Hrin’s Updates: Last Episode Of ‘Days Of Our Speculating Lives’ Approaches!

Hi guys,

1. Start Your Download Now!

Woot! The V2.1.18 patch is available for download now! There are two options of downloads for you over here - the full game client of V2.1.18 or the manual patch of V2.1.18. Just a quick reminder though, it has been password protected because the server side V2.1.18 patch has not yet been installed. Any attempts to install the patch to your current client will result in game client corruption and your current Granado Espada client will be unable to run. We will release the password on 16^th August 2007, after we patch the servers during server maintenance.

Discuss this topic here.

2. Latency Issue Updates

We have conducted in-depth investigations into recent feedback of latency issues faced by GE gamers. By escalating the feedback to telecommunication companies and our appointed data centre, we were able to isolate a couple of issues related to the matter. While it will take more time to resolve all issues immediately, we have managed to work together with related companies in solving peering problems and routing inefficiencies.

We are very appreciative of the communities’ assistance in sending in trace route results to assist us in the investigation. We have provided an FAQ related to connectivity issue here.

It is our critical mission to provide a seamless gaming experience and we thank you for your patience over the past weeks.

Discuss this topic here.

3. Business Model Announcement Date: 10^th August 2007, Friday

I must say it has been an interesting experience. Reading the 1190 replies in the “sgGE P2P/B2P/F2P/ETC All Encompassing Thread” which has been viewed 49,607 times in the forum, that is. So, the wildly speculated business model will be released on 10^th August 2007, Friday. The suspense will finally be over, so stay tuned for the last episode of this long-running soap opera of ‘Days Of Our Speculating Lives’. Will we reach 50,000 views before the last episode of this hit series?

Discuss this topic here for the last 10 days!

4. Weekly In-Game Events In August: National Heroes Month

Many of the countries in our region are celebrating their National Day for the month of August. In light of this, we will be hosting weekly in-game events for the entire month of August! The very first National Heroes Month event will kick off on Singapore’s National Day, 9^th August, 2007, Thursday. More details will be out over the next few days. Server maintenance for that week will be changed to 8^th August 2007, Wednesday, instead of the routine weekly Thursday, originally scheduled on 9^th August 2007.

Discuss this topic here.

5. X-Trap Conflict With AVG

Our game protection software, X-trap, encountered a conflict with the free anti-virus software, AVG Anti-virus. The X-trap patching executable was wrongly identified as a Trojan.

Having provided this feedback to the X-Trap developer, they have provided a patch and have also updated the X-trap to the latest version available.

We have tested and the said issue has been resolved. We are continuing to monitor the feedbacks and let us know if you still encounter issues related to X-Trap.

Discuss this topic here.

6. {LFFCC}: Looking For Forum Community Crew

We’re on the lookout for a community crew for our Granado Espada forums. Community crew is made up of members of the community who would like to help up with activities on the forum. This can be things like helping out newbies on the forum, organizing little forum events, starting interesting threads or replying others' questions etc.

Hence, we need helpful, friendly players and who are active on the forum. Humor is of course a plus point! If you possess all these things, you are the one we are looking for!

Discuss this topic here.

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.

Hrin Interviews Granado Espada’s Regional PvP Champions!

After a ferocious and dizzying spectacular battle of wits, strategies and moves spanning 3 hours, two teams faced off in the final showdown. They were from Malaysia comprising of gamers Nuub and cara while Team Ravage comprised of gamers RavaNa and Voyage from Singapore. With live commentary blaring in the background, the teams were out for blood. More than 20 plasma screens broadcast the action across the entire party venue, fuelling gasps of excitement and cheers from pockets of supporters.

The atmosphere was electrifying. Though the largely partisan crowd rallied behind the Singapore team, took the lead right from the start and never looked back. Comprising of seasoned G.E. gamers "Nuub" and "cara" from Cervantes world, emerged victorious as Granado Espada's PvP champions with a 2-0 straight win.

After their final showdown at the Regional PvP tournament held during the GE Raid Party at Zouk, Hrin finally gets the opportunity to have some quiet moments with the four of them… NOT.

My original fantazzzies of this interview revolved around us happily training in a squad together as I question them casually on the moves and grooves from their gameplay and PvP strategies. Getting them all together in the same map concurrently proved to be a difficult enough feat:

“Hrin! Can postpone the interview by 1 hour? We PK-ing now…”

1 hour later.

“I trying to clear my baron points. Wait ah…”

3 hours later.

