Full Circle

For some real news before the crap starts.

SDCombine now has a blog. SDComBlog. Original, huh? It's posted upon by Combine members, launched by me.

Time to retire from RuneScape.

Not like it's a massive surprise. I've been off for a long time. A week or two of heavy playing and a month on break. That sums up the last half a year or so. I just had to make it official. Tie up some loose ends.

I've been around RuneScape in late 2006 and saw half of it. Through a good bit of playing and at least a year and a half of total inactivity, I've passed the 1900 total. More than 90% of my Quest list and Music list is green. I said I'd finish Eagle's Peak and Observatory, the quests I started on the first day but never finished now, but I'll only do one: Eagle's Peak.

I'll leave Observatory. Eagle's Peak signals the end of my story on RuneScape, but RuneScape carries on. Observatory can be left to the end of RuneScape.

Eagle's Peak is actually the perfect way to end RuneScape for me. Hunter was made my new lowest skill recently, but before I got membership, I was fascinated by Hunter. It was the only skill that, to someone who hadn't attempted it before, had real depth. Slayer was killing things. Agility was running in circles, Herblore was making potions I'd never use, Farming was boring, Thieving was boring etc. Hunter had depth. You'd travel across RuneScape, using camouflage and tools, advanced and primitive to trap an enormous variety of exotic wildlife for resources.

Hunter was the first thing I tried on a member's server. Feldip coast, catching birds. It was the reason I started Eagle's Peak. I found more interesting things to do and it happened to be left to now. Eagle's Peak is perfect for closing the book.



I started RuneScape when I was in the late sixth grade and was clueless about things like efficiency, guides and so on. My first business venture in RuneScape was selling bronze armour sets I smithed in Lumbridge court. I just did what came to mind and never asked for help. The opposite happened when I played EVE recently. I knew about the playerbase, player factions, backstory, ship classes and progressions and dove right in and shot to the top (and fell right back done). Information is valuable to a new player's experience.

My only regret is not Googling 'RuneScape' guides when I was in the sixth grade. That's another reason The Combine switched gears to teaching. I don't want people to waste time like I did.

My last work in RuneScape was materialistic. I got my 3rd-Age Helm and kitted myself out in Armadyl (it was a success, owing to hard work and great friends). Money has always been a focal point in RuneScape. It's to show off, it's for practicality, show but quite like having something nice to strut around in during my retirement.



Killing goblins behind Lumbridge castle before I did the Flap emote for the first time taught me that constant effort leads to constant reward.

Mining ore and smithing iron weapons to sell to NPC merchants in Varrock before I complained about the Grim Reaper's Hood not being black taught me that there are other ways to make money.

Air rune running before I entered a clan chat for the first time taught me to look beyond skills for money making.

Merchanting unidentified herbs when the Obsidian set was still valuable taught me about big money.

Cutting yew logs the first time whips were 1.3 million per taught me that not all money is fast, but it can be simple sometimes and I just have to wait.

Cutting magic logs during an uproar over free trade taught me that things escalate and it really does get better eventually.

Catching sharks whilst internally replacing the words 'High Definition' with 'High Detail' in a whole new world taught me that sometimes, money can be easy and reasonably fast.

Catching Rocktail whilst wielding a Dragonfire Shield and Amulet of Fury just to look good taught me that I can do it.

Selling my valuables as my journey ends and putting together one last outfit for retirement has taught me that effort will be rewarded.

I am the richest, most highly skilled and most fulfilled player in the history of RuneScape and nobody can take that away from me.

My name is IVIilitarus

I am retired.

New Tag

It reads 'Jagex Rocks'.

Don't expect a lotta posts with that tag.

Saw the behind the scenes for July. Saw the Clan Citadel. I'm going to get one last month of membership on RuneScape. It died for a bit, but I'll come back to change my name back, check out the Citadels, build our own, get that 1900 Total and leave RuneScape. Forever. The 'About Me' column in my blog says I'm a bitter RuneScape veteran, and that implies I'm also retired, so I need to retire.


Also fun, I got some screenshots of a very, very productive strategy meeting between myself and another Combine member, we were planning out the Reform and rank structure, mostly.



Well, I think it was productive.

Regards, IVIilitarus

I Miss EVE Online

I really, really do. Was a great game. Is a great game. Can't afford to go back on a nonexistent salary.

Fallout: New Vegas is going strong. Sniper did an awesome job. Got a new character and I'm busy chopping things with a big ol' axe.

