Hi guys!

For Singaporeans out there, Happy National Day!

1. Shopping Mall Catalogue

The last episode of the ‘Days of our speculative lives’ a.k.a the business model announcement will be out tomorrow! One thing’s for sure though. There will be an item merchant within the game itself and she is one hawt babe! Meet my new best friend who I've been spending a lot of time with lately getting to know her (or rather her catalogue) better:

And hey, since it’s national day and all, I have convinced her to let you have a sneak preview of her goods. You can check them out over here.

Discuss this here.

2. September: Ladies Week & School Uniform Week

Well, Granado Espada ladies, not to fret. The item mall may have a limited number of femme wear now but we’ll be having a Ladies Week next month with more female costumes to be made available then! With September comes the end of school holidays for some. School uniform week boasts school uniforms for all the stock classes ��" Fighter, Elementalist, Scout, Musketeer and Wizard! You can look forward to various events and promotions for the month of September!

Discuss this here.

3. Forum Quests

Weekly forum quests are still ongoing:

Forum Quest #2: Selwyn’s Challenge

Inspired by our weekly Granado Espada in-house comics, Malaysia’s Community Manager, Selwyn, challenges you to create your very own comic! His challenge ends on 14^th August 2007. More details can be found here.

Forum Quest #3: Veya’s Challenge

Philippines Community Manager, Veya, wants you to showcase your aspects of love and challenges you to do so through a Granado Espada signature creation with the theme of love. Take part in her challenge over here.

The prize for each of these quests will be the event-exclusive Angel Wings.

4. Reminder: Download V2.1.18 Patch

Do remember to download the 200MB V2.1.18 patch as soon as possible. There are two options of downloads for you over here - the full game client of V2.1.18 or the manual patch of V2.1.18. Just a quick reminder though, it has been password protected because the server side V2.1.18 patch has not yet been installed. Any attempts to install the patch to your current client will result in game client corruption and your current Granado Espada client will be unable to run. We will release the password on 16^th August 2007, after we patch the servers during server maintenance. V2.1.18 of Granado Espada will only be playable after 16^th August 2007, when server maintenance is over. From that time on, V2.0.9 (the current version) will no longer be usable.

Discuss this topic here.

Hrin’s Updates: Weekly Colony Wars and V2.1.18 Patch Release Date!

Hi guys,

1) Weekly Colony Wars: Sunday Nights

There will be a weekly colony war held every Sunday, 2000hrs-2200hrs (GMT+8) starting from 29^th July 2007, Sunday onwards.

The colony maps will NOT be reset until the start of our commercial phase. On the first day of commercial launch, the world map will be wiped clean of all faction names and colonies will be reset to free for all. This is in consideration for some factions who are still affected by the ‘Declaration of war’ bug.

For the factions who are still affected by the Declaration of war bug, please report it here. This is the final call to all the factions who are still affected by the Faction leaders, please note that in the Declaration Of War Document, you will need to type in the name of the Faction you wish to declare war on and not the family name of the faction leader.

Discuss this here.

2) Latency Issue

Our technical team has been investigating the recent spate of latency issues and they suspect that the problem lies with the routing path of data packets since our bandwidth usage reports do not reflect any abnormal behavior.

In the meantime, our technical team has written a batch file to monitor this routing of data packets. For those still experiencing bad latency, please follow the instructions found here to submit your traceroute findings to them such that they may investigate where the problem could potentially be and execute the necessary follow-up action.

Discuss this here.

3) V2.1.18 Patch Release Date: 16^th August 2007

The patch for V2.1.18 is approximately 200MB and will be available soon for download. However, it has been password protected for the time being because the server side V2.1.18 patch has not yet been installed. Please do not attempt to crack the password and install the patch to your current client as this would result in game client corruption and will result in your current Granado Espada client being unable to run. The password will be released on 16^th August 2007 for users to install the patch.

P/S: This is not the date that we are going into commercial phase, so please remain calm. :)

Discuss this here.

4) Forum Quest #1: RohNaga’s Challenge

From Granado Espada’s in-game quests to RAID party real life quests and now… to Forum Quests! We will be having a series of weekly quests on the forum. Each week will bring forth a new challenge issued by each of the Community Managers and the Gamemasters on a rotational basis.

