Vanguard Month 6

28.06.07 Vanguard Month 6

Well its been a hell of a ride for the last 6 months. The game we had all been eagerly anticipating, Vanguard:Saga of Heroes was released. Unfortunately even by its own developers admission it was released 3-4 months too early. The developers, Sigil, had run out of money and they needed the cash to flow. It all went swimmingly to start with, then the numbers started to drop and people began to realize that they were going to need a seriously high end PC to be able to play VG at even mid range settings. The game world felt empty, bugs were abundant, quests couldn't be completed and crashes were a constant feature of game life.

Something had gone seriously wrong.

Then came the big news, Sigil was effectively folding.

The old enemy, SOE would be buying the game and half the staff were going to get fired. After 5 years of development the whole damn thing imploded with a welter of words from Brad which were largely self serving. I spent 5 years following the development of the game. I poured hundreds of hours into supporting web sites, creating communities, monitoring message boards, working with Sigil staff behind the scenes and encouraging friends to give the game a go. I logged a butt load of bug reports, wrote up ideas when asked for them and participated in in-game feed back sessions.

Suddenly it was all gone. The game was still there but all the work was toast. I tried very hard to be angry, back in the old days of EQ I would have been, I would have poured forth invective like a waterfall. I would have dragged into my anger even people who didn't know what a computer was, let alone a virtual world.

However, I guess I'm older, uglier and at the end of the day I got what I wanted. Vanguard is fun. Its a lot more challenging than most of the games out there, its prettier than almost anything else on the market and if SOE think they can make money out of it, then it has a hell of a lot of long term potential.

Southern Armada left WoW to move to Vanguard, so I have all my old raiding mates to play with again, in other words to a large extent I have found a Home, a World we can spend years exploring.

When you have cities like New Taraganor to explore what more could you want?

So I created my Dread Knight, logged in and started killing. I had been playing a Dread since the class was introduced in Beta2, nearly 2 years. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure (even after becoming an Elder) if I was going to continue to enjoy playing the class long term, I needn't have worried. A Shadow Knight was my first class in Everquest and so far I'm still loving the Vanguard version of the class.

I did have a log of where I was when all of these screens were taken but somewhere along the line they got misplaced. The Mutated Rekk is from quite early on in my leveling career, I think I was based around Renton Keep and spending a lot of time dying while trying to complete quests which were meant to be completed by groups. Even this early in the game groups were very hard to find and the LFG tool was composed pretty much of running around zones spamming "12 Dread LFG".

This shot of the named turtle Gordaukar is also from around the same time. I was completing a quest line and he was the final Mob. This fight is held entirely underwater and to be honest he was incredibly underpowered. I think he took me about 45 seconds to kill, loot and run back to the quest giver. An impressive model tho considering this is the sort of thing that you see at the very early levels of the game. To me this sort of thing is what makes VG feel empty. Its not empty plains that don't have a mob every 3 feet (Drive across the center of Aussie, you wont see anything for 1000 miles.) its mobs with no loot table.

It makes the world feel incomplete somehow, like they haven't quite gotten around to finishing it.

Another MOB from around Renton Keep. This is a Stonemaster Ettercap. There are a whole range of different types of Ettercap. This is where I began to feel the difference of Vanguard as a world from any of the previous games I had played. Each different type of Ettercap is a different class and unlike most games where that doesn't mean a lot, in Vanguard this means different tactics to fight and beat each type. Ettercaps don't just stand there and hit you, they will cast class based spells and attempt different ways to beat you, a lot like a player would.

At the end of the first 20 levels, this is Ulaa Elfbrother of Southern Armada. He is wearing amour almost entirely from the Universal Races of Thestra quests. These are quests which can be entirely soloed and I was really enjoying doing them. The rewards are great and the XP is well worth it. They were great right up until I ran into a bug which made then impossible to complete. Sigh, another bug report submitted.

At this point something happened that completely changed my game play. I got a regular group!. I was soloing in and around Renton Keep doing various quests when I teamed up with a Pally called Rocks. We hung out a bit and chatted and after a while he told me he was part of a regular Wednesday group and would I like to join them. I went into the usual, "you realize I am in Aussie", time zones speech and it turns out that half the Wednesday group were other members of SA and Rocks is applied to join, he was Cuddles the Mage when SA were playing WoW!.

