Ok, so our last attempt at starting OSG 20 fell flat, mainly because folks (including me) seemed to be pretty busy. Well, I've got some time, I noticed that Sullla expressed interest on the CIV forums, so let's give this another go...

OSG20 - Cyber Terrorists
Race: Meklar
Galaxy: Medium
Difficulty: Impossible
Opponents: 5

Variant Rules: The object of this game is to advance tech through espionage, and ONLY espionage.

*No tech field EXCEPT computers can be self-researched past level 10.
*No troops may be sent to an alien world EXCEPT if we know every single tech that they do (to make clean-up less tedious).

While the tech aspect of this variant is obvious, perhaps a more subtle point is that no AI world can be captured intact unless they are woefully behind us. This will probably mean that any acquisitions, especially early on, will need much more time to stand up.

The roster is open to the first 4 or 5 volunteers. Let's start hacking some classified data!

dathon

Quote: For those that don't pay close attention to the GW forums, the RBGW community has been thinking of ways to revitalize ourselves and one of the things we came up with was to add a wiki to the site. Now, the wiki would not be just for the GW people, we'd like to have it encompass all that RB does, so that everyone in the community has a chance to participate. Yes, we'd divide it up into different sections so you wouldn't have to worry about clicking a link for a Civ epic and somehow wind up reading about a GW variant.

Anyways, I think this is something we can all get excited about and can make it a real part of the community, if that didn't sound all sappy and stuff.

Now for the kicker, a wiki is a community run project, so we need as many people to get involved as possible. Wikis are community run, so don't feel you have to wait around for someone to do something. In any case, let's all get involved and make this work. And stuff.

Quote:For those that don't pay close attention to the GW forums, the RBGW community has been thinking of ways to revitalize ourselves and one of the things we came up with was to add a wiki to the site. Now, the wiki would not be just for the GW people, we'd like to have it encompass all that RB does, so that everyone in the community has a chance to participate. Yes, we'd divide it up into different sections so you wouldn't have to worry about clicking a link for a Civ epic and somehow wind up reading about a GW variant.

Anyways, I think this is something we can all get excited about and can make it a real part of the community, if that didn't sound all sappy and stuff.

Now for the kicker, a wiki is a community run project, so we need as many people to get involved as possible. Wikis are community run, so don't feel you have to wait around for someone to do something. In any case, let's all get involved and make this work. And stuff.

Note the event in red and what happened shortly after. It's an emperor level game as the Khmer:



I got the event that causes barbarians to appear at your borders. For some reason I thought they were out in the fog, that they couldn't appear where I had line of sight. Boy, was I wrong -- the appeared at the red square below, just one tile outside my cultural borders.



I did a quick check, didn't see the archers that had spawned on the one tile that was between my culture and ocean, and figured I was safe. Next turn 4 archers are 2 turns away from my capital and I have a sole warrior for defense.

This being a personal game, I find it hilarious. Had it been an Epic or other "scored" event, I probably would have been livid.

Now, in all fairness, it is true that I had horses hooked up. If I would have noticed the archers right away (and realized they could enter borders already) then I could have revolted to slavery right away and whipped a chariot after a turn of production.

Hey everyone,

Here's the list of current guild members who have been inactive for a long period of time:

Inactive for 2 years:
Ash Ock
C A R B O N C O P Y
Cheesus Christ
Cryptic Mage
Lochnar Truflight

Inactive for 1 year:
Ashen Vondara
Buck Fush
Enlil Essix
Isabella Rosenvale
Kandrathe Del Gato
Kaos Ashura
Lurker Fridge
Meverah Shadowreign
Night Shong
Zedf Factiona

I propose to streamline the guild roster a bit (just a bit) by kicking those names. Please let me know if there are any that I shouldn't kick, and why - it's got to be a reason more concrete than, "I just don't think we should kick anyone." The large inactive portion of our roster is not one of our better features, and not something that will look good to any new recruits!

I'll wait a week before kicking anyone, to give enough time to respond.

