Southern Armada Beta Diary

Southern Armada Beta Diary

Well its been 6 months or so since the first of us ex-SA found each other in VG beta. It started , as it often does, in a rather innocuous fashion.

Let me set the scene.
Its the middle of winter in New Zealand and its fucking freezing. Now in NZ we get winters as cold as you get them in places like the UK, but New Zealanders have never really taken to that wonderful invention known as insulation. We build our houses entirely out of wood with only a thin wooden skin between us and the outside 0C and 60Kph winds. Insulation is for "Poofs and whinging Poms" *poke Wolfe*.

So anyway, there I am huddling in my study, leaning into the warmth generated by my LCD monitor, logged in on one screen to VG Beta 2. 0 and on the other screen to my Cisco study material. Guess which one is being ignored :), when I get a /tell from some one called Durak.
"Oi are you a kiwi from Prexus eq server?"
"yup, whos this?"
"Alltear"
"Maaaaaaaate!!"

About 5 minutes later we were sick to death of /tell and we had decided to form a version of Southern Armada on the beta Server. Now I dunno about Allty but I had no intention of joining all the beta guilds that had started to up all over the place. I was happy to wear the SA tag for 3 years in EQ and a year in WoW and had every intention of continuing. I figured I should ask permission of the powers that be so I shot Kez a quick mail asking if it would be cool if we started an SA chapter and he said go for it. So I flicked an email to a GM and within a couple of days SA was born.

As soon as I logged in with the tag I got hold of Durak and invited him. It turns out that one of the advantages of having a guild with a very long term membership roster is that we all generally use the same names across all the games we play. So very quickly, Durak, Feninine (I can never spell that right) Qualm, Red, Pinkie and myself were all happily chatting away in /gu. After a while I began to realise that there was no way I could sustain a decent beta test schedule and pass my exams so I pretty much dropped out of Beta for several months. I kept up to date with the ongoing issues of beta and logged on occasionally but simply couldn't spend the amount of time the game deserved to be a good tester.

In the meantime the guys invited a few people from outside the guild and couple of others from SA started to pop up and the numbers started to flesh out a bit. There are about 20 people in SA right now including alts. For those from EQ we currently have Roottouch as a member :) Every day there a few more joining us in the beta experience and the SA spirit grows back just a little bit more.

I have now finished my exams and I'm back in playing as much as Telecoms shitty ADSL network and a random reboot from my PC will allow me to. It actually really hard to write anything about beta because it changes so damn much. To give you a couple of examples of how much it can change, I have now been through 3 complete rebuilds of the combat system and I don't know how many incremental changes. Diplomacy has been totally rebuilt twice and so has harvesting. Each Class is now on its 3rd complete rebuild, major systems can change at the drop of a hat and be tweaked, learned and gone again by the next patch. Every patch brings new sounds, new spells and abilities, new animations, new game systems

Having said that, the game is a lot of fun. I can see myself in VG for many years to come simply because its a tough game to master. I know that many people are out their bitching about Vanguard but I honestly think most of those people think they are going to experience that first time you logged into EQ again.

lets face it, when EQ first started it was not a good game. They couldn't keep the damn servers up for longer than about four hours a week for the first month. Crashes and item loss were constant. No one had a clue how to get around, Humans couldn't see in the dark and would spend hours running randomly with a completely black screen hoping for a light in the distance. No one understood aggro and Monks spent a LOT of time dying until the players figured out how it worked.

There were no pages long in-depth analysis of game play, class interaction or why the Devs hate . Crafting was broken for about a year and SOE denied there was anything at all wrong with it. They hired an absolute fucking moron as the player community person (To this day, 6 years later, I still hate Abashi) There was NO information outside the game, no eqmaps, no eqnecro, no steelwarrior, no database driven fansites of any sort. All of that in depth stuff came later and yet people seem to have this idea that all of those sites came with the game, that they evolved full blown from the brow of Aradune.

In fact the question is not "Is this game as good as EQ, will it hold my attention like EQ did?" because depending on your personal experience with EQ and why you left, that's a next to impossible question to answer.

The best question to ask is:
Will this game be as Good as EQ?, does it have the potential to evolve and develop in the same way that EQ did.

The unequivocal answer to that question is Yes, yes it does.

Beta: What it is, what it isnt

What is Beta?

Many many people seem to be under the impression that being in a Beta is an excuse to get 12 months worth of play time in for free before anyone else can play. Many seem to think that when they logon to Vanguard for the first time they will experience one of two things:

1. A finished game with only light polishing to complete it. These people become very upset with graphics bugs, disk transfer hitching, unfinished quests etc. Generally they will post one giant "fuck you all this game sucks, you bastards lied to me all along, another crappy SOE product!." in the beta forums. They then proceed to head on over to the Fires of Heaven Boards and break NDA left and right about how crap the game is and they know cause 'they are in beta'.

2. The other type of disappointed Beta player is the one who thought that being in beta was like the WoW public Beta, again a largely finished game. These players will generally whine on the Beta forums about how its not like WOW and how WOW "was a much better game at the same point". They will complain that this game will be a complete failure because its "not like WOW" and it wont get as many people as WOW". They miss the point co9mpletely that the game isn't and never wanted wanted to be WOW.

It is unfortunately very obvious that a lot of morons have applied to play the Beta. Sigil seems to be very adept at finding them out of the tens of thousands who are registered on the Vangaurd forums.

For those who do get into the beta with the right attitude they will find the early under-pinnings of a good game. The basic mechanics are in place but there is a long way to go. There are LOTS of bugs, everything from spelling mistakes in Quests and item descriptions out to crashes to desktop with programming errors. I have had 2 characters I have had to abandon completely as they were too buggy to logon to. I spent 3 weeks with an average fps of 5-10 until they found a graphics driver bug and squashed it.

The good Beta player submits every bug they can find, I would probably average 3 bugs submitted per play session, some days more, some days less.

However, despite the bugs, the falling through the world, the flawed game mechanics, the testing of some horrible game play there are definite benefits to being a beta tester. One thing Ive been told is a benefit is "getting a head start on other players". Honestly I don't believe that mainly because I have no idea what the game will look like live. So far the Dev's have moved around the racial starter towns, major cities, dungeons, Castles etc I have little idea what the final geography will look like, although it does feel like it will start to solidify now.

It has also been said that although we may be testing the mechanics of the Game a lot of it wont be put in till they go live. We will have tested the basics, but they wont put the polish in until the final master goes gold. So there will be content in the final version that I wont have seen.






To the left you will note an Ogre. He is big, ugly and hits like a Girl. Early level damage tweaking is going on right now. At the moment you can completely breeze through the early levels with no real danger of dieing. The Ogres are east of Martok (I wrote about them in my last Blog) and are a really fun quest line. As you can see from my tag Southern Armada is live and well in Vanguard Saga of Heroes Beta. I started playing in late Beta 1.5 and almost as soon as I logged into Beta 2.0 I got a tell.
Is that Ulaa from Prexus?
I replied it was and I found a fellow SA member, Alltear. We got to chatting and I found out from Allty there were another 2 SA in beta as well. We figured what the hell and started an SA chapter.

We quickly found our numbers around 10 fairly regular players and it stayed at that level well into beta 3.0. Around that point, suddenly we had a flood of SA getting into VG and we expanded rapidly. Its amazing what people remember, Alltear started getting requests to join the guild from people outside of SA who knew our reputation from either EQ or WOW. I started to get tells from people asking;

"Is that the original SA?, the Aussies from Prexus?"

When I replied that it was, mostly they were really happy to see us still in existence and still playing as a guild. They were largely people who had had good experiences with us in various other games and were glad to see solid, quality players coming online.






The entrance to Hathor Zhi

Welcome to beta :D

Ork Warrior: Kowl Dominant
Orc Dread Knight: Cowl Darkened

First things first, when you logon to Beta you are taken through the character creation process. The Character builder is almost a game in and of itself. There is almost nothing about your character and its appearance that you cant in some way modify. Nose length, chin thickness, eyebrow width, fullness of lips, anything can be changed. If you want a fat and ugly dark elf female, you can do that, a handsome and noble Orc?, you can do that too.

Next comes the choice of Class. Now as my (rl) physical resemblance is very close to that of an Orc anyway and I prefer to be up front bashing stuff, I chose Orc Warrior and hit the GO button.

The screen goes dark and I sit waiting with baited breath for the world to appear around me. Pop and I'm in. Firstly, a nearby Goblin calls out to me that he needs aid to help free the prisoners. Looking about I seem to be on some kind of boat which has run aground. I tell the Goblin that I will help and taking his key I run to a nearby chained prisoner and using the key I release him. The prisoner expresses his thanks and starts to follow me, as I'm not sure what to do next I run back to the Goblin who originally tasked me with freeing the prisoners.

As is proper the Goblin roundly abuses me for being an idiot and tells me to get the hell off the ship and away to a fellow Orc who will be waiting on shore to help fellow such as myself who are newly arrived in this world. I run down the plank and off the ship onto the beach into the middle of a battle. Fellow Martok Orcs appear to be deep in battle with a new, unrecognised force of Orcs. I run between battling soldiers and piles of flaming debris and arrive at my destination, a gruff heavily armoured Orc trooper who gives me a sword and sends me back into battle.

