Where I work, favorite RNPC, failed mission and more work

This current addiction to GE has made me some sort of a "freak employee" at work. For one, I log in at work at the most absurd time of the day (6AM being the earliest) at leave at an equally insane one (9PM being the latest). So in most cases, I report for work for 15 hours on a typical weekday, not discounting the overtime stuff I do on weekends.

God, this made me realize how much I miss sleeping on my bed for 12 hours straight. Hehe.

On a sudden streak of vanity, I took a few pictures of my workstation using my cellphone camera.

Anne's cluttered desk

Pardon the small size of the picture and the clutter. My seatmate's a terrible hax when it comes to tidiness. XD

Notice anything familiar? That's right, it's a GE tumbler sitting next to the monitor. I rarely use it now because it's sort of coming apart. Don't ask why, it's just that way. I dunno if I chose the substandard one from all the batches we gave away for the press last January, but I have a bad feeling that I did pick the worst in the lot.

And just this morning, my seatmate, who also happens to be my boss, had this lying around the table.

The Zouk Raid Party Guest Pass

Wow, neat! I still wish to this date that I was able to attend the Zouk event as well. Must've been loads of fun.

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I am currently working on populating the content for the temporary GE PH site, which is why I've been recently spending more time in-game after work. Last night, Nepomuceno, one of my faction mates in CARNAGE, invited me for the Trinity Mission. We set off to meet in Port of Coimbra Ch. 2 and warp into the quest room from there.

It took me quite a while to get there because of this totally abominable work PC that I have. In the quest room itself, the girls got wiped out by several Escudo Pechers coming from all directions. So there I was getting frustrated with the uber slow machinations of this PC while Nepomuceno handled the mission all by himself.

Massive failure

Yeah, so we failed. Damn.

I just wish my request for better hardware gets here by next week, otherwise I'm going to scream bloody murder.

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While on my usual level grinding moments, I took on Idge's last quest. Having previously collected the Liquefied Talts from Mermen in Porto Bello, I took quite some time finding that stone in Jezebel Glen to battle with the Grim Reaper. I thought I was going to have a hard time again, but thankfully, I finished the mission, and I'm totally bowled over by the reward:

Idge's great news for me

Yay! I finally got Idge! I've been wanting to have her in my lineup, given the fact that she's my favorite RNPC (next to Adelina Esperanza).

Idge is now a DeSanggria

Exploring the city with a new team

Idge and Cyradis up close

I felt like skipping for joy when I finally added her to the DeSanggria barracks. I didn't change her name just to stay on with the Idge fandom, though she now carries the DeSanggria surname. I'm thinking of having her and Alaena do some serious level grinding in Porto Bello The Deck. Alaena's has only 2 notches to go before Heaven and Hell! I can't wait!

Man, this is going to be fun later at 6PM when I go online. Woohoo!

yatta!

I finally got the girls at level 30 after much level grinding. Yeah, it's still a bit low level compared to those who are at their level 40s and up, but what the heck...it almost took me forever to get them in that current situation. I'm already in the process of leveling Alaena to 32 so she can don the Wallace Great Sword, a unique weapon I bought at the Auction house primarily because of its nice attributes and high attack powers.

I really like Great Swords because of its kick-ass design and the sheer mass. Fighters look dangerous wearing those huge weapons on their backs...much more if it's a glowing +5!

What I really want Alaena to have is the Heaven and Hell stance, which can only be acquired at level 40. It's still a long way to go, but I've got all the time in the world.

As for Verdandi, she's already using the Evocation of Fire stance. On the upside, I like the Hell Breath skill, which is somewhat similar to Uchiha Sasuke's Katon Blazing Fire technique. But she walks too damn slow! I have no idea how heavy those elemental bracelets are, but having Verdandi wear two of them is slowing her down! T_T She doesn't have a high level armor to protect her, and the team cannot move around that much with her trailing way behind. I really must invest on a new protective suit for her. I really love her current stance, but alas, I can't have everything. *le sigh*

On the other hand, I'm leveling Cyradis' Fortitudo stance so she can aid her sisters with better buffs. Her Healing stance is almost maxed up, though I haven't alloted the last skill point on the Cure All skill.

On a side note, I've created another DeSanggria family on the Pachelbel server. I figured that it's about time I tried the non-PK servers now that I have two families on Cervantes and Caravaggio. I have Althalus the Fighter, Azulan the Scout, and CeVanne the Wizard all on level 1 (hahaha..pathetic! XD). My other DeSanggria cousins (Armeo, Kahlil, and Raquim) are still stuck in level 7 though LOL. I really must devote some time to leveling them as well.

