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Pay It Forward - World of Warcraft - Guild News |
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Server Move |
The PIF / Silvergate
site has moved to a new webhost. There's been a few potholes
on the path to the new server, including the unfortunate fact that
our old server was Windows based and our new server is UNIX based.
This isn't normally a big deal except for a small issue with our
forum system YaBB.... To make a very long story very short, we
lost a thousand posts and had a day where the forums were more or
less unavailable, but we've got just about everything recovered now.
We lost about one day of posts, and some of the older posts are not
correctly 'linked' to their poster - Sometimes you'll find a post
from me, for example, that says I'm a guest over on the left hand
side. This won't happen to any new posts, by the way, and I
may eventually find a way to fix the incorrect poster case issue and
link them up correctly again.
In the meantime, I'm
certain that you will all notice a very substantial increase in the
entire website's speed. The new servers are hosted with a
company that's proven to be fantastic in all things. They're
also hosting the Epic Rock Radio stream. If you're in need of
a web host or if your existing web host isn't cutting it, let me
know and I'll point you in the right direction. |
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No News Is Good News? |
The Beta contests have
long since ended, and unfortunately none of the PIF members managed
to get in. Despite that, we're still having a great deal of fun
these days. We have been playing Asheron's Call 2 since the
beginning of May, and most of the members have been enjoying
themselves. In somewhat unrelated news, we'd gotten into the habit of playing music over Ventrillo, and I started wondering how difficult it would be to set up a small Internet streaming radio station. Well, as it turns out, it's not hard at all, and it's up and running 24/7 now! We currently have a 10 listener limit, but that can be easily raised if the station becomes popular. The station plays, almost exclusively, a subgenre of music that I really enjoy known as symphonic rock and symphonic metal. (Sometimes labeled power, epic, or melodic rock and metal) It's a very interesting sound and I invite you to listen to it and let me know what you think. Big, big thanks to our resident graphics expert, templar Mutius, who helped me coordinate the color scheme on the site, and designed the banner. Speaking of the banner, here it is. Click it to go to the station's homepage!
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Beta Contest Deadline Reached
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Yep, the Beta contest
deadlines across all of the official WoW fansites has been reached.
I've not paid a great deal of attention (read:none) to anywhere but
www.only-WoW.com mind you.
*chuckle* They closed their contest as of 6:00 PM today, and
will tabulate the results of their three contests and release the
results on Wednesday. (The contests, in case you were under a
rock, were hand-drawn artwork, a fictional story containing specific
elements, and a 'talentless' competition where you wrote an email
explaining why you ought to win the Beta slot.)
Maybe one of these days
I'll have the guts to show you my art entry... It was drawn
twelve years ago, and it is the only piece of art I've ever drawn
that doesn't look on par with a first grader's work. Which
isn't saying much. My best chance is the 'Talentless'
competition, as I didn't enter the fan fiction contest at all.
Here's hoping that at least one of our active members wins a slot,
so that we can get a leg up on learning the game... It will be a
great help to our community service project once the game goes
retail, as we'll have basic tutorials already prepared for everyone. |
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Asheron's Call 2:
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We've been running
around for months now trying to find ourselves a game that we can
play while we wait for World of Warcraft to arrive. We've
tried various free MMORPG's, several open betas of competing
MMORPG's, as well as trying to set up Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3
matches. Each of these ideas met with very limited success,
with the possible exception of a reasonable turnout for our Diablo 2
excursion. I, and may of the other members, have been getting
somewhat restless. That being said, here's what's happening, guys. Our official interim game is now Asheron's Call 2. I and the original members know the game well enough to get everyone started with a modicum of ease. Plus, the most fun of AC2 is in the beginning levels on the first continent. After a good deal of thought, I went ahead and reactivated my Asheron's Call 2 account. Much to my surprise, my original character and even the old Allegiance was still intact! I played with Wahya for a while and I must say I'm happy with the decision. The good news is this: The download of the game client is free, and it comes with a 15 day free trial. You can get it from this link. After the 15 days are up, the monthly fee is only $12.95 US dollars. So - PIF, gaze upon our official game which we will play until WoW! Those of you who are stuck with dialup - I've seen the AC2 boxed game going for $9.95 - $19.95 in software shops. One of our members may also volunteer for 'download and burn' duty. Any takers?
