[Repost] The Five Servers of SEA/ANZ Granado Espada

I wrote an article called The Servers of Granado Espada for the online edition of Game! Magazine. I'm reposting it here, and adding pictures of the five servers' namesakes as well. All information from Wikipedia, except the Pachelbel sketch, which is from http://www.pachelbel.us/.

Enjoy reading ^^

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The Servers of Granado Espada

Granado Espada is hosted on five servers. Cervantes and Carracci are the original two servers for POBT. After calls for additional servers due to latency issues, IAH Games opened two new servers on May 21, 2007; and the final server was added on 17 June.

Other than being the “realms” or “worlds” that the players of Granado Espada explore, the four servers also stand as monuments to honor five men who created great art during the Age of Exploration.


Cervantes: This is the very first server of Granado Espada, being the lone server in use during the Closed Beta Test. Now, it serves as the first of the three PK servers.

Don Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra (1547-1616), a Spanish novelist, poet and playwright, is best known for writing the classic satire / comic novel Don Quixote. Protagonist Alonso Quixano has read so many tales of chivalry that he begins to think that he is a knight as well. Taking up the name “Don Quixote de la Mancha,” he takes Sancho Panza as his “squire” and goes on such adventures as the attack on the windmills.


Carracci: The second server, and one of the two original POBT servers, along with Cervantes. It is the first of the two non-PK servers.

Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) was an Italian Baroque painter, known to have inspired a great revival and popularity for Baroque illusionism and energy. Working in the traditions begun by Raphael and Michelangelo, during the 17th century he was praised as the paragon of Italian painters.


Caravaggio: One of the two servers added on May 21 is a PK server.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), also an Italian Baroque painter and a contemporary of Carracci, is the more well-known of the two. Known for the vitality and energy he infused into his large body of religious work, and infamous for his insistence on painting only from life, Caravaggio has been credited as having been the forerunner of modern painting.


Pachelbel: The second of the two servers added on May 21 is a non-PK server.

Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), was a German Baroque composer, organist and teacher, perhaps best known for his Canon in D. While he also wrote chamber music and many choral pieces, the Canon has remained the piece of music for which he is best known, having been used in popular culture since its resurgence in the 1970s.


Vivaldi: The newest server, added on June 17, is a PK server.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), also known as Il Prete Rosso or “the Red Priest”, was a prolific composer perhaps best known in modern times for the series of four violin concertos known as The Four Seasons. These pieces depict natural scenes via the changing seasons and the movement of the music. They are called “La primavera” (Spring), “L’estate” (Summer), “L’autunno” (Autumn), and “L’inverno” (Winter).