quarta-feira, 19 de dezembro de 2012

Granado Espada - Doomsday and Fresh Starts


People, please.

Here, to get you in the January 10th mood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG7wB3G-xp0

Take a seat kids, this is a long story.
But I won't tell you how I met your mother.

This post is meant to tell how Sword 2, from GamersFirst, will end up becoming Granado Espada International, from T3Fun. Note I won't get too detail-y because otherwise this would turn into a book. Don't be naggy.

Scroll down if you are a Sword 2 player and already know all this mess, and go to the sub-title that says "The Transfer 101" to see the patch & transfer details.

Sword 2  - Granado Espada - Pheonix mode: 
Death and rise from the ashes

Resquiat in pace, Sword 2.

GamersFirst has lost their publishing license  originally given by IMC Games + Hanbitsoft. Many issues brought this upon them. On December 31st, the servers will go down, and then, the data of all players will be transferred to a new server, hosted by T3Fun company. As you readers know, I am a player from Sword 2 (The GamersFirst [G1] server of Granado Espada).

My farewell to G1. You guys have served us well for some years, but everyone knows everything exploded and now we have to let you go. Well, more specifically, IMC had to let you go.

My idea here was to make a little draw of a funeral with G1 in a tombstone and IMC carrying a bride-dressed T3Fun logo into the sunset, but I'm far too lazy to do that now, and it would be too mean to G1 to do so. Despite the loss of GamersFirst, there's no doubt every player in Sword 2 - Granado Espada is reliefed to have such a revolution, despite being so close to the end of the world. 

I personally would like to thank G1 for the fun few years. Special thanks to people like G1-Raiden, Neume, Quinzel and others who kept the game functioning so long considering the situation they were in.

What I know from the situation Sword 2 was inside GamersFirst are purely rumors, but believable rumors: With far too few staff to control the game and not enough funds to buy the patches from IMC Games, budget cuts everywhere and people being fired or relocated from one game management to another, Sword 2 (The name of the american-european server of GE) was sitting in a dusty desperate corner of the gaming industry. The forums piled with raging, bored and annoyed players who would oftenly ragequit the game after years of paying and cash shop investing.

Please no more desk flipping, remember your computers are on top of it.

So what G1 did, thanks to those and other quite dedicated people, was survive with what they had in hand  and keep the game going in a slow pace. 9 months ago a night of love brought the 8.5 patch version to the players; 1 year before that, it was the same situation. Sword 2 had fallen into a terribly slow updating cycle which would take 8-10 months for every patch, and in the meantime get players bored to death and ragequit. The population kept decreasing and the people raged harder and harder.

Enough flaming peeps, we've had it for a lifetime already.

Once upon a time, there was a forum troll.

News on the gaming world announced a permission granted to a random company to open an european Granado Espada Server. These news reached the community and made everybody panic, bringing all players to an 'THE END IS NEAR" mood. The company, Reloaded Games, was GamersFirst subsidiary and this calmed some people. However we now had fleas behind our ears and we would nto stop scratching until we got the truth.

Since then nobody heard from this Reloaded Games EU server deal again. But I'll comeback to this topic later. 

Ehmagherd, T3Fun!

Rumor, more rumor has it, there was an alt in forums who had insider information. Someone within G1's walls leaked out information that ended up posted in the official Sword 2 forums.

That thread got deleted a few hours later, but those few hours were enough to make everyone know that G1's Sword 2 was doomed. They had lost their publishing liscence and a company called T3Fun was going to take charge of everything very soon.

 This forced G1 to make an announcement regarding the transfer, much earlier than they planned to. However players had been already bothered for months, so in the end, having the word come out earlier was better for the community. I only feel sorry for whoever leaked the information. In the end he did a good thing, but some say G1 swore to find and exterminate his/her account.

T3Fun, you're my only hope.

I have been to T3Fun once, but only for like, 2 hours. When I was bored, looking for a new game to play, i ran into With Your Destiny, which happened to be hosted by T3Fun. I only realized this when I stupidly tried to register my e-mail and it said it was already registered in the website. Unofrtunately i never got to know T3F very well, because my old, crappy netbook could not handle the weight of WYD in its arms.

True Hope

Despite now knowing T3Fun, we have reasons to trust T3Fun will be good to us.

After all, this is their own game.

T3Fun is labeled as one of the developers of Granado Espada, by Hanbitsoft.

T3Fun is also the biggest shareholder of Hanbitsoft. They have bought the biggest share of the company, according to the Hanbitsoft Site itself. 