At the time I joined the group we were all in the 15-20 range and thus we christened ourselves "The Teens". Initially the group was Pally, Dread, Druid, Cleric, Cleric, so we had tons of Healing but our DPS was not fantastic. Apart from off-tanking we had no CC.

The group was formed with the idea of meeting up regularly on Wednesday nights so we could run through all the quests everyone had and do some of the premiere dungeons. We started off doing Hillsbury Manor in Thestra. I thought the map of the dungeon area was really cool (although I would see it repeated later in other dungeons) . We ran through HM several times and completed every quest that wasn't broken by bugs.

Once we were finished there we moved on to the nearby Crystal Caverns, killing our way down to the lower ant caves trying to get to the Queen. We never had a problem killing anything in that area but for various reasons (namely repeated server crashes) we never did quite make it to the Queen. The Crystalline servitors and the Crystal Warders did manage to make our lives a bit difficult at times. Having 2-3 of the Servitors pop on you at the same time can make it tough with out any CC.

In between Wednesday nights I'm still doing a bit of soloing. I quite like the game balance in the late teens early 20's, with Solo quests and small group or duet quests both giving solid xp. In the downtime you can still get stuff done without having to get a full group up and running. About 40 of the Vultrix Stalkers shown below had to die in order to make the quest gods happy.


Once we began to out level the Ant Caves, we decided to hit The Tomb of Lord Tsang. Its a hell of a run from Hillsbury Manor, being that its on Kojan, but its the perfect level and we had heard there were some nice weapons to be had. The design of the place was awesome with elevators going up and down, areas where you had to jump on and off and a really well done Asian theme throughout. It feels like you might be walking through the Kyoto palace in Japan with sliding screens and beautifully painted wall hangings. Kudos to whoever designed the place.

The Mobs were pretty cool with an undead theme all the way through. I think its really at this point that we started to get our groove on as a group. The second of third run through and we are starting to figure out how each of us works and the strengths and abilities of each class. It is also at this point that Rocks (our resident Pally) also decided to swap and become Lulla, our new resident Psionicist. This was a great move as it gave us lull and CC type abilities as well as adding to our DPS considerably.

A Roaming Phantasm

At sometime during the nights of smashing our way through the undead hordes, Lulla mentioned to me that he had started the Hunters League quests north of the Gnome city of Mekalia. So, in between group nights I ran myself across to Khal and started to do the early quest lines. Initially the quests are an easy solo quest. Then you run into the undead flesh quest and that's where it all starts to get a lot harder.

At this point I suggested to the whole group that we head over to the Upside garrison region and start to do the quests. they were into it as we didn't really have any thing else on the cards and needed to level up a bit before tackling Trengal Keep. So we farmed our way through the early quests and killed lots and lots of Gauthek on the way through.



The final parts of the quests are fantastic. This whole series not only delivers some awesome gear and a fantastic weapon, its also a hell of a lot of fun. Fighting up into the Bird skull cave, killing off the council members and then pulling the named, is going to go down as one of my most fun moments in gaming. Again Kudos to whoever designed both the quest series and the Skawlra Rock chunk.

A birdie dies on the way to the Skull cave.

Once we were through the quests I took Screenies to show all the guys fully kitted out in Hunters League class amour.

Naoru Shii Cleric

Benzine Cleric

Lulla Psionicist

Zeckl Druid

Once we completed the Hunters league quests we headed up to The ruins of Trengal Keep. Its interesting how acronyms evolve. There seems to be a split between people who use TK as the short version and some who use RoTK. I seem to use both depending on how I'm feeling at the time.

Trengal Keep is a huge quest hub to the north of Renton Keep. If you are a tight group in your mid to late 20s, or in an early 30's group, I can highly recommend it. The zone itself is really fun with lots of fallen ruins, undead Orcs and huge Drakes flying all over the place. The quests lead you deeper and deeper into the Keep with really cool rambles through underground caverns and dungeons. There are several named's on the way through, from whom we have managed to get some nice upgrades and at least one awesome set of Panties for Lulla.

Named Fatboy in the courtyard

Watching the Pally pull, and Die!

Oddly enough writing all of the above has been really hard for some reason, it hasnt flowed. I guess a whole lot has gone on in my life during this period, moving countries, quitting a very long term job and then finding a new one, renting my house out and then trying to find a new place to rent myself. Its been a hell of a year so far.

I've had a number of interesting conversations with various people about VG and where it will go. One that seems to have stuck in my head was a conversation with a chap who was helping to run Ausguard.com when I was involved with that project.

