ;)

Coming back to Vanity Extravaganza, there are actually 3 types of things to take note of:

1) All costumes are going at a 20% discount.
2) There will be School Uniform Packages! Woot!
3) School Uniform packages are going for a 10% discount for Vanity Extravaganza week. Its original price is 22,000 Gpoints. But for Vanity Extravaganza week, it is going for 20,000 Gpoints.

Elaborating more on the School Uniform Packages, they are really value for money! Not that I am trying to hard sell or anything, it's just that the Discount Queen in me just has this insatiable need to share my value-for-money discoveries with the world.

The School Uniform Package comprises of:

1 School Uniform
1 Combat manual - expert 15 days
1 Tactics manual - expert 15 days
1 Warp license - 15 days
10 Soul crystal
20 Hrin's ampule
20 Enhancement booster
3 Forgotten Territory pass

If you calculate the entire value of the items in this package, the whole value is 41,800 G Points! But the package (normal priced) is only selling for 22,000 G Points!

Now this is the package worth waiting for!

Hrin’s Updates: Bot Court? Yay Or Nay?

Hi guys!

1. Bot Busting (B Square) Squad Feedback

Our bot busting squad has been working 24/7 for the past 2 weeks to keep ‘third parties’ from coming between our relationship. We would like to know whether this measure has been effective in eradicating most of the bots. After all, such resources (especially a 24/7 one) are a huge money drain and upper management needs to know if these resources are justifiable. Thus, we would like to conduct a poll to find out about the service level and effectiveness of the B Square Squad.

Please vote and leave your feedback here.

2. Upcoming Events

Vanity Extravaganza: 18^th October 2007, Thursday-25^th October 2007, Thursday

Due to community feedback and popular demand, we are bringing you yet another week of costume sales! 20% discount on all costumes! There will also be some School Uniform Packages which are going at 10% below its normal price.

Discuss this here.

3. De-Leveling Issues

The community has been asking us for a stand on de-leveling issues. The [GM] team deals with this on a case-to-case basis. For example, if a player has just leveled up and was PK-ed by someone else just once, he would be ‘de-leveled’. This type of scenario is part of the game-play on a PK server. However, the other type of scenario whereby the infamous ‘Ress-PK Loop’ combination is repeatedly deployed – is considered as harassment and the culprit will be dealt with accordingly.

Discuss this here.

4. Opinions On Bot Court: Justice For All!

We’re facing a bit of a dilemma here. We do have a few appeal cases on hand and although the entire team has watched the video replays and coming to a unanimous decision about rejecting the appeal, a few gamers persist in an outcry of innocence on the forums. Thus, we’re toying with the idea of presenting these replays to the community and inviting the community to play the roles of judge, jury, defense attorney, prosecutor and whatnots. Typical scenarios include:

“OBJECTION!

He has an alibi! His faction mate, MisterAlibi Family was speaking to him at the time he was forcibly disconnected from the server and proclaimed as botting!”

“HOLD IT!

The records show that the time of botting was at 1313hrs while his faction mate was speaking to him at 0808hrs! There is a time lapse of 5 hours! We plead that the court regards this evidence as null and void!”

It’s an unorthodox approach, no doubt, but hey, in a day and age like this, unorthodox works. ;)

Let us know your opinion on this.

5. Real Person VS Reel Person

The [GM] team has been getting some appeal cases whereby the gamer admits that he has been using a *‘pilot’ to train his characters and that his*‘pilot’ used certain third party programs without his knowledge to train his characters. Unfortunately, we have to reject such appeals. After all, if your virtual character does the crime, then your virtual character has to do the time. You, as a real person, are cleared of all charges. It’s just your reel character that isn’t.

Since we are on the topic of ‘pilots’, we strongly discourage the community from sharing accounts or letting someone else pilot your account as this might result in scams, hacks or abuse of your account.

Discuss this here.

‘pi-lot’

-noun

A pilot with quotation marks as mentioned above – ‘pilot’, is not really the dude who steers an aeroplane. In this context, it refers to someone who is employed to train your virtual characters on your behalf.

The One About The Monster Blender

I was writing an article for Playworks Magazine October issue about the wonders of Diego and his usefulness in Colony wars. It's a little sad that not many people realize the incredible potential of Diego. 3 Diegos can solo take down a colony within 10-15 minutes due to rotating blades' fast attack speed. This 10-15 minute timeframe has certain conditions though:

1) 3 Diegos must be equipped with 2 Great Rotating Rings each
2) Switch to 'Hack & Slash' stance after you have built your maximum number of Great Rotating Blades' and attack the colony - to maximize the number of hits to the colony.