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Gamelists.net |
To help raise awareness of the existence of our guild, I've submitted our name to gamelists.net under their World of Warcraft section. Members, please click this link and vote for us! Also, head over to the forums and participate in the poll on the main page. We are considering closing active recruitment and making our guild invitation only only instead. Your opinion counts, come vote and discuss the issue. |
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A Stopgap |
Many members (myself
included) have been clamoring for a game we can play as a guild
while we wait for WoW to arrive. While we excuse Tinman and
Leofire (jealous) from this idea if they choose since they've got
WoW beta to play, a number of members have expressed interest in
trying out the Lineage 2 open beta which starts tonight.
See the
thread on this subject over on the forums for more
information and discussion on this subject. With any luck,
it'll be relatively bug free and we'll have ourselves something fun
to do as a team while we wait for the real thing. |
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Beta is |
Beta is out! Thus far, amongst our ranks only one of us has been admitted, Leofire, one of our applicants. We're glad to see that you got in, have fun! We're not jealous... Not at all! *whispers* Where's the chainsaw? Seriously, though, we are happy and hope to have lots of good news and tidbits for you in the future. If we're lucky, Leofire will get us a few nice screenshots, assuming that sort of thing is allowed. *grin* |
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Ventrilo
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Ventrilo has been a
fairly good success thus far. Most of the members are using it
and enjoying it, although we have yet to see how well it will
function in a live environment while we are actually playing.
A member or two has concerns about using Ventrilo as a primary
communication method, and when I consider it I agree. I think
it will be very effective for small groups, such as a single hunting
party of five players, and will make the game more fun.
(That's the whole idea, making the game more fun, that's what we do
here, right?) It will definitely never be used for guild
meetings or anything of that nature.
In any case, I've got
three Ventrilo servers available for us now, distributed out to
different networks so that each one has it's own bandwidth.
Everyone currently using 'wowguild.com' as their Ventrilo server
should change to 'chat1.wowguild.com' instead. See the
Resources page for more information. |
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New |
Thanks to Mutius for
modifying our main menu to include the Chat area. I've also
renamed the "Quest Guides" section to "Resources" as we'll be
accumulating lots of tidbits and information that ought to be
cataloged, but doesn't really fall into the category of a quest. For our newer members, you'll also notice an additional section added to the main menu called "Archives". This gives you the opportunity to look back in time and see the guild sites that Pay It Forward has used over the years. It's an interesting trip down memory lane for you older members, too. I was impressed to see the original House Silvergate that I was a member of is still in operation in GemStone III! Silvergate was the original name of our guild when we first started operations in Asheron's Call 1. By the way, we have
been having more luck than I expected recruiting new members!
As we are not active in any games right now, I really wasn't
expecting to get as many responses as we have been. Without
tooting our own horns here, I'm glad to see that our reputation as a
quality guild remains despite our not being active since our
departure from Asheron's Call 2. Everyone keep your fingers
crossed on those Beta applications! |
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Chat |
I've added a chat room to the website, as a good number of the members thought that it was a good idea. I might change it to something locally hosted in the future, but for the time being this will work quite well. Click [HERE] to access the chat room. Mutius says it'll be easy to add a new button to the menu on the left, so shortly it'll be accessible from there as well. |
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WoW |
I went and posted our guild information
the
Blizzard WoW Guild Recruitment Forum. To view our post directly click
here. It would help us if you headed on down and
posted replies to questions people have (assuming we get any replies at all) or just
post a message in support of the recruitment effort. I know that even back in the
'old days', we did most of our recruitment in-game rather than on message boards,
but this situation is unique in that we aren't really active in any specific games
since the collapse of Asheron's Call 2. |
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Site |
The website update is completed!
Kailef and Mutius toiled long through Saturday and deep into early Sunday morning to
create the graphics and layouts for the Pay It Forward World of Warcraft Guild
homepage. I must say, I am quite pleased with the results! While our old
graphics were acceptable, I think this new layout is much more professional.
Mutius was single-handedly responsible for the creation of all of the graphics on the
site, with only small amounts of input (IE nitpicking) from me. After the
graphics were completed, I sliced them and integrated them into our site, and voila,
here we are. Hmm, that sounded a lot easier that it really was, eh, Mutius?
I hope everyone likes the results! Post any comments (nice ones, please, we're
very sensitive you know, hehe) you may have on the forums. |
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Guild |
I've got the revised Guild Charter posted, you can access it via the links on the left of the page under the main menu. Members, have a look at it and make sure you think it includes everything you feel it ought. I'm definitely open to suggestions. |
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BETA TEST!
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Well, I finally managed to get my Beta
application in. Did you guys see some of those reports about how there was
actually a localized Internet slowdown that occurred at 6:00 PM when the Beta opened up
and lasted for hours? I find that amazing.
