And a little over a month after Shandre, Furyk, and Radhanon reached the Veteran mark, now comes: Anthy!
Gosh, it makes me SO proud - that stance that says she's in Outrage Shot mode, and the change in her EXP bar....
Not that it was easy, of course - it took me a few good hours, even with a one-day Expert Combat Manual on, to make it. Here's what happened en route:
I got reported as a bot. I joke not. Look at the gray text in the System chat box...and yes, the reason my musk died at that point was because I got VERY flustered at being reported. I had NOT needed to go to the Underground Prison at just that time, thank you!
My FL Blacksword suggested that it might have been some fool who wanted to take my spot - never mind that I had already been noticed in that location for a couple of days already - or someone who was doing random / griefing bot-report sweeps. Jeez. This team isn't exactly suited to botting, you know.
Anyway, my musketeer made it, just over one month after her elders did! Yay!
Special thanks to Artaxerxes for helping me over the last obstacle. That's his Catherine Summoner/Jack/elementalist team supporting me, plus a friend's Gracielo.
Now I think I'll spend some time leveling Anthy's Outrage Shot stance along with Radhanon and Furyk. Poor wizard, he's been quite bored all this time, what with being stuck in the Barracks and all....
While reading British scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins's recent bestselling book The God Delusion, I was introduced to a rather significant concept in communication: consciousness-raising. Essentially, this is making people stand up and pay attention to some things that may have become so everyday and ordinary that their other meanings are lost.
Dawkins uses as an example the feminist movement and its response to such ordinary words as "mankind" and "history". Some of the radical feminists, you see, disliked those words so much because they were allegedly so focused on the male of the species, so focused so as to make women [and children, and gays/lesbians/transgenders, and by implication the elderly] disappear.
I know that the example is a little extreme, and Dawkins admits as much. But the feminists did their share of consciousness-raising in making it clear that there were words and concepts that DID seem biased towards one gender or another. This then became the reason why gender-neutral language became widely accepted.
Now, what does consciousness-raising have to do with Granado Espada? For me, it has to do primarily with the community. We have a chance to change the usual perceptions of gamers, and we have a chance to raise others' consciousness about gaming and its actual benefits.
Take for example the GE Gamer Girls Season 1 initiative. Thanks to RCM Hrin, there is in place a project that seeks to showcase the many faces of the Granado Espada-playing girl gamer. I tend to see the project as a means of raising consciousness that there are just as many types of gamer girls out there as there are gamer guys: we are Achievers, Socializers, Explorers, and Killers [just to paraphrase that popular test of play style]; we are faction leaders, raid captains, and lone players; we devote hours and hours to the game and we also devote time to real life. I won't belabor the point, since I've already made my views clear in this previous post.
Another example of consciousness-raising would be the GE PH Bloggers' Meetings [28 October 2007, 18 February 2008, and most recently 6 September 2008].
Now, before anyone goes off accusing me of tooting my own horn, let me just repeat WHY I organize these things in the first place. The GE PH Bloggers' Meetings are put together in pursuit of the goal of bettering the GE PH players' community; they serve as venues for the community to air its concerns, and also function as real-life socializing activities. I have always intended for the GE PH Bloggers' Meetings to be a means of putting a face to the GE PH player: to make him and her REAL, with human faces and concerns and comments.
Now there is the concern raised in a recent study of Asian online gaming communities: they may be thriving, and they may be expanding, but already the bullies are out in force to prey upon the newbies. Read the story at hackenslash.
A concrete example of bullying - or more generally speaking, game griefing - can be found in one of my friend the MMOtaku's recent posts about an event in his preferred MMORPG, Perfect World: Perfect World: Frustration with a sponsored event. He says that an in-game event, which had been intended to give some enjoyment to the players, was hijacked by griefers in various ways, and offers screenshots to show what happened.
I mention these two links in connection with the problems of griefing that are currently rife in all of the SEA / ANZ Granado Espada servers. Each server has its own type of grief being suffered by the regular players, and, naturally, a different type of griefer. I want to take this opportunity to tell the community that it should be more than okay to fight back against griefers. Take back the fun of playing GE!
Consciousness-Raising is your friend!
...Or, at least, I was already able to buy a copy of it, from a magazine dealer in Greenhills.
Here's the cover, so you know what you're looking for:
Game! needs a lot more Granado Espada covers, Y/Y?
This month, my article is about the bots of Granado Espada. I've tried to balance out that article in its writing, but as always, I welcome constructive criticism and comments here on the blog.
Have a good week!
This week's to-do: Level.
Dear All
I find to my amazement that before this month ends, I will be celebrating the first year of this blog's existence. This was the first "one-subject" blog I ever started, meaning it was focused on a particular something. That something has been, and remains to this day, the MMORPG Granado Espada.