Thus begins the life of an Orc Warrior newly arrived to the world of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. The graphics are lush and like nothing else in the genre of MMO's today. Screenshots simply don't do it justice as there is no sense of movement in a screen shot. In the example I gave of the entrance of an Orc Warrior, the flames leap into the night sky, the grass ripples in the breeze and the tree's sway in the cool night air. Feathery clouds scud across the night sky and the star scape is absolutely beautiful.The only thing you need to make the scene complete is the sense of smell and I'm sure that if they could Sigil would be building that into their engine as well. The depth of the imagery is awesome.

Many will compare the graphics to that of EQ2 and claim that WoW's cartoonish graphics allow them to give more detail. On the surface both of these claims look correct. That is until you get up close and walk around a toon or an NPC in Vanguard. That's when you realise that the light is playing across the surface of the armour showing each nick and cut in the armour surface. The NPC casts a shadow which changes depending on what surface it is being cast against. As you look closer you realise that there are runes and symbols etched into the surface of the armour, you can see the straps overlaying each other on the bindings of the sword scabbard. The close up detail in these models and in every piece of equipment is awesome.

The opening quests in the Orc islands lead you cleverly from site to site and up through the levels. The original quest sets are designed to take you up to at least 10th level and provide you with a decent set of armour and beginning weapons. By the time you get to your major racial city you will have a good idea of the dynamics of your class and how to play it. You will have progressed through several levels of quests and you will have seen the earliest of the monster models that have obviously been lovingly crafted by skilled artisans. There are Mob models in this game that absolutely put any other MMO to shame and those are just the ones you will see on the way to level 10.

Some of my favourite models so far are the frogs with the 6 inch long teeth, or the giant beastie that just wanders the roads of the island, the Razzenbacks in the testing caves are awesome!. The Orcs that you first meet in battle on the beach all wield swords that strongly resemble the Orc weapons from the movie series Lord of the Rings. I want one!






As I move up the levels and follow the opening quest lines I am led slowly through the lore and history of the Orcs. Who did what to whom and why, the early history, the Heroes and Villains and the great items of Orcish history. There is a Weapon called the Harvester which was wielded by the greatest hero of the Martok Orcs in antiquity, just from the description and based on the possibility of Unique weapons it already has me drooling and I'm only level 9. I have read that Sigil has discussed the possibility of one off weapons which can only be gained once per server and they seem to be setting up the lore of the game to allow for such items, or maybe the other way around. I was playing in a graveyard killing off Haarq Bugs when I was jumped by the Haarq Queen. My Girlfriend wandered in to see what I was doing, took one look at this ultra realistic bug rearing up to bite me and ran out of the room with a shriek. I think there went my chance to ever get her to play an MMO.

As I progressed I wandered across the world and finally came to the Orc city of Martok. I organised some banking and received some mail. At this point I decided I would try grouping for the first time. To say it wasn't successful is something of an understatement. Now before I get into this I want to make the following point. Before all the Sigil haters popup and say see its broken I told you so!, this is Beta and bad things can happen. I have lost at least 2 characters so far to unfixable bugs, corruption or Beta Wipe. These are the reasons why we test, so that you don't have to go through these things.

So I join up with 2 other players, a Sorceror (Make things go BOOM) and a Necromancer (Cool pets!) and we decide to help each other fight our way down into the Ogre caverns to see the Ogre King as we all have a quest which involves talking to him. As a trio we absolutely breeze through the Ogres guards and make it down to the King. The Necro runs up to the King and before we even know what's happened, the King attacks and the Necro is down. The Necro tells us he had just hailed the king and run through the quest text when the King attacked. I figured as a Warrior I would have the best chance of surviving the Kings attacks so i would give it a go. Boy was I wrong. The King and his bodyguard turned me into so much greenish paste on the cavern walls.

So I respawn at the altar just in time to see the Necro's hp dropping and his death. Bugger now we are all dead. Much like any Warrior through out History, without my weapons I am pretty much stuffed. So I begin the long run back to my corpse. As I run I am trying to sort out a CR with the other two, neither of them respond in the 5 minutes or so it takes me to get back to the Cavern entrance. Just as I get there the Sorceror leaves the group. I try to ask the Necro what is going on, but without answering me he leaves the group about 5 minutes later. Then it dawns on me, in WoW there is no such thing as a CR, players don't need to help each other or to work as a team very much as any class is more than capable of soloing all the way to the top. I think what I have just experienced is the "Every man for himself" attitude of many of the players in World of Warcraft. Vanguard is not designed as a fantasy based First Person Shooter in the same way that WoW is. In VG you will have to group, you will have to co-operate and its going to hurt a lot more if you die and cant get your corpse back. The WoW players will adapt or die and the WoW guilds will rapidly disintegrate, old school EQ, UO, Lineage 2 guilds will do really well in this game.

So my corpse is now at the foot of the Ogre King and I am naked. So I head over to an altar and decide to take the corpse summon hit (If you summon a corpse you get it back but lose XP), I summon the corpse and get told " you have no corpses in this zone". Bugger. So now I am corpseless, no Guildies to help and no one in zone. Ah well, I'm only level 10. I /bug the corpse loss, log out and start a Dread Knight.

I run through the Level 1 - 10 quests again and come out with a slightly different Toon. When playing the Warrior I got a couple of random item drops which improved him significantly. With the Dread Knight I didn't get those rare drops so the Toon is different not only in skills and abilities but in equipped items. As I am levelling I learn an interesting tit-bit. If you stand at extreme distance from the Ogre King you can hail him and complete the quest. So once I reach 10 I decide to see if I can solo down to the King, whaddaya know, I can!. So I hail him, complete the quest that got me killed last time and I have started off into an entirely new Quest thread!. The King sets all his minions to ally so I don't have to fight my way in and out of the Ogre caves each time i want to come back to him. Voila I am now an ally of the Ogres and may walk within the Ogre kingdom safely!.

The Port of Khal.

Mission Statement/Suicide Note

This man killed himself by setting fire to himself on a Chicago onramp.
Yes he was a native born American WASP. A member of Mensa. This is his requiem. A powerful piece of writing.

Mission Statement

My actions should be self-explanatory, and since in our self-obsessed culture words seldom match the deed, writing a mission statement would seem questionable. So judge me by my actions. Maybe some will be scared enough to wake from their walking dream state - am I therefore a martyr or terrorist? I would prefer to be thought of as a 'spiritual warrior'. Our so-called leaders are the real terrorists in the world today, responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden.

I have had a wonderful life, both full and full of wonder. I have experienced love and the joy and heartache of raising a child. I have jumped out of an airplane, and escaped a burning building. I have spent the night in jail, and dropped acid during the sixties. I have been privileged to have met many supremely talented musicians and writers, most of whom were extremely generous and gracious. Even during the hard times, I felt charmed. Even the difficult lessons have been like blessed gifts. When I hear about our young men and women who are sent off to war in the name of God and Country, and who give up their lives for no rational cause at all, my heart is crushed. What has happened to my country? we have become worse than the imagined enemy - killing civilians and calling it 'collateral damage', torturing and trampling human rights inside and outside our own borders, violating our own Constitution whenever it seems convenient, lying and stealing right and left, more concerned with sports on television and ring-tones on cell-phones than the future of the world.... half the population is taking medication because they cannot face the daily stress of living in the richest nation in the world.

I too love God and Country, and feel called upon to serve. I can only hope my sacrifice is worth more than those brave lives thrown away when we attacked an Arab nation under the deception of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. Our interference completely destroyed that country, and destabilized the entire region. Everyone who pays taxes has blood on their hands.

I have had one previous opportunity to serve my country in a meaningful way - at 8:05 one morning in 2002 I passed Donald Rumsfeld on Delaware Avenue and I was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people. I had a knife clenched in my hand, and there were no bodyguards visible; to my deep shame I hesitated, and the moment was past.

The violent turmoil initiated by the United States military invasion of Iraq will beget future centuries of slaughter, if the human race lasts that long. First we spit on the United Nations, then we expect them to clean up our mess. Our elected representatives are supposed to find diplomatic and benevolent solutions to these situations. Anyone can lash out and retaliate, that is not leadership or vision. Where is the wisdom and honor of the people we delegate our trust to?

To the rest of the world we are cowards - demanding Iraq to disarm, and after they comply, we attack with remote-control high-tech video-game weapons. And then lie about our reasons for invading. We the people bear complete responsibility for all that will follow, and it won't be pretty.

It is strange that most if not all of this destruction is instigated by people who claim to believe in God, or Allah. Many sane people turn away from religion, faced with the insanity of the 'true believers'. There is a lot of confusion: many people think that God is like Santa Claus, rewarding good little girls with presents and punishing bad little boys with lumps of coal; actually God functions more like the Easter Bunny, hiding surprises in plain sight. God does not choose the Lottery numbers, God does not make the weather, God does not endorse military actions by the self-righteous, God does not sit on a cloud listening to your prayers for prosperity. God does not smite anybody. If God watches the sparrow fall, you notice that it continues to drop, even to its death. Face the truth folks, God doesn't care, that's not what God is or does. If the human race drives itself to extinction, God will be there for another couple million years, 'watching' as a new species rises and falls to replace us. It is time to let go of primitive and magical beliefs, and enter the age of personal responsibility. Not telling others what is right for them, but making our own choices, and accepting consequences.

