Sunday, September 30, 2007
Announcement
Happy belated 17th birthday to Gordon a.k.a. Oni-Neko, our second most senior member to date. Rock on, Marauder.
In view of embarking on expeditions in the future, a survey will be conducted on which game title the Marauders should participate in. Currently recruitment has commenced for HellGate: London, however should there be any suggestions for future expeditions, please state them in the comments area of this post. Thank you.
This announcement is brought to you by the Technical Support Team.
Hello Marauders. I just revamped the whole webbie, as you definitely would have noticed. Feel free to send any comments, suggestions are anythingywhat to me regarding the website, and not some other random stuff. Provided you know who I am, of course.
Tissue Paper FTW!
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Anatomy of a WoTM.
For all those of you wondering, "What the heck're they talking about?", let me just say, that's not the first time somebody's said that to us. LOL. All that follows is a summary of what i was TRYING to say, before Blogger deleted my edit on Justin's post, and before Justin tried to stitch together some Frankenstein of a re-edit which now makes the edit make no sense. AT ALL.
Basically, regarding justin's post below, a WoTM, is the abbreviation for Weapons of the Marauders. The idea was started 2 years ago during December, during which there was about a 1-2 week period where my old computer decided to spontaneously die on me, and stranding me back into the Ice Age except now I don't have a sabertooth tiger fur loincloth, and spears made out of sharpened sticks. To stop myself from going insane, I had this idea to in which, a person could have his own weapon, it being the materialisation of a person's character, personality, preferred weapon type and style and allll that nonsense. Meaning, you think up of a weapon you'd like to have if you could. You can throw in all the functions and powers you like, with the only limitation I gave them was that for the weapon to be able to essentially function within a team, which means no uber powerful one shot kill powers, no hand-held Satellite Beam thing, etc etc. It also should have been be written in a form that would appear to be from a weapons encyclopedia (meaning no statistics, no *something-something percent* increase of something, purely literature). Like if someone were to suddenly fall into some cliched tomb through a plot hole and discover this book detailing ancient weapons of much power held by people known as Marauders. It went well for a while, then grew exponentially, to the point where we were churning out several in a day. But then it burned itself out, cause we went too fast, ideas ran out, the original purpose went off-course (it is my personal opinion that it was solely because of one person that this -problem- started, due in part to the person's shift from weapons to suddenly VEHI-****ING-CLES.), mental fatigue set in and we were all nearly zombified. So, now you know. They all can be found on our msn spaces on the left (<<<-------- )
Thursday, September 27, 2007
"er..ookayy, first one up." [WotM]
[OOKAY, NEVERMIND, SINCE SOMEHOW BY SOME MAGICAL FORCE, THE PREVIOUS EDIT BY LEO DISAPPARED, I'll TRY to re-construct what he was ATTEMPTING to say. OKKAY, yeap, this was one of his random brain farts WHEN his comp broke down, and he was going completely nucking futs and insanely insane beyong all possiblity of returning to Earth when suddenly he came up with this random thing, to each create a weapon. Our own personalized kinda thing, i cant exactly remember what he said so i'm, just gonna say that it's just a representation of us, in a weapon form. Erm...ookay, that was somewhat wrong, but nevermind. MOVING ON. oh wait, theres nothing to move on to, cause i completely forgot the rest. YEAP, and wait WHAT, what's wrong with creating VEH-HEH-*******-CLES? =) ]Name: Elemental Strike (Main) [Edit]
Type: Bow
Description: Harnesses the power of all the various elements to attack its enemies, eg. Fire, ice, lightning, holy,wind, etcetc. Does not require an arrow to fire. Bow must be allowed to have "warm-up" time to be able fire shots with elemental effect/damage. The longer the "warm-up" time, the more powerful the shots become. During charging, a yellow light surrounds the bow, and two streaks of lightning, from the top and bottom, strikes the two gems embedded at the edges of the bow. The gems then glow a bright green colour, and frost slowly surrounds the bow, and turning into a bright blue colour. A bright fiery glow then emanates from the bow, and it creates an arrow out of the elements.
After "warming-up", shots with elemental effect can be fired. Type of shot fired is based on what the user wants to fire. Up to a combination of 2 elements can be fired at the same time. Combination shots have the effect of both elements, but only partially, as compared to a single elemental-type shot.When charged up to a certain limit, user is able to fire a combination of 5 elements at once [Fire, Ice, Lightning, wind, poison] in one shot; each element-type has 25% effect of the single element-type shot. It is slower as compared to standard firing, but has a greater area of effect.
Precision shot: -
Single-type elemental shot. Elemental effect is only 45% of a standard element-type shot. Shot does 1.5x more Physical damage than standard elemental-type shots, and a 40% chance of getting a critical hit. Precision shots fly faster, reducing velocity-time greatly, but has minimal area of effect.
