GAME! November 2008 Feature: Granado Espada Gamer Girls In The Spotlight

Okay, I managed to make decent scans of the GAME! November issue - well, at least just the pages for the GE Gamer Girls Season 1 feature. So here are the JPEG versions.


Page 1, the title page for the feature.


Page 2 of the feature.


Page 3, the last page of the feature.

Click on the JPEGs to be able to read the text. They should be large enough that the article can be easily read.

Enjoy the article ^^ For the upcoming Dec-Jan issue, I contributed a story about the Black Party event that marked the first anniversary of Granado Espada in the Philippines, as well as a report on the Server Merge - so please watch out for that one, too.

GAME! November 2008 issue is out!

This one is for all of the Granado Espada Gamer Girls - and especially those from the Philippines!

Never mind the main image; what you're looking for is in the bottom-left corner!



See the list of featured articles near the bottom? Check out the third entry on that list: Granado Espada Gamer Girls. That's right, you can now read the full article on the GE Gamer Girls Season 1 initiative - the same article I excerpted in this post!

Too bad I wasn't able to cover everyone. The article was set for deadline early in September, so I couldn't complete the list of Gamer Girls.

I owe someone scans of the pages where the article appeared.....

After the Merge: The Two Servers of SEA/ANZ Granado Espada

To honor one of the traditions I've started on this blog, here now is a piece on Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn and Johann Sebastian Bach, the namesakes of the new, post-Server Merge "worlds" of SEA/ANZ Granado Espada.

The facts of Rembrandt and Bach's lives were sourced mainly from Wikipedia. The videos of musical performances came from various YouTube videos and will be properly credited as they are introduced. The images of Rembrandt's work were also sourced from Wikipedia.

Previous Entry:

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

***

After the Server Merge took place in SEA/ANZ Granado Espada, the original five servers have been compressed to two: the PK realms of Cervantes, Caravaggio, and Vivaldi were merged into Bach; the non-PK realms of Carracci and Pachelbel were merged into Rembrandt.

The previous five servers were named after just a handful of the top men of the Baroque Era: Cervantes, author of the masterpiece Don Quixote; Carracci, the paragon of Italian painters of the Baroque time; Caravaggio, the forerunner of modern painting; Pachelbel, composer of the Canon in D; and Vivaldi, composer of The Four Seasons.

The two post-Merge servers could do no less but be named after equally dominating artistic geniuses of the time - and so we have Bach, named for the man who brought Baroque music to its ultimate zenith; and Rembrandt, named for that great painter of shadow and light.


Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a German composer and organist. He created music for both the church and for secular use, composing for choirs, orchestra, and solo instruments alike. He is best known for introducing a strong current of counterpoint, a technique in which harmony is derived from the interconnection of independent strands of melody.

Among his better-known works are the Goldberg Variations, a set of 30 variations for the harpsichord. In the works of author Thomas Harris, this is one of the musical favorites of the genius, Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter.

But certainly his most well-known piece is the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. Just take a listen to the opening seconds of the videos below and you'll recognize it almost instantly.


Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565. Arrangement by Leopold Stokowski. Performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Wolfgang Sawallisch at the Minato-Mirai Hall, Yokohama, Japan, 1999.

Here's a more familiar performance.


Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565. Arrangement by Leopold Stokowski. Performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. The first segment of the 1940 Disney animated film Fantasia.

The opening of this work has been performed many, many times since, to the point where it has even become associated with Halloween and horror movies.

Edited to Add: And of course we hear a version of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor in Granado Espada itself, courtesy of S.F.A! Thanks to Palukz™ for commenting on this!

###


Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher, generally considered once of the greatest visual artists of Europe, and certainly as the pinnacle of Dutch art. It was he who taught many of the important Dutch painters who succeeded him. He is famous for his portraits of his contemporaries, for his masterful self-portraits, for his paintings of Biblical scenes, and for the monumental painting Night Watch.


Night Watch by Rembrandt.

This painting was commissioned by a musketeer branch of a local civic militia of Rembrandt's acquaintance. It was named "The Night Watch" because when it was first discovered, it had been so darkened by age that it was thought to be a night scene. It shows Captain Frans Banning Cocq leading his group of musketeers out of their quarters. The exact nature of their errand is still unknown: are they going out on patrol? Are they going to a meeting? The girl near the center of the portrait carries many of the symbols of Cocq's group, serving as a mascot in the painting.