This week’s Forum Quest #1 is issued by Singapore Community Manager, RohNaga. His challenge comes in the form of Creative Captions which can be found here.

The prize for each of these quests will be the event-exclusive Angel Wings.

Hrin's Updates: Examining The B-Files

Hi guys,

1. Revisiting The Botting Issue: The 3 Stages

Quite a few people have been asking in the forum about how we have been catching bots. After some internal discussion, we decided to reveal a little in regard to the ‘behind the scenes’ operations.

There are three stages which botting is detected. The first stage is an in-built technical system. Although the in-built technical system is highly accurate, we still activate a second stage of investigation – the human factor. This is where the [GM] team does their whole ‘invisible stalker’ thing in-game to verify if the player is indeed botting.

Upon the first two stages of detection, players gets banned. The third stage also known as log checking by the log team is activated at a later time as a means of review. This third stage takes about a week or so to investigate and it is a very tedious process by which the suspect is confirmed to be botting. In the event that players appeal their case through our ticketing system, we escalate their case from the review queue in order to deal with their cases first. We have indeed unbanned a few players who, when upon submitting their appeal via the ticketing system with their evidence why they were not botting, were cleared of all charges. For these few players, when we activated the 3rd stage of investigation, we discovered that they were indeed not botting and have unbanned them ever since. Nevertheless, there are still some players who were reported as botting. They remain on our 'Suspects List' which we are still closely monitoring.

Please note that we ONLY entertain appeal cases via the ticketing system found here. We do realize that bots will keep making a comeback via new accounts within 15 minutes of our banning their accounts and will continue this policing as much as possible.

Discuss this topic here.

2. The Ad-Hoc Colony Wars…

IMC (Granado Espada’s game developer) handles all the server side applications. This includes all the Colony War functions such as switching on and off the activation times as well as the resetting or wiping of colony maps etc.

Unfortunately, due to their hectic schedule lately in the past month having to fix various bugs amongst other new back end developments, they forgot to switch it off. The Colony Wars caught us all by surprise as well! Nonetheless it was a rather amusing experience which resulted in us converting it into a trial ad hoc war to test for any colony war bugs. It reminded me of Sun Tzu’s Art Of War whereby real wars always come with the elements of surprise and unpredictability. At the same time, it tested the ‘operational-readiness’ of everyone in IAHgames as well as every faction in Granado Espada.

Having said that, the real colony wars are usually automated by the system to activate itself once the timings are set. Due to this period of trial wars which requires manual restarts and manual clearing of maps, this is a new process to IMC themselves which needs some kinks to be worked out. So do let's give them some time to work things out amidst this hectic period. :)

Discuss this topic here.

3. Upcoming Events

[Malaysia] Roadshow @ Johor Bahru: SMM will be holding a Leveling competition during this event. Participants will have to level a team of 3 newly created Level 1 characters for 45 minutes. The person with the highest leveled characters at the end of the 45 minutes wins! Read more here.

Discuss this topic here.

4. Commercial Launch Updates

Commercial launch is soon approaching. The commercial date cannot be confirmed at this time since there are still a few dependencies on the back-end which we are working on currently. The much-speculated business model will be officially announced in a few weeks time once we have finalized the last remaining details with our various partners. Personally, I’m really looking forward to announcing it since it is a business model that takes into account the different advocates of the various models and I find that it is a very fair system as well.

On an even more exciting note, we will be releasing Granado Espada’s V2.1.18 which includes new updates to the game! Think mercenaries! Think baron quests! Think Voting and Elections! We will be releasing weekly previews of the upcoming features so stay tuned for that!

Discuss this topic here.

Hi guys!

The glorious day of 17^th May 2007 has finally arrived! Just some quick updates before all of us get drawn into the new continent of Granado Espada.

1) Meet your local Community Managers!

Yes! Our local distributors have appointed a community manager who will address the needs of the local community. As for myself, I will be working closely with these local community managers to further instill that bond of unity and sense of ‘GE ownage’ within the community. I formally introduce your local community managers over here in the newly updated Community section on the left. As we expand over the Southeast Asia region and appoint more local distributors, we will continue to add more community managers to this page. As for the rest of you guys who do not have a local community manager yet, don’t worry - I will be looking after you lot in the meantime. ;)

2) Squad me, baby!

