Calling all Takhisis Faction Members to Our Post-Anniv EB!

The above photos were taken at Dom1nation II and include AlphaOmega, Puritans, Whiteships, Artaxerxes, Mena, Xei, Fiksdotter, Darkharvester, and NineMoons. [If I didn't mention you - haha sorry, please comment so I can add your name ^^] [Thanks for the correction ^^]

If you're a member of the Carracci Neutralist faction Takhisis, we want YOU to join us tomorrow at our post-First Anniversary get-together!

We're all meeting up at the SM Mall of Asia at 1pm tomorrow, 31 May. When you get there, please SMS your location to faction leader Fiksdotter @ 0927 433 1056 so he can find you - it's a damn big mall, it won't do to get lost ^^


The time is NOW!

Another case of "I'll believe it when I see it"

A nice attempt at public service.

ONLY it was a few weeks too late. And the tone is so carefree and skippity through the gardens as though the PH community were so not recently in crisis. Very relevant.

And what kind of blog post title is that? If it's a Public Service Announcement, as it looks like it was intended to be, best to label it like the newsies do: with a proper and informative headline. In a case like this, a straightforward blog post title will actually help you by being an instant answer for people who want to ask questions.

So long as the first paragraph of the MMOtaku's recent blog post gets no definite response from the so-called powers-that-be, my motto will be:

I'll believe it when I see it.

After all, it's not like I don't actually live in the NCR area. When I see more GVCs at SM Fairview and, heck, at the mother of all load lodes/hoards Greenhills, then maybe I'll change my tune. It's nothing but informed skepticism for me from now on.

And maybe I'll just keep badgering my friendly neighborhood cybercafe to help me promote seaGE. Gee, WHAT have I been doing for a year? [/sarcasm]

Finally, a summoner in the family

Talk about devotion; I had to do ALL of the Catherine quests in 2 hours just to make sure I got my very first summoner character.

Meet my summoner, Luhne, and her knight in shining armor [in this case, literally, thanks to a Plate Mail Costume], Lanthe:


A faithful guardian to watch over a summoner, just like Tidus and Yuna.


A moment of contemplation together.


My loyalty and my sword are yours.

So now I've got most of my teams set ^^ Can't wait for Bai Hu to complete the group!

Back from FT

Notes from THIS venture into the Forbidden Territories:

- I like the "hidden track" that plays only in the Porto Bello Hidden Deck.

- In a previous jaunt into an FT dungeon, I wasn't able to find any "fake" uniques. However, that might be because I was at the Torsche Mansion Annex. Can you actually get the Hollow Footman's weapon as an equip drop? 'Cos all he drops is the Plate Helm and his own Plate Mail Costume.

In Hidden Deck I've picked up no less than THREE Axe di Gavis, which ARE fake uniques. I've collected a ton of stuff for fighters and will most likely have to make one to go with my Catherine Summoner.

- Change of plans for future teams:

Current - Scout, Wizard, Grace Bernelli. The mains. Already spending a crapload on future EQs.
Second team - Scout, Feng Ling, Bai Hu. Obviously, I can't do this until he's available for recruitment. I call this my Breaker team - I plan to toss them into CW so they can happily break colony towers to their hearts' content.
Third team - Scout, Catherine the Summoner, Fighter. Cathy needs a bodyguard, natch.

- Really need to get my mains to Vet. That is imperative.

A geek's holiday

Taking a little time while leveling to make 60 tonight ^^

It's May 25 and it's time to pay tribute to Douglas Adams, writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by celebrating Towel Day.

Here's NineMoons and HER towel.

And have a commemorative banner, too, from http://www.towelday.kojv.net/.



Be a hoopy frood, know where your towel is!

We miss you, Douglas Adams.

Learn more about Towel Day at the Wikipedia article: Towel Day

Granado Espada Version 2.8.7: Pet System is Go!

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: All information in this post comes from the Version 2.8.7 page at doratomo.jp.

Clare, Andre Janzur, and a bunny-girl elementalist demonstrate the joys of the upcoming Pet System.


First comes the discovery of a mysterious egg... what's in it?


OMGWTFBBQ it's a baby Grabber! How cute!


Ain't he the cutest little thing?

I could be mistaken, of course, but that second picture, the one with the Grabber hatching, seems to imply that you can get the pets in a certain location in the Port of Bahia.

The only other thing I can decipher on the site is that pets' skills are toggled by pressing Ctrl + P.

