The One Where It's Time To Say Goodbye

"Today is the day! The day when an angel, Hrin has lost her wings, the day that immortal Hrin has lost her godlike powers, the day that this deity has fallen to earth and become nothing more than a mere mortal in order to pursue her dreams in Glasgow..." I announce theatrically to Kaioujin and Lorenza as they roll their eyes in disgust at my usual dramatic choice of words.

I don't know why, but as I am typing this final entry, I feel as though I am typing out a 'dear john' letter where I'm breaking up with you guys. I guess this is the part where I awkwardly say to you,"It's not you, it's me..."? LOL.

In any case, I think it's been a great 2.5 years with you guys. Like all relationships, we had our ups and downs, but we've come to learn to accept and respect each other in our own ways. Thank you for your patience, your understanding, and most of all, your love for our child, Granado Espada. Please continue to love her (yes, I firmly insist that if Granado Espada were a real human child, it would be a girl - cos only the female species can have that complicated a gameplay and I will firmly dispute the argument that it could be a boy 'because only males would love 3-somes i.e. MCC') and cherish her. Please continue to show kindness and support for the rest of Team GE and of course your new regional community manager, [CM] Lorenza.

Meanwhile I am truly touched and grateful to Desanggria for organizing an in-game event to bid me farewell on 6 September 2009. Thank you all for attending it and for giving your well wishes! Here were some of the screenshots of the event:


Yet another special thanks the Pinoy gaming community who got together and wrote me a very touching card and mailed it to me along with a necklace and earrings. As I looked at those simple accessories, the first thought that came to my mind was,'All the Tiffanys and Harry Winstons in the world could not be more valuable than this...'

Lastly, a big thank you to Bea who created this farewell video for me. Erm... but before you attempt to watch it, there is one thing you have to take note of. Children, stay away from alcohol as much as possible, for as you can see, excessive drinking can have very detrimental consequences like unflattering photos and abnormal poses...



For those of you who asked me for my Facebook account email address, here it is: hrinshire@hotmail.com. Some of you also asked me if you could have the URL of my personal blog in order to continue following my life's adventures. Well, I am truly flattered and I shall definitely make attempts to entertain as much as possible over at http://daniellehrin.xanga.com

Once things are more settled over in Glasgow, I'll start playing Granado Espada again with my family name reverted back to Hrin. Please don't get scammed by anyone else - I wouldn't ask for your passwords or 'items pl0x' you. Woot! I am pretty excited to revert back to normal player mode and do normal player stuff like join factions and raid bosses - something you guys have always been taking for granted!

From this moment forth, [CM] Hrin is now just... Hrin.

Goodbye my friends. :)

The One About GCA Merchandise!

Woot! The designs for the GCA Granado Espada merchandise are out!

Featuring... Hellena's Lucky Deck laptop skin!

... a DOTZ laptop skin!

...and a 'Masquerade' handphone wiper!

Just out of curiosity, which of the laptop skins do you guys prefer? The DOTZ one or the Hellena one? We're trying to nail down the production quantities and your input would be really valuable! Leave me your comments, ya?

The One About Games Convention Asia

Things are starting to get reallyyyyy hectic around here with preparations underway for Games Convention Asia. IAHGames is the official gaming partner for this major regional event - where all of the gaming industry's big players in the region fellowship together.

We are planning various stage events and a festival area which has quest stations to play mini games and win various Granado Espada merchandise. Currently, we are looking at Granado Espada Masquerade Logo handphone wipers and check this out - Granado Espada laptop skins! Yep that's right! We were totally inspired by our Malaysia partner (SMM) who created such fantazzztic GE laptop skins that we have been pushing for the same thing to be launched during GCA as well. Hopefully things will turn out well! I'll post up any sneak preview visuals as and when I receive them.

Moving on to the updates about V3.5, the localization text has been integrated and we are currently awaiting the final client build from IMC which should arrive mid September. Then we'll be doing the QA testing and if everything turns out well, then tentatively, we should be set to launch on 8 October 2009.

In the meantime, here're a few other events to look out for in the upcoming 2 months:

The Andre Challenge - Costume Design

1 Sept to 30 Sept

That’s right, you heard him! Andre is out to recruit talented artists in Granado Espada! Do you have what it takes to design a FANTAAAZZZTIC costume? So pick up your drawing tools today! Who knows, you might be the one!

The City Defenders - Reboldoeux

24 Sept to 22 October

Are you an avid RNPC collector? Then this event is definitely for you! Recruit and level up all RNPCs in City of Reboldoeux and you may stand to walk away with attractive in-game prizes!

It’s Holidays! Time to play GE!

4 Sept to 1 October

We’re giving you free items just for playing more in the New World! Login every week to get complimentary gifts! Plus, if you hit perfect attendance, we’ll throw in even more goodies!

The One About Vietnam GE CBT Activities

Ack! I've been wanting to post these photos up since last week, but oh well, better late than never I guess. In summary, it was an awesome party that I will live to regret not being at. The most beautiful people in HCM were all gathered there - from models, to TV celebrities. The DJ spinned Tiesto soundtracks from GE. Mr. Hakkyu Kim also visited a local university to give a talk to their students about Granado Espada's game development and for a Q&A session. Enjoy the slideshow:



We just received the V3.4 client and will be starting intensive testing pretty soon. IF all goes well, we will most likely be launching "V3.4 The Masquerade - Deception Takes Center Stage" on Friday, 19th June 2009.