Guys, do not think that having that funky MCC ability of the “power of 3” is sufficient. Read about why here. Further to that, join a faction! Faction chat is ever so entertaining and colony wars between factions are something you definitely do not want to miss out on! For those of you who are new to GE, there is now a new user guide available here which gives you some useful tips and tricks about starting out in GE.

3) Game Feedback

I have been compiling feedback from the CBT forums about what you guys think about GE and some of the changes you hope to see in the future of Granado Espada. Over the last few days, I had the privilege of having several meetings with some of the IMC and Hanbitsoft guys to discuss the various ideas that you have brought up. Some of these changes have already been implemented as a result of your feedback and other ideas are being looked into right now by IMC and Hanbitsoft.

“With great power comes great responsibility”

We at IAHgames are greatly honored an privileged to have that direct link to IMC and Hanbitsoft. This game we all love was made for our guilty pleasure and sinful delight. With this passion for GE comes our sense of dedication, responsibility and determination that the community’s voice must be heard. I will be setting up a ‘Feedback’ link in the Community section soon which states the more popular feedback from the community and the replies from IMC (GE’s game developers also known as the legendary Hakkyu Kim’s team). This would be for the purpose of greater transparency and accountability between us and you. :)

In the meantime, you will be glad to know that thanks to your feedback, patches were made and first names are now no longer unique! The name filter has been modified to allow more variations in names. The PvP (Cervantes) and non PvP (Carracci) servers were also implemented due to your active participation in suggestions.

Power to the people!

4) Email Of The Day

Interestingly enough, news of my newly appointed ‘Regional Community Manager’ position has spread before my official announcement. With this, came several sweet congratulatory emails…

“Hey Hrin! Congratz on your promotion to Regional Community Manager! So are you now like the lady boss of the other community managers? =p”

I grinned at that email in amusement. Nope, I am not “the one ring to rule them all”. Neither am I the one hring to pwn them all. We work together as a team. Our greater purpose is that vision of uniting the whole GE community, across the region. :)

Hi guys!

A very hearty “Welcome Back!” goes out to our CBT (Closed Beta Testing) gamers who have returned to continue their adventuring in Granado Espada. For those who have just joined our extended Granado Espada family - It’s great to have you with us! May you fall deeply in love with Granado Espada, just like the rest of us. My name is Hrin and I am the Regional Community Manager for Granado Espada. You can read more about the community manager’s role, as well as the ‘GE Ownage’ culture that has been instilled within our close-knit community since CBT over here.

I know… POBT (Pre-Open Beta Testing) is a painful 5 days away. Yes, I do realize tensions are running high in the forums due to this agonizing wait. We are all in the same boat, people. But hey, let’s de-activate that PK (Player Kill) mode and keep things friendly on the forums in the meantime. After all, there ain’t no baron mode bonuses on the forums! ;)

1) Baron Server & Carebear Server: Cervantes & Carracci!

Speaking of baron mode, the choice is now yours. We will be opening up two servers, Cervantes and Carracci on 17^th May 2007, Thursday, 12pm (GMT+8) to the public. Cervantes server will be a PK server, or what I like to call the baron server, whereby baron mode is activated while Carracci server will be the non PK server, otherwise more commonly referred to in the forums as the Carebear server. What I am looking forward to in the Carebear server (Carracci) is that interaction with some of the more peace-loving citizens and I foresee Carracci becoming that Utopia of perhaps, the best player-organized events. On the other hand, Cervantes will have all that typical mama drama which results from PK-ing and spirit of competition. In any case, choose the world you want to reside in based on what you hope to accomplish in Granado Espada. Or better yet, create families in BOTH servers to get the best of both worlds.

2) No Patch Available From CBT Client To POBT Client

Unfortunately, due to the extremely huge content differences from the V1.8.23 to the V2.0 game client, we have been informed by the game developers that patching will not be possible as it might result in instabilities. The mirrors for downloading the POBT client can be found here while torrent users can find the POBT client here. Many thanks to the GE fans who have set these torrent links up!