I came to what I think is the best solution to the Combine Reform. (I'm the leader, I decide what's best.) I dropped it on them and told them I didn't feel like doing it anymore. 3 volunteers so far. Gonna see where this goes, I want to be a passive observer.

Also, I got picked for the second round of beta testers for 8Realms. I checked the forums after the first round and they were deader than Stellar Dawn's pre-beta forum (I'm coining that phrase).

Playing it for a bit. It's nothing special so far.

Regards, IVIilitarus

Activity on the SDOF is Like Summer Rain

Sporadic and unpredictable.

At least there's no shortage of stupid people anywhere on the internet.



Clan Camp got released. Launched The Combine RSB on RuneScape. Activity died just in time to see the CRB become useless.

I quite like the emblem, though. Used the Combine colours. Surprisingly pretty.




Regards, IVIilitarus

Existential Questions

Okay, so I made a calendar fuckup.

Turns out, the Clan Camp would be released the Tuesday in 3 days, not the Tuesday in 10 days like I'd thought.

Which is kinda awesome.

I'm gonna need those 4 players or so to help me start it off, though. Not sure if I need them friendlisted, or on the same world or even at the location. Hard to tell.

I want to use RuneScape's system as a testbed for how much I need to adapt the Combine's leadership and advancement systems for use in Stellar Dawn, as RuneScape's system is likely to be very similiar and almost identical in the beginning of Stellar Dawn. The Combine needs the complex system of specialisation and independence from a leader's orders because I don't trust myself enough to be there when I'm always needed, so I need everyone to pull their weight.


Another bit of nostalgia that hit me was whilst going through Marlaine's blog links, I found Tim's (one of the major bloggers back in the day) and through the links in Tim's blog, I found Mat's (former clan mate) blog. And I found the piece below.



Thing a lot of the bloggers (including me) don't realise when they leave a blog inactive or quit it completely is how many of their readers have just lot out. Every blog gets a readership. You don't write successfully because you're an attention whore (like me), you write because you love it. I really envy people like Marlaine, who almost never seem to take breaks from this sort of thing. The kind who outlast their readers.

I really, really miss those days, now that I think about it.

Regards, IVIilitarus

In Spite of Consequence

Things are looking up. The Clan Camp will finally give all of those bored Combine members a little something on RuneScape a little something to do in the wait leading up to Stellar Dawn. If Stellar Dawn's clan support is anywhere near as good as RuneScape's is advertised, I'll be satisfied, as long as they include a good system of war and conflict, not just hiscores, but real, high-stakes warfare.

Combine's making some or other progress. We've passed the 1900 post mark on our thread and the logo is sort of moving forward. Still wondering about media organisation and various other junk like that.

Today's Livid Farm update also brought along the Clan Camp in its first form; the camp is now under construction, with trees being felled and a Guard Captain and Sergeant standing in front of a pile of supplies.

Guess it'll be done, despite their lack of effort by the 12th, anyway. I'm gonna need a few active Combine members around for release. The Guard Captain said you need 5 friends to form a clan.




Also, whilst hammering out a very, very long comment on one of Marlaine's recent blog posts, I realised that with the release of the new clan Vexillum and if it is wearable on the back or cape slot, I could theoretically have 3 banners out at one time; my Banner Carrier, the Vexillum and a standard PoH banner wielded in the weapon arm.



Regards, IVIilitarus

A Thing of Beauty

The Stellar Dawn Official Forums have seen a boost in activity lately. Which is great news for me, because that means The Combine's catching some activity. New logo's progressing fine and I uploaded a list of possible colour schemes for everyone to argue over. It's pretty much been decided that upward pointy thingy + star + motto + translation of motto is going to be our new logo. Just need to work out the design.



School starts tomorrow. So expect more bitching and fewer blog posts.

Regards, IVIilitarus

Incoming!

Short version is, Jagex is being a collected buncha morons about their perceived ability to market their games, so I'm hoping to clobber together some Combine members on RuneScape for a bit of fun, and to test out the new clan system.

In preparation for the upcoming Clan Camp, I've registered the Combine on Runehead and launched a Combine RuneScape Branch.

Following that, I put together a new logo and pretentious Latin motto for the Combine. The first picture was just me playing around with new brushes in Photoshop. The second is pretty much our new logo.




Regards, IVIilitarus

Reforms Finished Ahead of Time

I finished the Reform way ahead of schedule.

http://services.stellardawn.com/m=forum_fo/c=WeaB5*KL4Po/forums.ws?96,97,114,92831

Regards, IVIilitarus

Slam

This post was named in honour of my overuse of the word 'slam' and variations thereof in my newest fanfic, Moros.