“10 minutes more! I recovering my lost items! Just now in baron mode, lion kill me and I drop my items…”

Many hours later.

Finally, all of us assemble at Theringunen Lakeside, a peaceful place of rest. RavaNa is unable to squad with us since he still has 100,038 baron points to clear.

Tourney Planning 101: Choosing Your (Tourney) Lifetime Partner

Hrin: How did you choose your team mate?

Nuub: I trust cara so I called him.

Hrin: Oh so you guys knew each other even before Granado Espada?

cara: yeah. We used to meet up every week to play LAN games together.

Hrin: How about Voyage and RavaNa?

RavaNa: I knew voy since day 1 of Closed Beta Testing so I just knew it had to be him~

Voyage: Yeah… It was love at first sight! LOL!

Tourney Planning 101: Working Out The Relationship

Hrin: What did you do to prepare for the tournament?

Voyage: We practiced 1v1 fighting each other, every night for about 1 hour. We mainly trained our reaction speed and how to avoid AOE skills.

RavaNa: We also did a price check – to see how we can maximize the 20k vis given to us. Other than that, we also thought about the various scenarios that could happen during the pvp tournament and how to counter them.

Hrin: Impressive! It seems to me that you guys devised both defensive tactics and counter measures. How about our GE Champions, cara and Nuub? What kind of preparation did you guys make? I am all ears in eager anticipation!

Nuub: 0 times.

Hrin: … I am speechless.

cara: LOL! Yeah we only discussed the strategy before sleeping, the night before the tournament cos we had extra time and no GE to play…

Nuub: yeah we actually talked about the strategies with crimz and sabre (another Malaysian finalist team from their faction)

Hrin: So both of you teams deployed the same strategy yet your team made it all the way to the end. Why do you think that was so?

cara: Different usage of elementalist.

Hrin: That’s interesting. Can you elaborate more on this?

cara: SECRET!

Nuub: haha...

The Art Of PvP War: Secrets Revealed!

Hrin: Speaking of secrets, what are the other ‘secrets’ of PvPing that you do not mind sharing with your fellow GE gamers?

Voyage: No secret. Just lots of planning, team work and researching of information.

Nuub: Bravery to take risks. Teamwork was important. cara covers my back, I cover his. Amazingly, our team work was good all the way to the end.

cara: Yeah! No secrets, just guts and team work. Whenever I was getting ganked, Nuub would cast Elemental Strife to damage and immobilize the opponent team. Teamwork FTW!

Nuub: I’m proud to have a partner such as cara. Oi cara! I am promoting you! How much are you going to pay me? ^^

cara: 2 vis.

Nuub: -_-

RavaNa: Yes, covering is important especially when you have multiple characters to control.

Voyage: Team work matters a lot for us as we were using MCC that can cover each other.

Hrin: All of you come from Cervantes world (server), which is said to be the most hardcore PvP server. Did this help in your climb to the finals?

Voyage: Hmm… I guess so. Cos the people you PK or duel with in your server are all pretty skilled, hardcore players so your standards of PvP skills increase.

Nuub: I would say being in one of the most hardcore factions in the most hardcore server makes a difference. You learn a lot about PvP and use of weapons, items etc from your faction mates.

Hrin: RavaNa, legend has it that you are one of the top PK-ers in Cervantes. Did that contribute in any way to PvP?

cara: LOL! 100, 038 baron points overnight!

RavaNa: Haha… well, experience helps.

The Characters: Which MCC way to go?

Hrin: So tell me, what MCC combination did you guys choose as your team of 3?

cara: Fighter, Wizard and Elementalist

Nuub: Elementalist, Wizard and Emilia The Sage

Hrin: cara and Nuub, you guys chose a pretty interesting combination of “We don’t need no healers”. Tell us how this was derived.

cara: I found out we could buff faster using pots directly instead of casting spells. So we decided to be completely offensive and high damage dealers and just go in and kill or be killed.

Hrin: I notice that five out of the six characters that you guys chose are all magic-based classes while there is just one melee class - a fighter. Why did you choose to have that ‘lone ranger’?

cara: We wanted to have as many AOE (Area of Effect) casters as possible with minimal cool down time. That solo fighter was chosen to be the tanker and to cancel spells cast by our opponents.

Hrin: It looks like your risks paid off well. I’m a huge fan of magic-based classes as well. Although it is often argued that magic casters are ‘paper’ since they are so fragile and are better at PvE rather than PvP, but I’m glad that you have proven that theory to be wrong! Many fragile creatures, when combined, can be a devastatingly powerful force indeed! How about Team Ravage?