We were talking about raiding and he was boasting about his Guilds uberness and how they were going to be the best Aussie raiders on his server. This was a newly formed Guild mind you, with leaders with no experience of either leading a guild or raiding. So I said the three best Aussie raid guilds that I knew about were Southern Armada, Cold Fury and Aurora Noctum. I was also thinking of including Guilds with large Aussie populations like The Hand and some of the sub guilds that have spawned from the bigger guilds into new games, like Veni Vedi Vici, but I thought that would only confuse the issue so I left it out.

Anyway, this young chap went off, he started going on about how his guild had done more content, they were further along in high level dungeons, there were more of them, they were more dedicated and played more hours yada yada yada.

I tried to point out several issues to him.
Raiding is different. Working with, behaving in, and turning up to raids week after week is simply a different proposition to logging on to play in a group. Managing and running multi group raids is completely different to being in a single group and progressing through high level content. The Guilds I had named all had history. They had all been around since early EQ and had evolved into tight, efficient, well led, dedicated raiding crews, over years of banging against high level raid encounters.

Just killing stuff in groups for the first few months simply didn't get you into the "uber guild" rating in my books.

He couldn't see it and went off again. Oddly enough not only does his guild no longer exist in Vanguard, they disbanded about 3 weeks after this conversation and he no longer plays. A classic example of uber guild burn out I guess.

I have a confession.
I have been playing with the teens group for about 8 weeks or so, we have been happily making our way through the middle level dungeon progressions and I have been having a blast!. However shortly after I started with the teens I also hooked up for a couple of dungeon runs with some very old Guildies.

Keepr, Trikkie, Sanfy and Phaithful are also playing regularly 2 nights a week, Monday and Thursday. After a couple of runs I was asked if I wanted to join them regularly. Now I don't think I have ever made any secret of the fact that I wanted to get to raid level (Raiding is coming yay!) and I wanted to be able to play a whole lot more than I have been able to up to now. Having a group is pretty much a must have for play as a tank, Soloing is possible but not a whole lot of fun.

I am now at the point in game play that I have pretty much out -levelled the teens group and Trikkies group is beginning to delve into some parts of the game that are going to require some serious dedication. (Vol Tuniel and the Swamp Quests) I really don't think I am going to be able to play with the Teens group anymore.

I don't have an alt at the right level to continue to play with them and I have been their primary tank, so I'm feeling pretty crap about it. I am trying to level a Sorceror to be able to join them but it means Lulla the Psi will have to go back to being Rocks the Pally.

Its possible the Teens may just break up, I don't know. The feeling within the group is it was always a casual group to begin with. A couple of the lads within it arent really interested in VG and would rather be playing something else (see rose colored glasses comments later) whereas the Trikkie group is a little more dedicated and I can get to raid level a lot faster.

Where will SA go at the moment? that too is a good question. A lot of people have strayed off to other games like Lord of the Rings Online. Whether they are gone permanently or they will come back once raids go live is an unknown. Unfortunately I don't think that raiding as we have known it will ever exist in a game again.

Even a lot of the old SA people have the "this game must be perfect at launch and if its not I will go elsewhere" mentality which is a real pity. I think a lot of people look back with deeply rose coloured glasses at past games and hold them up as examples of shining perfection. I have seen people comparing VG with EQ as to how "finished" they are. Ignoring the fact that EQ was 6 years old when we left, when that game came out it was horribly bugged, the servers wouldn't stay up and huge parts of the game didn't evolve till years later. World of Warcraft was the same.

I think the closest example to what could potentially happen with Vanguard is EQ2. When that game was launched it was a POS. Major surgery occurred over the next two years and by everyone's accounts it is now a very good game. In the process of managing that game to the state it is in today, SOE has evolved a series of standards and methods for the management of an MMO and for communication with their fan base. If those same standards and methods can now be applied to VG then there is an excellent chance the game will evolve into something very powerful. Will SA stay that long?. I really do not know. I certainly hope they will, everything else that's coming out in the next 12 months or so is just a WoW clone from what I have been able to ascertain.

I actually have another update ready to go as I have been playing a whole lot more recently and have a whole lot more to write about so once this goes live the next one shouldn't take much longer and I will talk about some Guild stuff then.