Back from vacation to the Victoria Falls. Not worth spending 4 nights there. Great for 2 nights, though. Got pictures!

First's a fun one. I happened to be pointing the camera upward at the vultures circling (no, I wasn't gonna die. The restaurant there feeds the vultures every day with leftovers for the tourists 'n' stuff). So in the picture, you really have to ask yourself whether it's a bird or a plane.


The falls themselves were a lot more interesting from the chopper. At ground level, it was hard to see anything. The spray's huge and gets in the way, and once you venture past the first set, you won't see anything. The spray's thicker than most rainstorms and has zero visibility. The spray is also 100% water, so you will be soaked from the top-down.




The Falls are situated almost in between Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. There happened to be a rainstorm going on in Botswana and I got a picture.


Other fun stuff included taking this photo of the chopper coming for a landing. Then whilst going through them, I saw that big smokestack in the background. Worked out it was the spray from the falls a bit later.



Also, poked lions with a stick and rode an elephant. Didn't get the picture of lion poking, because the guy missed it and I didn't feel like doing it again, on account of 3 lions I'd be pissing off.



Rode the elephant. Fed the elephant. Smelled like the elephant afterward. If you ever do that sort of thing, don't wear your best.


Wrote the prologue and first chapter of Moros over there. Updated some Combine stuff. Wrote more stuff for the Reform.

I cannot wait for Runescape's clan update. I wanna test it out, because I am a clan leader now.

There's been a spike of activity on the SDOF while I was gone. 2 or 3 of the members received a message in their Jagex inbox about Stellar Dawn, but were told to keep it quiet, or some variation. 2 Forum Moderators started posting again and SallyD is on the 'Just Dropping By' thread on the Stellar Dawn Central forum.

Writing tl;dr's for Fun and Profit

The Combine's in the middle of reforms. Reforms are planned upgrades to the Combine that happen at intervals, fixing things that go wrong and adding lots of pretty new stuff.

First Reform changes the way the Combine is organised (sigh, again) and will be the last ginormohugic upgrade to the Combine before BETA release.

Speaking of the BETA, Jagex has stated that they will give out no new information until BETA announcement. They' stated that it's all part of their plan.

It's really not hard to tell that that is not how you manage a pre-release video game. Especially not an MMORPG.

More information on a Combine Reform is a bit of a tl;dr (like half of my writing), so can read the wiki pages.

Right. A wiki.

See, Jagex forums aren't a good place to write and archive tl;dr's, what with the 2000 character limit and habit of inactive threads dropping offa the edge in a month. Our offsite forum could only handle so much of my junk, and I write too much, so why the hell not? SDCombine Wiki was born.

So far I'm the only one editing and adding to it on account of the Stellar Dawn Official Forum being deader than dead. Lots of goodbye threads are popping up in the Stellar Dawn section and a number of my best clan members have become inactive (after saying goodbye, natch). I've stuck a buncha stuff in, already, but still.

Despite being a sci-fi-ish and Stellar Dawn blog, I got offa my ass and pulled up two Fletching levels today, thanks to the Double Experience Thingie.


Regards, IVIilitarus

Combine Theme Song 'n' Stuffs

Somebody came up with the bright idea of The Combine needing a theme song.

So here, I'm adding all of my own selections for the idea. The songs are all in the music player in the corner. Just have to find them.

My proposal is to have 3 Themes. (shit!) One for The Combine as a whole and one for each Arm. I strongly suggest you listen to each song end to end.

My selections come down to this;

Combine Main Theme:

Other 5. Battle Theme 2
Epic 6. Revelations (possible Scholarly Arm song, too)
Orchestra 4. Company of Heroes


Scholarly Arm Theme

Other 6. Battle Theme 3
Orchestra 5. Spectre Induction


Militant Arm Theme

Orchestral 3: The Old Republic
Other 4. Battle Theme 1


As a side note, I would like to say that I automatically reject ANY song with lyrics that aren't justified. If you like the tune, find the instrumental.

The Combine

I'd like to take a moment to jabber on about The Combine.

See, I made The Combine (we call it The Combine and refer to it as the Guild, we are The Combine. It's a name. We happen to be a guild.) when I decided to jump on the clan-making bandwagon. Nobody else was doing it, so I was essentially the first guy to really make a clan for the sake of making a clan, and be able to say "I made a clan before the game was released. I don't care if it's stupid, but I did it."

