NineMoons's Last Stand: Farewell to the New World

This is likely to be the final post at the NineMoons Family blog. I want to wrap things up properly, and get the last bits of everything off my chest, before I leave the New World, and I hope you and I can soldier on to the end together.

***

The Yays

YAY to RCM Hrin. She may not update her blog so frequently, and she may not always be in the forums or in-game, but she has always been my favorite GE-admin-type person. She's sweet and funny and kind - and if you're polite and patient enough she will always be accessible for any comments or questions.

YAY to the GE PH community, who continue to crusade for the game even after over a year of indifference, lack of promotion and distribution, and even the occasional act of sabotage. They come to the defense of the New World when they are called, and stay vigilant against all attacks. They are its true and stalwart pioneers and they are its most deserving inhabitants.

YAY to the GE PH fan artists: the fanfic writers, the fanart creators, the machinima directors, the independent cosplayers, and everyone else in between who has contributed their tangible and considerable talent to the community. You may be a small group and you may not always win the prizes, but your talent and sheer love for the game definitely show how much you rock.

YAY to the GE bloggers, and especially to the horde of them in the GE PH players' community. Without them, the game might have sunk into obscurity and be left on the wayside as other gamers rush towards what's new and what's shiny without considering the relative merits and demerits of each. The GE PH bloggers have fought long and hard for the game to get equal attention and love from the local gaming community. I may have started the entire GE fan-blog thing, but I could never in a million years have done it alone. It is everyone else who followed this little idea who are the real heroes - they didn't have to, but they did, and that makes all the difference.

And finally, YAY to all the friends I have made through this blog and through this game. I make no secret of the fact that if it weren't for GE in the first place I would never even have started this blog - hence I owe any tiny measure of celebrity and recognition I now possess to GE. But more important that that are the true friends that I have discovered in the process of playing, blogging, and living GE. There are many of them, and there are even some of them I may not get to meet in real life, and they are all cherished and dear to me.

[And now, because every list of Yays must have a list of Nays to balance it out.]

The Nays

NAY to IP e-Games. It's been a recurring theme in this blog, ever since that extreme disillusioning sometime during 2007. Thanks for nothing. Yes, you lot brought in the game, you distributed the pretty posters and the very first set of installers - and then after that there was really not a whole lot of anything. You let us down and dropped us as though we were hot potatoes, all the while enticing people to play your other games instead without mentioning the game you once marketed as the first Triple-A MMORPG brought to the Philippines. I don't know how to run a game publishing business, but I am certainly not going to run it as you attempted to do for GE, because you botched it, big time.

NAY to the fishers and to the saboteurs both in the community and from the competition. Nice try, kids.

***

As I write my final dispatch from the New World, I wonder how much it will take in terms of money, talent, and love to bring the game back to the forefront of gaming in the Philippines. GE has been unfairly sidelined and woefully underpromoted.

I only pray that the game can survive. It has its very devoted fans and its loyal players. Long may they last and well may they prosper.

Goodbye.

~NineMoons, as she lays her pen down
27 November 2008
[One year, eight months, and fifteen days in the New World]

NineMoons's Last Stand: 2008's Best Posts

I had been hoping that it would not come to this. But if I'm going out, I'm going out with a bang.

NineMoons's Last Stand, Part 1: The best posts from 2008

JANUARY
NineMoons at POGS 2008
Grace Bernelli and the Art of Dying

FEBRUARY
Dekaravia Owns Cervantes
The 2nd GE PH Bloggers' Meeting
World Premiere: Not Another Love Story Ze Musical

MARCH
For Love of the Game
FFA Grand Finale: The Philippines Rocks Machinima
Post-FFA Rant
NineMoons's First Anniversary
NineMoons Moves to Carracci
Not Another Love Story, all versions
GE PH Community Heroes
Tribute to the Ladies

APRIL
NineMoons's Convention Guide, Part 1
Dom1nation II: Cosplay and Factions
Dom1nation II: FFA Winners, GE PH Community Heroes
Dinner with RCM Hrin