Questions:
* Requirements to obtain a pet?
- What level do you have to be to obtain a pet?
- What Family Level do you have to be to obtain a pet?
- Is a pet purchased, quested, or hunted for?
- If purchased, what currency? (Vis, Feso, G-Points)
- If quested, how to trigger the quest?
- If hunted, where to hunt?

* Requirements to sustain a pet?
- Is pet food required?
- Can pets take damage, or die?
- If they take damage, can they be healed via Scout skill, or via pots? (Are there special pet-healing pots?)
- If they die, can they be resurrected, or do you have to get another one? (How to resurrect a pet?)
- Can pets be equipped?
- Attack-type: can it wear weapons and/or armor? Are there special pet equips?
- Looter-type: can it expand its inventory? Is its inventory shared with its masters, or separate?
- Magic-user type: can it wear magical equips and/or armor? What are its spells?

Cuteness factor up to a GOOGOL!
- Are there pet-only costumes?
- Are there pet poses? (Because the Grabber looks like it's waving "Hello" in the third picture...) Or does it also use the Andre Janzur poses?

The list goes on and on. This feature is something I like a lot, and am definitely curious about.

*goes off to look for more details*

[Plug] NineMoons: guest post!

In this previous entry, I showed my support for Aussie blogger Brian Gorrell and his continuing quest for justice. Yeah, it was a broad over the seaGE communications space, but it was still a gesture of support.

I wound up writing an opinion piece about Gorrell and his blog for the column I keep on the site that pays my bills: Nine Moons: A Meditation on the Blog that Ate Manila.

I sent Gorrell a copy of that as I had pledged way back when I started to write the piece, and look what he did with it: Well Said!

^^ Read on ^^

MMOtaku clobbers me with a tag again - thanks ^^

Some time ago I found out about this Tag! Gamers are It. meme from Aiza of www.gamerlite.com. I thought it might be interesting to join, since it was supposed to be open for everyone to participate.

And then Real Life in the form of the chicken pox hit me, and I clean forgot all about it - until Joel a/k/a the MMOtaku hit me with it.

So, here we go: NineMoons takes on a new gamer's meme.

Name and Job/s (if you want to share it) - PJ a/k/a NineMoons. IT Consultant, Editor and Writer for ScoutAreaOnline.com, the Philippines's first online community newspaper. Girl gamer and blogger, geekette, and trivia hound.

You’re currently playing? - the Southeast Asia / Australia & New Zealand version of MMORPG Granado Espada, to the point of addiction. I play lots and lots of Solitaire when I want to waste time at work. And I LOVE Text Twist, Hangaroo, and Bookworm!

Favorite game genre/s - role-playing games, trivia games, word games.

Favorite game/s of all time - this is SO going to date me, but the list includes Jeopardy!, Tetris, Pinball, the above-mentioned word games, Neverwinter Nights 1, and Granado Espada of course.

Favorite game character/s - Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. Plumbers with mushroom addictions FTW!

Earliest and fondest memory of gaming? - Lots of early memories here. Holding down the Down arrow on the B controller of our Famicom so my brother could do the immortal thing in Mega Man. Trying to beat my mom at Tetris. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start. Double Dragon and Ninja Gaiden. Watching my brother as he attempted to defeat Super Mario 3.

Fondest? Lots to choose from as well, but my current favorites:
Finishing Neverwinter Nights 1 - two years after I started it. (Not my fault my computer crashed during the first go-round, discouraging me so badly I couldn't face the game again for a whole year.) Beating my BF in successive matches the very first time I played both Tekken 4 and one of the Naruto fighting games. (Christine, Panda, and Hyuga Neji + button-mashing FTW.) Being accepted into the Closed Beta for Granado Espada - and playing it non-stop ever since.

Most hated gaming moment/s? - Neverwinter Nights 1 crashing. I mourned that for months.

Gaming gadgets/consoles you own/owned - Family Computer, the original Gameboy, PS2. Mostly I'm a PC player.

If you had a “gamer’s shirt” what would the color and design be? (or if you have a favorite gamer shirt, what does it look like?) - Black baby tee saying "Girl Gamers: Kicking Ass Since Tetris"

Gaming stuff on your wish list? - Wii, Nintendo DS, any laptop that exceeds the recommended specs for Granado Espada, and an unlimited cable internet connection.

***

I tag:

seaGE RCM Hrin
Reimaru / Blacksword
Caroline of Draw Write Play

Guess I can't play today, either.

