We've got some good news for the league. We've managed to attract a number of active players, and some of them are really high level. We've got all the active players from the Devil's Mind league with us now, and a few of them are active pvp'ers too.

I wasn't planning to go to SVS this weekend because most of our high level players haven't been seen for a while. With this group, I'll go make the reservation as soon as I post this. Hopefully a few people will read this before the weekend and we'll have some fun with that fight.

Also, there is a 2x complete event this weekend. All of xp rate, skill rate and drop rate will be doubled from noon Sunday until midnight on the 1st of November. It's not often we get a complete event so lets go out and enjoy it. I'll be on my nuker for this event because...

The bad news is, the second half of Tibet has been delayed yet again. This time "for some weeks". "Technical reasons" is all we were told but you know that translates from Korean as "Indy21 fucked something up again".

Oh well.

Yo Disconnecters,

The Games Campus publisher is holding another of their forum events and we're thinking to enter this Gif as our league entry. I'll open the comments section for this post.

A few people have asked politely to have this blog re-opened so they could look stuff up once in a while, so I have done that. To keep it that way, and to keep controversy to a minimum I have turned off the comments section. I don't plan to post news or new material.

The blog is now a 9Dragons reference book only. If you wish to quote anything written here I only ask that you give a link to our source material.

- AxtTreiber

My rough translation of tomorrow's event:

There is something brewing together in Hefei. The bad omens are piling up ...

White men have come to the conclusion that all indications are that on the 13th this month, at Friday, something terrible will happen in Hefei. They estimate, it is especially during the period of 12 to 18 o'clock to stay away from the capital, if you do not want to be hurt!

If you offer yet deciding during this period to be in Hefei, do not say we did not warn you!

Clan Games Campus

This is my first message here so bare with me. Just posting this because AxtTreiber aka SpearDriver is on vacation.

At the current moment there is nothing special going on, on Games Campus. Only thing going on at the moment is the Item Mall Auction. Its the same as the previous one, this week you can pm "Versteigerer" with your bid for certain items. The original message can be found here: Click Here

The items and days are as followed:

Monday till Wednesday (02/05/2011 - 04/05/2011):
2x 7/1000 Hp into Life Weapon Ornament.

Wednesday till Friday (04/05/2011 - 06/05/2011):
1x 30 day Premium Package.

Friday till Monday (06/05/2011 - 09/05/2011):
4x Jade Separator (adds 1 slot to weapons or deco's)

Person with the highest bid in gold gets the item. All auction days run from 14.00 on the start date till 14.00 on the ending date. Items will be placed in your bag at the end of the auction if you got the first place in the bidding and the gold will be removed automaticly.

P.S. I hope you have a nice vacation SD.

I'm not sure what to do about this blog in the long term, but for the next couple of weeks my wife and I are on vacation in the Canary Islands.

Patch 23 was rolled out today, but it's nothing to celebrate. We were told in advance that the Tibet map would be added to the game today and we got it. So, maybe 3 people can start grinding there. The lowest level mobs are level 176 and from my playing days on Bardo I know that those mobs hit hard.

For those people who can get to the third village on the ice map it's an easy jump to Tibet, and it's safe from the gate to the first village. You'll get 100% value for all the items you sell to the NPC too, so it's worth to save up a couple of bags full and at the end of the grinding day, jump to that map and sell your drops.

I was expecting to find the 800 defense clothes at the drapery, and they were there for about an hour. I bought several sets and passed them on at my cost to league members. It doesn't pay to be a nice guy though because Camlost decided that these are "a bit too powerful".

Seriously? What?

Some nuker might get his feelings hurt when he can't one shot kill everybody in Bloody Plains?

Fuck You Camlost. This is just one more bad decision. Pathetic drop rates, trying to sell skill experience items in the coin mall, hackers still in the game, all those lucky refiners from a small SE Asian nation, and no plan to deal with shared accounts.

What's next? Chi Kung defense items in the coin mall?