Energy shot: -
Non-elemental type shot. Bow fires out a burst of energy, does not have any elemental effect, does not do more/less damage to enemies with elemental strengths and weaknesses.
Silencing of spell casting: -
A bright circle of light surrounds opponent; temporarily prevents opponent from using any ranged atks or any special skills that it has. Note: 5% chance of silencing enemy for all shots
User Protection: -Creates a forcefield around user, reducing spell/ranged damage by 35%, Reduces melee damage by 10%.Note: Skill can be activated/deactivated; Once activated, protects user for 30 seconds. Can be deactivated at any time during this period. Cooldown time required for each activation is 65 seconds. Does not need to cooldown if limit of 30 seconds is not crossed.**The bow only recognizes its allies, does not work for/protect any others who use it.If in the possesion of enemies, bow does not respond to their commands, ie. Does not activate.
*Bow can be used with a standard arrow.*All shots have 15% chance of a critical hit except precision shots.*Maximum and minimum limits of the damage, elemental effects, etc. are dependent on level of skill of user.
Secondary:Lightning edge
Sorry, it looks daamn weird, but yea, i typed it what, almost 2 years ago sooo....it's somewhat..yeeeaaaa...a bit...ookay nevermind. UP!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Destination: HellGate.
EDIT: Hellgate: London will come out on October 31st in Western countries. It is assumed to be the same date for us as we have a dedicated company managing the server and all other distribution matters of the game in SEA. For all who are curious, Elite status costs US$9.95. Tax & value exchange may or may not be carried over. Even if it does, it'll be S$15.92 => S$16. Elite status is a requirement for Officer status in guilds (probably sub-leaders).
+ minor changes at the veeery bottom regarding squad line-up. Added Justin.
Attention all Marauders. Our next group expedition will be for HellGate London.
It's the spiritual successor to Diablo, but it's not the same setting. Made by 75% of the people of the same studio who made Diablo. That said, it'll probably be a kickass game considering the people involved. Here are some brief details regarding the game. You can probably get more from sites like IGN or something. Or our LOCAL (singapore) distributor's site, which is awesome, since we'll actually be living on the same chunk of dirt as our customer support (THEY CAN'T ESCAPE ME NOW!!!).
IGN Main SiteIAHGames Site(You might wanna sign up and stuff at the IAHGames site. Get updates and stuff. Might be useful.)
The rundown: It's based in a post-apocalyptic setting, like, 20XX, in London obviously, where a massive crater exploded out of nowhere from the ground, spilling forth demons (literally) that quickly destroyed most of the human population (i'm not quite sure if it's just London or the entire world. I'm thinking it's the latter). Out of the shadows, a secret Templar order dating back to the Crusades, who alone have the knowledge to defeat the demons, emerge and are tasked with the defense of London. The demons have started "hell-forming" London, which is like their version of Terra-forming, making the land suitable for living for them by stuffing as much death and decay as demonly possible.
My thoughts: Totally original idea, so Freshness factor rates high for me. Graphically, it kicks ass too so that scores high as well. Also, they have some nice ideas like being a Single-Player game, but with MMORPG capabilities without trying to be, AND kicking ass at it. And the multi-player function is what we are focusing on.
The Classes:
Foreword: Officially, there are 2 subclasses for the each but there is an extra class for ALL 3 factions. Probably Elite (subscribers) only. All classes heal themselves and should be able to sufficiently deal damage. There is no hand-holding, support class that deals damage like blowing air or tanks that have high constitutions to withstand hits but are somehow mysteriously unable to dish out high damage even though they have musclezzzz. THIS IS HELLGATE. There are NO weak classes.
Templars - They are the melee classes of Hellgate.
Templar Blademaster - Main melee DPS of group. Primary function is to deal damage with their ability to use Dual Swords. Tradeoff for power however, is a lack of staying power (unable to tank well). Best against 1v1 PvE scenarios. Float like a butterfly, sting like a CANNON.
Templar Guardians - Main tanks obviously. Primary function: Be a meat shield. Their damage and abilities rack up in power the more enemies are around the player. The more, the better. This class is able to wade into a bunch of enemies and kill more enemies than you can count in one hand in one stroke and take the sh*t too. Weirdly, it does worse 1v1 than it does mass mob rushes.
Possible Elite-only Class: Crusader. Holds 2-handed swords??? (Lack of info released by studio)
Hunters - They are the ranged specialists of Hellgate.
Hunter Marksman - Sniper class. The official description sums it up nicely. I quote: "Marksmen are less of lone wolves than they are walking armouries." This class deals in guns, guns and more guns. Probably the main DPS for Ranged.