The now-doomed server party: not just server maintenance, but prepping for Version 2.6?

Just as I suspected all along.

Except that this would actually be GOOD NEWS if it weren't for the fact that the maintenance has gone on, and on, and on, and bloody ON.

The maintenance has been extended till 4pm Singapore time today. Nth extension for the nth time. Any bets on whether that maintenance will get extended AGAIN?

I'm NOT betting. The Murphy's Law voice in my head says it ain't over till it's over, and only Ferruccio Espada knows when that will be.

This post by remynew in the forums has taken the words out of my mouth: we currently don't need distractions, we currently badly need explanations and patch notes and all the reasons why the maintenance has taken forever. We also need compensation for all the premium items that were activated and are now being frittered away uselessly.

It's not about saving face anymore for IAH: they should think about saving the game from itself and all of its enemies.

The Server Party seems to have turned into a Server Nightmare...

So, right, they announced there would be something called the Server Party today: a planned 12-hour maintenance. IAHGames gave no reasons, either for the reason why there was a Server Party laid on, or for why it was scheduled for a Tuesday.

Along with the Server Party, they scheduled a maintenance of the Official Forums and of the Passport System.

The Server Party was extended for another hour, and we thought, okay, still wanna party eh?

And now comes THIS announcement: Maintenance extended until 2200 Singapore time.

Yep, I was right. Giant alien bugs. Or perhaps that's Rafflesia all over the servers, and she brought armies and armies of Hornets to screw with the game systems.

A commenter in that last post jokes about Murphy's Law and / or gremlins bugging up the infrastructure. I'm beginning to think he's VERY right.

EDIT: Server Maintenance continues until 0800 on 21 May.

Now is the time to say that compensation is due to everyone for this. I hope IAH is listening.

***

In other, more shocking news, read this and weep:

Reimaru / Blacksword: Is it a sign?

Short version: IP e-Games player caught saying "GE is dead" to a GE player.

This just goes to show you that IP e-Games either really has such a low regard for seaGE, or allows its players to mouth off at random, which is the same thing really. SHAME ON YOU, anonymous employee. Thanks a LOT for your relevant comment. Retard.

[In this case, I bend my rule on watching my own language on this blog. That really IS the best word I can come up with to describe this person's shocking behavior.]

The crusade continues: Forum Wars

So there was this forum thread I started at the official seaGE forums in order to talk about the sudden surge in frustration in the PH community regarding the availability of GVCs in the country.

[Not that we needed any more reasons to tear our hair out, of course: bugged servers, screwed Colony Wars, log-in rigmaroles, countless bugs in the system - what happened, did the servers get infested by alien insects???]

TEN PAGES of PLAYERS telling the community that there are PROBLEMS. Big damn problems.

So where are the folks from IP e-Games? I happen to know for a fact that Veya goes on the forums every day. But she will NEVER NEVER NEVER respond to that thread.

Now it's up to the community. Active players, let's do something about this.


***

EDIT:

There is a troll in the thread. My motives for blogging and for playing seaGE have been questioned with malicious intent. The thread has sprouted a malign tumor in the form of a long-winded poster - who unfortunately has nothing better to do than think I am doing all this for self-serving motives.

I do not hold with feeding trolls, so just go look up the thread yourselves. If you want to continue the calm and reasoned discussion, go ahead and post to that thread, please. Caveat emptor in that no one from e-Games is likely to ever show up in that thread to respond.

The job that pays for my GVCs - IF they were available

The previous post talking about my day job

I wish I still carried around with me the innocent enthusiasm of the first sentence in that previous post.

But I am extremely proud to announce here that ScoutAreaOnline.com is back and better than ever. We've revamped the look and feel of the site and we're in the constant process of piling on the content.

We've recently laid on articles talking about such varied subjects as The Forbidden Kingdom film and the renovation of the Scout Rotunda at the intersection of Timog and Tomas Morato Avenues in QC, the Philippines. Please drop by and visit, and drop me a line if you want to comment on the site ^^

Carracci Factions: Faction Anniversaries!

It's nice to take a break from crusading, and writing this post is pure pleasure for me.

Faction # 1: This week Destiny Faction is celebrating its first anniversary! To celebrate, here's a link to a machinima video made especially for the occasion by seaGE's Master Machinima Director, Darrick, who as the Reclusion family is one of Destiny Faction's stalwart members and officers.

Watch the Destiny 1st Anniversary Video here!

Best wishes and more power to Destiny Faction!