The amazing thing is that you don't even need to train him to Level 100 since any damage to the colony only results in 1 HP decrease - all you need is to train him such that he gets 'Great Rotating Blades' skill.


Looking at those fineeee rotating blades reminded me of a blender I bought recently. Well, more like a Monster Blender, really, due to its traumatic background...

* * *

Lunch hour.

Had rushed down to Bugis Junction to buy a birthday present for my colleague, Ducky, since I had been too busy over the last few nights to go shopping.

Ducky is our copywriter for storylines for Granado Espada's background history & NPC backgrounds as well as the brains behind the GE Comics series. So after some careful thought, I felt that a pen would be most appropriate for him. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword and all that yada yada.

After I bought him this lovely black Parker Pen set with his name engraved in gold on it, I happened to pass through the household section and Braun's latest portable new blender caught my eye. As I was looking at it, the salesman comes up to me and beams,"Hello Miss! Would you like me to test it out for you?"

I shrugged casually,"Sure. Why not?"

He enthusiastically takes it out of the box and plugs it into the power socket, telling me excitedly about all the various items that it could blend. I was starting to wonder if he was going to tell me that it could blend an iPod. "

... and it has two speeds as well. High speed and low speed!" he says to me as he demonstrates by pressing two different buttons.

"Oh ok... which button is low speed and which one is high speed?" I ask him.

"Hmm... I'm not sure. Let me see..." he replies as he puts his hand under the blades of the blender to try to feel the wind currents it produces.

It all happened so quickly. Or maybe the shock of it blocked out the exact memory of it.

Somehow or other, the blade dislodges itself slightly and blends the palm of his hand! Blood splurts all over the place!

"GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" I find myself shrieking in absolute horror. I feel absolutely faint. The sight of blood always makes me queasy and pale in the face.

"Can you please test out the blender for this lady here?" Mr Courageous Salesman says his last parting words to Salesgirl standing nearby, as he is being ushered away to E.R to get his hand stitched up.

ZOMG... Mr Courageous Salesman is so brave! So dedicated to his job! So professional! Even when his palm has been semi-blended... the blending show must still go on...

I do hope I can reach that standard of professionalism one day - if that day should ever come when I am vomiting blood on my deathbed, I will turn to KingKongJon (Level 100 boss) and say to him,"KingKongJon... please tell the Granado Espada community not to grief for me... Tell them that life in Cite De Reboldoeux must go on... Tell them to continue training levels to get to veteran! Then only will I die in peace..."

So anyway Salesgirl looks at the blood stained blender and then looks at him with this look in her eyes that says,"Are you crazy? There is no way in hell I'm going to operate on that demon-possessed monster blender!"

Nevertheless, she feels obliged to do something about the blood-stained blender. She carefully unplugs Monster Blender and cleans the blood off the the handles of the blender.

"Erm... you missed a spot..." I meekly tell her as I point to the bloody blades of Demon Blender.

She glares at me and I guiltily look down and shuffle my feet.

I had wanted to try to lighten up the gloomy, tense atmosphere by cracking a joke like,"Out damn spot! Out I say!" and mimic Lady Macbeth. But from her response, she probably wasn't the type who tried to humorize awful situations. And well... if she hadn't read Shakespeare's 'Macbeth', she prolly wouldn't appreciate my cold joke either. So I had better not go down that road man... She might set the Demon Blender on me or something.

"So do you want to buy the blender or what?" she snaps.

Sigh. Of course I will. I feel so overwhelmed with guilt about the incident. A good friend of mine always used to say that the God Of Drama favors me. For some strange reason, drama always seems to follow me wherever I go - sometimes good drama, sometimes bad drama. I think I have reached the phase of bad drama, though. I have used up all the good drama charges over the past couple of weeks. Mental note to self to lay low for the next few days and keep myself and everyone else associated with me far away from sharp objects and road-crossing incidents etc.

"Yeah... I will buy it," I say defeatedly.

Pause. Contemplative silence. I need to say something important to her.

I look sheepishly at her as I say...

".... Erm.. Could you get me a new blender?"

The One About The School Uniform Interview

So school uniform week has come to an end. This school uniform week has brought back fond memories of how I got my job at IAHGames.

Yes. I cosplayed in school uniform which landed me this job...

Nah! I'm just kidding! Kidding about the part that cosplaying in school uniform will land you a job at IAHGames, that is. But I'm not kidding that I wore a school-uniform type of outfit to my interview!

















Putting On My Game Face For The Interview... THE TIME IS NOW!