We are now under the command of one of the most powerful grips of the true Granado Espada.

The only puzzling thing is where does IMC fit here. IMC is the partner of Hakkyu Kim, and they are the creators of GE. It seems like IMC is a subsidiary of Hanbitsoft. Who truly calls the shots here is a mystery. 
It's not certain if T3Fun actually has a word on the creating of GE content, if Hanbitsoft handles any of it, or if T3Fun is simply the main shareholder that funds and administrates most of the company, while Hanbit and IMC develop the game content itself. My idea is both T3Fun and Hanbitsoft can make dibs on the ideas, but IMC excecutes them.

But this also means, to the players, that the suggestions, the costume contests, the ideas we have to share, which in the past seemed to be completely ignored, now will have a true voice and ears listening to them. It should also mean the patches and updates will no longer be neglected to us, and that we might for once get exclusive content, like KGE and JGE get.

Okay, but what is the transfer?

The biggest fear of all players with the dark, undetailed rumours of the death of Sword 2 was that we would all have our accounts, gears, families, characters, the whole wonder of pixels deleted. 


T3Fun has saved our lovely pixels by announcing they will transfer all the data from Sword 2 to their new server, like in the post i already mentioned, of G1's Transfer Announcement. With a few rules and exceptions of course. I will explain everything now, including the patch notes, the server status and how to transfer your account if you are a Sword 2 player.

The Transfer 101

I'll post as many wizards here as I want because I love them and because I can so deal with it!

I will speak of how to transfer your account before telling you of the server & patch infos you shoul've already know of, you bloody noob  for the fact it's better safe than sorry and you don't wanna lose your stuff. If you scrolled down from the top of the page to read this and the other information, you lazy bastard. 

Step 1 - The Limitations

- Families below level 5 will not be transferred.

If you have alts, rush to put at least 3 characters to level 50. That grants you Level 5 family. However I recommend you vet them for level 10, it's safer.

- Gold will not be transferred.

If you have some coins left in the bazaar shop, burn them. The premium items will be transferred, but gold will not. Vis and Feso will be transported normally, but since i'm paranoid i'm keeping all i can in White Gold Bars/Elemental Jewels and Great/Earth stones.

- You must agree to the transfer

When you login to the game normally, a pop-up window with the terms of moving will appear. You must click 'yes'. Then, login to the main Sword 2 website with your account. A pop-up will be there too. You must agree to those terms as well.

Step 2 - Create an account on T3Fun's website

A few details:

The email you use to sign-up has to be shorter than 15 characters lenght before the @ symbol.
Example: tacticsandplastics@hotmail.com would not work, because it "tacticsandplastics" has a total of 18 characters. 

Let's scratch off everything I said here about the email/account ID issues. Ramiel, the forum Admin, has enlightened the problems. Your email and ID of the T3Fun account DO NOT HAVE TO BE THE SAME AS YOUR G1/SWORD 2 ACCOUNT.

For information regarding how to transfer if you have multiple Sword 2 Accounts in your GamersFirst acc, or if you lost your email, there are some useful links below the next 2 paragraphs.

T3Fun will have a landing page for Sword 2 players to input their account data (Login + password)  on January 9th, and players will receive a confirmation email to wrap everything up. Given this, I presume the email/account ID mismatch will no longer be an issue, making the following transfer instructions trustable. But we have a lot of confused people right now, hence why I wait for my message reply to officialize things.


Ramiel, the Forum Admin, has confirmed: you user ID and your e-mail for the T3Fun account do NOT have to be the same as your GamersFirst/Sword 2 account. This was answered on December 4th however in a  20+ page thread the information was lost. He also updated some threads regaring that information.

Important T3Fun announcements and 'tutorials' of transfer:

One personal tip:

If you can, make screenshots of your important items, inventory & vault. Characters and etc too if you want. It's a type of backup you'll have to make sure all your items have been transferred. 

The Server

The Client Download is now available and includes an event that gives 3.000 T3coins free if you download and screenshot it to report everything worked fine. 

In the download, the new server name seems to be Castilla.

What we know is the 3 servers from Sword 2 - Illier, Orpesia and Bristia, will merge into one.

This gives the players plenty of contradictions. Some love it, some hate it. The main issue is the Server Time.

The new server time will be at New York Time (GMT -5)

This isn't great news for the european players and brings me back to what I wanted to mention before: the publishing contract between IMC and Reloaded Games for an European Server.