Faction # 2: Also this week - specifically yesterday - Takhisis Faction hit its own first anniversary! There were broads aplenty - some of them were from me - and we also managed to get FL Fiksdotter and several other members online for this celebratory screenshot with Republican leader Simon Ayende:



I'm the Feng Ling next to Simon. And it wasn't till I looked at this screenshot that I realized that MAN, my favorite martial arts girl is, well, short ahahahahaha.

This shot also features Xei with the very first White Baron in seaGE, Fiksdotter and one of his main teams, and several other members of TK.

Live long and prosper, Takhisis Faction!

seaGE PH Community: A CALL TO ARMS.

The waves of frustration and pique at IP e-Games continue to ripple through the seaGE community of PH players. Check out the growing number of blog posts. These posts are all talking about the GVC shortage, the problems stemming from lack of promotion, and in general the dismay of how seaGE is being neglected by local distributor IP e-Games.

NineMoons
The first post: Promoting seaGE, and a rant on GVCs
Follow-up post: The rant continues

Blacksword / Reimaru
WHY do these companies DON'T give a DAMN

Stiles
Games Should be Games and Should Always be Games (The Rant I was Hiding for a Long Time)

Video post / true story: The Night When I Went Out to Buy some GVCs

Southernsky
Top 5 Reasons Why GE Is The No. 1 MMORPG

Winterlake
True story: I never thought an MMO would make me do math

Fiksdotter
When does the hurting stop?

In addition, the forum thread at the seaGE official forums has now reached 5 7 A WHOPPING TEN pages in length.

Unfortunately, no sign of a response or post from any IP e-Games personnel yet - nor, at the very least, an appearance from any community managers. Thanks are due to the forum / player mods who have joined in the discussion.

Ten pages in, still no official comment. All we got was a "patient" of a fanboy.

Not good enough, kids.

The rant continues

Continued from the following blog posts:

My rant on the availability, or lack thereof, of GVCs
Blacksword's rant about how MMO companies are treating their players
Stiles's almost-quitting speech

Additional, related posts
Southernsky's Top 5 reasons why seaGE is the No. 1 MMORPG...
Winterlake and having to do math for GVCs

Normally, when I get pissed off over something, the fit of pique goes away as quickly as it has begun. However, Blacksword's, Stiles's, and my blog posts have now let several cats out of the too-small bag. Let's talk about some of the biggest issues plaguing the PH community of Granado Espada players.

1. As mentioned by Sigrid in her comment to Blacksword's post: where the heck are the seaGE installers?

Why aren't IP e-Games giving away installers at events, or via the online gaming magazines, or even at more standard outlets such as convenience stores? Where are the seaGE installers in the thousands of Internet cafes scattered all over the Philippines?

Giving away samples of a game you would like people to try out, and eventually play: that's chapter one page one for promoting games! And what are the samples for MMOs? You guessed it: installers! If you want to grow your player base, you need to let people try out the game!

Telling people to download the game instead of giving them an installer? That's called giving them the cold shoulder. You want them to immediately start playing, NOT wait several days for a huge download to finish!

2. Corollary to the installers question above: where the heck are the promotional materials?

Why aren't people going round distributing seaGE posters? There are almost never enough to go around at the events. Are these posters supposed to be extra-speshul limited editions or something?

Okay, posters require the expenses of design and layout and printing and shit, but they more than pay for themselves once they're up in Internet cafes, because even if you just give them away, they make people curious to try out the game! So - where are they?

Plus, printing tarps is becoming cheaper. If other online games could spend lots on tarpaulins, why hasn't IP e-Games done the same for seaGE?

3. The over-arching theme of questions 1 and 2 is: where the heck are the sales personnel? Where are the IP e-Games people who go around to Internet cafes specifically for the purpose of promoting seaGE? Where are the personnel who will promote the game by installing it and then asking people to try it out? Isn't this a marketing strategy?

And hasn't it worked well for the other games being handled by IP e-Games? So why isn't seaGE getting the same treatment?

4. Speaking of promoting seaGE versus the other IP e-Games titles: truth is, they're NOT.

Sure, I see the marketing staff for Ran Online, for Dance Battle Audition, for O2 Jam, for Supreme Destiny, and now for Cabal Online. In fact, just yesterday I found out that the marketing people for Cabal had already come around to the Internet shop where I'm a regular - they received an installer yesterday afternoon!

Is there a similar group for seaGE? I don't know. I've never seen them.