At the time, I recall the major clans were were StellarStop, which is more of a fansite community. Really, it's a fansite. There's a link. Visit sometime. There was also the Void Alliance, which collapsed.

See, StellarStop was founded as a community and bunch who would get to know each other before the game. The Void Alliance was a 'heavy Roleplay based/milsim' clan. Founded on the 14th and 16th of July, respectively.

So it was a good 10 days into it that my ego hit a peak and decided to found a clan so I can say, 5 years from now, "I FOUNDED A FUCKIN' STELLAR DAWN CLAN BEFORE YOUR CHARACTER EVEN STARTED!"

Riiiiiiight.

So on the 27th of July, The Combine showed up, and man, that'll be remembered as a dark day.

See, I started The Combine as a Tech-race specific guild to help myself. Ya know, let it grow and crash eventually. Every clan I ever started and/or joined died or I left for some reason, so I figured this would wouldn't be any different. It'll die a few months into the game and I'd write a heartfelt goodbye and join some other loser clan or something.

That plan went screwy when The Combine actually took off. Now I had problems. People were really coming in and we were becoming a respected clan because I kept stressing intelligence and maturity in the opening that only intelligent, mature people showed up.

So I overhauled the thread, shut down recruitment for a few weeks and rewrote that trash into something useful. Took it seriously. I'mma actually run this shit and make it last, because my plan of building an ego just died with a load of awesome people flying in.

The original Combine thread is over here.

Current Combine thread is here, and a helluva lot better.

See how the original sucked ass and the new one didn't?

In the time between I panicked as my plan died and I actually took responsibility for a well-established and well-stocked clan, the Borg and Titan Empire were founded, on the 3rd and 10 of August, respectively and they started snatching up people, useless, inactive as well as mature and intelligent.

See, we mighta been founded weeks earlier, but we never became the biggest or best because our leader was a dumb, egotistic fuck who tried to manipulate our collective ass into making him more respected and when he finally got his act together, the others were way ahead. Wait a sec...

Okay, so short version is, when I got swamped by people who were awesome, responsibility kicked me in the balls and I took it up, building [bold, unjustified declaration]one of the best clans in-non-existent-game[/bold, unjustified declaration].

As it turns out, when I redirect the effort I usually use to promote myself, I can do some pretty awesome stuff.

Like The Combine: The Offsite, Official Forums!

The Combine: The Twitter!

The Combine: The Facebook Page!

Okay, maybe the Facebook Page is a little much, but you gotta admit, I do some pretty insane/stupid stuff when I put my mind to it. Like found a guild for the sake of founding a guild. And then actually turning it into something meaningful.

Since then, a whole bunch of other clans have jumped on the bandwagon and most never quite take off (or get any members at all). See? Jump on a bandwagon first and they call you trend-setter. Do it too late, and they call you unoriginal copycat.

Shit.

I'm a leader now.

And I got stuff to do.

You know what, founding, building and running a guild has been a learning experience thus far. I've been stressed out, I've panicked, I've jumped with joy at the prospect of new members, I've overseen discussion, participated in them, we've made ourselves a known guild and I was at the head of it.

With the above in mind, I can say one thing with utmost sincerity and honesty;

It's really, really hard, please don't make me do it again.

I mean, really. Do you know how much effort goes into doing shit like that? If I knew, I woulda found some other way of getting an ego trip. So watcha say, Combine! Let's not crash and burn/spontaneously collapse or appear destined for greatness and die overnight like the Soviet Union did?

Also, if you look up near the top of my blog, you'll see a fish tank (with fish). Click inside to feed them. That's one fishy for every Combine member, rounded down. We're at just over 20 at time of this posting and I can safely say we have the best people here.

If the fishies aren't busy eating and you move your mouse cursor around in the tank, they follow you around. See, it's a responsibility. You can either be nice and feed the fishies, helping others, but losing attention and love they give you (or your cursor), or you can have a fleet of mindless drones following you and asskissing you at every turn, who never quite find happiness with you.

Thing is, when you're leading them around in little circles and fun shapes, you're not always getting pampered and you might just as well be leading them away from the edges of the aquarium, to swim freely (or if your guild is dumb, to swim back into the wall). And when you're feeding them events and plans, you've got a responsibility not to treat them as your personal army of do-anything-I-say drones and have to keep them functioning to what the community as a whole wants.

That's what it's like to be a leader.

It's hard.

Regards, IVIilitarus