Iúil 2014
(July)


Cead Mile Failte!

Happy Birthday America!
This is our July 2014 Ceannard Notes. As many may be familiar July is a very special month for me and thus it is a month that I may not be around as much as usual. This is the one month a year I get to see my daughter and is also the month of my wedding anniversary. This year Juliana and I are celebrating 5 years :D! You may not know this but the rebirth of the Gaiscioch family in Warhammer Online, was the work of our very own first lady Juliana. She was the one that pulled me out of the fire and anguish that was my life and inspired me to do what I love again.

Over the course of this month many of you who play Guild Wars 2 will likely run across, my daughter Allie, my Ma Humble Misty, my wife Juliana aka Yulishka and I roaming around the countryside of Tyria. My daughter is an avid Guild Wars 2 fan and we will likely be spending some time over there together. Who knows I may even convince her to try WvW.

Looking forward at this month I will be running my usual late night events and my thursday events. Tuesdays are going to be up in the air. I may hold a event but it will be based around what Allie wants to do. Feel free to stop in and say hi.

Gaiscioch Magazine Issue 2 Now Available!

We are pleased to announce that as of Monday morning our second issue of Gaiscioch Magazine will be public. If you have not had the chance to check out this Digital Magazine be sure to visit: http://www.gaiscioch.com/magazine/ and give it a read. Our second issue releases Monday and features interviews with Matt Firor of Mythic and ZeniMax Online, Colin Johanson of ArenaNet, and Scott Hartsman of Trion Worlds. This issue is packed with information. For this month’s newsletters I am going to use 2 articles I published in this issue to highlight our ESO and GW2 Progress Reports.

Get an exclusive first look at Gaiscioch Magazine Issue 2 at:
http://issuu.com/gaiscioch/docs/gaiscioch-magazine-issue-2

Elder Scrolls Online Progress Report

With most games the first few months set the tempo for the next few years. To the untrained eye the fluctuations in numbers can cause panic and a false sense of impending doom. A lot of players have noticed that when we launched into Elder Scrolls Online we had over 1,300 players and currently at the time I am writing this article we've dropped to a little over 700 players.

First and foremost let me remind ourselves of a time long past, the early days of RIFT. At launch we had over 2,200 registered members aiming to go full steam into RIFT. Right after the gates opened and we realized that the Siege Warfare promised in the game early on had been cut from the program and if more than 50 of us gathered in one spot we couldn't even see each other numbers dropped like a rock. Within the first 3 months we dropped from 2,200 to a little over 800.

Fast forward to the height of RIFT, and you'll find that we actually did find the maximum number of people you could fit in a guild. Not because it gave us a warning saying "Guild Is Full" but because by pressing "G" you would crash your game. Trion fixed the problem and we continued to grow to the point that we had over 4,500 characters in the guild roster before the XML export ability broke. At our height a year after launch we were sitting at over 2,700 active members.

The key to remember is that while this game may be for some, it may not be for all. Some people are looking for something specific, others just want to be part of the community. The key is player satisfaction. We want everyone to end the day with a smile on their face.

Our first few months of Elder Scrolls Online have been challenging to say the least. The loss of the Alliance system just before the final stages of beta put a serious dent in our ability to communicate across multiple guilds. This made that 500 person guild cap hit even harder and caused the same thinning we saw in Guild Wars 2.

Additionally, the unbalanced emperor system and vampire skills in AvA caused droves to call it quits after 4 players were able to decimate 150 in seconds. This issue for the most part has been resolved and ZeniMax continues to issue new patches to lengthen the engagements and give everyone a fair shot. Just recently we have had great fun hunting and repeatedly killing the Emperors. A feat previously deemed impossible.

So looking forward, the first campaign has ended and in it's place come several new campaign options. We will be moving our efforts to a more populated campaign to work on getting our family some additional exposure. When the new Non-Veteran Rank campaigns are introduced we will be moving 1 event per week to that campaign to try to serve as an introduction to AvA and also help introduce new players to our community.

I highly encourage anyone who hasn't tried AvA recently to come out and experience the changes that ZeniMax has made thus far. There are several larger changes coming in Update 2 and Update 3 including new campaigns and more AvA refinement as well as the ability to dye your armor and even a Guild Emblem system! Ok maybe I'm excited about that one. Guild branding is a huge plus.

In any case over the next few months I suspect we'll see the same type of rise we saw in RIFT as the game thins out the players that are trying the game, and builds its foundation on the players who are here to stay. Now it's all up to us to show what we're capable of in front of a larger audience. It's showtime people lets make a splash in our new campaign.