I used to patronize a shop in Bulacan. Guess who brought the posters and installers to that shop? I did. I occasionally go to one of the big Internet shops on Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City. Do they have posters? Heck no. No one's going to play seaGE there if they don't know it IS there!

And I already know full well that I am not alone in having to do IP e-Games's promo work for it. Players from various corners of the National Capital Region, Baguio, Cebu, Davao, and cities all over the Philippines have shared similar experiences!

Last year IP e-Games was talking up seaGE as the first Triple-A MMO to be launched in the Philippines. Oh, the irony! How will people be able to see if seaGE really IS a Triple-A game if its local publisher treats it so badly?

IP e-Games is actually promoting its other titles vigorously - with the sole exception of seaGE. Now, can someone PLEASE explain why you're treating this title as though it were the bastard child of the family?

5. Going back to the GVCs issue: it's a slap in the face to see the standard IP e-Games game load cards EVERYWHERE, because the same company that issues the e-Cards is the same company that's supposed to be looking after GVC distribution.

Is it TOO MUCH to ask to use the same distribution network as the e-Cards for the GVCs?

6. Can someone at IP e-Games talk about why the community is so neglected? Every day in every server, Pinoy players talk about how hard it is to get other people to play seaGE. All-Pinoy factions complain about never having been visited by the Philippine Community Manager. Pinoy players of seaGE make heroic efforts EVERY DAY to make more people aware of this game, to answer questions from interested people - and never a word of thanks from the local management.

It was through RCM Hrin's efforts that the GE PH Community Heroes were acknowledged. Take note: the RCM started the ball rolling. We actually HAVE a Philippine Community Manager, but she couldn't be bothered with the initiative to prepare the list of heroes, or to add any more noteworthy names to the list!

Where is she while players are complaining about the lack of GVCs? Twittering about going to their office in Makati. Yeah, GREAT answer, when half of the player community isn't even in Luzon. Or she talks about going to the so-called list she keeps on her blog. Wonderful suggestion, when the list has never been kept up to date.

*

Look, here's the painful thing. The one-year anniversary of seaGE in the Philippines will be coming soon, and the same problems that plagued the PH players at the start of the Open Beta period are the EXACT SAME ISSUES bothering us now. One year is a LONG time to be ironing out the start-up difficulties, to be having problems with GVC distribution, to be caught flat-footed on marketing and promotions.

What the HECK are they DOING?

Promoting seaGE, and a rant on GVCs

A few weeks ago I decided to become a regular at this PC shop / Internet cafe near my place. It has very nice amenities, a decent crowd, and friendly counter staff. It has an almost indecently good net connection, which is STILL fast even when a lot of people are playing all sorts of online games concurrently. The connection also remained smooth when there were a lot of people logged on to Friendster [one of the culprits for lag].

So I decided to introduce Granado Espada there.

I've played seaGE there over several different time periods and the results are quite consistent: very little lag. I even played there for my first CW in Carracci - and I lagged slightly, but only when there were bunches of summons running around all over the place [at least one Tary, a Treasure Golem or a Steel Ararat, and a bunch of marionettes]. Otherwise, even with all the families concentrated around the Tetra Hill colony, I was keeping up with everyone.

Anyway, I gave them one of my extra seaGE posters to help advertise that all the PCs at that shop now had seaGE installed on them.

The last time I was there, I received several questions from the guy on duty. My answers in italics.

Is seaGE free to play?

Yes, it is. We used to be pay to play, but we switched back to F2P + premium item shop.

Ah, so there's load.

Yup. We call them GVCs.

Where do we get the load?

...

And then I had to explain that there were very, very few places where one could get GVCs. Granted, this shop is in Novaliches, one of the northern reaches of Quezon City, and therefore a little far from the retailers in Makati and Manila.

The one shop I know that HAS GVCs, Dataventure at SM Fairview, only stocks about 10-20 pieces at a time, and those get gobbled up almost as soon as they go on sale. And they restock their GVCs rather irregularly, sad to say - it's always a crapshoot going there, because most of the time the salespersons will tell you they're out of GVCs. Only on rare occasions can you get GVCs, and then usually only the smaller denominations.

Now, pardon me while I veer off into marketing territory, but since seaGE is free to play - shouldn't the GVCs be treated as the most important marketing tool / means of promoting the game?

There are a bunch of threads in the PH section of the seaGE forums in which players from all over the country complain about the utter lack of GVCs. Here's the most active one:

P100 load (e-pins and GVC) no more? =(
Eleven pages, and still active as of now. In this thread, forum member "paulvr173cm" is gaining a reputation for being a reliable seller of PHP100 GVCs [1,800 G-Points].