I'm hoping that the fact that I
run a fan / guild site will help get me on the Beta team... But then again, it might
not, because a Beta tester needs to sign a nondisclosure agreement. (standard
fare for this sort of thing, I've been in on a few beta tests - I was even a beta
tester for Everquest!) As such, they may be worried that fan site operators
will post pictures and discuss experiences that they shouldn't be spreading around or
something. So, I don't know whether or not to feel encouraged or
discouraged, and of course it's going to be a long time before they contact the
people who actually got in. I hope Blizzard is nice and sends emails to all the
applicants who don't get in on the first "large" wave of Beta testers so they know to
quit holding their breath. Unfortunately that's not likely, as I've never
received such a message before when I was not selected for a Beta. Oh
well. Worst case, none of us get it and need to hang around playing other games
until release date, whereupon I will mount an assault on my nearby Babbages and
purcahse every copy they have. Yes, that's it. *evil grin* |
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BETA TEST!
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This is quoted exactly as it appears on
the Blizzard WoW site:
World of Warcraft Beta Signups This
Week! |
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Major PIF WoW
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As I'm sure everyone has noticed by now,
the layout of the Pay It Forward World of Warcraft site has changed quite a lot in the
last week or so. To summarize what's been going on:
First, we've archived and are no longer using the Teemz message forum system we have been using here up until this point. Since it'd be a shame to lose the several hundred messages in there, we've left the board up for reference but advise everyone to visit our new forum, which is based on a modified YaBB script. It sports a large number of features which will surely benefit the guild as a whole, especially once the game is out and running. Some of the functions include a comprehensive member list, private messaging, guild-only message areas, an integrated event calendar, an integrated polling system, custom posting avatars, and a number of other decidedly geeky features that have left me amused for the better part of a week while I installed and configured it. This means that the previous calendar has been removed - As it stands it really wasn't in use anyhow so there was no particular need to archive it.
If you haven't registered on the
new board, do so now so that I have an accurate listing of everyone's email
addresses. |
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World of Warcraft
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This is quoted exactly as it appears on
the Blizzard WoW site:
Over the past few weeks, it has become apparent that the World of Warcraft beta will not be available within the fourth quarter of 2003. The development team is currently hard at work testing the alpha version of the game, and we look forward to bringing you an outstanding beta in early 2004. Our goal is to always make the best games possible, and a critical part of the development process includes the public beta test. This means that we will not release the final product or any other component of the game until it's ready. Rather than release an inferior candidate to meet a specific date, we have chosen to further test World of Warcraft internally until we feel the game will allow for a productive beta test.
Announcements concerning the beta test,
along with additional details about the game, will be released in the near future. We
encourage you to check this official Web site for further updates. Thank you for your
continued support and patience. |
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Guild Roster
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Well, there's certainly not a huge
number of members who have remained active in PIF after we closed down the AC2
division. But it's better than nothing... Far better, in fact, because
every person is a great player and fun to game with. What am I blabbering on
about? Our current official Pay It Forward WoW guild roster, which is as
follows:
Aulluria
Everyone listed with the possible exception of
Vel, depending on his classes, plans to be in full attendance once World of Warcraft
is released. If we keep our guild focused and small with good, non "lazy"
members (Brio hates that, hehe) we will be well on our way to success. What is
our measure of success? Being the largest guild? Certainly
not. Being the best guild? No, not even that. It's having fun,
silly. What good is it, if it's not fun? :-) |
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Site Basics Completed
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Okay, I think I'm finished now with most
of the board's basics. The message boards are installed and working, we've fixed
the sign in bug, and the calendar function, while not extremely flashy, works
well. I was able to integrate all the functions of the site into the main frame
and theme them so our site (gasp) actually looks slightly professional!
*laugh* Let me know what you think, k? |
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PIF WoW Site
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From our guild's humble beginnings on the original Asheron's Call, to it's peak within Asheron's Call 2 where we boasted nearly three hundred characters at our apex, falling to a mere handful as the Asheron's Call 2 servers dwindled in popularity, we have certainly had our ups and downs. Through it all, though, we have maintained contact with one another, and have become good friends. So, then, it is onward and upward to World of Warcraft, a game with wonderful potential that promises to be an outstanding, high quality online multiplayer RPG. When WoW is released, I am hoping for us to swiftly take the forefront as one of the most active and positive guilds on whichever server we choose to inhabit. Keep your eyes out for news over at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com and let's work towards making our new home ever better than the last. Enjoy your stay, and check back often for updates!
-Kailef |
8-3-04