A little respect for your server, then, no matter what it be - it's named after a great man, so live up to its name! Forward the New World!

A GE Gamer Girls Meeting at e-Games

It was, rather ironically, Blacksword who called my attention to a posting in the SEA / ANZ Granado Espada forums on the second day of the Server Merge.

[Blacksword, of course, is a guy ^^]

e-Games is hosting a Focus Group Discussion for its female gamers! This forum thread was posted by GM Phryzea, a/k/a Grantoza in Rembrandt.

So I signed up, and got the details. Which meant that I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6am - on a weekend - and run off across the city to this Focus Group Discussion. The GE group was to be accommodated during the first session [of four], and it was to start at 10am.

Who else showed up?

Attendees:
NineMoons
ryuuosha
Serpentes [a/k/a Hahaziah]
Clairemont
Hargrove
Skeffington
Niji

Facilitators:
CM Jes, a/k/a GM Amethy
CM Aethrin [okay, he's a guy, but since he's the CM for GE....]
GM Phryzea [the aforementioned Grantoza family]
GM Makadesh
GM Chromium
GM Faiga

The session was supposed to have been shared with the gamer girls who played another e-Games-distributed game, Supreme Destiny, but it turned out that the GE players were the only ones who turned up, and not all of them besides. All of us attendees came from Rembrandt; the registrants from Bach seemed to be unable to make it.

We had the discussion solely to ourselves, and we talked about how GE could be better improved. To answer the always-thorny problem of GVC availability in the country, the e-Games people told us that they were finally in the last stages of putting together the process to be able to convert their own e-Points to GE's G-points. Apparently they'll be going public with this soon, denominations and all; they were at least able to claim it'll be up by November or so.

To answer the question of having more PH events both in-game and in real life, CM Aethrin mentioned that he had already turned in a list of suggested events [likely to both his bosses and to IAH, I guess]; GM Amethy said that by 25 October they'd start an all-new provincial tour, called "Road to Domination" or something like that.

They asked us what it would take for us to cosplay at events. We all looked at each other and held out our hands in a local gesture that means "money"! They wound up suggesting a quid-pro-quo scheme: show up in our own costumes, made at our own expense - which would be compensated by in-game items. We were pretty much unanimous in asking that if we were to be given items, the items should at least have some use to us in-game....

They gave us some tokens of appreciation for showing up - Field Manuals and 20 x Adelina's Booty Searches apiece - and also raffled off some prizes, including the rare and coveted GE ID laces / lanyards, GE mousepads, and a stuffed-toy version of the Ran Online mob "Hooligan". I got a mousepad, and it has Grace Bernelli on it ^^ They also gave us posters for The Requiem.

I think at some point we asked if e-Games would be distributing the actual DVDs of the Version 2.9 installer [as shown by RCM Hrin here] - they said they would. I hope so - I'd like to get my hands on one of those!

Okay, quick pics:


From right to left: NineMoons, ryuuosha, Serpentes, Clairemont, GM Phryzea a/k/a Grantoza, and GM Makadesh. [Oops, bunny ears!]


From left to right: GM Amethy, CM Aethrin, Niji, Skeffington, and Hargrove.


Seated, from left to right: Clairemont, Serpentes, and ryuuosha. Standing, from left to right: GM Phryzea, GM Faiga, NineMoons, GM Amethy, Hargrove, Skeffington, and Niji.

At the close of the discussion, we all promised we'd get together again; GM Amethy insisted it'd be a real event next time, and not just a Focus Group Discussion.

GE Gamer Girls Rule.

Server Merge, Day 2: All-New Colony Wars Poster!

By the time you read this, the SEA / ANZ Granado Espada servers will have gone down for the infamous and much-discussed Server Merge. Now, what do we do in order to keep our collective spirits up? NineMoons humbly submits her second offering: an ode to the all-new Colony Wars beginning right this weekend!

***

All deities and guardian spirits willing, the Server Merge will end tonight at 1800 Singapore time - meaning we can all rush back in and take a look around at the new Rembrandt and Bach servers.

Server Merge means one major thing for Colony Wars: EVERYONE DUKES IT OUT from now on. It's high time we get a chance to see what happens when the biggest and best CW-oriented factions collide, and the first round of hostilities begins - we hope most mightily - on Sunday.