I pointed out the equivalent number of G-Points that you can get for PHP100 because PHP100 is a fairly median amount for people to spend on non-necessities such as game load; and also because of the comment pointed up in the following thread:

Load much cheaper outside..

Check out what that thread starter says:

The equivalent of PHP20 in SGD or MYR nets seaGE players in those countries 5,800 G-Points.

But here in the Philippines, you have to pay PHP300 to get that same 5,800 G-Points!

Here are, then, the main issues in this entry:

There are very few places to get GVCs reliably here in the Philippines. Sure, there's a list of retailers at pCM Veya's blog, but how often is that list being updated? How often are the retailers on that list being resupplied? What of the rumors that some of the outlets rumored to be GVC retailers refuse to sell the load? What of the rumors that some of the outlets are actually extremely UNreliable?

Why are PH players getting so few G-Points for their money? I think that example from the second thread says it all: the conversion rate for PHP to G-Points is wildly different from that of other countries - specifically, the conversion rate is too steep. This inconveniences PH players, because they must pay so much more to get the G-Points they need.

The VERY painful part is that these issues have been part of the PH community of seaGE players practically from Day One. And the fact that the first thread I linked in this entry is STILL active ought to say volumes about the treatment this dire situation has received from the people at local publisher IP e-Games: shabby, ruinous, miserable, shoddy, tatterdemalion treatment.

How the heck can IP e-Games expect the PH player base for seaGE to keep growing if it cannot even use the game load as a proper marketing and promotions tool? Those who cannot access the materials needed to play a game will NEVER play that game.

Someone DO something about this!

***

The Ripples Are Spreading.

Blacksword: WHY do these companies DON'T give a DAMN Find out how he feels with regard to the neglect that the general MMO-playing community suffers in the Philippines.

Stiles: Games Should be Games and Should Always Be Games (The Rant I was Hiding for a Long Time) Stiles tells his side of the story and his view on the GVC problem, and how he nearly quit over it.

The thread I started in the forums so that people can keep talking about this issue.

I Believe in seaGE~!

The campaign, she is starting to bear fruit~

Sigrid: I believe in seaGE!: Contains a screenshot with the "I Believe in seaGE" banner, plus the standalone banner in a rainbow of colors!

Because despite all the problems, server instabilities, economic roller-coasters, and general weirdness - there are still reasons to love Granado Espada!


Button by NineMoons.


Button by Scarlette.

Please spread these buttons and show your love for seaGE!

EXTRA: A "button banner" that you can also use ^^! I just put the two buttons together.

A pain of a Colony Wars session

Tonight I went to Colony Wars in Carracci server for the first time.

It was NOT at all what I had thought.

First: server and time irregularities. Some factions snatched colonies BEFORE the official Colony Wars session could begin. We don't know why this happened yet.

It also FELT like the session began a few minutes late.

Combined, those two events made people in the server scratch their heads in confusion. As I understand it, there have been some difficulties going on in Carracci server this weekend, not the least of which was the squad bug. [People already in squads could not leave, or something like that.]

IAH - you owe us a decent explanation for these irregularities.

***

A few words about "alliances" in the server:

As slippery as oil-slicked pavement. Honored as is convenient to each ally. Who gave that person the right to determine who goes in which alliance?

WTF, Carracci. WTF.

***

To Takhisis Faction:

Let's keep reaching for the stars!

"NineMoons" =/= Online Game ^^

Just thought now's a good time to clarify this little thing, as I've had to field the same question twice now in the past couple of weeks.

My all-servers family name is "NineMoons". This family name is taken from deceased American novelist Robert Jordan's fantasy maxi-series The Wheel of Time. It is derived from the ceremonial title of a female character named Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag, who is formally referred to as the Daughter of the Nine Moons.

[Click on her name above to read the Wikipedia article about her.]

Sorry to say, my family name has no connection at all to either of the MMORPGs 2Moons, or 9 Dragons. I have looked at both, though, and they're both fairly interesting - but not a patch on Granado Espada of course.

Just wanted to make that clear. ^^ Enjoy your weekend!

***

seaGE players who also happen to be mothers - Happy Mothers' Day in advance to you ^^

Working!

Banner, button, campaign!

Banners are UP - see above. Both of the current banners feature Grace Bernelli, everyone's favorite DPS character. The blue one was made by me, and the Port of Coimbra one was made by my dear friend Scarlette.