In other news I bought one of the NPC weapons from Tibet, because I really badly need a new axe. I'm using a borrowed FC level axe and I'm almost Little Master levels. Ridiculous, right? The story gets better. I cut that axe 12 levels, down to LM6, added one slot to it with a bronze separator and the refining bitch broke it at +3.

There really is nothing here to celebrate. Move along.

-AxtTreiber

ShadowGuyver pretty much gave up the game last night. We did a run in Gold Coins Mansion for him, to get that killer epithet. It was fun. It's just sad to see another experienced adult player leave the game. Let's face it, they're hard to replace. That guy in particular will be really hard to replace. He's been playing for years and was even a volunteer game manager back in the Acclaim days. There aren't too many around who know more about the game than I do, but he would be one of them.

He's got good reasons though and we all have to respect them. He's graduating university in a few weeks and is already searching for a job. He's got a girlfriend too now, one of the original sort of time sink. He hasn't been too happy about the state of the game either, and in his own words, "Games Campus hasn't done much to improve the game".

He's right of course. This league is called Disconnected for a reason, and we all still get dc'ed far too often. The game crashes at the map changes are pretty annoying too. There is still no such thing as PvP balance even with the artificial attack rating cap on the nukers. All it takes is one high level nuker to show up and no one else will ever have a chance to take one of the fortresses. In Black vs White war Batuo can single-handedly defend the white side Hermit.

PvP balance may not be something that Games Campus can ever fix but there are plenty of other issues they could deal with, and obviously they don't have the same concerns that we players have. Refining hacks get a three day ban, quest repeats are still happening, damage is hacked on the bosses, level hacking is back, and shared accounts are more common than ever. The lack of responses from Games Campus mean it's just not worth to report them anymore.

And in the mean time, another one bites the dust.

See ya Shadow, it was a lot of fun having you around! Come and see us once in a while.

- AxtTreiber

I don't have much that is important to report, but I thought I would share a few things from the news this weekend. First of all the experience event is going reasonably well and a fair number of people are actually playing. I have a new member in my band, and 2 people are waiting for invites to the Sacred Flowers band. We may have to reform that band because the bandmaster hasn't been seen for ages. ShadowGuyver, I would appreciate it if you could check in with us once in a while so that we can reform the league and dump that mostly inactive SF band.

Xenawarior? Are you up to being bandmaster again?

Laskarina from the UnitedForces league made it to Hermit 1 this weekend. There should be a special entry on the wikipedia page for no-life losers, just for Laskarina. Man, I thought I was bad. I might make it to HM12 tonight. It's looking like next weekend will be a 3x event. It will be interesting to see who gets what sort of levels.

Games Campus will bring us the Tibet map and School of the Rising Sun dungeon next week. There are a total of maybe 3 people who could grind in SRS now, so that's not really important. I've been instructed to not post in English on their forum anymore, except in the International Corner. I'm really not in the mood for that sort of game publisher stupidity. Yes I can speak and read in German but I touch type in English. I have to physically look at each key to type in German while I think about how about how to spell things, and I can't spell worth spit in German.

I suspect I won't be posting much more on the Games Campus forum. It's their loss, not mine.

Speaking of game publisher stupidity, I posted a suggestion that Games Campus should change the package size of the experience cards. The current price for a package of 50 cards is 3300 Campus Credits, or about 66 cents each. The only problem with that? The easiest way to buy Campus Credits is with a Paysafe card, and those come in 25 euro amounts. For 25 euros you get 2750 credits. If Games Campus packaged 40 xp cards for 2750 credits the unit price would be 68 cents each.

This doesn't look difficult to me but I doubt they'll do anything with that suggestion.

Traditionally, the publishers of 9Dragons don't pay much attention to player suggestions and in this regard Games Campus isn't much different. What we have here is a game being played by a bunch of people with no life, and being run by a bunch of people with no brains.

Good combination! How did you do in the weekend event?