MAY
I Believe in seaGE
GVCs Rant, Part 1
GVCs Rant, Part 2

JUNE
Takhisis Faction Anniversary EB
The Five Servers of SEA / ANZ Granado Espada
GE Hangaroo, Version 1.0
Introducing Granado Espada to Gamers

JULY
Introducing Granado Espada to Non-Gamers
GE Hangaroo, Version 1.2
NineMoons at the IGN.com Vault
50k Hits
If These Girls Played GE
NineMoons Makes Vet

SEPTEMBER
NineMoons and the One about the GE Gamer Girls
An Adventurer is You!
GE PH Mini Community Meeting with CM Aethrin
Vetting a Musk
GE PH First Anniversary
NineMoons's Convention Guide, Part 2
GE PH Black Party
The One About The Faithful Granado Espada Blogger

OCTOBER
NineMoons as Faction Leader: ShenAnCalhar
A Gamer Girl's Lament
e-Games Hosts the GE PH Gamer Girls
The Two Servers of SEA / ANZ Granado Espada
Presenting the NineMoons Family Grabber
Game! November 2008 Features GE Gamer Girls
Five Hundred Posts

Now is your chance to relive with me my memories of this year in Granado Espada. Please comment away!

Granado Espada Version 3.2: Cute Overload!

Continuing the series of projected updates to Granado Espada from the Version 3.0 cycle, which is currently undergoing testing in kGE and has now been published to the doratomo.jp fan site:

- A new feature, the Team Arena, where you can do the usual plethora of boss hunting and rare-loot gathering, but with an extra bonus of having some sort of assistant personnel in there with you and your squad. From the little I could understand of the rudimentary translation into English, the assistant personnel - actually soldiers from the towns - grant buffs and debuffs to you and your squad, the better to take the bosses out.

- The Super Fight admission times will be reduced to just five minutes from the opening of the portals, rather than the current ten. Admission will now be secured through larger versions of the Ferruccio Espada statues - sort of like the Pioneering Memorials blown up to around thrice the usual size. Still not as large as the one in the Ferruccio Junction, of course.


- Seventh Barracks! Now it's possible to have up to 63 characters to choose your current MCC team from!

- Modifications to the Colony Buffs the Family's Protection buffs [thanks to commenter Souken], which look like they've been adjusted upwards.


- It's your birthday and you're logged in to the New World? Then you'll be receiving a Birthday Gift Box! There will be cake, a birthday firecracker - I wonder if it really does proclaim "Happy Birthday!" when you set it off - and at least a pair of wings for you! No word on the wings' duration, though.

But the thing that has me MOST excited about Granado Espada 3.2 is of course none other than THIS:


Yes, a PET PANDA! The official name of this cutest critter of them all is "Panpan." No word on stats, abilities, or cost yet but I DON'T CARE - wantwantwantwantwant. Pandas Rule!


Pandas are ♥♥♥♥♥ and you know it! *grabby hands*

Source
Source in English

Hmm, this is odd.

After taking such pains to explain and justify the merging of 3 PK servers into one, and 2 non-PK servers ditto, what is the reason for the sudden rush towards this?

[Unless, of course, the answer lies in the very fact of Bach containing THREE PK servers. Then the question becomes, have things gotten overcrowded in a hurry?]

NineMoons Talks About Fatigue

Once again, I begin this entry with an apology for the sudden decrease in posts on this blog.

The truth is, I'm kind of scaling back my Granado Espada playing time. Recently, my main reason for logging in at all was to farm Sun Stones for my pet Pilfurr Po - but even that wish was foiled, since the particular Poison Yard I entered was also occupied by people who insist that Super Fight maps are nothing but personal PvP shooting ranges. To no avail did my family carry the "Farmer" signs over their heads - they still got hunted as though they were animals.

In order to NOT lose my head in anger, I quit doing even that. People have to have their fun, and I decided to give mine up so others can enjoy theirs.