Buttons are UP - see top right of the blog, immediately below the banner. The buttons say I Believe in seaGE! Feel free to post it on your blogs, in your forum sigs, and basically anywhere you want ^^ Again, the first button was made by me, and the second one by Scarlette.

Campaign is ongoing - just spread the button around, that's all you need to do. ^^

Now, THAT'S what I call compensation!

20 FREE Adelina's Booty Searches for all!~

Good luck getting the big loots!

EDIT 9 May: I swear, is this game telling me to make an elementalist??? Elite robes? *facepalm*

Trust no one - and right-click for great justice

Inspired by Sigrid's blog entry about the travails of Carracci's first President and faction leader of Outcasts Faction, †Bayushi†. You can read the full article by clicking the link below:

Sigrid: On †Bayushi†'s Scamming Issues

You can read about what exactly happened to †Bayushi†, and why he's not happy with IAHGames, at the following forum threads:

The first [closed] thread, in which he describes the loss of his equipment

The second thread, in which he discusses how he currently feels

As for me, I think this entire flap should also be used to call attention to scammers and their insidious practices. The particular one I had in mind? Impersonation.

I'll call it "cloning" in this blog: the use, reuse, and abuse of keyboard symbols, ASCII and other special characters, and other character sets in order to come up with in-game names that resemble those of legitimate players.

Taking myself as an example [†Bayushi† has had enough grief on this matter already]: my in-game name - my family name is, of course, NineMoons. [Please take note: the "m" is capitalized.]

How can it be cloned?

Change the case of a letter in the name: nineMoons, or Ninemoons. [I'm just grateful that when people link to this blog with that latter version, they understand it's me and not someone else.]

Add Alt+160 before, in the middle of, or after the name. Alt+160 gives you a blank character and is how some people have "spaces" in their family names. So my name could be cloned as <blank character>NineMoons, Nine<blank character>Moons, or NineMoons<blank character>.

Write it out in full ASCII, like this: ÑïñëMðöñš. [Do NOT ask me to do that again.]

People could interpolate J Random ASCII Character / Symbol into the name.

Or they could do all of the above.

valinorian on the forums, backed up by moderator Edythia, suggest checking Family Profiles in order to make sure you're talking to someone legitimate. Simply right-click on any member of the other person's family and select Family Profile.

Is there any way around this? Will banning ASCII characters actually work? [Probably not.] The lesson we all need to pick up is still the original one:

Be Wary When Dealing With Stranger, i.e. Non-Familiar, Players.

What NineMoons is up to this week

Checklist time ^^

- Make a new blog banner. It's not that I don't love my Cervantes main team any more [ah how I miss you, Tuon, Aurana, Chimal, and Ravashi], but the banner's getting a bit outdated. I'm going to try something different for a change.

Grace Bernelli, why do I ♥ you so?

- A "show your love for seaGE" campaign! Lots of new content coming in, with V. 2.6 just around the corner and "Third Civilization" too - so what better time to support seaGE than now? Our battle cry shall be:

I believe in seaGE!

I'll be making a blog button and a forum signature / mini-banner for this slogan, so watch out for when I post the new downloadable goodies ^^

***

Rounds of applause to the following; wish them luck!

- Winterlake @ Sugar-high!, who says she'll be attempting to put together a GE-based layout for Blogger!

- Stiles @ Northern Imposion, who needs only a proper banner for his blog who now HAS a blog banner, replete with his quirky sense of humor and his...ahem, affection for Lorch ^^

***

Lunch time ^^

Granado Espada = WORTH PLAYING.

From Blacksword's latest blog article:

Granado Espada is one of the 9 free MMOs worth playing

The original list is from PC Gamer magazine, and it's reprinted at MMOCrunch: click here to read the full article.

I'm just going say, if the folks at PC Gamer Magazine think Sword of the New World is pretty cool, they REALLY should check out Granado Espada - in particular seaGE, natch. And it's not just because we get updates earlier and stuff.

I believe in seaGE!

[Okay, there's my next project: a banner AND a button with THAT sentiment!]

Pluggage: Game! [print mag], Draw Write Play [webcomic]

[I really feel like I'm making up for lost time now ^^]

I went to the Game! Magazine offices today to pick up some stuff and got fairly lucky: along with my complimentary April issue, the one with the Fantazzztic Film Awards winners, they gave me an advanced copy of the May print edition. Here's the cover for that upcoming issue:



Other than the cover, I can give you LOTS of reasons to buy that issue when it hits newsstands:

- Our very own Sigrid reviews the hit anime series Claymore! [I wanna watch that show, just before the rumored second season comes out!]