I will also be making the screenies a lot bigger and I'm going to stop screwing with them to reduce file sizes. If you don't have broadband by now, go and bloody get it. So hopefull the pics will be a lot clearer. Vanguard is a beautiful game and some of the Mobs and Dungeons are fantastic, I would really like to show that off.

Say Goodbye to New Zealand (Part 2)

Well its almost over.
We are only 6 days from flying out. As of 4Pm AEST I will officially be a Sydney resident. To be quite honest getting to Sydney has been the hard part, actually being in Sydney and having to find a place to live/work etc is going to be the easy bit. We have both been working enormously hard to get ready to move. If all we had to do was move our stuff to Sydney we would have been easily done in a week or so. However because we own our own house and we are planning on renting it out we have to finish the 2 major projects we started on the house before Jicki was offered the job in Sydney.

Suddenly instead of having 6 months to finish these projects we have only had 6 weeks. On top of both of those we discovered the fence was rotten down one side and large sections had to be replaced. So over the last few weeks we have:

Lifted 2000 bricks from the walkway at the back of our house. Leveled off the walkway so that it makes 3 steps down, dug-in and edged with railway sleepers, dug out several cubic meters of clay. Laid Scoria and sand to provide a bedding, relaid all the bricks.

Dug out 5 fence posts which were rotten, replaced the posts with new uprights, concreted them all in, replaced 10 meters of fence boards which were rotten. Relaid all the earth and planted new flowers.

Completely stripped the all the paint from the wood in the front entrance way. This is 100 years of multiple layers of mostly lead based paint on 4 door frames, kick plates and front door. If you are ever looking to restore wood in a home I can heartily recommend Coopers Wood Restoration System. Well worth the phone call and our entrance looks absolutely fantastic. Its still hard work to do the stripping but you will come up with a finish that will blow you away and best of all, no sanding.

Cleaned all the walls, repainted, removed the doors and had them dipped, we were going to hand strip them as well but we simply ran out of time. To do a decent job is about 6-8 hours per side and we just didn't have the spare time unfortunately. Its taken me about another 2 hours to do a really bad job fixing all the damage to the doors from the strippers. I have to oil and hang the doors and replace the locks that were removed tonight.

Cleaned, de-moulded and painted the front steps.

Organized to actually have our stuff shipped to Sydney. Gave away LOTS of stuff to friends, family and in some cases passing strangers. Sold my Motorcycle (Sob) and did lots of research on living in NSW, figured out how to pay our mortgage from another country (sort of), organized a rental agent to manage and rent our place, quit my job and after nearly 8 years that was a very hard thing to do, made sure I have some form of contact number or email address for all my friends and family, tidied all the gardens, fixed and sold my PC, went on a 4 day holiday, spent a weekend in Sydney on a research trip, thanks to Kez for driving us around all day!, researched the next bike I will buy in Sydney, unless I can get a full license, if so I will buy this beast, oh and we are both still working full time.

So its been a hell of a couple of weeks I can tell you.

What I am looking forward to is being in the same time zone as the rest of Southern Armada. Being able to log on and join up into groups, being able to go along to SA drinks in Sydney. I'm looking forward to a new Job, new things to learn. I really wanted to try and stay within APN as I have very much enjoyed my time here but APN don't have any technical services in Sydney, they are all based north of Brisbane. I interviewed for a job yesterday that I really really want. Its interesting and would give me a very good foothold into a section of the IT industry that I have long held an interest in.

Ah well, the night we get to Sydney we are going to go out to Dinner and get very drunk!.

So farewell to New Zealand for the next couple of years and Hello to Sydney!

Southern Armada Vanguard Week One

I just re read the previous post and it probably came off a little more harsh than intended. In fact it came off way more harsh than intended. The important point was that I trust the leadership of SA to do the right thing. I have been following you guys for the last 5 years. I'm not going to stop now.

*note*
I just had a chat in game with Kez and I had to explain that last post. Halfway through the conversation my PC rebooted (of course, my 5 minutes online was up). Now I have a policy, I dont re write stuff once its live. I do spend a lot of time re thinking what I am about to post and often I will put something into draft and look at it again a few days later. But once I have put it live it doesn't change. There are a lot of reasons for this, but for me it comes down to you have to stand by what you say and going back and editing something constantly just feels wishy washy to me.

However, that last post does leave me feeling like it needs a re-write. I'm not going to but I am going to add a caveat. My intention with that post was simply to make the point that there are potential issues with the new system as it stands. I stand by the examples that I wrote, I can see them being possibly divisive and possibly causing issues for some players. What I didn't emphasis strongly enough is that the Guild leadership are a great bunch of guys. they have been doing this for a long time, and in the case of Kez since pretty much day one.