Hellena is a very cool character. I've always liked magic and summons the most and I am absolutely loving it that IMC is creating Hellena who has both magical abilities and a summoning ability. Hellena is able to summon a Frost creature

Frost at Lvl : 100
Type: Human / Light Armor / No Attribute / Small
Max HP: 49764
ATK Rating: 50
Fire RES: 40
ATK: 2830
Ice RES: 40
DEF Rating: 50
Lightening RES: 40
DEF: 138
Mental RES: 40

To recruit her, however, you will need to have Emilia and Ania to activate the quest. (Ania will be out in V3.4 as well.) Ok, back to work work.

The One About Vietnam Granado Espada CBT

In about 20 hours' time, Vietnam Granado Espada will be officially introduced to the rest of the world via a major press conference hosted by FPT Online, followed by the commencement of their CBT.

Their press conference is truly going to be an exciting one! A famous Vietnamese architect will be giving a talk about the baroque architecture of Granado Espada. They even invited the most famous fashion designer in Vietnam to design some costumes based on Granado Espada and to showcase them in a fashion show during the press conference. (And no, the fashion designer isn't anything like Andre Janzur, just in case you were wondering!)

Here's some exclusive photos of their pre-event setup:

Vietnam Granado Espada's Project Runway?

Gorgeous setup ain't it? Too bad I wouldn't be able to be there for the actual event. :_(

Nevertheless, I'll post up some photos as soon as I get them from Jon. More updates about V3.4 coming up in my next entry - here's a teaser: it's gonna be the new RNPC Helena's voiceover!

The One About Cooking

Just back from Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City) and still feeling a little fuzzy. Had the privilege to meet up with some of the Vietnamese gamers during their focused group discussion about some of the changes in the vGE build. The vGE client that IMC built is vastly different from the other versions and the changes made to the build were to stem out potential economic problems of inflation and to allow the user to get through the lower levels faster (e.g. Some RNPC cards start out at higher levels rather than Level 1) so as to reach veteran/expert content more quickly.

This is essential due to vGE going into V2.9 in their first build whereby most of the content is already starting to focus on veteran/expert content. One of the more interesting changes to their build is that skill points are reduced, so the user will not be able to max all his/her skills. This makes it pretty interesting since more thought will be required in choosing the kind of character to build - DPS? Tanker? Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none? Raids could potentially be more strategic with organizing of the various build types.

The focused group discussion was a pretty formal one, with some Vietnamese gaming reporters present:

There was even a video conference with gamers in Hanoi:

Work aside, we managed to have a few fun filled days of relaxation as well. Jon recently bought a DSLR camera and I was playing around with it during the Vietnam trip. Photography with a DSLR camera feels so different. It enlivens the soul and overwhelms you with a desire to capture and immortalize an unforgettable moment. For myself, I enjoy capturing emotions and human dynamics on film, such as these:

And this is my all-time personal fave:


Anyway, coming back to my blog post title... about cooking, IMC is currently in the midst of developing a farming and cooking system for V3.6. Not sure about the exact mechanics of what it will be like yet since it's still in development stage but I can't help but feel excited by it! It would be funny though, if it was something like Facebook's Restaurant City, otherwise known as the only reason I have been actively logging into Facebook these days. And hey, Restaurant City has an AFK function, just like GE! Falkenhausen (Reclusion) Family gave me a pretty maid costume which even looks like the one worn by the wizard in GE. The downside about wearing it was that I noticed a lot of other GE players on Restaurant City started hiring me as their restaurant cleaner!?

On the topic of Facebook, Desanggria and Reimaru also created some pretty awesome Granado Espada quizzes on Facebook. Check them out:

Which Granado Esapada character are you?
Which Granado Espada RNPC are you?

There has to be some truth in it, since my quiz results reflects my personal favorite characters:

You are a Elementalist

You are haphazard and unforgiving, most of the time over the top and excessive, all for the sake of showy and senseless glamour. In this journey called life, it doesn't matter whatever road you take, because the only thing that is important for you is doing it in style.

You are Selva Norte!

Revenge is your middle name. You want retribution from the girly man who messed up with your boyfriend's brain. You can't accept the fact that he forgot all about you when you literally sacrificed your limb just for him. Ungrateful SOB.

Meanwhile, if you still don't have a Facebook account, go get one! And join IAHGames page! And get Restaurant City! And trade me lemons, lobsters and butters! And don't make me your cleaner! Like now (when it's still maintenance)!

The One About The Fantazzztic Linksys Ads

The power of Elite Le Noirs and Constellation Weapons.

Within one day of posting those prizes up, the submissions for Fantazzztic Ads Awards came flooding in!

I was looking through some of the Blood Donation Week submissions (since it is the first theme to end) when something else caught my eye. The film submissions thread for Linksys Week.