"Who would Jesus bomb?" This question is primarily addressing a Christian audience, but the same issues face the Muslims and the Jews: God's message is tolerance and love, not self-righteousness and hatred. Please consider "Thou shalt not kill" and "As ye sow, so shall ye reap". Not a lot of ambiguity there.

What is God? God is the force of life - the spark of creation. We each carry it within us, we share it with each other. Whether we are conscious of the life-force is a choice we make, every minute of every day. If you choose to ignore it, nothing will happen - you are just 'less conscious'. Maybe you are less happy (maybe not). Maybe you grow able to tap into the universal force, and increase the creativity in the universe. Love is anti-entropy. Please notice that 'conscious' and 'conscience' are related concepts.

Why God - what is the value? Whether committee consensus of a benevolent power that works through humans, or giant fungus under Oregon, the value of opening up to the concept of God is in coming to the realization that we are not alone, establishing a connection to the universe, the experience of finding completion. As individuals we may exist alone, but we are all alone together as a people. Faith is the answer to fear. Fear opposes love. To manipulate through fear is a betrayal of trust.

What does God want? No big mystery - simply that we try to help each other. We decide to make God-like decisions, rescuing falling sparrows, or putting the poor things out of their misery. Tolerance, giving, acceptance, forgiveness.

If this sounds a lot like pop psychology, that is my exact goal. Never underestimate the value of a pep-talk and a pat on the ass. That is basically all we give to our brave soldiers heading over to Iraq, and more than they receive when they return. I want to state these ideas in their simplest form, reducing all complexity, because each of us has to find our own answers anyway. Start from here...

I am amazed how many people think they know me, even people who I have never talked with. Many people will think that I should not be able to choose the time and manner of my own death. My position is that I only get one death, I want it to be a good one. Wouldn't it be better to stand for something or make a statement, rather than a fiery collision with some drunk driver? Are not smokers choosing death by lung cancer? Where is the dignity there? Are not the people the people who disregard the environment killing themselves and future generations? Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country. I will not participate in your charade - my conscience will not allow me to be a part of your crusade. There might be some who say "it's a coward's way out" - that opinion is so idiotic that it requires no response. From my point of view, I am opening a new door.

What is one more life thrown away in this sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country. I was alive when John F. Kennedy instilled hope into a generation, and I was a sorry witness to the final crushing of hope by Dick Cheney's puppet, himself a pawn of the real rulers, the financial plunderers and looters who profit from every calamity; following the template of Reagan's idiocracy.

The upcoming elections are not a solution - our two party system is a failure of democracy. Our government has lost its way since our founders tried to build a structure which allowed people to practice their own beliefs, as far as it did not negatively affect others. In this regard, the separation of church and state needs to be reviewed. This is a large part of the way that the world has gone wrong, the endless defining and dividing of things, micro-sub-categorization, sectarianism. The direction we need is a process of unification, integrating all people into a world body, respecting each individual. Business and industry have more power than ever before, and individuals have less. Clearly, the function of government is to protect the individual, from hardship and disease, from zealots, from the exploitation, from monopoly, even from itself. Our leaders are not wise persons with integrity and vision - they are actors reading from teleprompters, whose highest goal is to stir up the mob. Our country slaughters Arabs, abandons New Orleaneans, and ignores the dieing environment. Our economy is a house of cards, as hollow and fragile as our reputation around the world. We as a nation face the abyss of our own design.

A coalition system which includes a Green Party would be an obvious better approach than our winner-take-all system. Direct electronic debate and balloting would be an improvement over our non-representative congress. Consider that the French people actually have a voice, because they are willing to riot when the government doesn't listen to them.

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government... " - Abraham Lincoln

With regard to those few who crossed my path carrying the extreme and unnecessary weight of animosity: they seemed by their efforts to be punishing themselves. As they acted out the misery of their lives it is now difficult to feel anything other than pity for them.

Without fear I go now to God - your future is what you will choose today.

A Note on the EQ Raiding Series

I orginally wrote this series of raid blogs as a member of the Everquest Guild Southern Armada 2004/5. I had been playing EQ on the Karana server for about 3 years when the Guild that I had been a member of for the better part of that three year period, imploded, and I was left without a connection to most of the people I had spent all day, every day with.

At this point I decided I really wanted to see the high end raid game. In essence I was either going to quit or commit. I had spent so long in EQ I felt like I wanted to get into the "end game" and see what the deal was, see for myself what everyone was taliking about. So I looked about on the web to find an aussie/kiwi raid guild that wasnt going to require massive online time.

In my search I stumbled on the Southern Armada web site, had a good look around and after several days of thinking about it I applied to join. I transferred to Prexus about a week later and the following Blogs are my experience as a member of a high end raid guild in Everquest.

I started the blog for me, as a way for me to record my experiences and to have something to look back on. I let a few people from the guild know about it and within a couple of weeks I was getting "why havent you posted?" tells the day after a blog was due. Over the peiord of the 2 years that I wrote this, I recieved quite a lot of emails, ingame /tells and several people actually took the time to post on the SA website saying how much they were enjoying the series and my writing.

The original site where this was hosted recieved traffic from all over the world and quite a lot of it, usually straight into the next blog episode. One backpacker actually sat down in a cyber cafe in Spain and read the whole thing start to finish. I dont think I have ever been as proud of anything in my life as when I found out that that backpacker spent AUS80$ in order to read the entire continuing adventures of Ulaa the Necromancer and Southern Armada.

I think a lot of people were interested in the original blog because SA is a casual guild. It isnt one of those arrogant uber guilds who treat gaming like a job. We raided because we loved it and I was describing encounters that due to the mechanics of the game, many people, even those who had played for years, would just never be able to see or experience. It was a window into a world that was closed to many people.

I also very much enjoyed bringing to life the people and personalities of Southern Armada. SA is full of some amazing and incredibly dedicated people. My experience in EQ went from being Ok to being an absolute blast, I couldnt wait to logon and play the game every day. I would Raid till 2am and be at my desk at work at 7am twice a week for 2 years.

SA triumphed in EQ and moved on to the World of Warcraft. For various reasons I stopped playing that game, some personal, some preferential and some hardware related. I am however forever a member of SA in my head. I am currently involved with a game called Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and I am a site admin with the aussie fan site Ausguard.com I am very much hoping that as soon as VG is released SA will move to the new game and I can become an active member again.

I have now migrated these blog entries twice. I am hoping that by putting this up on one of the largest blog sites in the world this will be the last time I ever have to do this. I know they aren't all that relevant anymore as people have well and truly passed through these areas, but what the hell I still like to look at them and maybe one day they will inspire someone else to log onto a game and go on a raid.

Massively Multiplayer: A Primer Part 2: Kids

I recently received the following Email from a friend of mine;

Hey Ulaa
can you give some advice/information for parents of a child who wants to join an online guild? Rules, etiquette, things to watch out for...?

Why yes I can. Here are a few thoughts on my MMPORG experience of Guilds and their membership.

1. Reputation follows you, whether its earned or not.
For me the most interesting part of any Massively Multiplayer game is the Guild that you elect to join. When you are invited to join a Guild one of the first things that happens is that you will you recieve a Guild tag above your head.

The Guild tag is visable to all other players and indentifies you as a member of a particular organisation. How that organisation is viewed by other players in the game is a result, not only of the actions of yourself, but of all other members present and past. Like any organisation, unless its brand new, a Guild has a history, it will have enemies, friends and allies. If the Guild that you join is known for anti social actions such as Kill Stealing (KS'ing), Raid Jumping, Griefing or any of the other various actions that can be performed to the detriment of other players in an MMPORG, then regardless of whether you yourself have ever participated in any of the events, to most other players you will still be tarred with the same brush.

For example: There was a Guild in EQ (Who shall not be named) who were known as a "Zerg" Guild. They would throw immense numbers of Players at a game event, until, through sheer persistance and weight of numbers they would win. In Everquest game terms this method of play usually implies a lack of skill and dedication on the behalf of the indivdual players within the Guild. The Guild were also known generally as unpleasant players, it was always assumed that they would be unfriendly, KS'ers, Trainers etc etc.
Generally not nice people.

Now whenever I saw that Guild Tag in game I was always on my guard expecting the worst sorts of behaviour from those people, yet I very rarely had a bad experience with the individual players within that Guild, in fact many of them were friendly and highly skilled. However due to its past history the Guilds name still came with unpleasant connotations.

Now in a game such as Everquest where Player vs Player (PvP) is not a major part of game play, having a bad reputation doesnt come with many in game repercussions. In a game such as WoW, DAOC or EVE where PvP combat is a major part of game play, having a bad reputation can mean being corpse camped, it can mean people going out of their way to kill you over and over. This can most definitely spoil your game play and for children it will quickly ruin the game.
Some people actively seek to join Guilds with bad reputations and make those reputations worse, many are proud of having a bad reputation and seek to make it even worse.