3) POBT Phase To Officially Begin On 17^th May 2007, Thursday, 1200 (GMT+8)

Until that glorious day of 17^th May 2007, Thursday, 1200 (GMT+8), you will NOT be able to log into the servers. This applies to the general public. For the winners of the POBT 2-day advance pass, you will be receiving an activation code in an email within the next 2 days. Instructions on how to activate your account will be included in that email. Once we have sent out the emails, we will post an official announcement on the website and in the forums.

4) "Hear, Hear" Rumors FAQ

Too many duplicate threads on the forums with too many phantom speculations. Here is an FAQ to banish those 'phantom menaces':

FAQ1: Hrin! I heard there will be IP bans! No wai! Say it isn’t so!

Ans: It isn’t so.

FAQ2: Hrin! Will GE be F2P/P2P? Why can’t you tell me?

Ans: Because we are all about mystery and suspense? On a more serious note, we are still fine-tuning the details of our business model. Once we have done so, we PROMISE we will announce it on the website and on the forums. In the meantime, we have been reading the forums and hearing what you guys have been saying and believe me, we have been taking every one of those concerns into arriving at our decision.

FAQ3: Hrin! Will the Granado Espada game client be made available in CD/DVD format?

Ans: From what I understand from our distributors, Malaysia and Singapore will be releasing DVD format game clients while Philippines will be releasing CD format game clients. These DVD/CD clients will be made available after the launch of POBT. As for the exact dates, we will post up an announcement when they are out in stores.

5) Colony War Schedules

Since this is a testing phase, we are also testing out the best times of the week as well as the frequency per week to hold our colony wars. The final decision will be based on the results of our findings during this phase. Colony wars will be made available in BOTH Cervantes and Carracci servers. Here is the tentative schedule, up to mid July:

First Colony War: 8 June 2007, Friday, 2000hrs (GMT+8)
Second Colony War: 17 June 2007, Sunday, 2000hrs (GMT+8)
Third Colony War: 23 June 2007, Saturday, 2000hrs (GMT+8)
Fourth Colony War: 27 June 2007, Wednesday, 2000hrs (GMT+8)
Fifth Colony War: 1 July 2007, Sunday, 1400hrs (GMT+8)
Sixth Colony War: 7 July 2007, Saturday, 1400hrs (GMT+8)

So, guys, train hard and mark your faction name on the world map! ;)

Hrin's Updates: CBT Finale LAN Party – 17th March 2007

Hi guys!

More updates in today’s news.

1) GE Timeline

Just to let you guys know, there has been a shift in the timeline of our GE schedule. Tentatively, here is the summarized version of the new schedule:

19^th March 2007: End of Closed Beta Testing (CBT), CBT accounts and all characters will be wiped.

Late March/April 2007: Registration for Pre-Open Beta Testing (POBT) begins at this website.

2 days before POBT: Exclusive preview for contest winners and special guests, Characters will NOT be wiped.

Late May 2007: Pre-Open Beta Testing (POBT), Open to everyone, Characters will NOT be wiped.

June/July 2007: Open Beta Testing (OBT), Open to everyone, Characters will NOT be wiped.

2) V2.0 Client Download For POBT

We have plans to have BOTH a new client for V2.0 for new gamers to download as well as a 500+MB patch for the current 1.8.23 version. Tentatively, this patch will be split up into a few parts for download

3) Hrin’s ‘Industrial Attachment’ Plans

The CBT period has been an absolutely divine time for me. I’ve really enjoyed my time with you guys so far: from squadding with some of you random GE players that I’ve met during my grinding sessions, to participating in some of the events that you have organized, right down to old school ‘IRC’ style of just having a casual chat with you guys about where you come from and the person who you are behind the GE face.