I had been rather apprehensive and worried about the Linksys Week initially, since I thought that it might be difficult for people to come up with ad concepts using Granado Espada. I even considered that during the Linksys Week, I might give a couple of ideas or ad directions in my article for the web.

And then I watched this and ended up in tears...

...BECAUSE I WAS LAUGHING SO FRIGGIN HARD!!!

Kudos to exebolt Family (Rembrandt/Giovanni)! I guess my worries were uncalled for. Another of his Linksys Ads had a rather interesting concept and good execution as well:



The concept has a lot of potential, perhaps it might be made stronger by giving it a stronger branding such as,'Learn the Linksys Dance!' and giving some of the 'dance steps' some interesting names. But of course there is a delicate balance between overkill of words VS visual impact. Ads are ultimately, very subjective, since beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Nevertheless, exebolt's ingenious creativity and incredible sense of humor is just so WINrar. Never in my wildest imaginations would I be able to come up with such innovative ads for Linksys routers! I can't wait to see what other ads the rest of the community will produce for the Linksys Week, which IMO is THE most challenging week of them all.

The One About Granado Espada Red Packets!

If you haven't already heard about the Red Affair Blood Donation Drive happening this weekend at red dot design museum, check out the article here:

Even if blood donation scares you, or you're still sitting on the fence as to whether or not you wanna donate, no worries. Just come down as a 'spectator' or rather, a supporter to your fellow GE mates! There will be lots of side events happening that day - like MAAD bazaar and Settlers Cafe will be setting up some board-gaming booths as well. Supporters will receive a Rabbit Grindstone and GE red packets as a token of appreciation:

Grind your rabbit into powder!

For those out of Singapore, no worries, I will be giving your local distributors some of these rabbit grindstone codes to be used at local events and we'll probably use some during in-game /forum / website events as well.

And here's a sneak peek at the red packets that will be fresh from the printers this Friday, 2 Jan'09. Let's hope there aren't any delays from the printer's side or else... *gulp*...



Here's my personal favorite!

For donors, you heroes deserve a little something extra! A White Cristatus and an extra pack of GE red packets for you!

It tickles! But in a glam way...

We've also posted up the event in the IAHGames Facebook Fan Page. So do RSVP over here so that we have a rough estimate of how many people will be attending that day. And of course do blog/Facebook/Friendster about this event and spread the news to your friends and family to support this event!

The One About Diego's Art Nouveau

I were looking through the Week 2 loading screen submissions for Diego's Art Nouveau and though there was quite a significant improvement in the quality of the submissions, but still... I felt that some cutting edge creativity was still lacking.

Here's some ideas that could set YOUR submission apart!

1) Magic Eye 3D Loading Screens!
I used to be obsessed with those Magic Eye 3D pictures thingy whereby there is a sentence or picture inside a mosaic looking picture. Something like that:

Use your magic eye and check out the bird!

Source: http://www-ai.ijs.si/sirds/bird.jpg

It would be super duper awesome to have such loading screens in GE whereby the subject matter was GE-related and the user would only have like 5-10 seconds to figure out what was on the loading screen before he reached the next map. Not sure how to do up something like that though. There's prolly some freeware out there that enables you to do so.

2) Mini Games!

I think the key thing here is to entertain the community during those painful 5-10 seconds of waiting time. So why not mini games to amuse them in the meantime? Loading screens could be like 'Spot the difference' types whereby 2 screenshots are side by side, looking almost same same but different. The user would then have to spot like 5 differences in the pictures.

Other than 'Spot the difference', there could be trivia questions or GE-context riddles with the answers at the corner or something along those lines.

Yup, yup. So try to think out of the box and push your creativity and sense of imagination to the next level. Let the simple things around you inspire you, you'll never know where it will take you!

Oh wait, one more thing before I meet up with my colleagues for a badminton game, the Paid Game Services project has been delayed yet again due to unforseen circumstances. *sigh*

Everything had been working beautifully on the test server. But when imported to the live server, it was then discovered that the stored procedures given to us by HBS on the test server were a different structure/format from the one on the live server! *sigh* So... now we are awaiting the new stored procedures from HBS again. :_(

The One About Singapore Cosfest 2008

Singapore's Cosfest 2008 was held recently over the first weekend of July. As always, a huge event with thousands of cosplayers all over the island coming together. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the event due to Top Speed's maiden CBT launch that same weekend. Nevertheless, I'll still try to piece together a poem of what happened that weekend based on pictures, courtesy of Singapore Community Manager, [CM]Rohnaga.

IAHGames had a booth onsite...

With a mysterious counterman as dark as night...

Game trailers played on into the night...

The registration queue numbers were just aight...

But then, it grew when people saw the light...

In the midst of Espada's fight...

And even with Naruto's sorry plight...

The time was now for fighter's good fight...

And Scouts were indeed a welcome sight...

With a charming elementalist on their right...

And on the left, a templar knight ...

Their final photo shoot was indeed dynamite!

Phew! That was close. The only rhyming words I had left on my list were 'eat vegemite' and 'go fly a kite'. I certainly don't see a career switch to 'Full Time Poet' in the near future. Or ever...

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! ;)