I have worked my ass off to help get Ausguard.com off the ground and a large part of that was because I wanted this guild, its officers and leadership to play VG with me. I wanted you guys back in a game that I knew you would enjoy and would challenge you. I wanted to help create a community where SA could both be a part of the community and stand out from it as an example of what an Aussie guild can do, what we can achieve without having to turn into 7 day a week hard core assholes. I didn't do all that work over 18 months to turn around and screw with the leadership before the game goes live.

I have said this before but I believe that its worth saying again. The leadership in SA is easily the best of any guild I have ever heard of, worked with, been a member of or even heard rumors of. They are guys and girls who put aside their own precious free time in order to do work for the greater good of the guild as a whole. I absolutely trust the guild leadership to do the right thing. They didn't create this system to make it work just for them. Much like the Sigil decision to do away with the Official forums, I may not agree with every point they put forward for doing so, BUT I am willing to step back and give the new system support and give it a try.

I trust that if there are some things in the new Guild system that don't work, they will be looked at, examined for the best thing for the Guild over all, and if they don't work, they will be modified or done away with.

So, thats been said.

The first week of Vanguard and goddamn it I am cursed. The gaming gods appear to look down on me and whenever a new MMO is released they reach down and put the whammy on my PC. This happened last time with WoW. I moved house about 3 days after WoW was released and then had to wait for about 3 weeks before Telecom (may a curse be on them forever) could supply me with a DSL connection. Its possible that may have contributed to my feeling of disconnection from WoW in general.

This time, even tho I have been playing this game for the last year in Beta, I have developed a severe problem with reboots. I have had this random reboot problem for about 2 years. Some days its really bad and I boot every 30 minutes. Some weeks it doesn't happen at all. However with the release of VanGuard to live I have started to lock up and then reboot roughly every 7-9 minutes. I am currently spending more time waiting for my PC to finish the boot, and then logging into VanGuard than I am actually playing the game. On top of that about roughly 1 in 2 reboots results in a death for me.

60 divided by 9 = 6.6 boots an hour
4 hours of play time 26.6 boots a night
26.6 divided by 2 = 13 deaths a night, no wonder I have no cash

I am at the point where I need to start grouping to progress and with my machine in this state I simply cant. It would not be fair to a group to have me disappear every 7 minutes and then take 3 minutes to get back into the game. I have replaced every bit of hardware on my PC with the exception of the disks (I've never come across a disk failure that will cause a full hard reboot), the mother board and the CPU. I am replacing the motherboard this week and I am desperately hoping that this will cause the whole reboot problem to go away. If it doesn't I'm stuffed until I reach Sydney. I cant afford to replace the CPU as well, so I will just have to live with it. Its also possible that the fan that was supplied with the CPU is horribly underpowered and I may have a heat issue. Again cant afford a custom heat solution to experiment with to try and fix the problem.

However, having said all that this is the box I have sitting next to me desk. All in pieces all still in original packing. I am shipping this to Sydney and this will be my new PC:
Intel E6600 Dual Core 2.4GhZ (I'm going to Overclock this to at least 3GhZ, more if I can)
Zalman 9500 Custom Fan
8800GTX 720
Gigabyte DS3 Mobo
2 Gigs PC 6400 RAM
2x 200GB SATA 2
1x 160GB SATA 1
Creative Wireless keyboard and mouse.

With a few other bits and pieces that is going to be my new PC. Unfortunately I will have to wait for that to get shipped, then wait to find a new apartment, then build it, then wait to get broadband connected then patch before I can play again so I will be off-line for, at a conservative estimate, at least a month. I haven't been disconnected from the web for that long in about a decade.

Now there really isn't a lot of new stuff here. I'm only level 10. I haven't managed to get to any dungeons or really get deeply into the game yet. I would be playing a lot more if it wasn't for the reboots. As I cant really do a lot in the way of XP'ing I'm working on crafting as much as I can. Apart from losing the credit for the work order you are doing when you crash, at least I'm not affecting anyone else.

I wandered though the first 10 levels and ran into the Giant Gargoyles again. For the life of me I cant remember what these guys are called. They are funky looking beats when you are fighting them tho, they way they fly up into the sky and pounce on you from the air!.