I offer this poster to serve as a teaser for what is about to befall the wars to claim new stakes in the New World.



I hope this serves as a fitting poster to herald what is about to come, with the long-awaited clash of the server Titans nearly upon us.

Should the Server Merge finish on time and with few glitches - well, it looks like happy days are almost upon us....

Server Merge, Day 1: NineMoons Presents Granado Espada Motivational Posters I!

By the time you read this, the SEA / ANZ Granado Espada servers will have gone down for the infamous and much-discussed Server Merge. Now, what do we do in order to keep our collective spirits up? NineMoons humbly submits her series of Granado Espada motivational posters!

***

It's a question we ask ourselves all the time: What do I do now? Well, allow me to suggest these ways of finding solutions to that immortal question. Ask yourself: What would my political leader do?

Are you a Royalist?


Are you a Republican?


Are you a Neutralist?


Be inspired, be motivated, and move forward, for victory!

***

Hope you enjoyed this entry, and please come back for the next one!

*Lights joss sticks and asks the gods to make the Server Merge go through properly*

***

Links, dribs, and drabs:

Since I was asked for the favor: Please drop into this forum thread by Tokoyoshi, who's come up with his new GE machinima story, Shattered Hearts II. Links to all parts of the story + poster in this forum thread.

Now that the "Player-Organized Events Happening In..." portion of the forums has been updated to include the Bach and Rembrandt servers, I put up the very first thread in the Rembrandt sub-forum: GE PH players in Rembrandt - let's talk here ^^. Drop in and say hi when you have a moment ^^

Friends and More at the Granado Espada PH Black Party

Previous Posts
Now, THAT'S what I call a Birthday Present!
NineMoons Marks Her 26th Birthday~!
Pictures and After-Action Report: The Granado Espada PH Black Party

[There will be pictures in this post - lots and lots of pictures! I'll be resizing them so as not to completely kill your browsers dead, but it's well worth it to wait while all the pictures are loading since they're pretty much integral to the story. In fact, as I often do for these after-action reports, the pictures and the captions ARE the story. Hope you can stick around to wait for them, since they're quite worth it.]

The single best part about going to gatherings such as the Black Party is, of course, meeting and greeting a whole lot of people, making friends, and taking photos! The honor I received this year was that now people were asking to have pictures taken with me ^^ Never had that happen to me before.


Rivendel attempts to log in to Granado Espada.


Ditto for Covenant faction leader Blacksword.


A proper picture of Sigrid and NineMoons.


Covenant faction from Carracci, take 1.

[I left temporarily because I wanted to try setting up a faction of my own, and doing the Faction Lv 51 and 52 quests. As things stand, I've had to postpone setting up until after the Server Merge.]


Nate Reclusion and Sigrid.


RoseChavez and NineMoons.


NineMoons and Whiteships a/k/a Feng Ling.


RoseChavez, NineMoons, and Santoss.



Xei and Artaxerxes.


Covenant faction from Carracci, take 2 - with CM Aethrin.

To friendship, the Power of Trinity, and Granado Espada~!

Pictures and After-Action Report: The Granado Espada PH Black Party

Previous Posts
Now, THAT'S what I call a Birthday Present!
NineMoons Marks Her 26th Birthday~!

Next Post
Friends and More at the Granado Espada PH Black Party

[There will be pictures in this post - lots and lots of pictures! I'll be resizing them so as not to completely kill your browsers dead, but it's well worth it to wait while all the pictures are loading since they're pretty much integral to the story. In fact, as I often do for these after-action reports, the pictures and the captions ARE the story. Hope you can stick around to wait for them, since they're quite worth it.]

In order to celebrate its first year since commercial launch in the Philippines, IP e-Games piggybacked onto a Globe Telecoms event, hosting a Gaming Arena area on the first floor of the SMX Convention Center, the pet exhibit center of the SM Mall of Asia. The Gaming Arena boasted about a hundred or so PCs, and was intended to host the games being promoted that day: CABAL Online, Top Speed, Dance Battle Audition, and of course Granado Espada.


The Granado Espada banner at the Gaming Arena.





PCs! Lots of PCs!