One of the GE players was very kind to invite me to join his faction during the CBT period. While I have been enjoying my time with them, I would also love to spend time with the other factions as well so as to get to know all of you on a much deeper level! I do realize CBT is coming to an end, but this is the time to start making plans for Pre-OBT dudes! So do drop me an email inviting me to join the faction which you plan to open up in POBT. I will be spending time with each faction (first-come-first-serve basis) for a few weeks before being attached to the next faction and so on. ;)

3) Player-Organized Events

I’ve been noticing a lot of player-organized events that have been going on recently. Keep up the great work guys! I’m really proud of you. :)

In the meantime, do turn up for these events in order to show support and appreciation for your fellow GE gamers who have taken so much effort to organize them for your entertainment. Some of the upcoming events are things like ‘Hide and Seek’, ‘Shopping List’ and ‘Who wants to be a vis-illionaire?’ More details on these upcoming events can be found at the forums here. For the players who are organizing events, please feel welcome to approach me either in-game or via emails. I would really love to get involved with what you guys are planning. :)

4) CBT Finale LAN Party – 17^th March 2007

Yes! To end CBT off with a bang, we will be having a CBT Finale LAN party on 17^th March 2007! There will be some special in-game events being held on that day as well. Think XP boosts! Think never-seen-before items raining on the ground! Think ‘GE Gone Wild’! That's just a little teaser of what is to come. I will be giving out more details of this LAN party over the next few days once I get wind of more details.

5) Hrin’s GE Blog Skin Contest

I’ve set up my GE Blog over here: http://blogs.iahgames.com/hrin

I’ll be blogging ever so often about my mama-drama life at IAH, my adventures with you guys in GE, the hilarious emails I’ve been getting and so on. From what I’ve seen in the forums, I daresay there are a quite a few creative GE gamers out there. Thus, I will be hosting a GE Blog Skin Contest for you lovely GE fans to design my GE Blog skin for my GE Blog. I will be giving out more details of the blog skin contest on my blog over the next few days.

So. My laptop crashed and burned. #!?@#%^@%

One of those traumatizing life lessons where the moral of the story is to back up all your data every single day. My bleeding heart...

Anyway, moving along to happier times: CBT is just next week! And here is the FAQ for CBT like I promised:

i) Closed Beta Testing (CBT) FAQ

1) Which version of Granado Espada will be used for CBT?

V1.8.23

2) Will Granado Espada be free to play (F2P)?

We are still in discussion about this.

3) When will Open Beta Testing (OBT) be out?

In a few months' time. Check back here for updates.

4) Which version will be used for OBT?

Tentatively, V2.0

5) How many realms (servers) will there be for CBT?

Due to overwhelming response for CBT sign ups, we have decided to standby an additional 2 more realms. Effectively, there will be 3 realms: Cerventes, Carracci, Caravaggio. However, we will be opening one realm at a time. Once the first realm is filled up, we will then open the second realm and so on.

6) Will there be any in-game events during CBT?

Yes, there will be a major in-game event scheduled in March. More details will be given at a later date. In the meantime, throughout the course of the CBT period, we may be holding ad-hoc in-game events as well. We will keep you guys informed through the website.

7) When will the CBT invitations be given out?

They will be sent out this week. So do remember to regularly check your emails.

8) How long will CBT last?

Tentatively, 3 weeks.

9) Will there be a server wipe after CBT?

Yes.

10) What are we (those selected to participate in CBT) supposed to do for CBT?

You guys are the 'chosen ones' to test out Granado Espada for bugs. The purpose of having a closed beta testing is for gamers to discover and most importantly, to inform us of the bugs in the game that will affect game play experience. In this way, we can fix the bugs and improve the game for you guys.

ii) IRC Channels

Undecided about which combination of classes to play? Need to vent your pent-up frustrations about how you can't wait to play Granado Espada (I know how you feel... welcome to my world...)? For those on the Galaxynet server, a group of GE fans have set up channel #granadoespada.

At the same time, the Granado Espada International Community has set up their official IRC channel on Rizon (irc.rizon.net), channel #ge.cc which I will be popping by at night every now and then to answer any questions you may have.

iii) Your emails!

Thanks for all your emails! It’s always a pleasure hearing from GE fans. A sincere word of thanks goes out to the readers who emailed me in regard to some graphical errors on the website. The marketing team has already resolved this issue. And of course, thanks to all those who sent me 'my fave type of emails' ;)

The most unforgettable email I received which sent me into laughing fits, was from this dude:

"first of all, i think you're really hot.. seriously, i will be your slave if you want me to.. i hope i can make it to become one of the beta testers.. and i hope the CB gets on this valentines.. i'll make a 'Hrin' family and a guild that will be purposedly build to worship you only.. ciao.. ja ne.. later.."