Guilds being real life organisations, they can sometimes cross games and game genres. Thus you may see the same Guild name emerge in multiple different games.

People being social animals they become very attached to their Guild tag and sometimes try to have their Guilds move with them into new games. This can happen in the manner of Southern Armada or the Fires of Heaven, where the entire Guild essentially changed games. It can be that a Guild transcends any one game and has representatives in multiple games and genres such as Organisation:Drow.

Southern Armada has also sort of gone down this path with representatives of the Guild in both Everquest2 and World of Warcraft. However there is no connection between the two guilds apart from some members in both Guilds played together in EQ1. There are also Guilds that may completely disband in one game and then re-emerge in another game with no connection between the two instances except the name. Sometimes this can be a deliberate attempt to trade on a Guilds already established reputation, sometimes its just ex-membership of the original guild starting again.

Check a Guilds reputation before joining, either through playing with its membership or even just asking around on the same world shard.

2. Even a Half-Assed Guild has a Website.
Unless its only 5 minutes old (and thats possible) most guilds will have a website detailing their beliefs and policies. Find your potential Guilds website and have a good look around. The sections you particuarly want to read are the rules on player interactions, and the Guilds policies. Try to read between the lines a bit as Guild policies can range from "We dont care what you do at all" to "When you log on you must check in with an officer and obey that officer in all things forever and ever amen".

IE some Guilds are run by Hippies and some are run by control freaks.

This is also a good time to review what it is that the Guild is going to require of its players. Raiding Guilds (or those who aspire to be raiding Guilds) will often have minimum required play times. Sometimes this is just a requirement to raid a certain number of times a week, but sometimes it is a requirement to be online for a certain number of hours a week.

Something else to check is to have a look at the Guilds Forums. Every Guild has one of these as they are the best method for the Guild members to communicate with each other and for officers to post information about upcoming events. This is usually where the Guild will also have a recruitment Policy and application form. Most Guilds will also post some form of warning about "appropriate use" of language in the Guild Chat Channels (See more below).

These warnings will vary from "We allow adult language/ topics" through to "We only allow the type of language as she is spoken in the Bible" Have a good look around the Guild website for policies and belief statements.

3. Play with your Child: Understand the game they play.
Im not saying that you have to control every moment of your Childs online play, but try to sit down with the Child and if you can, play the game with them, or have them explain what it is that they do in the game. I have found that most kids love explaining the stuff they are doing in a Computer Game. The better that you understand the game that your child is playing the better you will be able to make an informed choice on whether you want them to play that style of game at all. A blanket ban on all computer gaming or completely ignoring what they do are not answers to the issue of online gaming.

When joining a Guild your child will suddenly have access to a chat "channel" that is only visible to other Guild members. This is so that Guild members can communicate across the entire physical game layout. So even if you have watched the child in the past, when/if they join a Guild sit with them again and just watch the chat channels to check out the new level of conversation.

4. Etiquette
The Eitiquette of Massively Multiplayer is not limited to only the interactions with other Guild members. Because the entire premise of such games is interacting with other people in a fantasy setting, the etiquette of the game itself will probably dictate a large part of the inter guild rules.

A. Assume that the person behind the toon to whom you are speaking is the sex of the toon.
For example, if the toon is female, assume the player is as well. Sometimes it can be very obvious due to the tone of the chat you are having, that the female Elf is in fact a real life Male, sometimes it isnt. It may be easier ( you may think ) to assume that all players are male and act appropriately. However there are more and more women involved in the MMO Genre and many of them play Male toons in order to escape from percieved in game "harassment", So you really never know.

It is not strictly speaking considered polite to ask the Real Life (RL) sex of another player unless you have known them for some time. My toon in EQ, Ulaa, was a very pretty Dark Elf, I had a number of embarassing encounters where I had to tell other players that I was in fact a male player, before their flirting went any further. I had one encounter with a young man where we had been chatting in game for some months off and on, then one day out of the blue he asked me my sex in real life. I told him and I didnt hear from him again for some weeks. I think he had been thinking I was female and learning I wasnt was something of a shock. I had never hinted or pretended that I was, but he was upset none the less.

The acronym for this kind of question is occasionally a crossover from the classic IRC chat channel question; A/S/L?

This means Age, Sex, Location and there is no obligation to answer it.

This leads us nicely to:
Always remember, there are real people on the other side of the screen. It may be a game, it may be "Fun", it may all be Fantasy/SciFi, it may all be pixels and code, but on the other end of every Character in the game is a real person. Treat them as such. Be polite and friendly, exactly as if you had just walked into a room full of strangers.

B. Do not share intimate personal information with people unless you know them very very well and even then be careful.
After a couple of months of playing with Southern Armada I met up with my Guild leader as he also lived in Auckland at the time. I am a 100KG's Male and have no problems looking after myself. However when I organised to meet him I did it in a public place with lots of people around and excuses ready in case it all became unpleasant. In my case it didnt, but if you do elect to meet someone from a game, do it publicly and do it carefully. Never share personal information like Address or Phone number in game.

Much like other public places, MMPORGs in general or public chats do not condone the use of explicit or racist comment. If you are playing a female Gnome and greet your Guild at each login with "Whats up my Niggers?!", its inapropriate and isnt going to make you any friends.

C. DONT SHOUT.
It is generally accepted internet usage that posting all in caps is considered SHOUTING. Dont do it, its annoying.

D. Dont beg.
Would you allow your child to stand on a street corner and beg for coins? Im sure most wouldnt. However a surprising number of children (and they are easily identifiable as kids) will send chat messages to high level players begging, this is usually along the lines of "gimmee Gold pleeze" or they will simply stand in a zone and shout to be given items. Not only is this bloody annoying for all other players but it defeats the purpose of the game. If I hand you a high level account with all the most powerful gear in a given game, whats the point of playing the game?. Go out, kill stuff, do quests, you will soon earn your own money and items and have fun doing it. Persistant beggars just end up on my ignore list.

Asking for help is perfectly fine and this is one of the reasons many people will join a Guild. If you cant find the place/item/monster you need to finish the quest, ask in Guild chat. Someone will either know, or be able to find you the information. Asking for help to kill a Mob or finish a Quest is also perfectly acceptable. However do remember that your guild members are not obligated to help you out. If they want to help and have the time, they will, if they dont, they wont.

E. Written english comes across very differently than spoken english.
An enormous amount of communication is non verbal, its eye movement and body language. Be careful how you write what you are trying to communicate. What may seem funny to you in your head can come across as outright rude when it shows up on someone elses screen. Think about what you just written before you hit the Enter button. In reverse, if someone writes something that you find offensive or rude, ask them if thats what they meant to say. More often then not, they just didnt manage to get the joke across in the manner intended.

5. You get out what you put in.
Like any other organisation, the more you put into the Guild, the more you will get out of it, both personally and in game. As discussed above, reputation plays a big part of the game. This applies to both Guilds as groups and Players as individuals. People will get to know you and will judge you based on the persona you project. If you are outgoing, participate in Guild chat, show up to help others when they need it, join in Guild events, post on the Guilds web boards, try to organise fun events for other players etc, you will get a lot more out of the game than if you dont participate at all.

On a wider scale, if you are known as a good player and a good person you will get people searching you out to group with, people will respond more favorably when you are asking for help. In other words if people like you and regard you as a good player, they are a lot more likely to help you out.

For some people its not the in-game participation that counts, its the out of game stuff. An active Guild web site requires a lot of support. Beyond the coding, design and layout of the site itself there is content updating and moderating and security of the Guilds web boards. I know of Guild web sites where the people who actually maintain and support the Guilds website/board are no longer actively playing any sort of game. They are still regarded as respected and active members due to their participation in the Guilds life in other ways.

6. There are assholes everywhere
This is true of games as well as life. You like to know who your kids play with in RL, so you really should know who they are playing with in Game as well. This is sort of related to 3. Play with your Child: Understand the game they play, in that its a good idea to sit with your child and learn what they are playing and who they are playing with. There will always be assholes everywhere and your child will encounter then both in game and out. In MMPORG's which involve PvP combat such people are usually known as "Griefers" or "PlayerKillers" (PK's). These are people who go out of their way to make your life miserable by repeatedly killing you for no other reason than they can.

Oddly enough most of the Griefers I have ever come across have themselves been children. They are usually unsupervised 10-16 year olds having a bad day and determined to take it out on other people. The best way to deal with Griefers is generally to get away from them. If you cant do that, then its time to put the call in to the Guild to come and help you. Most Guild members will come and help out if you are repeatedly being Ganked by someone a lot higher level than you. If that doesnt work. Just log out and do something else, play another toon or another game. Smack talk and anger just excites a griefer, log out and you have taken away his/her fun.

Thats about it for now. Feel free to leave comments or ask questions if you want to know anymore or want me to expand on something.