I'm sure Po will find it in his furry little heart to forgive his negligent mistress.

I wanted so much to increase the number of Veterans in my Rembrandt Barracks, but, well, I'm not sure I should be looking forward to the many days of grinding that I need to put in. And that's not mentioning the months it will take to train one single trio up to Expert level, too.

Certainly, there is no point in asking for the return of certain items if the regional distributors have already made it clear that the matter is not in their hands to control.

Certainly, there is no real reason to ask for an increase in experience rates.

Just to make it clear - I am not whining, I don't want anything, and I have absolutely no intentions of asking for sympathy. All I'm saying is that right now, the fatigue has set in, and I'm having to dig deep in order to find the reasons for me to stay in the New World.

Also, I wanted you all to know this because it is thanks to you that this blog has existed and flourished at all - and now that it seems to be undergoing a [temporary, I hope] downturn, I hope that you can understand, in one way or another, me, and my reasons why.

Back from the dead: Upcoming Back Costumes!

Sorry for the delay in new posts. It's been a bit of a madhouse; it got to the point where I was not even able to log in to the game.

Today's entry over at doratomo.jp is devoted to showing off a new crop of back costumes. From my fuzzy deciphering of the translation, it looks like the costumes are only for Expert-level and above, with the notable exception of the standard Satchel in the final photo.

Since the flags are named for ranks of nobility - Earl, Knight, Grand Master [not a noble rank per se, but a rank that was used by associations of nobility such as the Knights Templar], Archduke, Marquis, and Viscount - it's an intriguing idea that maybe they DO have something to do with noble ranks in the New World.


The Grand Master flag.

The individual pages for the flags show that there is a hierarchy to this ranking: from lowest to highest, the ranks are Knight, Viscount, Earl, Marquis, Archduke, and Grand Master.


Blue Chrysalis Wings on Selva.

Additional new back costumes include two variations on the now-familiar Chrysalis Wings: a blue version, and a violet version.


Morada Puesta de sol.

Two pairs of Sunset Wings are also featured, similarly in blue and in violet. Since the wings are named in Spanish as "Puesta de sol", the blue version is called Azul and the violet, Morado.


Golden Archangel Wings on Lisa.


The standard Satchel is on Selva; the new version is on the elementalist.

Just prior to the Satchel and to its new variation, there is also mention of the Golden Archangel Wings, as well as the silver and gold versions of the Phoenix Wings.

Pictures taken from the post.

Recent Goings-On at the Forums

Just a linking post for today since there seems to be a lot of action going on at the SEA / ANZ Granado Espada Forums. Remember to log in during maintenance and check out what's happening!

From the Event and Contest Announcements sub-forum:

Pets Day, 14 November
War of the Factions III, 9-30 November
The Quest Master Challenge, 1-30 November
Title Change Event, 23 October - 6 November

Note that the Title Change event is only until 2359 tonight, Singapore time.

Also ongoing are the Newbie Faction and the Novia Execution events.

Enjoy and get a little R&R before the maintenance ends!

Finally! e-Games e-Points can now be converted to GE G-Points!

Extra, extra, read all about it! Click the banner to see the official news article!



Allow me to repost the conversion values here. EP = e-Points, GP = G-Points, ABS = Adelina's Booty Search.

20 EP = 230 GP + 1 ABS

50 EP = 750 GP + 3 ABS

100 EP = 1800 GP + 5 ABS

200 EP = 3600 GP + 8 ABS

300 EP = 5800 GP + 10 ABS

1000 EP = 23800 GP + 35 ABS

Now, I guess my only question is, where can I buy me a 1000 eP card???

EDITED TO ADD: CM Aethrin has popped in with a link to a list of the e-Points retailers. The list is here: e-Games Partners. He says the list is updated on a monthly basis.

SON OF EDITED TO ADD: The forum discussion thread for this news is buzzing with CM Aethrin's announcement: Coming soon: the 70k g-points denomination in the Philippines!