- AxtTreiber

We already know that the Korean server has a fairly cool Easter event planned for their servers. One of the regulars on the Games Campus forum posted a link for us. I can't read a word of it though, and I sure wish there was a google translator for text in images, so we could find out more details.

I'm bringing this up because Camlost posted a poll today in the forums, and we have some choice as to the server settings for the Easter weekend. Use that link and go vote. You don't need to be able to speak German to understand the choices for the server settings.

In addition to the poll though, the German language text Camlost posted suggests that we are probably getting some sort of an event for Easter.

"Ostern kommt schneller als man denkt! Wir sind schon am Vorbereiten eines netten Ostereis für euch...

Easter is coming faster than we can think. We are already preparing a nice Easter Egg for you..."

The rest of his text just introduces the poll and the choices we have. We have until Wednesday of next week to vote, but there is no reason not to do that today. In the mean time, if anyone can read that Korean text, it would be nice to know what it says.

- AxtTreiber

Maybe they are finally starting to feel sorry for us, or maybe this is just the usual once per month experience event that Games Campus has been giving us so far. Either way I'm happy to see it. At the Half Maniac 2 level I get about 8% per hour of grind. Without events and xp cards I can't even level up every day, and that is pretty frustrating. I'm not planning to spend any more money on this version so I'm saving the xp cards I have, for an event.

Finally we have one.

This weekend, starting Friday at 6pm local time until Monday morning at 10am we'll have 2x the normal experience rates. Yes, it's another marathon. I don't think I can get to the Lost Mind levels but I will probably be fairly close.

Good luck and have fun this weekend. It's Time To Grind!

- AxtTreiber

Many of the players on 9DGermany are doing their best to convince Games Campus to put on more events, but the message isn't getting through. For better or for worse 9D players got used to regular weekly experience events and many people simply wont play without them. I have players in my band stuck at RC/RL levels and they haven't been seen in weeks. They want regular events and didn't get them on this server. They voted with their feet, and left.

I mention this because this weekend Games Campus has come up with an event!

It's a nice idea but really, only about 15 people will be able to play this one. It's a collection event. Sort of. You have to collect 20 pieces of steel as your entry fee to join a special True General Wei spawn event on Monday night. Games Campus will spawn TGW 3 times and people who already have that epithet are not invited to the party.

I have a small chance to get this epithet. I am one of about 15 people on the server who are Half Maniac, or Humble Master level. In the 5 years or so that I've played this game I've never had this epithet. Obviously I'm going to try for it and I'm collecting all the damage equipment I can find. My competition includes a bunch of incredibly lucky weapon refiners and +9 is the new +10.

Hey ShadowGuyver, can I borrow your axe?

So far there aren't lot more details for this event. Apparently we'll be teleported to where ever the spawn spot will be. That probably means CC5. I hope not. We probably wont have time to get the anti-PK buff and I'm on a PvE build. The first nuker who decides to clear the room will end the event for me. I'll have some herbs with me, against the poisoned air, but I really don't have anything to save me from a nuker.

I'm just going to have to hope for the best. Any suggestions?

Update: Like I said, I had a small chance to win one of these but it didn't happen. Thanks though in particular to Lilith for the loan of an nice axe and healer support during the three spawn.

Just for the record I had damage relics and decos from the Master & Disciple system that totaled an 80% increase in damage and some attack rate. I had 1k damage pills and 20% crit rate pills too. For clothing and epithets I used critical rate damage clothes that with my masteries and premium added 21% to all critical hits. I know I was getting True General Wei's attention. He was hitting me back regularly.

It's annoying to use these good items for nothing, but without them you can't possibly win, and what hell, it's at least worth it to try.

- AxtTreiber

This is what you get for giving three day bans to hackers...



Yes, he's running around with another plus 10 bracers. That is what you get for a 3 day ban.

You get a player who comes back and hacks himself another weapon. I took that shot around midnight last night and I would normally send it to GamesCampus, but Camlost clearly no longer cares.

So, what are we playing next?

- AxtTreiber