- TWO Granado Espada articles! In the "Updates" section you'll find not only my report on the GE PH Tribute to the Ladies, but also my report on the Verano Escapade, a.k.a. the GE events at Dom1nation II! These two articles both have lots of photos in with them, although sadly not all of the more than 150 pictures I took in all of the events.

If you want to browse through my pictures of those two events, please check out my Photobucket albums!

NineMoons's Photobucket for GE PH Tribute to the Ladies
NineMoons's Photobucket for GE PH's Verano Escapade @ e-Games Dom1nation II

You should also check out the magazine's "Game Funnies" section, occupied since April by the webcomic Draw Write Play, drawn by gamer girl Caroline Dy. One of the May strips talks about Granado Espada, particularly where fun with pose books is concerned!

Okay, back to leveling ^^

GUIDE: Spread the link love - Granado Espada style!

Anyone who's got a Granado Espada blog out there?

Um, yes, I hoped so.

Anyway, this entry is for all of us seaGE bloggers, both the old hands and the new ones. I'm here to talk about how to give proper credit to other seaGE-related blog entries.

By "giving proper credit", I mean you are linking properly to a blog entry that you liked, AND letting the original blogger know that you liked what they posted ^^ Yes, there's a way to do this. All you need to do is remember a few simple rules, as well as use your right mouse button.

For seaGE bloggers using Blogger / Blogspot:

Couldn't be simpler. Let's use Southernsky's [Guide] Karjalainen's Necklace Crafting as our example.

1. Left-click once on the post's title to be taken to the specific post page.

In this case, it looks like this:

http://telltalesfromgranadoespada.blogspot.com/2008/04/
guide-karjalainens-necklace-crafting.html

2. Copy the specific post page's URL from the address bar.

3. Paste the specific post page's URL in your entry, between the quotes in <a href="">. [Don't forget the matching </a> tag at the end!]

The HTML should look like this:
<a href="http://telltalesfromgranadoespada.blogspot.com/2008/04/
guide-karjalainens-necklace-crafting.html">[Link Text]</a>

4. At the very end of the specific post page's URL, add "#links". No quotes, no spaces. Add it immediately after the .html part.

It now looks like this:

<a href="http://telltalesfromgranadoespada.blogspot.com/2008/04/
guide-karjalainens-necklace-crafting.html#links">[Link Text]</a>

Having the "#links" attribute at the end of the specific post page's URL will make your blog post's title appear at the end of the original post's page, under the heading "Links to this post" - so the original post's author will know that it was you who linked to their posts!

For seaGE bloggers using Wordpress:

For this example, let's use Fiksdotter's blogspotted Bahama Map: My first step.

1. Left-click once on the post's title to be taken to the specific post page.

2. Scroll to the end of the post and find the link named "Trackback URI".

Wordpress has the Trackback feature, which allows blog users to track who has been linking back to them. If they have activated the feature on their blogs, the blogs will have a link list headed "Recent Links", under which the blog posts that have linked to them will appear.

URI means Uniform Resource Identifier. It's the generic term for URLs [Uniform Resource Locators] and URNs [Uniform Resource Names].

3. Right-click on the "Trackback URI" link once, and select "Copy Link Location" [or equivalent] on the context menu.

For the above example, the Trackback URI for Fiksdotter's entry is:

http://ynexounemai.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/
bahama-map-my-first-step/trackback/

4. Paste the copied trackback URI into your HTML code.

Sample HTML would be
<a href="http://ynexounemai.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/
bahama-map-my-first-step/trackback/">[Link Text]</a>

And that's all there is to it!

Hope this will help the seaGE bloggers with linking and promoting each other!

***

Thanks to Southernsky and to Fiksdotter for their wonderful and informative blog posts ^^

A name and a slogan

My entry to pCM Veya's Ultimate Blog Challenge.

***

Blog Title
GE PH Gamer Girls' Site de Femme

Slogan
Get your game, your grind, and your gossip ON here!

***

In the next entry, the allied mysteries of the "#links" [for Blogger users] and the Trackback URI [for Wordpress users] - how to correctly link back to interesting Granado Espada blog entries - and let the original posters know you liked their articles!

[First in NineMoons's series of how to be a better Granado Espada blogger!]