Uh huh... Right... what on earth would such a guild be doing when they are not grinding or questing?!

Sing Britney Spears' "I'm a slave for you" hymns in the Cite De Reboldoeux streets every Sunday?!

...Or chant Hrin-ma Sutra scriptures? "Hey Hrin... You're hot! - HealthySpam 3:16"

In any case, methinks The Queen of Vespanola would probably stone me for this... ;)

Hi again!

I'm back with some updates on GE.

1. Website Updates

How's the new look of our website? Is it hot or is it just absolutely fantabulous? ;)

Our marketing team spent sleepless nights and weekends perfecting it. All their blood and sweat is in every last pixel that you are admiring right now. So do take the time to click on every single link and to appreciate all their hard work and efforts.

We are currently working on getting the GE forums up and running as well. Most of the technical functions have been done up. We are pretty much left with tons of admin stuff to settle such as setting up forum rules and categorizing the boards etc.

2. Closed Beta Testing (CBT) Updates

Lots of people have been asking me the same question: When is CBT going to start?

Patience, young Padawan, patience. Let's just say for the singles out there, come this Valentines Day 2007... you'll be lonely no more. :)

For the gamers who have been selected to participate in our CBT, you will be receiving an email confirmation with your assigned username and password next week. Something important to take note of: Please remember to save that email and to keep your assigned user name and password confidential as you will NOT be able to change either your user name or password during the span of the CBT period.

I am aware that you guys have tons of questions to ask about CBT. I’ll be talking more about what will be happening during CBT within the next few days as well as to post up an FAQ in regard to the most commonly asked questions I have been getting these days.

3. Blog Section

The marketing team is currently helping me to set up a separate blog section. In the near future, this ‘News’ section will consist of purely no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point GE news. On the other end of the scale, in my blog, I’ll be dropping hints about unofficial, ‘off-the-record’ GE stuff, blogging about the various adventures I’ve been having with you guys in Vespanola, giving my two cents worth of the latest GE topics that everyone is talking about… basically, the works.

Being the die-hard blogger/GE fan that I am, I will be updating as much as possible. But you can be sure that I will definitely have an update every Wednesday. So here’s something else to look out for come Wednesdays, other than Mambo Night!

4. My Email Address

A special note of thanks goes out to the GE fans in the ‘Granado Espada International Community’ who brought to my attention that their email to me was being rejected by our powerful spam email firewall. Our technical team has already resolved this issue. So please feel free to spam me with email at community@ge.iahgames.com

But please ah, only healthy spam. I’m more than happy to get email that go along the lines of:

“I love GE because…”

“Some questions I have about GE are…”

“Hi Hrin! Let me tell you about myself…”

“Hey Hrin… YOU’RE HOT!” <--- my fave kind of email! *beams*

3 words remain: Healthy. Spam. Please.

Hey GE fans,

I’m Hrin, and I’m your very own Community Manager for Granado Espada (GE)! I'll be updating here at least once a week and giving you insider updates as well as dropping hard-to-miss hints on what is up and coming in the spotlight for GE. So do check back here for updates.

I know you guys and dolls have been waiting ever so anxiously for GE to come out - someone even ranked the GE release on the same level as World Peace on a wish-list! World Peace VS. Playing Granado Espada? A definite dilemma.

Let me throw out some GE updates for you:

As you can see, we have a brand new spanking website with some nice GE write-ups on the game play, player guides, downloads... and a correct version of the Granado Espada background story! The background is short right now, just to get you guys started on GE lore. Expect a much more detailed version to come soon.

Closed Beta Testing (CBT) is drawing near as well. All of us at IAH are pretty excited about it. We had more than 80,000 sign-ups for CBT and are in the filtration process of selecting CBT users. We will be emailing out the results of the successful applicants pretty soon so remember to check your email regularly!

In the meantime, do feel free to email me at community@ge.iahgames.com with any questions you may have about GE or just to tell me more about yourself. I look forward to meeting each and every one of you in the months to come, as Destiny’s Chains bind us further in that enigmatic world known as Granado Espada…

Hrin

Community Manager: Granado Espada