This made me think how NineMoons manages her other families in all servers. XD

Anyway, I'll be posting some pictures of the Zouk Raid Party (courtesy of Veya), as well as the latest updates on the DeSanggrias on the next post. There was an avalanche of work this week that I cannot just find time to write a lengthy journal entry of the three sisters. It'll be Verdandi's entry coming up next, and we'll all get to see how vain and bratty this Elementalist really is. ^.~

this is what adrenaline rush is all about

Okay, so I haven't updated this blog for the longest time. XD I'm still trying to stick to the original plan of having this blog as the "journal" of the DeSanggria sisters, so it still takes quite some time for me to write their adventures in detail (complete with screencaps!).

All I can say is, the girls are moving at a slow pace. Blame it on the fact that I can't play here at work as often as I wanted. I'm trying to cope up with this by going to work early so I'd still have an hour or two to play before official work starts.

teamPH.jpg

Anyway, the reason for this sudden update in this blog is to recount the recent Granado Espada PvP Tournament Finals last June 16 at the Toycon event in Megamall. 16 best GE players (with 2 of the lot in Singapore to personally attend the Zouk Raid Party) represented the country in this first-ever tournament. I personally met the 14 players from NCR, Central Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, and I have to say that they were really quite something. Two of these players are my personal friends, namely the Stormgeist and Crowe family. To identify them from the massive crowd in the venue, they wore awesome GE Team Philippines jackets.

I was quite surprised to learn that during the semi-finals, Team Philippines had to compete with each other to get a spot in the finals. Like, WTF?! I shared the players' sentiments of disbelief on this. I even heard them conversing about strategies and all that other stuff, thinking that they were to play as one team against Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Each team had only one chance to advance to the next round. The first ones to emerge victorious were Crowe and Stormgeist, oGTO and DeathAngel, Street and Arcleaumont and Tresspassing and wattz. Then from this batch, Street and Arcleaumont and Stormgeist and Crowe were pitted against each other with the former team finally winning the much coveted spot.*

Here are just some of my observations during the competition proper:

- The lag was just horrible. It took the system more than 3 seconds to respond to the players' commands. Most of the teams had to bear the brunt of this problem as they were knocked off the race. I personally saw the frustration of Stormgeist and Crowe as they just took the beating from Street and Arcleaumont without much struggle.

- The veteran stances and armors/costumes had us all drooling uncontrollably as we watched the players try these out

teamPH1.jpg

in a practice match. Since they only had the 5 classes plus Emilia the Sage to familiarize, seeing those maxed out stances at work was like waving chocolate under my nose. I want my girls to have those stances! Hopefully it wouldn't take me too long to have them attain the appropriate level. *crosses fingers*

- Seeing the pros at work made me realize that I'm basically a n00b when it comes to game controls. I really need to brush up on that.

I was also tasked to talk to the crowd in the GE segment of Toycon, so I wore my Elementalist Robe of Fire yet again. Funny that I didn't feel the butterflies when I went onstage...and that was a good thing I guess.

Meanwhile, after Street and Arcleaumont were proclaimed as the official team to battle against the other SEA GE gamers, we got the shock of our lives when we heard the news of Ino and Overseer's (the one team that when to Singapore) defeat in the tourney, leaving Street and Arcleaumont as the lone PH team.

And then afterward, we learned that the Singapore Team was also knocked off the race.

GEvan.jpg

You can just imagine the tension come the finals, and we saw that very same pressure reflected on the team. The tension was even heightened all the more when we all had to wait for Vietnam and Malaysia to arrive on the PvP room.

When the moment of truth finally arrived, we were all cheering for the lone PH team as they came face to face with the Vietnames team. But alas, they were defeated in the first and second round. The opposing team apparently had a lot of pots, and we had to contend with the lag on top of everything. I saw the frustration on Street and Arcleaumont as they tried to take a hit on the opponents, only to find their HPs replenished.

But what the heck, we finished at 3rd place, which was not too bad Team PH won special awards such as the MVP and Most Supporting Team Award. Arcleaumont corrected us with this, so that means Team PH didn't win a runner up spot, but that's ok. There's always next year's tourney and I'm definitely going to fight for better connections so the gamers won't experience the same horrible lag. I just feel that we'd have given the regional GE gamers a run for their money if not for that godforsaken technical problem. I'd have wanted a rematch, if you ask me.

I can still feel the adrenaline rush after the tournament was finished and I'm very thrilled to have witnessed the first PvP tourney. It was also nice to have met fellow GE gamer/blogger NineMoons and Mena. I hope we have more events like these, and perhaps a grand EB for all GE gamers. Hopefully by then, I'd have my Idge costume ready (it's kinda lame to be using the same costume thrice in a row already XD).

This is definitely one of the reasons why I love this game. I hope one day I can pit my own girls in a heated PvP match, but I still have to train and familiarize myself with the game's intricacies before I jump from one task to another. Nevertheless, this experience made me want to strive harder, and I definitely will.

Long live Granado Espada!

Mission accomplished

*source: NineMoons Family