Unfortunately all those PCs wound up becoming so much dead things. How ironic that a telecoms promotion that was supposed to extol added connectivity via both computers and mobile phones wound up providing an extremely inadequate Internet connection to this whole lot of computers. The lack of a reliable Internet connection had several repercussions for the event; the biggest casualty was this:


The Granado Espada PvP go-round, and any other tournaments that the other games might have wanted to put on, was unceremoniously bricked because there was no actual connection. Too bad since the GE tourney was supposed to take place on the Test Servers! I can only hope the PvP teams found the rest of the day at least as eventful as the tourney would have been. At least everyone who registered for the tournament was given a prize ^^

There was no PvP, but there was a lot of People Meeting People, in many cases for the first time, and in a few cases after a long time! Here's one of the surprise participants at the rest of the event: Sigrid!


[With thanks to Alex Crosse who took this pretty cool candid shot of me and Sigrid talking.]


The Black Party kicked off in earnest with the Trivia Contest, hosted by Grantoza and CM Aethrin.

[The telecom company also did not provide microphones, so we had to make do with that megaphone - and that prompted several rounds of jokes about being right back in Granado Espada, what with the game having Megaphone items to talk to an entire map at once, and the Microphone item to talk to the entire server.]


Part of the crowd that hung around the stage to join the Trivia Contest. Is it any wonder they were crowded so thickly when the prizes included video cards and such?

Lucky me to win one of the major prizes at this Trivia Contest; details here.

After a break, during which this cake was revealed and eaten with much relish, Aethrin got back on stage [I hope he enjoyed his chunk of the cake!] to hand out certificates of appreciation to the GE PH bloggers for, once again, going above and beyond the call of duty to keep the community informed and up to date with the game's latest developments.

As the certificate itself says:

For [their] stupendous efforts in chronicling events, news and features pertinent to the Granado Espada community.


The first group of bloggers honored: from left to right, Fiksdotter, Blacksword, Christus, CM Aethrin, Sigrid, and Southernsky.


The second group of bloggers honored: standing, from left to right, Churvanesska, Welling, CM Aethrin, Mena, and Artaxerxes. Kneeling, well, that's me [NineMoons].

Other bloggers were called but were not around, including Ogasawara and Craeon. [Craeon, that's the second certificate you've missed....]


The fan art competition drew a few contestants, and the prizes were won by StreyCat and Serpentes [a/k/a Hahaziah].

As a parting shot at the close of the Black Party, CM Aethrin suddenly yelled, "Okay, everyone who showed up in black, line up in front of the stage!" One scrum later, people walked away carrying GE mousepads [with Pirate Adelina on them] and other random real-life goodies. Whiteships a/k/a the lovely Feng Ling cosplayer snagged a limited-edition shirt, to her joy, after she'd been unable to buy anything in her size. I also got a shirt - but was able to trade it to Blacksword in exchange for his GE lanyard!


My parting photo: the Carracci crowd what attended the event, in what will likely be the last picture of this group under that name! [Since in two weeks' time Pachelbel and Carracci will cease to exist and instead become the single server Rembrandt....]

[Next Post: Friends and more - and pictures of us eating that cake!]

NineMoons Marks Her 26th Birthday~!

Previous Post
Now, THAT'S what I call a Birthday Present!

Next Posts
Pictures and After-Action Report: The Granado Espada PH Black Party
Friends and More at the Granado Espada PH Black Party

[Multiple posts today! I'll be blogging about yesterday's Granado Espada PH Black Party in a few minutes; I just wanted to post this first, since it IS an important day and all.]

Last year my Cervantes team affectionately made fun of me for my birthday.

This year, I got a heck of a present instead: during the festivities celebrating the first year of Granado Espada in the Philippines, Mena brought me this ginormous cake!


The inscription reads, 1st Anniversary Granado Espada Happy Birthday NineMoons.

Which cake was promptly set upon by friends from the community, enough that I was only barely able to bring home just enough of a chunk to share with my partner Rosso.... ^^

Now I'm 26. Yay for another year of life! And I really want to keep going as long as I can. I hope I can keep blogging, keep playing, and keep discovering new things in this New World, as well as out in the real world!

[Next Post: After-Action Report from the Black Party! With lots of gossip and interesting tidbits....]

Now, THAT'S what I call a Birthday Present!