New Elder Scrolls Online
AvA Ebonheart Campaign:

Wabbajack

Top 10 Elder Scrolls News For June, 2014

  1. ESO AVA: Upcoming Campaign Changes - Post Feedback Please
  2. Family Maintenance: Purge / Reinvite in Activity Rooms - Completed
  3. Elder Scrols Online AvA Meeting - Sat @ 10:30AM PDT
  4. Shoddycast: Elder Scrolls Online FULL Review – Worth the wait ?
  5. Tamriel Foundry: Foundry Tactical Combat Version 0.31
  6. Massively.com: The Daily Grind: Are you subbing to Elder Scrolls Online?
  7. Massively.com: The Daily Grind: Do you mob grind?
  8. Elder Scrolls Online: The Road Ahead – June 4th
  9. Massively.com: Elder Scrolls Online gets another third-party auction house
  10. Massively.com: Tamriel Infinium: An open letter to the creators of Elder Scrolls Online

Elder Scrolls Links of Interest

Guild Wars 2 Progress Report

Life in Guild Wars 2 lately has been getting better by the day. Our numbers have balanced out right at the 500 active player level which has made guild management a breeze and makes the strain of the lack of a cross guild communication system less apparent.

Over the past few months we've actually seen a rise in activities and player participation in these activities. The new Sanctum of Rall Community Conquest events featuring both Guild Missions and WvW have been a huge hit and we're now getting crowds over 90 players for the missions and around 60 for the WvW segment.

Server wise, we have seen several new developments that have improved the quality of life. A new war council has been elected including Xivor, Scripko, Moscow, GFKowns, and myself to oversee the public face of our server to the rest of the Guild Wars 2 community and provide leadership and support to our community.

Several new features have been added to the SanctumofRall.com including the new Commander On Deck feature that allows commanders to mark that they are on a map and earn a score based of their PPT performance and how many players followed them into battle. This system ties directly into our new Weekly and Monthly raffles which award random participants, leaders, and members of Sanctum of Rall a chance to win loot.

Additionally I have added a new feature that allows people to add comments about each leader and award them with a commander commendation if they feel the leader has done an outstanding job. Lastly we have enabled badges on the Sanctum of Rall site to allow players to show off their achievements in leadership and fellowship.

Many of you will be familiar with these new systems as they are a lite versions of the ones we use every day on the Gaiscioch.com site. With this new system in place we have seen our server grow and become active once again. New guilds have found their way to our shores and we are actively growing once again.

Those of you who have stepped up to lead in World vs World I thank you. Your efforts have breathed new life into our server. Over the past couple months we have had some of the most fulfilling fights on the battlefield to date.

Players are having fun again and the old days of belittling and raging that we came to know on the community Teamspeak is long passed. With the loss of the Elite, we gained the ability to forge a community of our own.

This new community is friendly, helpful, kind, and respectful. If you have not had a chance to experience WvW since we left tier 1, I'd highly recommend coming out for some of the most epic nights we've had in recent years. Every event is an epic event now. I look forward to the days to come in anticipation for what comes next. We can finally "play" and not worry about being the best all the time. Join us for some fun times and play Guild Wars 2 the way it should be played. With friends!

Top 10 Guild Wars 2 News For June, 2014

  1. You know that thing Fog hates? Yeah please read :)
  2. New Feature for Commanders on SanctumofRall.com
  3. Monthly Puzzle Jumper Achievement
  4. JOB UPDATE:: TO :: May 19th thur May 23rd Many Guild Wars 2 events ( Birthday Bash week w Balor Gorgon )
  5. Guild Wars 2: Phoenix Weapons, New Faces, and More in the Gem Store!
  6. Massively.com: Rebuild Lion's Arch in Guild Wars 2's Festival of the Four Winds
  7. Guild Wars 2: New Ancestral Outfit and Mini Jaguar Cub in the Gem Store!
  8. Guild Wars 2 Guru: Patch Notes - May 20th, 2014
  9. 5/5/2014 Community Curse Shores event. - Cancelled
  10. Guild Wars 2 Guru: Prepare for the Festival of the Four Winds!

In Closing

Please be safe out there this summer. Summer typically marks the time where population drops as families go outside and do fun things with each other. Those of you who brave the wild indoors I look forward to sharing some adventures with you. Those who are traveling be sure to submit some photo's of cool places for the magazine :). We'd love to publish our members in cool places. Be well everyone and I'll catch you all on the flipside.

Slan Go Foill!
(Goodbye For Now)

Benjamin "Foghladha" Foley
Ceannard De Gaiscioch Treubh