Voyage: Elementalist, Wizard and Scout

RavaNa: Fighter, Elementalist and Scout

Hrin: Wow… totally different tactics from cara and nuub. Both of you have scouts! Going for defensive tactics?

RavaNa: We rather use classes that we are very familiar with since we don’t really like taking risks. Voy’s MCC combination in GE is Elementalist, Wizard and Scout as well. We needed a fighter as a tanker so I used the fighter in my MCC selection.

Voyage: We also wanted a more balanced team in order to be prepared for any scenario given to us. By choosing this combination between the two of us, we could safely balance up any flaws and weaknesses that each of the character classes may have. So we have a tanker (fighter), 2 AOE damage dealers, 1 wizard for buffs and supporting role and 2 scouts to heal and defend.

The Unconquerable Mount “Rushmore”

Hrin: So all of us witnessed “The Rush” tactic whereby the two of you used potions to buff instead of the conventional spell-casting, and took advantage of the time factor to rush to the enemy when they were still unprepared and buffing themselves to launch the first wave of ‘Elemental Strife’ attacks on them. This proved to be highly effective. Who came up with this idea and what was the inspiration behind it?

cara: I came up with the ‘buffing with pots’ idea and Nuub expanded further on it with the idea of ‘The Rush’ since we had the advantage of time.

Nuub: Banzai all the way! Just rush and choke them at the stairs while they are still buffing themselves! We were pressing the buff pots at the same time as we were rushing to attack them!

Hrin: Yeah it took all of us, the audience, by surprise as well. I can only imagine the psychological war that was already won when you took your mentally unprepared opponents by surprise! Nice one, guys.

cara: Actually we had no confidence in our first match because we were up against our faction leader. In that first round when we defeated them, the game marshall said that the match was disqualified because one of their characters was unable to move. We were scared that our tactics were revealed and it would not work again. But Nuub and I just agreed that we will still go ahead with the same tactic anyway and it worked all the way till the finals!

Survivor: Fighting Your Own Mates

Hrin: So, all of you are from the same faction. How did you guys feel having to fight with your fellow faction members?

Voyage: We were quite relaxed as we were up against our own people.

Nuub: It feels like our daily GvG practice for colony war.

cara: We were all joking with one another backstage before we went on stage for the Finals. We even named our PvP room name for the Finals: ‘YAKISOBA’.

RavaNa: Yeah. Either way, we win as a faction.

Nuub: It was a Yakisoba finals so no hard feelings because we are all friends.

Voyage: Actually cara paid us 1000RM backstage to let them win so no hard feelings ^^

Nuub: RavaNa said if I let him win he’ll give me the FHM chick’s info.

cara: nice!

Tourney Aftermath: Walking Down Memorable Lane

Hrin: Were there any interesting or memorable matches or moments that occurred in the tournament?

cara: YEAH! Our very first match was against our faction leader and our very last match was against our own faction mates! MEMORABLE TO THE MAX!

Nuub: Yeah… we didn’t know there was such a thing has veteran stats! So we did not add that additional statistic till the finals against RavaNa and Voyage. Other than that… RavaNa forgot to equip his LOE (Lord Of Element) bracelet in the finals! ROFL!

RavaNa: HEY! NEED TO SAY THAT OR NOT?!

Hrin: HAHA! Gee… this sure reminds me of a classic story that was going around the server during Closed Beta Testing (CBT) phase when RavaNa challenged someone to a PvP duel with his musketeer… and forgot to buy bullets!

RAVANA: ShhHH!! Don’t mention that in the interview okay!

Hrin: *changes topic* Moving along… so how about you Voyage? Any memorable scenes from the tournament?

Voyage: Yes! I remember our first match, the guy we were up against ran to us… and cast blizzard on the staircase instead of us… LOL!

Tourney Aftermath: Reflections

Hrin: What comments do you guys have on the PvP tournament?

Voyage: Well, I enjoyed the tournament because I got the chance to try out the Level 100 veteran characters and their stances.

cara: Yeah it was fun! I do hope there will be more characters to choose from though and also no restrictions on the MCC combination, for example, the choice of being able to use 3 elementalists, rather than only one from each character class. Oh yah! One more thing is to let us add our own skill points, rather than maxing out all the skills. There was a tactic I wanted to use with ‘Invisible Stalker’ but the maxed out ‘Invisible Stalker’ was 40 seconds which was too long for the strategy I wanted to use.