Next Posts
NineMoons Marks Her 26th Birthday~!
Pictures and After-Action Report: The Granado Espada PH Black Party
Friends and More at the Granado Espada PH Black Party

Here's my swag from the Granado Espada PH Black Party event today. Note carefully the small bundle of stapled papers below the lanyard:



That bundle of papers is actually a bunch of Adelina's Booty Searches codes - 10 codes for 10 searches each - making for 100 searches in all. I won it for answering the following trivia question correctly and promptly:

Q: What is the name of the crossbow-user Calyce's Veteran stance?
A: Sagitta

When I got home from the festivities I immediately used the first set of codes, or the first ten searches. Imagine my shock and surprise when, on the second search, I won the prize of 50 MORE Adelina's Booty Searches! After using the first ten searches, I'm left with 90 + 50 = 140 Adelina's Booty Searches.

I intend to use the remaining lot AFTER the server merge in two weeks' time, thankyouverymuch.

Full report from the Black Party in the morning, because I am just about to fall over from exhaustion now. I've got a lot of tales to tell and I want to do them all justice, so I hope you can wait for it.

I want to explain that certificate, of course, and the story of how I came to be in possession of the lanyard, which I've wanted ever since I first saw it during the GE PH Tribute to the Ladies.

Yes, how unimaginable that I should find myself working on my 26th birthday. And I also want to log in and make a Carracci picture in which my characters make fun of me, just like I did last year.

And, final note for tonight. I have the feeling I'll wind up having to make multiple posts tomorrow. Explanations in the morning, after I check the official SEA / ANZ GE website again for new updates involving the Granado Espada Gamer Girls Season 1.

New Musketeer Hair!

Okay, taking a break from the madness and gloom-and-doom mode we all got dropped into abruptly because of the news of the Server Merge.

If the game lasts that long - and if you have a Female Musketeer - there is a new hairstyle for you to look forward to. And I for one WILL spend to get this:

Tight Arrangement [don't look at me like that, that's what the page heading said]




Those hairsticks! That lovely air of she-just-got-out-of-bed! Those sexy sidelocks and stray strands! I swear, I am SO glad that they've decided to REALLY pretty up the Musketeer.

Now I hope they come up with an equally beautiful wig for the Wizard, as she's the last one without the new hairstyles. We already saw the Elementalist's Fairy Bob, the Fighter's new ponytail, the Scout's feathery bob-thing, and now this new Musketeer hairstyle.

You may now commence squeeing.

Sources
Original doratomo.jp page, in Japanese
The same page run through BabelFish

The latest costumes from kGE, and the banner for the GE PH Black Party!

[So, obviously, image- and link-heavy post. Please wait for everything to load.....]

From this and this at doratomo.jp, the latest eye-candy new costumes that will be coming in as part of the Version 3.0 Third Civilization updates.

I got a few pictures of the lot, and there are better ones at the doratomo links plus this thread on the SEA / ANZ GE forums.




Have to assume that there are part and parcel of the "Rose" set of costumes. Remember from here: the female fighter's costume in this series is called Rose Camellia, and the male wizard's is Blackness Rose.

Now, we're missing the following costumes in this series: Male Scout, Male Musketeer, Female Wizard, Female Elementalist. Those, we should be looking forward to in the following days....

***



And here's the banner for the GE PH Anniversary Black Party, upcoming this Saturday. Here's the linky to all the events taking place then.

Eee trivia, I really wanna join that!

A GE PH anniversary event on the 27th?

I'm still working on the feature on the GE Gamer Girls Season 1 initiative, and spent a couple of hours coming up with this graphic, which I intend to put into the article:



I'm no great shakes at Photoshop obviously, but I like the night effect ^^

***

And now for some potentially important news where the GE PH community is concerned.

I keep a tracker for Granado Espada and Sword of the New World news in one of my email accounts, so every day the service emails me the titles and relevant sentences of whoever in the world writes about, blogs, or mentions those two titles over the Internet.

Last night my tracker sent in news from a rather, shall we say, unexpected source: the blog of CABAL Online PH's Community Manager Jay. Here's the link: Globe and e-Games Live Event at SMX!

The important part is the second separated paragraph, which I quote below in its entirety.

In line with this, e-Games will also have activities for Dance Battle Audition, Top Speed, and Granado Espada- as they celebrate their anniversary.