I have probably died more at the hands of the Forest Stalkers than any other MOB due to the huge amount of reboots I have had in this zone. Not the zones fault. My POS computers fault. Where oh where is that damn motherboard.

Spiders, really really big spiders, they freak the GF out. I keep telling her that there are bigger spiders than that in Sydney, she hits me a lot :)


Finally after about 100+ deaths this is Ulaa just after he dinged level 10. Its early days for the game and for me but this is the beginning!.

Southern Armada Vanguard Week One Minus 16hours

Well its not long now. Vanguard will be released to the early purchaser crowd (of whom I am one) at 7am New Zealand time Saturday January 27th.

Southern Armada will be forming up on the Thunder Axe server not on the unofficial Oceanic server which has been organized by the affiliate site www.ausguard.com. There are many reasons for this but the primary one is contention. We don't want to be on a server with multiple other Aussie raiding Guilds, although it does make it easier to recruit it may very well make raiding a lot harder as we will be racing for raid targets against other Aussie guilds. Its a lot easier to raid if your competition is in bed. Of course this can work against us in a lot of ways as well. If the hard core US guilds have completely cleared the server ( and this did happen to us in EQ) we can end up on a raid night with no targets up to hit. Now obviously its all a bit speculative at the moment as we have little or no idea about the raid game in VG. Lots of people have thrown around a number of 24 raiders and this number has become accepted as fact. I have yet to see a post from anyone official which has said anything beyond vague references about a raid total "less than EQ" , the only rough number I have seen is 24-36. I guess we will see.

SA had an online meeting in Team Speak and Kez outlined the Officers new view for SA going into VG. It sounds to me like there is some serious discontent about the behavior of some of the membership from the WoW era. SA will now have two ranks within the membership.

Elders are those who have shown commitment to the Guild and to helping others within the Guild. These are people who show up to raid, who help out in gathering stuff for guild made components etc. They will get precedence in Raid slots and for gear.

Members are the more casual player members who don't want to or cant commit to time online and cant raid as often.

The other change is that we are having our classes picked for us. In the past the Guild has required an even spread of classes in order to progress. Often this even spread of people aren't there and you get raids with 12 tanks and 3 healers. Kez wants to sort this out to start with, so everyone has had to apply for their SA VG membership, state their 2 favored classes and the type of member they want to be (elder or member) The officers will decide who gets to be what.
Now I have been playing a Dread Knight since the class was released into the game last year. I am sure that there is a strong possibility I wont get this class as I'm sure there is at least one officer who will want to play a Dread. My secondary class choice is Monk and to be quite honest i would be quite happy with that. I played a Goblin Monk in Beta till about 15 and really enjoyed the experience. I would honestly be happy to play either class.

To be honest in my head this whole class choice and splitting of the membership feels a little premature. I can understand the officers wanting to get this sort of stuff sorted early on in the piece but I also think we really don't know enough about the game, especially the game at later levels, to even begin to make this sort of division clear and concise. I have a point to make here. Lets say that I don't get chosen to be an Elder, disappointing but fair enough, there are too many people and not enough slots. Now this means that I am free to choose my class. In that case I will more than likely choose a Dread or a Monk anyway. So I create my Dread, I level up, I join in with mini raids, I help with farming, I build myself up as a Weapon crafter, I join in the life of the guild as I would normally. I write this blog, I keep doing SA PR in and out of game etc

We get to raid level. No one has stepped down from the Elder role and I am still not an Elder despite all the effort I have put in. This means that I pretty much wont get to raid. Now raiding is why I play these games. Its what makes these games fun for me. If I am not an Elder ( and I am using the royal 'I' here, this can apply to anyone in the members position ) and I don't get raiding slots. I have one choice if I want to raid and that is to leave SA. THAT is what I don't like about this system. I don't think we will end up with a have/have not problem between Elders and Members, I do think we will end up with a potential of a lot of resentment from established long term members.

Second issue.
I have chosen my Dread, leveled him up etc and an Elder steps down. I get picked to join the ranks of the Elders ( again royal "I" ) but there is already a Dread in the Elders and it was a Cleric that stepped down. Do I HAVE to start and PL a Cleric in order to join the Elders?. I hate playing bloody Clerics, after WoW I said never again. If I can join as a Dread doesn't that blow the whole carefully laid class balance sheet out the window? and given that I can join as a Dread couldn't everybody just have chosen their classes to begin with?