Reloaded Games belongs to GamersFirst. G1 even has a game called "APB Reloaded", hint to the company name. Now, if IMC has cut GamersFirst publishing license for Granado, this means Reloaded Games has also been cut off from such license. But there are no more official news regarding this, they had published the European Server contract negotiations on newsfeed and never mentioned it after the T3Fun transfer got out.

So, I come to believe that the EU Server x Reloaded is cancelled. But this leads to a question:
Will T3Fun have an European Granado Espada server? Or will it only be a North American server?
Will we even have multiple game servers from them? 
What of the EU players which will be put under NYT with the merge?
All of this is clouded and we probably won't know until the server(s) are up.
I'm considering to download a random game from T3Fun to have a peek on their functionality and to see their server timezones. I will probably due it in the void between December 31st (when G1 brings the servers down) to January 10th (when T3Fun server is up).

I personally love the fact we'll merge with Orpesia and Bristia (I play at Illier). I have many friends in other servers which I always wanted to play with, but Granado Espada doesn't have a login-to-server after Quarters login, AKA, your stuff and characters are stuck to your server of choice only.

P.S.: If you're an european player, don't worry, you can still play the game on the new server. The only difference is that the server time will be for North America. The download/connection is not blocked.

The Almighty Patch

T3Fun has announced which version we will be moving into. 

Rumor has it we were only going to go to the 10.6 version, which was the patch GamersFirst was looking to give us before the forum troll and the merge being announced.

However we will go even further.

The version we will get at January 10th will be...

*sound the overly extended drums*


Wait, don't panic.

Koreans can't count, or, they count in a korean way, as you wish. But infact, 10.23 is a HIGHER patch than 10.6. This means not only will we get Garden patch, Grandies, Beronif, Beatrice, Ion, Ludin, Natalie, Daria, all the tasty 10.6 characters, we will also get Montoro Castle, a bunchload of new instanced raids, and even the freshly recruitable Eva Sharon.

This puts us in a patch more advanced than Singapore GE. That's somethign that NEVER happened to the Sword of The New World/ Sword 2 server. Ever, ever, ever.

Everybody's just dieing to get into the new server already. We have been bored for 1 year now, and we'll be getting not one, not two, but FOUR PATCHES.

The Patch Notes: From 8.5 to 10.23 in 22 days

These links are patch notes from the SGE - IAH Games website. Some of these are simplified since for them the patch is quite old, but you can search to gather further and more detailed information. I don't have many good detailed links in english, sadly.

Patch 01 - 9.5 - Lucifer's Garden

Patch 02 - 10.6 - Lucifer's Castle & Montoro Finale

Now, for the 9.5 + 10.6 patch, our amazing blogger, Ashardalon (aka Starstorm) has published a compilation list with everything you need for the new characters and stances acquisition on Pioneering Granado Espada. Click Here to check the list out.

Patch 03 - 10.18 - Mary-go-round

NOT the actual patch name, I just made it up cause I don't know it.

New Chars: Mary (Marie, whatever, the maid shotgun chick), Racel, Tora.

Patch 04 - 10.23.4 - Eva Sharon & The Family Tree Buffs

Note that this information is very shallow, because only KGE has recieved this patch so far, and there's only Korean information about it, so not many translations have been made. We usually get our information from SGE for patch notes, but since we are getting a patch they dont have (MWHAHAAH) we don't have deep information. What we know is the stunning Family Tree - a specialization buff you decide upon, upgraded with family level, and Sharon Recruitment are implemented.

T3Fun is announcing the patch in sectioned posts with lot of information. Stick an eye to General Discussion pinned threads to follow the updates. So far they have published:

Dear god, what a long, handful post.

One last thing:

Contact T3Fun

If you're on despair and have doubts and questions, you can ask them to T3Fun through the forum's thread, Questions for T3Fun

Keep your eyes open because they publish some of the Q&A in separate threads in announcements, but they will answer smaller questions straight inside the main thread.

I guess that's all for now folks. Thank you for reading, and live long and prosper!

Spoils of war

Let's burn some cash!

My dreams! My shallow, material dreams!

Granado Espada Visual Chronicle

At last! It belongs to me! Well, thanks to my lovely country unholy mail service, it's not physically mine yet, but it should be, until january.

For those of you people who still have a life noobs who don't know, a Visual Chronicle is basically a concept art book. These are the first ideas for characters, monsters, bosses and maps of the game before they went into the marvellous 3D machine and became an actual game.