Prior to working at IAHGames, I had been working overseas in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City for nearly a year. I loved working there, don't get me wrong. Working and living there was like an adventure. Life was so unpredictable and the random people you meet there truly inspires you. I'll probably post some old entries from my previous blog about some of my classic experiences there. Nevertheless, I had explored enough and wanted to come back to Singapore to work. So when I was back in Singapore to settle some financial and legal matters for the company, I decided to 'try my luck' and see what kinds of jobs Singapore was offering at that time...

I had been browsing through all the various jobs online with a bored expression on my face. Clicking, clicking, clicking.... and then I saw it! A Gamemaster position at an online gaming company! Being an avid MMORPG fan and a competitive gamer (I always strived to be one of the top in the server for any MMORPG I played), it would be a dream come true to work for an online gaming company.

It was the first interview I went for and a very enjoyable one. I had a lovely time chatting with my interviewer - The Gamemaster Manager.

The thing is that, the next day, another position at the same company opened up. A Community Manager position. Which had greater challenges, greater creativity required, and writing - which was one of my passions in life. Now THAT was the dream job I really wanted cos it encompassed various of my interests. Event management, business strategies, public relations, the list goes on... So I emailed the Gamemaster Manager to thank him for the interview and asked him if it were possible if I was considered for the new position that had just opened up as well.

So I went for yet another interview with yet another person from a different department, my current Level 100 Boss - KingKongJon!

Being that obsessive, 'kiasu' (competitive) person that I am and considering that this was my dream job, I spent the whole day before my interview thinking about various business strategies for MMORPG and various other potential questions that an interviewer could possibly ask.

So during the interview, things went pretty smoothly. Towards the end of the interview, he asked me the top question that every single interviewer asks every single candidate,"So why should we hire you? What do you have that makes you stand out from the other candidates?"

Pause. Silence.

Aha! The question I had been waiting for. I had written a whole page in my notebook about my superduperawesome, winning qualities!

I began,"First of all, I am passionate about gaming! Especially MMORPG. It's my Archilles heel."

Pause. Silence.

I laughed,"Oh boy... I bet every other person you have interviewed has told you that exact same cliched thing huh."

He laughs heartily,"Yeah."

I grin,"Why not you let me know all the other cliched stuff that the other interviewees have told you so that I wouldn't bore you with same stuff over and over again?"

He grins back and says,"Ok. Hmm... other than passionate about gaming, they said they were hardworking...etc etc etc"

"Ok... So that's off my list. But you know I am all these things, right?" I say with a cheeky grin as I cross out those qualities he mentioned one by one off my notebook.

Then I go into my soliloquy of all my winning qualities.

From the important qualities:

"... and I'm pre-emptive! I don't just react to problems when they happen. I think about all the various potential problems that could crop up and think about the solutions in advance. Just like how I thought about all the potential questions you could ask me and I wrote down my answers in this notebook! Being pre-emptive is important in an online gaming company since changes are so dynamic and nothing is for certain..."

Blah blah blah...

To the lame qualities:

"... and I'm a female gamer! I could offer you the perspective of what females think. Female gamers are important. Cos when you have pretty girls playing your game, the guys will be drawn to play your game as well! So well... I could be that 'yin' so that you will have yin-yang balance in your team!"

He laughed heartily at my candid and (hopefully) entertaining answers to his questions.

Finally, it was shortlisted down to me and another female candidate. Both of us were called back to have a second round of interview with the Product Director.

After an agonizing wait through the weekend, I finally gave KingKongJon a call on Monday to ask about the results. I needed closure. Regardless of the answer. Which is when I learnt that the director who interviewed me in the second round of interviews was on sick leave for the next 2 days. KingKongJon promised to contact me once a decision had been made, whether or not the answer was 'yes' or 'no'.

Unexpectedly, on a lazy Thursday afternoon, when I was having an afternoon nap, I received a call from KingKongJon.

"Hello?" I sleepily answered.

"Hrin? You resting at home now is it?" he asks.

I laughed sheepishly,"Yeah. Enjoying my tai-tai (Lady of Leisure) life while I still can."

"Well, I'm sorry to tell you those days have come to an end," he says with a smile in his voice.

"Huh? Why?" I ask sadly, still halfway drifting out of lala-land.

"Cos you need to start work tomorrow! I have tons of things waiting for you to do!" he says chirpily.

Pause. Silence. Temporary confusion. Sudden realization.

"Oooo!!! Yeay yeay! I got the job! Thank you so much! I'm so happy!" my volcano of suspense finally erupts, lavas of delirious joy overflowing.

And so... here I am. :)