Remember Them

If you are able,
Save for them a place inside of you
And save one backward glance
When you are leaving, for the places the can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them
Though you may
Or may not have always
Take what they have left
And what they taught you with their dieing
And keep it with your own
And in that time
When men decide and feel safe
To call the war insane
Take one moment to embrace
Those gentle heroes
You left behind

Major Michael Davis O'Donnel
1 January 1970
Dak To
Vietnam

The future

This is disposable throw it away
This is an animal dont let it stray
That was the past so leave it behind
This is the future its all in our minds

Love

And in those words were hell divine
As if of salamander and turpentine she spoke;
instead of simple words.
As if the world were new and old at once
And pain did at last eschew the lonely and the feared and poured forth; a dawn of fire and tears
In those words the Gods did walk
Instead of simple talk
Of Love

The City

Its cold, in the morning, amidst the concrete and glass
Its cold, in the morning and here I am, sitting on my ass,
Coffee and a cigarette fill up my mind.
The City wakes up at a very early hour
comes alive quickly slowly
in a rush of light and sound and smell and power
I wander amidst tall towers and flashing lights
I smell the smells and see the sights
of my city coming back to life.

A Poem for you

The Sea rides high the waves,
Above the Sea;Clouds
flow and drift through blue void.
Seeming tho it was
Oil on webs of water.

Welcome to the Internet

This is incredibly True.
This should flash up on every copy of internet explorer as soon as you access the internet.

This is a mirror of the original, posted at Deeplight.Net. It was written by Robert "redpaw" Jung, Webmaster, managing editor, chief techmonkey of Deeplight.

Welcome to the Internet.
No one here likes you. We're going to offend, insult, abuse, and belittle the living hell out of you. And when you rail against us with "FUCK YOU YOU GEEK WIMP SKATER GOTH LOSER PUNK FAG BITCH!1!!", we smile to ourselves. We laugh at you because you don't get it. Then we turn up the heat, hoping to draw more entertainment from your irrational fuming. We will judge you, and we will find you unworthy. It is a trial by fire, and we won't even think about turning down the flames until you finally understand.

Some of you are smart enough to realize that, when you go online, it's like entering a foreign country ... and you know better than to ignorantly fuck with the locals. You take the time to listen and think before speaking. You learn, and by learning are gladly welcomed. For some of you, it takes a while, then one day it all dawns on you - you get it, and are welcomed into the fold. Some of you give up, and we breathe a sigh of relief - we didn't want you here anyway. And some of you just never get it.

The offensively clueless have a special place in our hearts - as objects of ridicule. We don't like you, but we do love you. You will get mad. You will tell us to go to hell, and call us "nerds" and "geeks". Don't bother ... we already know exactly what we are. And, much like the way hardcore rap has co-opted the word "nigger", turning an insult around on itself to become a semiserious badge of honor, so have we done.

"How dare you! I used to beat the crap out of punks like you in high school/college!" You may have owned the playing field because you were an athlete. You may have owned the student council because you were more popular. You may have owned the hallways and sidewalks because you were big and intimidating. Well, welcome to our world. Things like athleticism, popularity, and physical prowess mean nothing here. We place no value on them ... or what car you drive, the size of your bank account, what you do for a living or where you went to school.

Allow us to introduce you to the concept of a "meritocracy" - the closest thing to a form of self-government we have. In The United Meritocratic nation-states of the Internet, those who can do, rule. Those who wish to rule, learn. Everyone else watches from the stands. You may posses everything in the off-line world. We don't care. You come to the Internet penniless, lacking the only thing of real value here: knowledge.

"Who cares? The Internet isn't real anyway!" This attitude is universally unacceptable. The Internet is real. Real people live behind those handles and screen names. Real machines allow it to exist. It's real enough to change government policy, real enough to feed the world's hungry, and even, for some of us, real enough to earn us a paycheck. Using your own definition, how "real" is your job? Your stock portfolio? Your political party? What is the meaning of "real", anyway?

Do I sound arrogant? Sure ... to you. Because you probably don't get it yet. If you insist on staying, then, at the very least, follow this advice:
1) No one, ESPECIALLY YOU, will make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

2) Use your brain before ever putting fingers to keys.

3) Do you want a picture of you getting anally raped by Bill Clinton while you're performing oral sex on a cow saved to hundreds of thousands of people's hard drives? No? Then don't put your fucking picture on the Internet. We can, will, and probably already HAVE altered it in awful ways. Expect it to show up on an equally offensive website.

4) Realize that you are never, EVER going to get that, or any other, offensive web page taken down. Those of us who run those sites LIVE to piss off people like you. Those of us who don't run those sites sometimes visit them just to read the hatemail from fools like you.

5) Oh, you say you're going to a lawyer? Be prepared for us to giggle with girlish delight, and for your lawyer to laugh in your face after he explains current copyright and parody law.

6) The Web is not the Internet. Stop referring to it that way.

7) We have already received the e-mail you are about to forward to us. Shut up.

8) Don't reply to spam. You are not going to be "unsubscribed".

9) Don't ever use the term "cyberspace" (only William Gibson gets to say that, and even he hasn't really used it for two or three books now). Likewise, you prove yourself a marketing-hype victim if you ever use the term "surfing".

10) With one or two notable exceptions, chat rooms will not get you laid.

11) It's a hoax, not a virus warning.

12) The internet is made up of thousands of computers, all connected but owned by different people. Learn how to use *your* computer before attempting to connect it to someone else's.

13) The first person who offers to help you is really just trying to fuck with you for entertainment. So is the second. And the third. And me.

14) Never insult someone who's been active in any group longer than you have. You may as well paint a damn target on your back.

15) Never get comfortable and arrogant behind your supposed mask of anonymity. Don't be surprised when your name, address, and home phone number get thrown back in your smug face. Hell, some of us will snail-mail you a printed satellite photograph of your house to drive the point home. Realize that you are powerless if this happens ... it's all public information, and information is our stock and trade.

16) No one thinks you are as cool as you think you are.

17) You aren\'t going to win any argument that you start.

18) If you're on AOL, don't worry about anything I've said here. You're already a fucking laughing stock, and there's no hope for you.

19) If you can't take a joke, immediately sell your computer to someone who can. RIGHT NOW.
Pissed off? It's the TRUTH, not these words, that hurts your feelings. Don't ever even pretend like I've gone & hurt them.

We don't like you. We don't want you here. We never will. Save us all the trouble and go away.

The Middle is always behind the Edge

Microsoft, ahhh Microsoft.
They are like your Granny, nice to have around, occasionally she makes you cookies, but every now and again she opens her mouth and just plain embarrasses herself and probably you. I will explain where this is going after a little bit of a digression. I have written 2 articles as introductions to the world of the Massively Multiplayer Game.

I play MMORPG's on a daily basis and I have a reasonably good idea of what the hell I am talking about, I can write on the subject from an informed viewpoint. At one point I considered writing an article covering the language of the Multiplayer Game, after some reflection I decided not to for two reasons. The first and most important is that it's an enormous subject. The language of the MMPRG, much like that of the TXT Generation has evolved from acronyms and shortenings of words due to most people (Like me) having crap typing skills.

Thus instead of writing "I will be right back, I have to leave the keyboard as I need to go to the bathroom" a player will write something like "brb, afk for a bio" This is translated as "Be Right Back, Away From Keyboard for a Biological break". There are literally thousands of these acronyms and bits of slang. I once saw a guide to MMPORG speak that was Everquest specific on the EQLive forums, towards the end of its life it had expanded out to about 15 pages.

Here is a very basic primer to give you an idea of the type of thing involved in this new language. It is a vast and very new subject. Not even Nick Yee has done any significant research into this proto language. I don't know if the "serious" language researchers of the world simply don't regard it as worthy of study, but from someone who "speaks" this language reasonably fluently, I can state it is definitely evolving into a language very separate from its parent tongues.

The thing with online gaming speak is that it gets in your head, I actually find myself thinking in MMORPG speak. For example, if I find something funny, I will still physically smile or laugh, but I wll also think "lol" (Laugh Out Loud) to myself. I will have little conversations in my head and suddenly realize that I am actually thinking in the language of the MMPRG rather than fully articulating my thoughts in my native English.

The second reason that I didnt write anything on this subject is that the language, to an extent, is game or even Genre specific. Much of the core language is trans-game but a lot of it will evolve within a game to discuss specific aspects of that game's dynamics. Some parts of the language will work in some games and not others. For example in MMPRGs where it is possible to join a Guild type organsation the reference /GU will refer to speech made in the guilds chat channel. This is due to the use of the prefix /GU to speak in the guild channel rather than locally. In use you would see "Wow man, did you hear what johnny said in /GU the other day?"

In a Multiplayer FPS talking about /GU wont mean anything. Yet the commonly used phrase "Woot!" meaning that something good has happened (Woot I just soloed that MOB!) is used across all genre's and types of gaming. The phrase has even made its way into main stream media in places. It is claimed that this phrase evolved out of the FPS phrase "We Owned the Other Team!". Meaning that your team has decisively defeated your opponents.

On top of all of this there are the online worlds of the script kiddies, the BBS freaks, the Hackers and Phreakers, the IRC bots, web chat fans etc. It is truly a massive and in some cases disparate community, yet at a basic level they are all still able to "speak" the same base language.