O RLY? It Must Be The MMORPG Focus....

Cute way to start the next five hundred posts off. Never let it be said I wasn't up for laughing at myself....

While surfing through my daily complement of technology and gadgets blogs I saw an entry on news aggregator Boing Boing, in which Xeni, one of their editors, talks about a site called GenderAnalyzer. The deal with this site is, you type in a website URL, and its AI determines whether the site was written by a man or by a woman. GenderAnalyzer notes that it exists for "curiosity and fun", and helpfully, you can give the developers instant feedback on whether it guessed correctly or not via the attached poll on the front page.

Out of curiosity, I ran this site through their analyzer. Here's the result.



Yeah. There you have it. This analyzer thinks this blog is run by a guy. I immediately clicked in to the survey to say that the analyzer gave an incorrect result of the blog, and the survey results show that the analyzer is right roughly 56% of the time.

I think the incorrect result might be due to the AI being tested on, as the front page says, 2000-something blogs. No matter what, that remains a tiny proportion of all bloggers in the world today.

Also, I guess the AI wasn't tested on gamers' blogs, or on MMO blogs in particular. As a verification check, I ran RCM Hrin's blog through it - and got the same result as above.

It's good for a chuckle, eh? Try it out for yourselves and let me know what you got!

FIVE HUNDRED POSTS!

[Okay, okay, it doesn't have quite the same ring as, say, Over NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAND!!!!!!, but hey, it's MY milestone, right?]

On Writing, Fangirling, and Blogging Granado Espada

So, yeah, here I am at the five hundred posts mark, with over sixty-four thousand visitors, and I have no idea how much Internet space I've consumed for all the photos, videos, and things of a widget-y nature posted to this one site.

Lately I've had this blog even more on my mind than usual, since a nephew of mine started consulting me about being a writer, and going to university specifically to take up a degree in Creative Writing. One of the first pieces of advice I wound up giving him was that he ought to start up a blog - his choice of topic, his choice of posting schedule - and update it as frequently as he was able.

The underlying lesson was that writing X number of words to a Y publishing schedule fosters both creativity and discipline in a budding writer. I got the initial piece of advice from none other but Neil Gaiman, and additional reinforcement and occasional elaborations from John Scalzi. You can't accuse those two gentlemen of not practicing what they preach, either....

But come on, NineMoons, some of you might be saying, you're writing about an MMORPG! How can that foster anything when you're just being a fan?

I actually submit that being a fan of something, who wants to write X number of words for a fairly regular Y publishing schedule, is a big help to meeting said schedule. Being a fan of something means you're immersed in it to some extent or another, and it often means being willing to add to one's store of information about the subject being fanboyed / fangirled.

Don't believe me? Check out the massive number of crafting, food, and review blogs, to name just three popular genres of blogging. They're not all "I love this" or "I'm really into that" - many of them are active learning experiences, where bloggers and readers interact to boost stocks of knowledge and skills.

The blog has been an immense help to me to become a more disciplined, and yes, certainly more prolific writer. And since writing is my greatest passion: being a fan is no small fry, this blog has been the greatest help to me, and Granado Espada continues to rock for providing me with such rich material to write with.

Here's to five hundred posts and to the next five hundred.

Stories of the New World: New Community Event!

[In-Game Event] The Quest Master Challenge!

Now, here is a call for events that I can quite get behind!

If you have a story to tell in the New World - write it up, embellish it with screenshots and other details, and post it at the forums - you might see your story turned into an event for all the pioneers of Bach and Rembrandt!

Gosh, this might turn out to be a bit of an outlet for me. I'm a writer by training and this is really the sort of thing that could be an exercise for me. Not to mention that I've got quite a few tales I've always wanted to tell. I think I'll sign up for this one.

Edited to Add: Okay, here's my entry. I'll be updating it with the accompanying pictures very shortly.

[The Quest Master Challenge Entry – Rembrandt/NineMoons] Waiting For Fate

Do drop in soon and tell me what you think!