Third issue.
A Cleric steps down, I have worked really hard to join the Elders but I am playing a Dread. The Guild needs a Cleric and goes outside the Guild for recruitment. Someone comes in and steps right over me from the outside, despite all my hard work. Instant resentment and I'm back to only having the choice to leave.

There was a list of Classes people were wanting to play as their Choice posted to the SA Forum and it was pretty evenly split with about 6-8 people choosing classes within each archetype. I thought it was a pretty good spread and I think that trying to come up with the 'perfect' class spread just isn't going to work.

I was talking with Anobis today and one of the things we both fondly remember from EQ and from Prexus was the SA ability of getting things done despite having completely the wrong class mix. I got asked once how many Wizzies for fast DPS we had when we beat Coirnav for the first time. The answer was only one, but we had 11 Necros. I really do understand that Kez and the Officers had a really bad experience with many of the WoW membership. But sitting at my desk listening to the TS chat the other day, I was reading the names of the people logged in and it struck me: This was the core of the old EQ raiding crew. These were the people who turned up to every raid and who worked with each other to help make the guild the best it could be for all its members. This wasn't a bunch of 14 year old wankers only out for themselves.

I'm guessing that the system will stay flexible and the officers will do their best for the whole of the Guild. I have faith in the guys leading SA and I know if a system doesn't work they will be flexible enough to rethink it.

I guess we will see what VG brings us.

Now normally I would have pictures to post but as there isn't any game to take screen shots of I will have to leave you with a picture of a Pohutakawa, the NZ Xmas tree instead.

New Zealand Christmas Tree

Week One Minus 8 hours
I'm a Dread!

Say Good Bye to New Zealand

Well, I've been back for a really long time, in fact I've been living back in New Zealand since I returned from my OE in 1996, but its time to move again. Just before Xmas 2006 my Girlfriend was, completely out of the blue, offered a promotion working in Sydney. After she came down off the ceiling we talked about it and decided it really wasn't an opportunity we could pass up. I mean how many people get offered promotions with international transfers? not very many. This was something that she had been working towards for a very long time. It's a bit convoluted but essentially, she had been working in a different division of the same company for 7 years. That division had on and off promised her the same sort of promotion, but it had been blocked by (male) persons higher up every time it was suggested. She transferred divisions about 2 years ago and this time her boss (female) suggested it, approved it and we are moving.

This sort of opportunity can't be ignored for 2 reasons in my mind. Firstly, if offered once and turned down they won't offer it again. Also, once its offered and accepted they will look at you for other roles where you need to move countries. They know that you are flexible enough to have done it once and can do it again. Secondly its very rare to be offered a transfer internationally. Effectively the company is paying us to emigrate, this is just an awesome offer.

So, the GF will hit the ground running in Sydney with an income already sorted. I need to find work (negotiations underway with an ex-boss now) and sort out some sort of income. I am told by a lot of people that I won't have a lot of issues with finding work in Sydney. However, it's always nice when other people tell you that, they aren't the ones who have to go out there and do it.

We won't be selling the house, we would never ever get back into the NZ housing market if we did that, so we need to find someone to rent our place. We had actually started 2 major house projects thinking we would have plenty of time to finish them. Now of course it turns out we have about 6 weeks to finish them and get the place rented. We are hoping to make at least 400NZ$/week for the place, the rental agents coming round next week will be able to confirm or deny that. Either way we will still need to be topping up the mortgage in NZ. I doubt very much if we can make enough rental to actually cover the mortgage payments.

I'm a bit worried about the old girl actually. I've come to really love my 100 year old cottage. She takes an enormous amount of looking after but she is a great little place. Our experience with renters in the past haunt been good with the last renter being a crack whore.

We have been looking in Sydney on the North Shore. We really like a suburb called Lane Cove and we will try to move in around that area. Of course, we have no idea what the market will actually be like in 3 months when we move but we need to get a good idea of the prices and styles of tenancies.

It will be really weird; I've been an NZ gamer trying to fit in with Aussie time zones for so long it will be odd to actually be in the Aussie time zones. No more staying awake till 2 am just to be able to play with my Guildies. I'm also going to be buying a new bike. I will probably go for the GV650 as I can buy it on a NSW limited bike license. I was planning on buying one in NZ anyway but I need a full license over here. The Aussies have a much better graduated system with options to move to bigger bikes depending on how long you have been riding and the power to weight ratio of the bike in question.