The particular language dialect within the gaming community, will be different depending on whether you are playing a fantasy based MMPRG such as Asherons Call, Everquest or World of Warcraft, a more "realistic" type of game like The Sims:Online, a Multiplayer First Person Shooter like Halflife, Doom3, Unreal Tournament, Quake, a Science Fiction like MMPRG like Star Wars: Galaxies. Each game will have its own specific phrases and acronyms, as well as sharing many similarities across the Genres.

The reason the whole thing came up was a friend sent me this link on Kids online speech from Microsoft. I dug around and also found this on Teen Speak and this on Gaming Lingo. To me this kind of thing is like trying to learn the English Language from a single page of instruction written by someone 100 years ago. By the time Microsoft tries to write up a primer on this, it has already evolved well beyond them.

Ok its a way to start understanding the language, but if you ever truly want to understand your childs "L337 5p3@| <" (Leet Speak) you will have to go online and learn the language yourself.I will write up a short history of Online Languages and their evolution, as far as I understand it some other time.

Why I hate Clerics'

I have to post this. This is one of the reasons why I love Southern Armada.
This is a little post from the Oggie Tank AKA Mewkus. I did not write this but I believe it is worth keeping alive as it illustrates beautifully the Love/Hate relationship between a Tank and their Healer.

Why I hate Clerics
A little story about my first encounter with a guilded greydax. I log on late because work sux. keepr sends me an abusive tell to hurry my ass east in BoT because oreen is up. i get there and nerasa is doing his usual finesse pulls and trikkie is copping his usual beatdown from a CoD mob. Group cleric is greydax. i join and say hello. i warn greydax to keep me alive or i will hate him forever. "purple club" was the reply. great. fuck i hate clerics. anyways i grab my buffs and we rez trikkie because i let the CoD mob kill him (i love "forgetting" to taunt sometimes) and get ready for the pull. nerasa gets him solo with 4 pops standing around him (damn that boy is good). oggie charges the bastard and BANG, first hit he gets a stun proc. fuck i love my weapon setup. aggro is locked in, too easy. even trikkie landing tash in the first half second of engagement doesn't drag him away (why do chanters and shammys always cast their highest aggro spell on the fucking pull???)

watching the damage roll by. damn i kick ass. more stun procs, rage proc, this bitch is mine for aggro now. health gets low, berzerker frenzy! no need to panic, i still have a few k hp up my sleeve. down to 1 bub, ok no CH message yet. 10 bucks the fucking cleric (fuck i hate clerics) is messing with my head and doing a silent CH. they do that sometimes just to piss me off. dirith is the worst. caniella does it too. even phaith does it to me.
did i mention i hate clerics?
ok sliver of life. the bitch forgot to heal. keepr is probably too busy cybering half the server to think about using her oggiehealage5 AA skillz to pull off a last minute save. OMG! OGGIE DOWN! he's in the purple. the screen changes to view to a top down view of a crumpled oggie. the words YOU HAVE DIED flash on my screen. the formation of a string of extremely foul curses surges to the forefront of my mind and BAM! oggie is on his feet again wailing away as if nothing had happened.

stunned silence.

oggie sits back and stares in disbelief. the ranger begins to crack up. the group begins to chant "purple club, purple club" and greydax is chilling up the back with a smug look on his face as if the smartass little punk planned it all along.

first ever group with greydax. first pull. first heal cast. not just a purple club, but utterly plucked from the gaping jaws of death. i could see the grim reaper getting annoyed as i escape his dreadful embrace.

fuck i hate clerics

Guilds and Clans in Massively Multiplayer games: A Primer

With the massive expansion of the online genre happening I thought I would write a little introduction to one of the newer aspects of the phenomenon, the online "Guild" or "Clan". Guilds are funny beasts, they exist entirely in virtual worlds and tend to focus on a single virtual world or game, they inspire passion and the sort of closeness amongst their members that a few years ago would only been found on the sports field.

Also known in some circles as "Clans" or "Teams". Anyone who has ever played a game online knows what these are, for those who don't I have created this little guide. If you accept that "You don't get to choose your family but you can choose your friends" as a truism then the clan is the online circle of friends of the 21st century, also known amongst the psychological community as the "Third Place".

A Clan or Guild is essentially a group of like minded gamers who gather together to achieve a given set of goals within a game framework. Team goals can range from the more casual, but no less hotly contested goal of domination in a First Person Shooter such as Quake, or crushing the opposition in a Real Time Strategy Game such as Command and Conquer. The penultimate level of this type of competition is the more complex and on occasion heavily personal race to raid targets in games such As Everquest.

There are also "Clans" and "Gangs" in non combat online games such as the Sims where people gather their virtual avatars to hang out in virtual malls together. It seems the human social drive is a lot more powerful than was ever realized and the need to group with other like minded individuals is spilling into the completely virtual worlds. There is also a type of Guild known as "Gaming Guilds". Generaally these are groups of friends who are not dedicated to a single world or game, but instead play a variety of games while continuing their association across the genres. Possibly the biggest and most famous of these would be Organisation:Drow AKA Venom AKA Blood of the Spider. I have encountered a few of these types of Guilds including the Underground Warlords and The Syndicate. These guilds are huge and very, very hard to manage, requiring hours of unpaid work from Guild and Website admins and leaders.

The interests of such groups can range from a focus purely on the gameplay experience of their members through to being virtual gaming portals with links, reviews and subsite hosting for their members. These virtual relationships have begun to be studied by serious academics, the two leaders of which would be Nick Yee and Damion Schubert. Nick Yee studies online and virtual relationships from the point of view of an academic doing research for his PhD whereas Damion Schubert looks at them from the point of view of both a player and a professional, successful game designer. Damions site also has some great links to other sites looking at such things as Online Economies and the science of game design and management.

From the point of view of a common player a Guild offers several things. It offers other people in the game from whom you can learn the mechanics of the game, it offers people to chat with, to game with, to raid with, to achieve the sorts of things that require more than a single group to complete. Beyond even that, it can offer friendship, "mateship" and even the opportunity to meet people in real life. "In Real Life" is also commonly known as 'IRL' and the acronym will be used here from now on. In short a guild can fully flesh out an experience that even within the framework of a massively multiplayer game can be a lonely one. A good guild can help advance your Avatar and gain you respect within the game world, a bad Guild can create you a reputation that may even follow you from game to game or world to world.

There are many different types of guilds and then there are sub classes within the Types. For example within a Massively Multiplayer game that includes an element of Player vs Player (PvP) you will have Player Killer (PK) and Anti PK guilds. Good guys and Bad guys. I can only really speak for the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMPORG) genre of Guilds as that has been my primary playground for the last few years but many of the guild types can be applied across game genres. First I need to explain the difference between Hard Core and Casual gamers in relation to MMPORG's.

A Casual Gamer is someone who can log on to play anywhere from 1-20 hours a week. They often have families or commitments outside the game. They want to be able to login, achieve something within their limited playtime and log out without major penalties to themselves. The 'High End Game' is not where they are headed, they are there to hang out with friends and maybe peek timidly round the corner while the Uber Guild (See Below) is cleaning out the Dragons and/or Gods. A Hardcore gamer is someone who plays as much as they possibly can. This can range from 15+ hours a week out to 60+ hours a week. The Hardcore tend to haunt message boards and information sites. They go into an encounter knowing as much as they possibly can about that encounter. They will max level within weeks or months of a game going live and will stay up at MaxLevel for years. They are often rich within the game world as they are the first to get their hands on rare sellable items and/or spend a lot of time earning cash through tradeskills.

These players also often Multi Box ( own two or more computers and two or more game accounts and play two or more characters simultaneously. If you are playing with more than 4 PC's and Characters you are playing a "Hydra") The hardcore tend to drift into Raiding or Uber guilds and tend to be more focused on advancing their characters and in seeing new zones and killing new monsters. Casual and raiding players tend to be attracted to specific guild types, however there are no hard and fast rules for the type of Guild a player may join. A Hardcore player may join a Family guild simply to be the big fish in the small pond and be happy there.

Family Guilds
These are made up of people who are playing for the "experience" and the friendship of other players. The family guild is really there more as a chat channel for its members and to allow members to come together to help each other. These types of guilds are usually strongly represented on the so called "Role Playing" servers that are supported by many MMPORG's.

These guilds don't usually raid or aim for the "high end" of the game. They are really there for the fun. They can be made up of hardcore and casual members although the hardcore tend to move on to Raiding guilds if their needs are not met within the structure of the guild. Family Guilds will have a heavy emphasis on friendship and the mores of family life when recruiting. Such Guilds can often contain several hundred members.

Casual Guilds
The casual guild sounds a lot like the family guild but with less emphasis on 'family'. The casual guild is often made up of a small group of real life friends and is created largely for the members to be able to 'hang out' together, they are often made up of people with limited play times. You will rarely find the Hardcore player in such a Guild unless the entire Guild is made up of a small number of Hardcore IRL friends.