There. I'm doing my den-motherly duty by housecleaning.

Hey guys,

For those that don't pay close attention to the GW forums, the RBGW community has been thinking of ways to revitalize ourselves and one of the things we came up with was to add a wiki to the site. Now, the wiki would not be just for the GW people, we'd like to have it encompass all that RB does, so that everyone in the community has a chance to participate. Yes, we'd divide it up into different sections so you wouldn't have to worry about clicking a link for a Civ epic and somehow wind up reading about a GW variant.

Anyways, I think this is something we can all get excited about and can make it a real part of the community, if that didn't sound all sappy and stuff.

Now for the kicker, a wiki is a community run project, so we need as many people to get involved as possible. Wikis are community run, so don't feel you have to wait around for someone to do something. In any case, let's all get involved and make this work. And stuff.

Disclaimer:
Version - Pre-release
The following is mostly copied from beta forum posts

Quote: Hold down ALT and right-click on party members' names to generate a portal to them in their instance.

To see other commands in game type / and hit tab

Hitting tab twice brings up an overview map, similar to the one in Diablo 2.

You can use the same item in multiple weapon arrangements by clicking the desired weapon in the mini-slots near the bottom and dropping it in more than one set.

When you have been given a quest, press L to open your quest log, then click on the minus sign to the left of your quest name. This will display your quest in the bottom right corner of your screen.

The bottom of your skills screen also has a special recall skill which will return you to the previous station you visited, after about 5 seconds cast time. You don't get a portal back to the instance you were in but it's useful after you've finished whatever quests brought you to the instance originally.

Sell nothing! Break down stuff you either can't use or don't want (right click the item in your inventory, then - while holding the right mouse button down - choose the wrench icon). You'll find plenty of money, so just break stuff down into components.

To add friends to your friend list, press 'b' to bring up the Buddy window. Click 'Add', then type in the character name you want to add. Its' nice to know when your friends are online.

Check the bottom of your skills screen (hit 'k' on your keyboard) for a variety of other useful buttons you can drag around. There you can find a button which will let you fire with both guns or attack with both swords at once, instead of just the left or just the right hand. Useful if you're dual-wielding!

And if you missed something in chat, use the little (<) on the far left side of the HUD. It will give you the full chat box!

When you party, items drops individualy for each party member, so don't be affraid to loot everything you see (I felt like a mean ninja-looter first time i grouped up :P)

ALT is your friend, allow to bring multiple menus, right click on pets icons to bring up other menus etc....

When you start the game, your basic items give a basic 1 skill point. When you sell or break it down you loose it but remember it's just a freebie. You get your first real skill point at level 2

Don't neglect to keep upgrading your main weapons whenever you can with the Nano device.

Each station has a "Station Travel Terminal" in them, activate it to get a list of stations which you have visited.

when you're trying to find out where to go next, hit tab to get up the minimap and you'll see indicators like ! or ? there, telling u... someone who wants to interact with you is near.. or for example in one instance you have to go through that portal, which is shown on the minimap too... so use it to save a lot of time

The place where you spawn in the station has PRD (Personal Relocation Device) written with yellow above it. Just go back into that and you will return to where you used the PRD

lockers(banks in WoW) are in most stations. They look like footlockers and are usually down by the train tracks of a station.

Ctrl item thing automatically shows an item based on the situation. Low on health, power, poisoned, etc. It pops up the right potion.

Armor is added up and based on that makes a % of dmg that is negated.
Shields go over the top of armor and regenerate on their own and act as ablative armor. IE every time you get hit that dmg gets taken out of your shields till shields are gone then it goes to health. Shields will stay down for a short time after a fight.

With the key 'P' you can autoparty with other players, or if you like to play with friends type /invite <name> in the chat to invite them to your party.

To join a specific chat channel use:
/channeljoin (specific channel) Ex: /channeljoin newbie-1

To leave a specific chat channel use:
/leavechannel (specific channel) Ex: /leavechannel newbie-1

You can drag often used abilities to the bubble on the right of the toolbar, this makes it trigger on right mouse clicks.