For most of this blog's existence I have been playing on the Cervantes server of the sGE release. In fact, this blog was begun within the last two weeks of the Closed Beta Test. I still consider myself lucky to have made it in during that first phase of testing, and to have seen the test through to the end.
Through pOBT, the Open Beta, and the switching around of business models, I have stayed true to sGE. That hasn't always been easy. I would get attacked on sight simply because I was trying to promote the blog as a resource and as a place where I could show the fun / lighter / more intellectual / storyline side of sGE. People would heckle this blog in its comments and its chat box.
[And there are the times when the game itself has misstepped, but that is not for this entry.]
The animosity from some quarters of the population remains to this day.
I single out one person in sGE who has seemingly made it his life's mission to put this blog down. When I make broadcasts about new content, this person replies with an insult to both me and to the content. This person has called me names and slandered the blog's good name.
The only time I was insulted personally was when he made a comment about GE machinima; this person's comment derided the genre and, by extension, the members of the community who wished to enjoy its possibilities - and in the process do some good for the game.
Dear annoying person, you know not of what you speak. And you have known not, since you began your campaign of insults.
What I do here is not always easy. I make no money from this blog. I devote much effort to improving its appearance and content - to the occasional detriment of my characters in the game. In the drive to make this blog better, my main characters on Cervantes server remain at level 84. Any other characters I have on the other four servers have not even reached level 50, the halfway mark of the standard game. I have never made Veteran, much less Expert. Not even in Closed Beta.
So why am I keeping it up? A plain and simple answer. I made this blog for love of the game. I continue to improve it for love of the game. I continue to write in it for love of the game. And I continue to love, and play, the game.
I have done all this for almost one year, and I hope to continue for as long as I can. I hope to see a second-year anniversary, a third, a fourth, and so on.
Do not, annoying person, think that I do this in response to your childish banter. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I write this entry, this open letter, because I want to stand up and say, I am proud to be the first sGE blogger. I am happy to keep up the blog. And I am happy to remain an sGE player.
Despite the problems and the occasional WTF? moment, I am happy to be here.
I remain your devoted sGE blogger
NineMoons
P.S. 10 March 2008
To commenters The Arc and Darrick, as well as to Leoz [!] and to Artaxerxes, thank you very much for the good wishes.
Just so everyone knows, the actual one-year anniversary of this blog is on 13 March. [That's just three days away!] Here's the very first entry.
^^
...I would normally include "insisting I'm a guy when I've said I'm a girl over and over again" in this, but some people don't want to let go of their cherished notion that "there are no girls on the Internet or in MMOs".
But here's a sure-fire way to get me mad:
Report me as a botter.
I had that happen to me just now. Luckily I managed to type in the verification code in time, and got this:
The gray text in the chat box shows that I have successfully verified my identity as an actual player and not as a bot. The incident took place around 1040 Singapore time, in Channel 1 of the Prison de Joaquin, The Mohrgus.
DON'T try me, guys.
The following post has elements of indignation, irony, sarcasm, and frustration.
Granado Espada, Cervantes server, anywhere from 2am-onwards. It is past midnight in the Philippines and the lonely roosters warm up their crows in order to start waking people up for school and work.
If you're still awake, then you're likely to be quietly leveling somewhere, hoping to get a chance at some good drops and some serious EXP.
And then, the outrage begins to assault your eyes.
Server broadcasts full of capslock!of!rage and the word "ASA" scroll up on your user interface; people abuse the "@" in order to type out insults; too much Filipino appears on the broadcasts, and by God I'm not talking about polite language at all.
Certain members of certain factions in Cervantes are starting to take their toll on my nerves.
It's these people who make me sick, and violently apprehensive to reveal that I, too, am from the Philippines, out of fears that other people will lump me in with the tiny-minded griefers simply because of my nationality.
I could name names here, but let me just say it involves certain loud-mouthed players from a few all-Pinoy factions. They seem to spend an inordinate amount of time calling each other out with reams of [uncreative] insults, a never-ending game of the [dreary] dozens that you can almost set your clock by.
There's this guy who seems to be actively competing for the title of "biggest griefer" in all of Cervantes, and his nearest competition are actually the members of his own faction. They PK people left, right and center and then boast to the server of such claimed kills, taking even more pleasure out of deriding others.
Anyone who makes the mistake of responding to them on their own terms - i.e. in the same boorish language - is in turn targeted for repeated PK.
Anyone who makes the even larger mistake of winning - and then calling them out on losing - becomes the target of concentrated verbal abuse all over the server, often in the form of the above-mentioned server broadcasts.