Raiding Guilds
Raiding Guilds are designed around the concept of the raid. Within the MMPORG genre there are several method's of joining together with other players to achieve something.
Soloing - Obviously doing something yourself
Grouping - joining with 4-6 others players
Raiding - joining up with 40-60 other players.
A Raid is often a complex scripted event where all of the members of the guild have to do their jobs simultaneously and in a proscribed manner in order to achieve a given goal. Often this goal is to do with the death of a big target such as a Dragon or Giant. Raiding Guilds often have strict rules which players must adhere to or be forced out of the guild. For example the Guild may raid 6 Days a week and attendance at least 5 raids a week is mandatory. Players in this type of guild tend to be the hardcore type.

Uber Guild
These are the Superstars of the guild system. This type of guild will have mandatory online time and raid rules. They tend to be run with a strict multi tier structure and penalties for broken rules are severe. This type of guild is pushing the boundaries of the game system all the time, they are the first to kill the Dragon and be the first into the Evil Castle. They will maintain websites where they can tell others of their accomplishments and non Uber Guilds can go to drool over the uber items the Guild has aquired for its members. The membership of the Uberguild is heavily influenced towards the Hardcore player. To make life interesting the boundaries of Family, Casual and Raiding Guilds can often blur. For example you can have a FamilyRaiding Guild that is capable of killing the big monsters without the heavy strictures placed on members in a normal Raiding guild.

Guilds are living breathing entities. They change and flux constantly with changes in membership and the needs of the guild members. You may initially join a Casual Guild that grows into a Family Guild over the years. Then the Guild may have an influx of hardcore players who want to raid. These players may attempt to steer the guild towards being a Raiding Guild. Sometimes this will work and the Guild will evolve towards its new form, more often than not the guild will split into two smaller guilds. Sometimes the Guild will disintegrate completely and two new Guilds will form, or the original Guild may continue on its way and the split Guild will take on a new name. Guild names can be passionately fought over when a guild splits with both sides claiming the 'right' to the original Guild name and all the history attached to it. Guild names or 'Tags' are proudly carried and insults to the guild name can be treated with all the seriousness of an insult to a set of Gang colors.

These are all my personal observations from many years of involvement in the MMPORG genre. I have had my share of flame wars over perceived insults to my guild. I have had Guilds disintegrate under me and helped build guilds up. It is all part of the fascinating fabric of the web. At the end of it all I am a Proud member of The Southern Armada. Don't like what I have to say or feel like insulting my Guild?. Come join me on the www.Ausguard website and you can tell me to my "face".

A Legion on the march

Marcus had always been of the belief that a Legion on the march is a beautiful thing.

This Legion, his Legion, was making slow progress through the Igroe River Valley below him. Marcus had made his way to the top of a small ridge that jutted out from the mountains enclosing the valley to the North. Without concious thought Marcus adjusted his weight as his horse pawed and neighed beneath him. His Legion, the 10th was strung out in a long line as it followed the curve of the river. They were on their way South and out of the valley, moving towards the next assignment. A Legion was always on the march, a Legion standing still was a n ugly thing, deformed,smelling and somehow congealed. A Legion on the march was a scorpion poised to strike, coiled steel strength.

On the ridge a fresh and slightly cool breeze carried the green scent of the river in an otherwise dry and arid land. The bright glitter of spear points and bare freshly sharpened metal stood out hard and fresh against the brown dust of the valley. The faint calls of horses and Nagro could be heard across the valley, protesting the weight of the wagons hitched to their shoulders. A Legion on the March didn’t travel light, everything had to travel with them from anvils to spare tack for the animals. The Legion carried all it needed to survive for months in a hostile wilderness. A Legionnaire marched with all of his cooking equipment, pots and pans, spoon, sharpening stones and abrasives to keep his weapons in trim, glues and knives to keep his armour maintained, bedroll, tent, tent pegs and hammers. Of course a Legionairre would also be waering his light armour of undershirt and cured leather. In formal combat they would also wear the heavy armour of the Legion, boiled leather and formed copper plates. A Legionairre travelled witth all of this and the most important part of his world, his weapons. No Legionairre would be without his throwing spears, his broadsword and usually a dagger or two.

Light infantry carried more spears than regular infantry and wore only boiled armour with no plate. The heavy infantry carried the massive axes known as Mank's and wore heavier steel plates. The priests of course rode in the wagons because it wouldn’t be seemly for a Priest to walk. Marcus thought it was more likely to be because Priests were simply lazy. If this were peacetime there would also be a long trail of camp followers, the women and children of the Legion, marching with their men wherever the Legion had ordered them. The woman usually walked to the rear, talking amongst themselves and planning the days meals. The children would be running all along the line of march,s howing an energy that Marcus hadn’t felt in himself for years. He envied the children their energy, their vitality, and it made the troopers a lot happier to have their families with them, not least because with their wives along they didnt have to cook their own meals. As this was to be a punitive expedition the men had left their families behind at the Legions home fort at Prem.

The first time Marcus had seen the sight of a Legion on the march he was 8 years old and it was one of his clearest memories. He could still, even now, 30 years later, recall the sight, the sound, the smell, the texture of that day. His father had taken him to market as part of an effort to teach him the ways of trading that their family had followed for generations. The market had been in the same place for nearly three centuries. Originally it had started as a gathering place for farmers outside of what were then the city walls. As the city grew and walls were extended the market found itself within the city proper and gained a place within the general commerce of the city.

Everybody came to the market, farmers and merchants to sell and buy, estate managers and slaves on the business of their masters, Matrons and their grandchildren having an adventure, young girls and boys just looking for their opposites to flirt with. The more permanent Souk traders had built themselves small lean-tos against the rough plaster of the inner city walls. Many of these traders’ buildings could almost be called proper shops selling textiles, precious glassware, pottery, spices, jewellery. There were even 2 small Ironmongers the roar of whose furnaces could be heard and felt even over the cry of the crowd and the heat of the day. The farmers would arrive daily with their produce of vegetables, leather, plants, animal flesh and every conceivable item that could be dug, pulled or grown out of the earth. They would set up in the centre of the square, paying 1 silver coin for a piece of earth big enough to lay down on. 2 silver coins was the price for a space big enough to park a wagon for a day.

The wagoneers and farmers had to have a place to put the oxen and cattle which had pulled them to the city and so the north western corner of the market had become a place for the sale of live animals, a place where, for a small fee, farmers could tie up their animals safely. Here you could buy just about every animal known to civilisation. From the common or garden domestic animals through to the rarer and more exotic only seen on the fringes of the Empire. Animals for eating, riding, flying, hunting, fighting, even fucking could be bought at the flesh market.

In the south western corner of the square was another kind of flesh market. This was the domain of the Slavers. Mostly these peddlers of man flesh were Valpurga from the North, although several Empire merchants had turned to the trade after the northern wars had created large refugee populations and thus opportunities. The Valpurga were distinct in their long purple robes and intricately tied turbans, blue-black tattoos proclaiming their tribal affiliations and their places within their societies. The tattoos covered every exposed inch of their faces and hands. Rumour had it that at the height of the northern wars there were several Empire merchants who had not been averse to creating their own refugee's if they could not find anyone willing to sell themselves, or others to the slavers dock. It was well known that the Valpurga had been raiding each others tribes to provide slaves for the Empire for centuries, but the Valpurga were barbarians and people expected that sort of thing from them. It was said a Valpurga merchant would sell the purity his own daughters to make a profit.

It was at one of these slavers stalls that Marcus had seen his first Aloi. He had been one of the very rare prisoners captured in fighting on the very southern edge of the Empire. Marcus was six when he saw him. The Aloi stood out over the heads of the crowd being at least a foot taller than his guards. He was standing alone on a display platform sweating in the sun, waiting for his turn at sale. Heavy iron manacles fastened to his wrists, feet and neck were attached by chains as thick as a mans finger, to a pole driven deep into the ground. The Slavers guards were keeping a clear space around the Alois, trying to keep the curious and the foolish out of the massively muscled reach of the man. The Aloi was nearly 7 feet tall. With every movement Marcus could see the muscles in his neck and shoulders flex beneat his black-green skin. His long unkempt hair was grey and greasy and matted. Marcus wondered if his hair was always that color or if he was as old as Marcus's Grandfather. The Alois smelled strong, he obviously hadnt washed for days or weeks and was utterly filthy.

Suddenly Marcus was sad, an old man shouldn’t be standing for sale amidst those who hated him. He should be at home beside his hearth with his woman and his children. The low forehead and deep-set eyes of the Aloi slowly scanned the crowd, the heavy lower jaw with its small upward jutting teeth opened slightly as he panted in the heat. Marcus thought he sensed contempt in the black eyed gaze and breaking from his fathers grip he started to duck through the crowd, slipping and diving through legs and between bodies to get a closer look. As he broke through the legs of the surrounding crowd and looked up, he realised that his movement had attracted the attention of the Aloi and Marcus was looking directly into his eyes. For a long moment the man and the boy looked at each other. Gleaming with sweat in the brutal sun the Aloi was magnificent, his musculature shone as if carved out of ebony, the loincloth he wore as his only clothing to cover his manhood simply enhanced his massiveness. With a roar, claws extended, sharp teeth exposed in a horrible rictus the Aloi jumped forward at Marcus. For just one second Marcus thought he was going to die. Then the chains caught with a crash and the Aloi came to a sudden painful halt. Behind the Aloi amidst the slavers guards, whips were uncurled from belts and began to snake through the air cutting and slicing. Fresh welts began to appear on the arms and back of the already deeply scarred skin of the Aloi.