Now, the speculation since the meeting with CM Aethrin is that the anniversary of GE PH might well take place in the last two weeks or so of September, since they've been kind of short on time to prepare. This has been somewhat boosted in the statements made by the CM himself when DeSanggria interviewed him; in particular this question and answer:

[DeSanggria:]I hear that you (or e-Games for that matter) is in the thick of hosting the GE PH anniversary this month. Are there any plans/activities that you have in mind? If so, what are those?

[CM Aethrin:]Yes, we have the activities lined up for the GE anniversary and we will communicate it to all players once everything’s settled and finalized.

So, can someone from e-Games please help the community out by releasing a few more details? It's kinda funny, we had to learn this from another game's CM altogether....

[I created a forum topic also so that we can discuss this further. Linky: September 27 GE event at SMX? Please Confirm/Deny!]

Calyce's Family Name REVEALED!

The source for this entry is RCM Hrin's latest blog post about the upcoming Version 2.9 of Granado Espada - and wow it is a DOOZY.

In that blog post, Hrin talks briefly about new maps and instances that pioneers can encounter in the next patch. More importantly, she mentions that one of the new RNPCs to become available will be none other than the game's first crossbow user: Calyce Bernelli.

I guess you think that last name is familiar? Here's proof, again from RCM Hrin:



This is apparently the new version of the interior of the Pegadilla location in the Port of Coimbra, home of the mercenaries. Calyce joins mercenary guy Gerard in his office....



That last name! Amazing! I wonder what the family relationship might be. In any case, given that we already know that Calyce's storyline is in some way connected to Princess Gabriella of Vespanola, I want to know: how the heck does Grace react, knowing the immense grudge she carries against that kingdom?

There's also the question of game mechanics: Grace Bernelli carries a very high DEX, while Calyce balances both DEX and AGI. Given this, what sort of damage can she cause compared to Grace?

Let's hope that more details surrounding the lovely crossbow-wielder pop up soon!

[Man, the two of them in Coimbra - should we expect a fight between them during Calyce's recruitment quests?]

Pictures and After-Action Report: GE PH Mini-Community Meeting

WARNING: Some pictures. Please wait for them to load, thank you.

The date: 6 September 2008, a breezy Saturday afternoon

The place: Fandom Cafe at the ground floor of the Regalia Park Towers in Cubao, Quezon City, the Philippines

[Fandom Cafe is a PC shop, a coffeeshop, and the headquarters of the New Worlds Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, click here.]

The participants: Selected members of the Granado Espada PH players' community a/k/a GE bloggers; and from IP e-Games, the new GE PH Community Manager, plus some of the GE marketing staff

The event: Granado Espada PH Mini-Community Meeting, a/k/a Meet and Greet CM Aethrin. Also, as a side-event, NineMoons's advanced birthday party


Discussions at the Fandom Cafe during the GE PH Mini-Community Meeting. That's Fiksdotter in the white shirt with his back to the camera; next around the circle are Blacksword, Donna and Joan from IP e-Games [and one of them revealed herself to be the Grantoza family!], Rivendel, Kincaid, CM Aethrin, NineMoons [me], and Rosso. Not in picture: Nate Reclusion [who took the picture], Mena [seated next to Blacksword].

One of the major topics under discussion at this mini-community meeting was the upcoming anniversary of Granado Espada in the Philippines. The game was launched in the country last year on 15 September - and that date is just about a week from now.

CM Aethrin asked for suggestions for marking the anniversary, and one of the good ones was an event to be held at the Game Frog PC shop in Ortigas, where previous events had been held with success. We also suggested side events such as a trivia contest, a PVP tourney, allied events in Visayas and Mindanao, etc.

Since the 15th is a Monday, the general consensus was that the anniversary would be marked either during the weekend of the 13th-14th, before the actual anniversary date; or on the weekend of the 20th-21st, after the actual anniversary date.

We also devoted a lot of discussion time to the need for promoting Granado Espada; we especially stressed the need for installers, posters, and ads. The IP e-Games people admitted that most of the budget for promoting games had indeed gone to the recently released CABAL Online, and the other e-Games titles had suffered as a result.

[Shocking to think that RAN Online, which had been THE top MMORPG in the country for a long time, suffered an abrupt drop in concurrent users to CABAL. Cannibalization anyone?]

