I'm looking to do regular HA with alliance mates (only 70 from r5 whee!), so I'm putting up a thread here to sound out interest and check general availability.

I'd like to start with once or twice a week, maybe schedule things more frequently if there is interest in doing so.

I'm personally available Monday/Wednesday/Friday (I work the others) every week til classes start, at which point I'll be alternating classes and work.

Would Wednesday or Friday starting at 7 work for people?

Post below if you want to play and your preferred time for play, and maybe a bit about what class you'd prefer to play.

I'd like to run a new succession game using Beyond the Sword. I intend to play the Defense! packaged scenario with a team of 4 or 5 peope; this shouldn't be tremendously difficult, but I think there's the potential for some good fun. This is kind of a one-time deal, as the scenario isn't particularly complicated. We'll have our one pass through, kill a lot of lions, zombies, and whatnot, and probably never play the thing again. Kapiche?

I'd also ask that anyone interested in this concept refrain from going out and reading all over the Internet about how to beat this particular scenario. I'm sure that someone, somewhere has already outlined the optimal formula for winning. We'll have much more fun playing things by ear, making mistakes, and having to recover from them. I hope that makes sense.

Who's interested in the idea? We don't normally do much with scenarios here at Realms Beyond, but this is a bit of an exception.

Hello; i'm Foxhound3857, an active legit (although not purist) player on Classic Diablo. After reading up on basic and advanced strategies for ironman on RBD, I began to practice them with a friend of mine; Attica. Our current Relaxed Fit game is doing alright; we finally made it to floor 16, but I am currently dead with no resses remaining (died 5 times, 3 of which weren't my fault), so he has to work the floor alone.

He's not on very often, so I play solo Lock-In games of IM on Battle.Net with a Warrior whenever a partner is not available. So far, the farthest i've been able to get to is dlvl10...twice. The first time I fell victim to Slayers after running out of reds; the second to Storm Riders with garbage for equipment. The last game I died on dlvl7 to the unique Night Clan Archer; I couldn't believe it. I had 20 reds, a heal stick with 30/36 charges remaining, 2 yellows, a magical ringmail, a ring, baranar's Star, Gnarled Root 9which I started using after seeing THREE different goat archer types on dlvl7) and plenty of useful scrolls. Hell, I even found a BLOOD FOUNTAIN on 7! I can't BELIEVE I died; the unique archer scored a critical hit with 30HP remaining. It was ridiculous. That game could have succeeded; I'm still pissed about it.

Anyway, I'm currently seeking long-term Ironman partners to play with, since Attica and Petre are rarely on, and I don't think I have what it takes to play with people like Roede or Taoni. I'm open to Relaxed Fit OR Lock-In; I prefer the ladder, but either is fine for me. I play as the Mage in team-IM, but I can take up the Warrior position if someone else wants to play as Mage. I don't really like playing as a Rogue in Ironman, so please don't force me unless absolutely necessary.

Let me know if you want to play a game of Ironman sometime; I'll add you to my friends list so we can do games in the future. These are my two primary legit characters accounts.

Foxhound3857
Foxhound_3857

These are my Ironman character accounts.

Zeeky_H_Bomb (Mage)
Fox_IronWolf (Warrior)

I hope to see some players for this in the future, and for those I do play with, I hope we have some fun and achieve victory. Hit me back!

Edit: Forgot to mention; I play on US-East.

Minor Announcement: We've been joined in the alliance by "Madhouse Rockstars[HoVa]." This is the new name of remnants of the guild formerly known as The First Resistance[Fail].

KingOfPain: We've been asked to withdraw the invitation to Fail. Also Z was looking for you in game and wants to give you 1k.

(Posted on Civfanatics, and reposted here, at the advice of vmxa)

Sorry, I recently got my hands on a PS3 and have been dazzled by the sparkly graphics. I find myself drawn back to the 'greatest' game of all time, because there was something lacking. Until age of Conan comes out, or Spore, I'm gonna be here from now on. (need a new computer to play either one anyway).

Anyway, I see there haven't been any recent OSG games. I've always been partial to the Meks, who I believe, in the hands of the player, are the best race. I haven't formed any concrete ideas yet; cause I haven't been able to work out differences with the past games with Darloks, but I think a Mek game with espionage would be a ton of fun.

They are excellent in comps, and combined with their factory bonus should allow them to, with only computer funding (given the few caveats I'm sure I'm missing) present a decent spy challenge. They'd need minimal propulsion, and I'd imagine a minimal tech level (say 5 or 10) to be the 'cut off.' If there are more limiters I don't realize, let me know.

As such, I propose a robospy game, with (let's say) no techs above level 5 or 10 (besides computer tech) being funded by the govt. Besides tech limiters, I also propose this be done in a medium galaxy with only 3 other opponents, to keep it interesting. As for difficulty, I'm open to anything really. The only thing I'm suggestiing, for the variant, would be that you can't gropo a non rebelling alien world. As far as I know, you don't get tech from a rebelling world, and if you do, then you already had them rebelling right?! Also, you can always use those nifty bombs they made to devestate them, then take over. I'm open to all suggestions, and comments, and hope that everyone at least considers how to make it a better variant.

So, I'm slowly starting to play the game again and what I'm seeing and hearing is a bit troublesome. Realms Beyond is, I think, for all intents and purposes, a dead guild. Most of the people we would consider the core members are playing very little, if at all. They're all either too busy, too tired, or some other too something. There hasn't been enough active recruitment (we're not even attempting to advertise ourselves so people can find their way here) so there are no fresh faces. What's worse is that I don't think the RB guild even knows what it is or what it stands for. Granted, I haven't been around that much in the past month and a half, but it just seems that there are some very serious issues that have been festering for a while now and are just going to continue to get worse.