Hunter Engineer - This class is hard to explain. It's sorta like....a pet class. The engineer can deal damage on his own with rifles, and also build and deploy drones to damage, stop, stun, burn, shred, cut or blow up enemies with. It's like having a little hovering robot army at your control. Like R2D2 + Badass + Rockets - Annoying squealing = Drones. I dunno, but this class seems more support-ish than the rest.
Possible Elite-only Class: Hunter Recon. No additional known info. My guess? Stealth? Radar marking?
Cabalists - The mages of Hellgate.
Cabalist Evoker -
Main damage class for sure. This is the quintessential NUKER. Does a hell of a lot of damage. But, not suprisingly, they are glass cannons. Can dish it out the pwn but can't take it in. As with all Cabalists, they are highly dependant on Focus Drives (gloves that are the main casting weapon of Cabalists). Can dual wield Focus Drives (which is the main source of power).
Cabalist Summoner - Pet class. Like the name suggests, summons elementals and creatures and even demons to do their work for them. As with the Engineer, capable of doing damage on own.
Possible Elite-only Class: Cabalist Shapeshifter. Pretty self-explanatory. Maybe you get to morph your hand into a Reaper claw and smack something up nice.
Current Roster:
Me - Guardian/Crusader
Justin - Marksman
Gordo - Marksman
Alvin - Marksman/Engi
Edmund - Guardian
Josh - Evoker/Shaper
Sam - Evoker
Ian - Observer
[[*****Currently recruiting more members. Refer to bottom post for more details.]]
My plan until I can try out the game is to form squads. Based on dungeon size/in-game limitations, party size may vary from as little to 2-3 people per party or a large number. I plan to form 4 man squads consisting of as many variations in classes as possible. Preferably, I'd like to have 1Templar-2Hunter-1Cabalist formation. For now, it'll probably be formed into squads of Me-Gordo-Justin-Josh, Ed-Al-Sam-(member wanted).
Sunday, September 16, 2007
State of the Marauders.
This is an broadcast update for all Marauders. In the long absence of activity, our guild is now liquidated and information about members is largely unknown. I am here to provide information, as well as tell you of a project that I have been thinking of.
First off, I will be speaking about the State of the Founders. For all who do not know, or have forgotten, the Marauders was founded by the Original 6. That is, Alvin (SgtPouwell), Me (Leo), Justin (CptFoley), Gordo (Agent), Oli (Saburo) and Cindy (Takeshi88). 5 of us are still active and part of the Marauders guild. Oli however is on hiatus of her position as Founder to focus on her studies.
The last member, Cindy, otherwise known to Marauders as Takeshi88, is largely inactive, and by this time far too busy to be involved with the guild. Though unofficially, but effectively, Cindy is no longer a member in Marauders. However, she will still be remembered in memoriam as one of us.
Next, though I realise most of you do not hold much for the guild, it being an online guild and all, as well as the busyness of your lives, I strongly hope that your ties will remain with the Marauders in all endevours you participate in. Remember our Modus Operandi: Never Give Up, Stick Together, Work As One. I say this is so as practically all of our already small memberbase has been more or less alienated and we are now left with once again, little to work with.
To this end, I'd like to propose a project to all of you. This project, is to see Marauders not becoming just a small guild of a single game, but a clan tag. It is not a overly huge project, but more of a small experiment. The idea is for the blog to becoming a small community hub, where members would talk, group, party and then go for gaming sessions. It would also be a review hub, where people can come along and read about thoughts of a game that a member has played. A person need not be a hardcore chiongster player, Marauders does not call for that. You can play any type of game you'd like for any length of time, at your own pace. I have but one request. I would like, for all of you, whenever you decide to participate in any game, be it MMO or Offline, to give details of it, to any of the founders. We will then post this info on the blog. I'd also like for you to, whereever possible, find people to play with you in your games. We do not wish for you to force your friends to play with you, a simple question would suffice. Please then help your friend register with us, so as to expand our roster. Furthermore, we do not ask for all members to be playing the same game as the rest. Some shards might decide to pursue some other game, and that is totally fine. We only ask for you to inform one of the founders where we would then update our information as well as provide some advice.
Lastly, I also strongly support activities OUTSIDE of the game world, so to this end, I also hope to add small subsections for other things, reviews on a book, what movie to watch, lifestyle, news, funny things and my favourite, the Random Board. To this end, a forum is better for facilitation. I'd also like for any willing and free kind soul to help set up a forum for Marauder use.
In the long run, we hope that the Marauders guild, can be a strong social community network for you and your friends.
Thank You for Reading This! (seriously, if you actually managed to read through all of this text, you must be one badass person. =] )
- Leo