A related question was the topic of GVCs in the country. G-Points, as I and the other bloggers have noted, are EXTREMELY hard to come by in the Philippines. Apparently, a means of converting e-Games's own ePoints into the GE G-Points is still under development as of this time; while it's still not in place, the need still has to be filled. We suggested making the 70,000 G-Points GVC available in the country since it DID bring greater value for money spent:

Highest denomination of GVC in PH: PHP750 = 18,000 G-Points
Highest denomination of GVC in SG: SGD59.90 = 70,000 G-Points.

Singaporean players pay roughly PHP2000 for 70,000 G-Points.
Filipino players have to pay roughly PHP3000 for 72,000 G-Points! [Four of the PHP 750 = 18,000 G-Points cards.]

Look at that discrepancy!

I also had to ask, since I was already invested in this particular turn of events, about the fate of the GE Gamer Girls initiatives. Yes, RCM Hrin has put together the current run of interviews with actual gamer girls, sponsored by a major cosmetics company. But the fact remained that it was the previous GE PH CM who started the ball rolling. CM Aethrin assured that the GE Gamer Girls would not be abandoned.

At some point, Rosso laid out the terms of how the relationship between the bloggers and the new CM might take place: the bloggers provide free publicity and put together events for the community; the CM provides news and details of events and especially support for the promotions.

Another hot-button topic was an animated discussion centering on the growing dichotomy between two of the major populations of players in Granado Espada: the players from the Philippines and the players from Singapore. Fiksdotter and Nate Reclusion, both being in an international faction, said that SOME Singaporean players were behaving badly towards Filipinos, and was there some way to deal with that?


SEATED: Front row, left to right - CM Aethrin, Grantoza, NineMoons; second row, left to right - Nate Reclusion, Fiksdotter; third row, left to right - Rivendel, Kincaid, Blacksword. STANDING: Mena.


From left to right: Nate Reclusion, Fiksdotter, Mena, Grantoza, CM Aethrin, NineMoons, Blacksword [seated], Rivendel, Kincaid.

Well, it looks like we'll all get to see each other again very soon, just as soon as the GE PH first anniversary event rolls around. Until then, happy leveling, Pioneers!

Special shout-out to Paolo Jalbuena, owner of Fandom Cafe. [He plays in Cervantes server.]

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The NEW GE PH CM!

After the indignity and utter confusion of suddenly finding out that the Granado Espada PH community was going to get a change in CMs - without any official notice, at that, just insipid wittering from the outgoing - we FINALLY find out who's taking over the position.

Welcome GE PH Community Manager Aethrin! Contact details here. Here's the avatar he's using right now:


Nice costume on the fighter there! We have great hopes for you, sir...and we hope to meet you soon!

kGE Welcomes Third Civilization with a Special Event!

The portion of the poster below comes from the original newsflash at http://doratomo.jp/~sannpomiti/info/683.html.


In order to celebrate the recent release of Granado Espada Version 3.0 in South Korea, an event called Open the premium costume treasure warehouse! has been laid on. Essentially, players with a set amount of "cash" can enter a premium "warehouse" and stand a chance to grab the loot shown in the poster - from the new Fighter and Elementalist wigs to the new costumes for Clare, Emilia the Sage, Grace Bernelli, male Wizard, and female Fighter!

[Unfortunately, the basic translation I could find for the article was not clear on what "cash" meant in the context. Are we talking about the premium points? The Feso?]

Anyway, let's take a closer look at each of the wigs and costumes available for this event!


First comes the female Fighter's Ponytail wig. I've talked about it before, and here it is again.


Next, the female Elementalist's Fairy Bob wig. Cute, eh?


For the cute cannon-toting socketing assistant Clare, her alternate costume, Fraulein.


Fans of Emilia the Sage can hope for her alternate costume, Cinneraria Sage.

[And yes, I stand corrected. I'd earlier said that the costume was for the original Emilia RNPC - it's really for the Sage version. Mea culpa.]


For the fans of the markswoman Grace Bernelli, a new alternate costume, White Event.


The male Wizard gets a new outfit called Blackness Rose.


The final costume is for the female Fighter, a sexy number called Rose Camellia.

The rest of the items up for grabs seem to range from premium dungeon entry passes to certain types of potions and miscellaneous items. The original newsflash even showed a sort of bar graph that seemed to be talking about the probability of getting the items in the premium warehouse!

Something pretty to look at during maintenance ^^