Given it's 2,000 vis a pop, these guys apparently like to waste their money playing these silly little verbal games of one-upmanship, taunting each other all over the Cervantes airwaves, recycling the same old insults over and over again.
No one can even get past the childish words to craft gems of insult; I've never even seen anything that approaches, at least, the amusement afforded by the classic
I fart in your general direction! Your father was a hamster and your mother smelt of elderberries!
[gratuitous Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference]
Given this ignominious situation, I feel much like this,
wonder where the "Facepalm" pose is, and feel very reluctant to say I'm from the Philippines.
These guys went to One Esplanade hoping for fistfights with rival factions, for chrissakes.
I'm starting to think I should find a way to take out the left-side information display on my user interface, so that when I turn off floating text as well, I will never have to watch this inanity ever again.
***
Just a reminder to all: the RNPCs Are Love blog contest will continue until midnight tomorrow, 27 September, and I'll draw and announce the winner on Friday, 28 September.
To join the blog contest, simply comment about your most favorite RNPC in all of Granado Espada here: ♥♥RNPCs Are Love♥♥.
Join now and stand a chance to win a pair of Divine Angel Wings.
Quick refresher course in Granado Espada politeness, coming right up!!!
Okay, here's hoping that you, the reader, at least took a peek at that linked post. It's not even shameless self-promotion or an attempt to get people to read my other entries. I'm just saying, it's an impetus to the subject at hand today - that is, being civil in Granado Espada.
~meditation begins~
The word civil can mean any of the following:
1. of or relating to a citizen or citizens *
2. of ordinary community life as distinguished from the military or the ecclesiastical [i.e., not of the armed forces or of the religious groups]
3. civilized [as in, to raise (a society) to an advanced stage of development, or to educate in manners] *
4. not rude; polite *
[from the American Heritage Dictionary]
The three definitions marked with stars are the ones we kind of need to reflect on right now.
With the IAH-mediated release of Granado Espada now in its commercial phase, the developers must be hoping to attract more players to begin exploring this New World with such promotions as the launch parties, the item mall, and the many unique features of the game. It is thus their responsibility to make sure that all of the game's features are fully optimized and working, and to follow up complaints and/or concerns with alacrity and sensitivity.
Do we as players have any corresponding responsibilities to the game? I believe the answer is a big, resounding Yes. It is our responsibility to present ourselves, the players, as people who welcome those who are new to the game, who help each other out, and, in many cases, stay civil even when the game hosts such features as Colony Wars and the Baron mode.
Over the past few nights while I've been grinding my NineMoons family in Cervantes, I've been witnessing some very non-civil behavior from certain players. By non-civil, I mean contrary to the definitions cited above, and in some cases, contrary as well to the general rules of online etiquette that I referenced in the post I linked at the beginning of this meditation.
Players who routinely kill-steal other players - who are, in some instances, actually at the keyboard instead of being AFK. Players who taunt other players extensively, even to the extent of typing out obscenities - and finding means around the filters to do so.
Other than these in-game anomalies, there are also the taunts and evil words being bandied about in some Granado Espada players' blogs. The victimized blogs installed a tagbox code primarily so that they could interact with their readers at a moment's notice, but the tagboxes are being vandalized and spammed. Some of those being hit were spammed precisely because they had just been spotlighted by other members of the player community.
In this instance I'll freely admit that my tagbox has been trolled several times.
Might I be so bold as to say, people who act in these non-civil ways are griefing the other members of the community? Griefing in this case would refer to its definition of playing the game simply to cause grief to other players through harassment. It could also be extended to the practice of trolling other people's fan sites and blogs, as these actions also cause grief to the owners / webmasters.
[See Wikipedia for an extended discussion of the term.]
The more important question now might be, what can we do against these griefers?
The community as a whole has the power to act upon these griefers - a power that is both a right and a responsibility. We're all going to have to face this problem sometime.
~meditation ends~
The good: the NineMoons family on Cervantes has leveled up enough to move to Jezebel Glen.
Family status: Aurana [First Aid / Fortitudo] 30, Tuon [Hack and Slash] 29, Chimal [Psychokinesis] 29.
The bad: I don't have screenshots of the actual monsters to prove it, but people are telling me that this is happening not only in Tetra but also in Porto Bello, in Cervantes server.
Just what, I wonder, were the players who unleashed a Victor [Lv. 6x] in Tetra Golden Road Channel 2, AND a Thoroctomy [Lv. 100 WTF?] in Tetra Golden Road Channel 1, thinking? Good grief, if that's not griefing, I will never know what "griefing" IS.
The just plain nutters: the NineMoons family on Cervantes has a little fun with poses.
This first pose is called, apparently, "An Error Gesture", or something.
And, yes, the classic V for Victory we all know, love, and most likely abuse.
***
Happy Vesak Day to all ^^