We have no identity as a guild. Variants? No team variants are running (there's talk of running one for GW:EN but even that looks a bit shaky) and there's absolutely no talk of individual based ones, unless you count people going for survivor titles. Heck, if you click the link on the website that offers an explanation about variants it just links to the Diablo page. PvE community? Not really. Most of the time you have to solo because people in the guild are either doing something else or don't want to, or there just isn't anyone on. We have no focus right now so the guild roster is basically a glorified chat interface where we can exchange witty sarcasm every so often and, on a very rare occassion, do a mission together. There's a topic on the alliance sub-board that says concerning mission statement. Well, how can we have an alliance mission statement if we don't even have one for the guild?

It seems as though no one ever really thought of what RB is supposed to represent to the Guild Wars community, or, it may be more appropriate to say that no one ever thought of what Guild Wars would represent to the RB community. When I look at the backlogs of the forums, I think everyone was so caught up at the time in the idea of GW being the closest thing they would get to Diablo 3 and started playing it for those reasons. Some liked it, some didn't, but enough of the community thought it was fun enough to add to the list of community games, still playing it by Diablo rules and not Guild Wars rules.

I think we're getting too caught up in the idea of RB being a guild, and losing sight of RB as a community. It seems that right now all the focus is on making the guild look good, making the guild self-important, making the guild the center of attention. I think that because of this we're losing sight of the community. We're a ship sailing without a compass, or, if you want one of Fox's metaphors, a deaf bat out of hell. I know some of you are going to argue with me and say that we've been a community the whole time and just look at our spiffy new alliance but I think that's just an illusion, trying to put gold plating on a shack with rotting wood, and I'm not even sure the plating is gold. We're in such a hurry to push forward that we're sailing without a keel and, pretty soon, without masts.

So what do we do now? Where do we go from here? Is it really all that important for RB to exist as an in-game guild? Will the community fall apart if it's not tied up ever so neatly in the game? There are constant arguments about what the cape and hall should look like as well as just about anything else you can think of. Should there even be a Realms Beyond in-game guild? Are we the Titanic of Guild Wars? So sure and confident that the guild is unsinkable that we're not bothering to navigate the icebergs?

I remember that some time ago when I brought up something similar about RB becoming stagnant people just laughed at me and said RB would always be around. Well, is it? Most of the old guard has left the game and the few that are left aren't bothering to teach the new, so the new guard doesn't have any of the values of the old. So what's left? A bunch of people arguing with each other about how they want to run the community. Not be a part of it. There's no middle ground. People are either tired and don't care or they're trying to force their way on everyone else, using a sledge hammer to put nails in a coffin.

Is the RB in-game guild destined for a coffin? So much importance in Guild Wars is placed on what guild you're in and it seems that when people join the guild they're not really joining the community. Those that do join the community and then later leave the guild often leave the community as well, even though their reasons for leaving might have more to do with wanting to be in a guild with people they know in real life or wanting to be part of a guild that's focused on some specific type of gameplay. In a way, you could make a case for the guild hurting the community. That just seems wrong in my book. There have been members of the community that never once bothered to join the guild, and some may have left the community because of all the squabbles we've had over the years (yes, it's plural now) about the guild.

I guess I keep coming back to the same point, which is: what's more important, an in-game guild or a community of people? Does the in-game guild need to be disbanded and turned into a "ghost guild" for the community to survive? Am I completely off-base?

edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to give credit to Fox for the old not teaching the new point. Sorry if that puts you on the spot Fox, but it wasn't something I had come up with on my own, so I thought it best to give credit where credit is due.

Yeah, I know, the thread title sounds like spam, but I got a kick out of the "trailer" for Minesweeper, so I thought I'd share it.

Maybe it's just that I'm trying to write a paper, and minesweeper (as well as looking up random movies online) always seems so much more entertaining when you're in that position.

In any case, enjoy!

Edit- fixed link

Edit 2- While we're at it, maybe we can use this thread to post links to other interesting little web movies.

Hi!

I've been reading many of the excellent reports for the current crop of games. Which are informative way to fill a dull day at work btw. Thanks for them!

Noticed some people have put their work into website form.

I'd like to give that a try. Am incredibly ignorant about web design and think reporting would be a good way to introduce myself to the subject.

Is it hard to do?

Does anyone have a link to a resource that could get me started on this?

To clarify it, oddly enough I'm actually a programmer, just everything I do is offline single workstation stuff. Not technologically illiterate, but no web experience.

Will be thankful for any help you can offer!

IT IS SOOOO HUGE!!!


Anyway, I have some good news and bad news.

Good News: I have successfully moved in my new apartment (hallelujah!!)

Bad News: I will have to wait until next week to get my internet up and running (darn it to hell!!!)

Just givin a heads up so no one will think we're holding out joining the alliance. AND we are making a new guild, so as soon as I get back, we'll handle everything and get the info to someone. Till then, keep on rapping peeps


**i like big butts and I can not lie/ you other allies cant deny...**

Da Homie,
Z

I designed, wrote, and helped to implement the random events system in BTS. This was an ambition of mine from early on in the development of the core game, along with map scripts, and now both have been realized.

If I had more time, I could have made it even stronger. Bigger. More well polished. But I am happy with what was achieved in the available time.


What my future may be here, I haven't decided, nor have I talked it over with Gris or Sulla. I'm still quite distracted by a number of things and have no short term intent to mess with anything they're doing except to say that it was my intent to stop the patterning of Civ4 Epics after Civ3 Epics at The Gauntlet. ... Well you got a Baker's Dozen instead, but I still think it's time to throw off that yoke and open the Epics wide, as they should be.

Maybe I'll throw one together, but don't hold me to that. It's not a promise.


- Sirian