Latest from the horse's mouth

Quote:Beta NDA Lifted The NDA period for the general Beta test is officially over! THANK YOU all for being as good as you have been on this. Feel free to post, email, phone call, and alert your local news station about your play experiences!


How Our Beta Process Works

We wanted to take a few minutes to talk about how we run our Beta tests, the differences of and timing for getting builds out to the testers, and basically let you in on what makes our test tick.


Our development path is quite different from that of the vast majority of game developers. We utilize what we call an organic process, which is basically shorthand for our way of constantly iterating, tweaking, tuning, and making changes that are difficult to set months or years ahead of time in a traditional design document. When we get into the last 6 - 9 months of development time, this process really kicks into high-gear. We are making an immense amount of changes, both large and small, and if we tried to push these out to our Beta testing community, we’d literally be giving you new code up to a dozen times a day. Obviously, this isn’t going to be of any great benefit, so we wait until we have done a lot of internal testing and can batch changes into larger, meaningful updates.


We have a core team of testers on-site dedicated to working with our programmers and designers to give immediate feedback and address bugs in a focused manner. We also have a massive amount of testers at EA that work on builds that have been promoted as release candidates. When we get a patch release candidate that we feel is solid, we then promote that to being a Published candidate, and it undergoes patch testing. When we get something here that we like, we push it to you, the Beta testers.


What this means is that we are, at a MINIMUM, 2 weeks further down the road on the game than the testers see. Commonly, this time gap can be upwards of 4 weeks. We push hot fixes as quickly as possible, but please remember that we have also been working on numerous language builds, the single-player gold master, and of course, the fixes and features for our first day online – what we call Patch 0.


We know that it can be frustrating at times to hear that things are different in our internal builds than what you have, but it is just how timing has to work in order for us to meet all of our deadlines and make sure that the testing time we get with you is as beneficial as possible. Thank you all for the hard work, the hours of testing, and your continued support and excitement for the game.


So – how about some specifics?!


DX10 Update

The build of Hellgate: London which you are reviewing includes both DX9 and DX10 versions of the graphics library. The DX10 version of this build has a few known issues. They include a slow framerate compared to the same scene in DX9 and black loading screens. We’re currently working on a fix for the black loading screens. The slower framerate is due to the fill-rate intensive special features that only our DX10 engine has, including: soft shadows with proper contact hardening, depth-of-field, motion blur, interactive GPU-simulated fluid smoke, texture-array animated rain, and soft particles. The extra fill rate costs are mitigated by an initial depth-only render pass, which is now being tested and will be ready for release. When Hellgate: London hits retail, we expect the framerate of our DX10 target to be as high, if not higher than DX9, including these special features.


Multiplayer Updates – All Players

We are continuing to push both new multiplayer features and bug fixes to the Beta. Things that may or may not be in during their review time (depending on when they do it), but will be in by launch are:


Buddy Lists

Much better and easier ways to organize your friends!


Guilds

While only subscribers can start one, anyone can join a guild. Special name colors and tags on characters show their affiliation.


Buddy and Guild Chat

Special chat channels so you can keep your conversations clear.


Bigger Levels in Nightmare Mode

These increase the time players get to spend in each area, giving the game a more expansive feel at higher difficulty levels.


PVP

Players can both duel and elect to enter free-for-all PvP Mode. To duel, a player invites the person they wish to duel into a group, and heads into an adventuring area. Duelers, then right-click on the portrait of the person they wish to duel and select the Duel option from the displayed list. Dueling can only take place outside of Underground hubs.


Players can also choose to enter into PvP mode which means they can be attacked and harmed outside of Underground hubs by anyone else that has chosen to enter PvP mode. That is, those in PvP mode, must always be ready for PvP. This is a way to have wide-ranging free-for-alls, or create your own “friendly-fire” way of playing the game.