I've always loved the looks GE has, as i've mentioned in my last year's review of the game. As you all know i have my shallow plastic side which simply cannot play a game unless it looks good and has pretty dresses I can fondle. (God that sounds so wrong). And I love drawing, if you wnat evidence, check my deviantart page. I acknowledged the existance of this book has been about 2 years and I needed it. I just needed it. My favorite game, one of the best artwork ever and a huge opportunity to learn how to draw them accurately without staring at a screen. But there was a problem.

GE's Visual Chronicle is off-press, aka, it's not printed anymore. So those little tragic things cost from 80 to 100 dollars. God damit, that's like $200 in brazilian coins. 

But then a lovely soul on eBay - DUH! Ofc it's eBay! What else?? - had put the book on sale... for $50 -.-"
Still off my budget. 
He had opened the sale for offers [on ebay you have buy it now, bid auction and make offer for items options. Up to the seller's way] so I tried.

And he accepted my U$ 32 offer last week.


A tiny rage on banks

May someone explain me why those fetid bastards are around everybody's necks when they don't need you,  but when YOU need THEM, they simply dissapear, never work the way you want them to, the bloody credit card never arrives?

Last month I opened a bank account for myself at last, and i had to pretty much beg them PLEASE LET ME PUT MONEY IN YOUR BANK, PLEASE, LET ME HAVE A CREDIT CARD, PLEASE.

Yet they send you 10000x credit cards when you don't want or need them. Amazing.

I get it that it's near christmas time, but you don't tell a kid their stuff will arrive in 2 weeks and then take a month and a half to give ti to them, y'know? Baaaah.

Okay I'm done bankraging.

Pandora/Pugster/European Bracelet

Girly stuff.

There's this very clever bracelet, probably not new on the market, but surely new to me.

It comes in gold, silver, cotton or leather. Is a standart width bracelet withotu any charms on it. 

You can then buy multiple charms in any color shape and theme you want to fill them. Like crafting a bracelet but one notch up in fancyness and jewelness.

My mother actually bought hers first, and at a certain point i couldn't help but finding it fun, and potentially good-looking if you choose the right stones and colors and such. She has travelled to the US with my brother and father (damn, me, i stayed, had finals and had to take care of my cockatiels. I should make a post about my cockatiels sometime, altough it woudl be completely unrelated to the blog theme. Do you want me to ramble about my birds? Please answer in the comments!)

Well mom bought me the bracelet alone with one pendant only. The bracelet is the only problem to buy on ebay. We tried to buy one but the lock didn't open. We were not able to remove the beads on it to make my own bracelet. So she bought me an original Pandora (there are several brands which work, like Pugster and European. Of the 3 Pugster is the cheapest but also the hardest to find at stores).

The beads on eBay are cheap like hell. I recommend you search as 'european bracelet charm', 'pugster bracelet bead' or so on. You cna insert golden/silver on the research or glass for the colorful glass beads.

The prices vary from U$ 0.90 to U$ 50. All depends if u want originals or not. The originals will have ensured quality, but the underbrands are so accurate and well-crafted it's worth the risk. You're always under the possibility to have a not so good-looking one but if they don't match the picture you just do your eBay things and the seller will return your money. 

It's a very customizable fun thing. In Brazil we have a jewel brand called Vivara with a Pandora-copy and they called it 'Life bracelet series'. Pretty much suggest you to have a lifestory souvenir hanging from your arm. It's a cool idea. They have everything-shaped beads. Not just Vivara, eBay too, of course. Pets, tourist locations, random objects, symbols, etc. It's also a nice gift if you manage to get a good cheap bracelet to match the beads. 

Back to tactics...

Lugia Plush

Yeeeeeeeeeash pokemon was my childhood.

I was bored one day and decided to go browse the mother-of-shopping [eBay... I think eBay should start paying me really, I speak of them all the time and make reviews of stuff they sell all the time]. I decided to look for my favorite, childhood remark pokemon, Lugia.

He's cute, ain't it? Screaming 'TAKE ME HOME!! PLEEEASE.'

It's very cheap, just U$5, 2 dollars shipping. But i left it to buy later with a bigger purchase, so I acquired it with the Granado book. It's small, about 20 centimeters tops. 

I loved Lugia since the first pokemon movie, so i just had to take him.

I think I'm done blabbign about my purchases for now.

Have some awesome Lugia artwork by the deviantartist EvilQueenie and enjoy your weekend!

Stay tuned! I will be posting regarding the GamersFirst -> T3Fun transfer of Sword 2 - Granado Espada still today!