The Aloi was driven to his knees with whips and clubs, but even through the pain and the savage beating, he never broke eye contact with Marcus.

Im back

Well the original plan was that I had started this blog and would continue with it. Then a friend of mine asked me to help with and contribute to www.domain-admins.com so everything I had planned for this blog I then moved to that site.

A couple of weeks ago the ISP that was hosting the Domain-Admins.com site got hacked (or so they claim) and we lost 2 years worth of work. Now thats not too bad, I can understand someone being malicious, it is after all what I spend my working day guarding against. What is absolutely unacceptable was that they had absolutely no backups.

How the hell, in an IT company who's entire existance depends on the safety and integrity of its data can you NOT have backups?. It absolutely boggles my mind.

So if I can get any of the data back and oh god I hope I can, I will be updating this blog rather than domain-admins.com. I will upload all of the old stuff here.

Off to try and see if I can save any of my data.

Guilds Part 1

Guilds

With the massive expansion of the online genre happening I thought I would write a little introduction to one of the newer aspects of the phenomenon, the online "Guild" or "Clan".

Guilds are funny beasts, they exist entirely in virtual worlds and tend to focus on a single virtual world or game, they inspire passion and the sort of closeness amongst their members that a few years ago would only been found on the sports field.

Also known in some circles as "Clans" or "Teams". Anyone who has ever played a game online knows what these are, for those who don't I have created this little guide. If you accept that "You don't get to choose your family but you can choose your friends" as a truism then the clan is the online circle of friends of the 21st century.

A Clan or Guild is essentially a group of like minded gamers who gather together to achieve a given set of goals within a game framework. Team goals can range from the more casual, but no less hotly contested goal of domination in a First Person Shooter such as Quake or crushing the opposition in a Real Time Strategy Game such as Command and Conquer.

The penultimate level of this type of competition is the more complex and on occasion heavily
personal race to raid targets in games such As Everquest. There are also "Clans" and "Gangs" in non combat online games such as the Sims where people gather their virtual avatars to hang out in virtual malls together. It seems the human social drive is a lot more powerful than was ever realized.

There are also a variety of Guilds known as "Gaming Guilds". These are groups of friends who are not dedicated to a single world or game, but instead play a variety of games while continuing their association across the genres. Possibly the biggest and most famous of these would be "Organisation:Drow" AKA Venom AKA Blood of the Spider. I have encountered a few of these types of Guilds including the Underground Warlords and The Syndicate. These guilds are huge and very very hard to manage, requiring hours of unpaid work from Guild and Website admins and leaders.

The interests of such groups can range from a focus purely on the gameplay experience of their members through to being virtual gaming portals with links, reviews and subsite hosting for their members.

These virtual relationships have begun to be studied by serious academics, the two leaders of which would be Nick Yee and Damion Schubert. Nick Yee studies online and virtual relationships from the point of view of an academic doing research for his PhD whereas Damion Schubert looks at them from the point of view of both a player and a professional, successful game designer. Damions site also has some great links to other sites looking at such things as Online Economies and the science of game design and management.

From the point of view of a common player a Guild offers several things. It offers other people in the game from whom you can learn the mechanics of the game, it offers people to chat with, to game with, to raid with, to achieve the sorts of things that require more than a single group to complete. Beyond even that, it can offer friendship, "mateship" and even the opportunity to meet people in real life.

"In Real Life" is also commonly known as 'IRL' and the acronym will be used here from now on.

In short a guild can fully flesh out an experience that even within the framework of a massively multiplayer game can be a lonely one. A good guild can help advance your Avatar and gain you respect within the game world, a bad Guild can create you a reputation that may even follow you from game to game or world to world.

There are many different types of guilds and then there are sub classes within the Types. For example within a Massively Multiplayer game that includes an element of Player vs Player (PvP) you will have Player Killer (PK) and Anti PK guilds. Good guys and Bad guys. I can only really speak for the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMPORG) genre of Guilds as that has been my primary playground for the last few years but many of the guild types can be applied across game genres.

First I need to explain the difference between Hard Core and Casual gamers in relation to MMPORG's.

A Casual Gamer is someone who can log on to play anywhere from 1-10 hours a week. They often have families or commitments outside the game. They want to be able to login, achieve something within their limited playtime and log out without major penalties to themselves. The 'High End Game' is not where they are headed, they are there to hang out with friends and maybe peek timidly round the corner while the Uber Guild (See Below) is cleaning out the Dragons and/or Gods.

A Hardcore gamer is someone who plays as much as they possibly can. This can range from 15+ hours a week out to 60+ hours a week. The Hardcore tend to haunt message boards and information sites. They go into an encounter knowing as much as they possibly can about that encounter. They will max level within weeks or months of a game going live and will stay up at MaxLevel for years. They are often rich within the game world as they are the first to get their hands on rare sellable items and/or spend a lot of time earning cash through tradeskills.

These players also often Multi Box ( own two or more computers and two or more game accounts and play two or more characters simultaneously. If you are playing with more than 4 PC's and Characters you are playing a "Hydra") The hardcore tend to drift into Raiding or Uber guilds and tend to be more focused on advancing their characters and in seeing new zones and killing new monsters.

Casual and raiding players tend to be attracted to specific guild types, however there are no hard and fast rules for the type of Guild a player may join. A Hardcore player may join a Family guild simply to be the big fish in the small pond and be happy there.

Family Guilds
These are made up of people who are playing for the "experience" and the friendship of other players. The family guild is really there more as a chat channel for its members and to allow members to come together to help each other. These types of guilds are usually strongly represented on the so called "Role Playing" servers that are supported by many MMPORG's.

These guilds don't usually raid or aim for the "high end" of the game. They are really there for the fun. They can be made up of hardcore and casual members although the hardcore tend to move on to Raiding guilds if their needs are not met within the structure of the guild. Family Guilds will have a heavy emphasis on friendship and the mores of family life when recruiting. Such Guilds can often contain several hundred members.

Casual Guilds
The casual guild sounds a lot like the family guild but with less emphasis on 'family'. The casual guild is often made up of a small group of real life friends and is created largely for the members to be able to 'hang out' together, they are often made up of people with limited play times. You will rarely find the Hardcore player in such a Guild unless the entire Guild is made up of a small number of Hardcore IRL friends..

Raiding Guilds
Raiding Guilds are designed around the concept of the raid. Within the MMPORG genre there are several method's of joining together with other players to achieve something. Soloing - Obviously doing something yourself, Grouping - joining with 4-6 others players and raiding - joining up with 40-60 other players. A Raid is often a complex scripted even where all of the members of the guild have to do their jobs simultaneously and in a proscribed manner in order to achieve a given goal. Often this goal is to do with the death of a big target such as a Dragon or Giant.

Raiding Guilds often have strict rules which players must adhere to or be forced out of the guild. For example the Guild may raid 6 Days a week and attendance at least 5 raids a week is mandatory. Players in this type of guild tend to be the hardcore type.

Uber Guild
These are the Superstars of the guild system. This type of guild will have mandatory online time and raid rules. They tend to be run with a strict multi tier structure and penalties for broken rules are severe. This type of guild is pushing the boundaries of the game system all the time, they are the first to kill the Dragon and be the first into the Evil Castle. They will maintain websites where they can tell others of their accomplishments and non Uber Guilds can go to
drool. The membership of the Uberguild is heavily influenced towards the Hardcore player.

To make life interesting the boundaries of Family, Casual and Raiding Guilds can often blur. For example you can have a Family\Raiding Guild that is capable of killing the big monsters without the heavy strictures placed on members in a normal Raiding guild.

Guilds are living breathing entities. They change and flux constantly with changes in membership and the needs of the guild members. You may initially join a Casual Guild that grows into a Family Guild over the years. Then the Guild may have an influx of hardcore players who want to raid. These players may attempt to steer the guild towards being a Raiding Guild. Sometimes this will work and the Guild will evolve towards its new form, more often than not the guild will split into two smaller guilds.

Sometimes the Guild will disintegrate completely and two new Guilds will form, or the original Guild may continue on its way and the split Guild will take on a new name. Guild names can be passionately fought over when a guild splits with both sides claiming the 'right' to the original Guild name and all the history attached to it.

Guild names or 'Tags' are proudly carried and insults to the guild name can be treated with all the seriousness of an insult to a set of Gang colors.

These are all my personal observations from many years of involvement in the MMPORG genre. I have had my share of flame wars over perceived insults to my guild. I have had Guilds disintegrate under me and helped build guilds up. It is all part of the fascinating fabric of the web.

And at the end of it all I am a Proud member of The Southern Armada. Don't like what I have to say or feel like insulting my Guild?. Come join me on the Proudmoore server in the World of Warcraft MMPORG and you can tell me to my "face".