Tuned Game Progression

Level and monster progression is more thematic in nature. While this does not affect the overarching layout of the world map, it does make each act feel more defined and focused.


Gossip

We’ve added loads of additional details on the people and places in the game through various NPCs in the world. This definitely helps make the stations feel more alive and provides players with more of the back-story.


More Quest Information

Quest NPCs do a better job of getting you prepared to know what you’re fighting and why. The overall story flows much better, the named demons that are encountered are given more story weight, and players gain a much better sense of overall direction.


NPC Tweaks

The vocal responses given by NPCs have been tuned so that they tend more towards the serious and “normal”, reserving the twisted commentary for specific player characters or in rare moments for the general populace.


Subscriber Features


Elite Mode

This is for those players that always feel a game is too easy. The demons are tougher, deal out more damage, move faster, travel in larger groups, and have more champions at the ready. Numerous tweaks to the overall balance and progression of the game make this an extremely challenging mode.


Hardcore

Hardcore mode takes away the various resurrection options. For the gamer that wants the ultimate test, try playing an Elite Hardcore character!


Themed Events and Items




Halloween (October 31 – November 4)

• Zombot - A special pet just for All Hallows’, this amalgam of meat and metal is sure to frighten and delight those players that are willing to put in the time to find all the necessary pieces in order to construct him.
  
• All Hallow’s Visage - A Unique Helm that has not only very special properties, but as well a look unlike any other helm in the game. Ghost Rider would be jealous!
  
• All Hallow’s Treats - Delicious and devious, these different candies do everything from temporarily boosting stats to temporarily altering the appearance of the devourer.
  
• All Hallows’ Quests - There is a pair of special quests available, including one that is repeatable for continuous fun.
  
• Nemo ~ Master of Festivities - This special NPC can first be found in Covent Garden Station to greet players and send them on their way with quests specifically crafted for the season.
  

Guild Creation

Buy purchasing a Guild Herald, a character can form a new guild. Characters can only be part of one guild at a time and should a Guild leader decide to abandon their post, they can pass leadership of the Guild to another subscribing guild member.


Achievements

These are long-term goals for players. The player starts with a few new goals in an Achievement Log. These can be as simple as slaying a certain amount of specific demons to something as difficult as completing quests without the benefit of armor! Players uncover new goals as they start to meet the requirements of that achievement. For example, after 50 zombies have been slain, an “Achievement Unlocked” message displays on the screen. Checking the Achievement Log shows how many zombies must be eradicated to complete the achievement. Rewards for completing achievements can be anything from reputation to tags on the player to special particle effects to items to special skills to – well, anything is possible!


Extra Character Slots

While everyone gets 3 character slots, subscribers can have a maximum of 24 characters.


Larger Stash

Each character’s storage locker is doubled in size with an extra 6x8 section, making the hoarding of all sorts of goodies that much easier. Packrats rejoice!


Founder’s Perks

Name Color

Forum Icon

More to come… (this will be an on-going area, as well)

Adventure 23 was more difficult than usual to compile the results, since most of the participants chose not to take part in the official scoring. Given that I had enormously incomplete information for categories such as units killed and Great People produced, it was impossible to calculate a meaningful score for this event. Since everyone seemed to be pretty happy with comparing the games on the basis of fastest finish alone, that's what I did:

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/adv23results.html

Please let me know if you would like these results ordered in a different fashion before I send them off to Griselda.

Okay, this offer is technically available to EU players, but this might work for the rest of you across the pond. It's not pretty, numbers are (apparently) limited, and the way to do it is through an extremely annoying PDF magazine.

So if you want your Ceratadon, do the following:

1. Go to http://www.gamerzines.com/
   
2. Download the latest MMOZine.
   
3. Scroll through the magazine to page 20 (If you can manage it, and aren't paranoid about the PDF accessing stuff in the temp folder).
   
4. Submit your name and e-mail address in the form.
   
5. Wait and see if you receive a code in your e-mail.
   
6. If so, enter code into your account.
   
7. Use the /special command to pop a single pet.