Nuub: errr more time to prepare ourselves would be good, at least 10 minutes would be good.

cara: yeah! Because of the shortage of time to prepare, I went in with the wrong stance. I wanted to cast flame ground, but elemental strife came out instead!

RavaNa: SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME!

Nuub: All nuubs! -_-

Voyage: We hope to have more time to try out the veteran stances as we didn’t use any of them before so we didn’t know what they can do.

Crystal Ball Gazing: Potential Tournament Formats

Hrin: What types of PvP tournament formats would you like to see in the future?

cara: Faction vs Faction please!

RavaNa: 1 vs 1! I sure go!

Nuub: 2 vs 2 is fine with me.

Voyage: I hope to see a server vs server format. Hrin, you?

Hrin: Nice one Voyage! I’d like to see a ‘War of the worlds’ format as well. Hmm… well, personally, I enjoy seeing the fruits of teamwork. I think a format whereby 15 v 15 to overcome an ‘obstacle course’ of various mob bosses and a race at the same time to see which team can reach the end of the dungeon first would be interesting. Other than that, I would love to see players fight it out in one of the scenic locations in GE. Other than just the eye candy factor of gorgeous scenery, players can also make use of the properties of that terrain as part of their strategy! That would certainly call for innovative and creative ideas!

Thank You Speeches & Whatnots

Hrin: RavaNa has been lamenting to me that he never got a chance to make a ‘Thank You’ speech on stage. These are your golden moments, guys. Go ahead and make those speeches now. Of course I’ll edit to shorten them if it gets too long-winded :p

Hrin: Hey! What’s with all this pro-Yakisoba-ness?

Hrin: LOL! Ok… how about you Voyage?

Nuub: HAHAHA!

RavaNa: NICE ONE VOYAGE!!!

cara: LOL!!! Good one, bro!

Hrin: ……GG

The One About The 'Buggy' NPC Merchant (otherwise known as 'Courts' Singapore)

So we've been hearing some buzz on the forum in regard to our limited edition box being sold for *gasp* $44.90 and not the standard $79.90 that all of us have been buying at. Hey! Even I don't get it that cheap with my staff discount man! :p

So we played Sherlock Holmes and went around doing some investigating. Apparently, Courts had tagged the wrong price tag to the limited edition box set, which resulted in this overwhelmingly 'Great Singapore Sale'. From what I have heard, around 50 box sets were sold within the time that the error was not detected. One faction leader even swiped up an entire shelf of box sets!

Naturally, Courts will be bearing the additional costs. So well... gratz to the 50 lucky souls who managed to get Courts to be their 'partial sponsors' for their adventures with Emilia the Sage. ;)

The One About The League of 'Extraordinary' G.E. Fans

MMOsite is celebrating their 2nd year anniversary and they are conducting this Treasure Hunt contest thingy which basically has you "digging" (or clicking) for random treasures. I tried it out and man! It is so addictive! Somehow, there's nothing more exciting that clicking non-stop and waiting for something you so desire to magically appear in front of you. Granado Espada in-game items to be won when you dig hard enough! Think increased warped slots, combat manuals, tactic manuals... So start digging for those precioussss Granado Espada treasure now over here:

http://contest.mmosite.com/2y/dig/

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Meanwhile, we were having our weekly Ops meeting and all of us were swapping stories about the various funny incidents that happened during the GE Raid Party. Hope you will enjoy the compilation of stories brought to you by Team Vespanola Tabloid Times!

[Vesponola Tabloid Times] The League of 'Extraordinary' G.E. Fans

The Gentleman

A kind gentleman was telling one of our staff that the French Maid girl was being photographed from 'below'. The 'upskirt' episode was quickly resolved with the poor girl retreating to the back of the Hakkyu Kim Signature booth. Talk about modern day chivalry!

The “Baron”

A young man went into “Baron” mode, ran across our Quest Reward booth and “PKed” the G.E. Quest station NPC by snatching the G.E. Quest stamp from him. Our personnel gave chase but lost him in the crowd. However, our “Baron” soon came back to our quest reward station to redeem his “freshly-stamped” (i.e. STILL WET WITH INK!!) quest card. Our keen-eyed staff spotted the difference and questioned him. He returned the stamp and apologized to us. For his passion and desperation for the reward of those virtual 'Angel Wings', we just had to give him a little G.E. door knob for providing those few laughs.

The “Curious” Queue Ticket G.E. Fan

A young lady requested to our Pirate manning the queue to have a look at the Signature Booth ticket. She then literally RAN away with it and her friend came back with that same ticket to get into the signature queue. The amused Pirate did spot what she was doing after all (even with one eye!); but again, for her creativity and courage, he let her into the queue anyway.

The Man with Extended Inventory

A man presented 1 queue ticket with 1 G.E. Limited Signature Box to get into the signature queue. When he got to Mr. Hakkyu Kim, he opened his haversack and out came 4 more boxes to be signed. Mr. Kim shook his head smiling and graciously autographed all his boxes after all. We are not so sure about how the guy waiting behind him felt about that though!

The “CheeKorPek” aka “Licentious Photog”

Overheard near the FHM gamer girl, Eunice - “Shoot her legs! Shoot her legs! Got ‘zao geng’ ”. Enough said.

The CosPlayers

Do you know that out of the Cosplayers you see during the party, there were only around 10 real Cosplayers? The rest of the characters you see are IAHGames employees who were sporting enough to wear the costumes to liven up the fun element of the party. Among them were the COO, the Creative Director, the Marketing AVP, the Regional Product Manager, the Regional Community Manager, the Web/Graphic Designers, the Game-Masters and even the Database Administrator! Can you tell who’s who?

The Hill Giant Slayer
Some hyped-up party-goer took the monster a little too seriously and decided to deal some damage to the monster at the entrance of Zouk. He/she should level up his/her stance more - only the nose of the Hill Giant was chipped off! There’s a “Wanted” notice for the perpetrator but it’s only because we want to show him/her the REAL Hill Giant in-game.

The Early Birds (who forgot to eat their worms)

A group of gamers came as early as 8am to queue up to buy the Limited Signature boxes so that they can get Mr. Hakkyu Kim’s signatures on their boxes. They managed to buy the boxes at 1pm but in their excitement, they forgot to get the queue tickets! Luckily, the alert retail staff was able to recognize them and get them into the signature queue later on. The early birds did get their rewards after all; they had pictures taken together with Mr. Kim.

The Figures, the Logistics

To make the party happen,

• 20 pallets of goods and material are delivered to Zouk at 0600hrs by 2 x 18 feet Lorry with mechanical arms,
• 96 signages were made and displayed across the entire Zouk venue
• 32 staff started creating the entire Zouk setup (stage, draperies, standees, etc) from 5 am onward, right after the previous night party ended.
• 20 staff started packing 4,000 goodie bags (including VIP, Trade and Media, etc.) from 6.30am onwards.
• 38 helpers from the G.E. community as well as students from Temasek Polytechnic, assisted in crowd management, registrations and quest stations.
• 2 long months of planning and endless meetings
• 30 sponsors supported the event in one way or another

You, the party attendees,

• Drank 3,508 cans of Coke
• Took home 3,167 goodies bags
• Filled up 6 shuttle coaches
• Completed 2,198 quest stations in all.
• Won more than $15,000 worth of prizes in the lucky draw and PvP tournament
  

That’s all the stories we have for now. Hope you had a good read and we’ll look forward to the next community event. Last we heard, our Regional distributors will be holding their local parties (Read:BIGGER!) in their countries really soon.

The One About GE Raid Party Memoirs Part III: Hall Of Fame - Player Organized Events During Closed Beta Testing (CBT) & Video

I'm a big fan of events organized by the community. I proudly look through those screenshots on a regular basis, just like how my mum looks through my baby photos every once in a while...














Aight, not to digress any further, here are just a few of the CBT player organized events that were selected to be decked up in the 'Hall Of Fame' at Velvet Underground. With the party now over, my focus will be shifting back to player-organized events. CBT was truly such an unforgettable time because of the gamers who organized them. Ask any active CBT gamer!


































































































































































And of course, my real life GE heroes <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7VrrtrgpGs-JX-IEbh4rfC4qYfXn7mC5K9AyOEWyi86O6hULShKdGE_i-CF20-RrrHpR1R3_urH5jJ_wkCiyrGAbYtgR0xuxGgMh3GU4GuV6GLREGBqMylPSPP7wjvgr94cfsw/s1600-h/GE+Real+Life+Heroes.jpg">























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One of the GE community, Tan Eng Teck, was THE absolute sweetie. He painstakingly filmed the GE RAID party and edited it over the weekend. I was most impressed with how fast and efficiently he did it. He even managed to capture the excitement and the fast pace nature of the party. Well boys, there's a lot of footage on the FHM gamer girl, so... enjoy! ;)