The few-months-old Valkyrie Server is Philippine Ragnarok Online’s bid for game resurrection. It’s free to play so people are attracted. Here’s my article about Valkyrie. But the server was opened without assurance that the bugs will be fixed and an automated control of bot-infestation will be implemented. Hence, the war against bots rages on in Valkyrie (view diwa’s blog), and it’s funny how people log in to play then spend most of their time in-game simply looking for bots and reporting.

Noted, a champion of the honest non-botting players came about. His name is Goenitz, or more popularly known as killprobots, with his name suggesting his job description in the company. But still, LUG simply cannot install a system in Valkyrie that will let people just play and not worry about bot hunting and reporting bots to killprobots (Goenitz’ YM id). My prediction is, if the botting in Valkyrie gets out of hand, LUG will blame the players for letting it happen to their community by not being active enough in reporting. Effin’ what, who’s supposed to be running the business anyway?!?

They failed dismally in keeping their customers happy. When their business was booming back in 2004, they thoughtlessly banned people for the most minor offenses. It went on until player population waned and thinned out. They never learned from that.

And here’s their most stupid blunder to date: Valhalla

Valhalla is a new server they created (again) which adopts the interface of Valkyrie server, and is also free-to-play. The only difference is, with Valhalla, players from the defunct Thor server may log in and retain their old character, levels and items. If they can do that with Thor, why the hell did they not do that with all the other “paid” servers and brought everyone to Valkyrie? The answer is very simple: they need botters’ money, which comes from the other paid servers (Baldur, Tyr and Freya).

LUG is handling Philippine Ragnarok Online in a way that they can please the international community (legalizing bots is frowned on as it compromises the game’s credibility in other markets) by not directly stating that they’re allowing bots in other servers. Their desperation to maintain their business is obvious, and their failures in this aspect, more so.

Ragnarok Online is a very old game in the Philippines (5 years?), the least that LUG can give their loyal players is the perks that they deserve. Clean up the game to make us stay.

[end of part 2 ... end of rant]

And oh, why the hell did LUG choose Toni Gonzaga to sing Perfect World’s song? (but that’s another rant…. click the link to view)

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For those who don’t know, Level Up Games is handling the more popular MMORPGs in the Philippines; to name some, Ragnarok Online, Perfect World, Khan, FlyFF and Pangya. Ragnarok Online is the first ever MMORPG in the Philippines and pinoys ate it up. Until the problems flowed. The third party program invasion, and more recently, the duplicate bug exploitation, reduced Ragnarok Online’s population from a staggering 12 thousand to a measly less than 2k per server. It was not formally announced, but botting became “somewhat legal” in all servers (read: “you can bot if you want, but we’d rather you don’t”)… their first mistake in trying to keep their business going.

They created Thor, a server that was touted as the only commercial (paid) server that doesn’t allow botting. It is an option for the players who want to play manually. What happened? Thor was doomed at the onset because people are still paying to play the game, but cannot get the most of their paid game time because they couldn’t bot.

The duplication bug was never in their control as it is the game developer’s problem. But LUG’s handling of the exploit was laughable. First, they announce a major duplicated item-wipe across all servers, and players who invested their time, money and electricity (and bandwidth for botting, lol) prior to this announcement lost most of their trade-acquired items. And second, they make players believe that they have installed an anti-duplication script in their system. This was later proven a lie by people who still tried the duplicate bug and succeeded.

[end of part 1]

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Find friends according to hobbies, interests and age:
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Chixilog - literal and figurative contexts

In Ragnarok online, there’s this category of players we call Chixilogs. Literally, this means that the player driving the female character is a guy in real life. In a negative sense, these chixilogs use feminine wiles to trick their fellow players into doing them some in-game favors. This is a derogatory name that is given to those who are willing to roleplay their girl character to its full potential and swallow their in-game manhood just to get further in the game. This is also a reflection of the way society views women, in general; implying that girls are the needy ones, and guys are the providers. Guys have a certain perception of how a girl should act, look and, in the game pRO, play.

I, on the other hand, interpret the term chixilog in another way. In fact, i get tickled by the thought that players have always thought the player who plays Polgara is a guy. I like it when I get thought of as a chixilog. I’d like to think I get more attention and recognition from players because of the way I play. It sucks to think that they’re patronizing me and not treating me as an equal, in-game, just because i’m a girl.

I encourage the misguided thought of RO players that I’m a “Chixilog” just because I have accepted that chauvinistic males who play this game simply cannot digest that someone who can play pRO better than them could actually be a girl in real life.

While I enjoy throwing in the feminine sass once in a while to get my way, I bristle at how some guy players treat my opinions like dirt when they finally get convinced (by me) that i am a real girl. Hence, I’d rather succumb to the tag of chixilog (which i find non-offensive, but rather funny), than have my in-game talks disregarded in favor of “karir” conversations that will waste my time.

As a matter of fact, my personal definition of chixilog is “girls with more balls than guys”. Which in some cases, is true. (laughs)

Rate this: 3.2 (1 person)

It was late September when the Armada guildmaster and high council asked me to make a tribute about our guild, considering that we’re retiring the guild and all that. They wanted the tribute to come out as soon as possible. I refused to rush. Why? Well, because I had a very good feeling about the RPC and my vibe was:

“Can we postpone the tribute until after the RPC? I have a feeling we’re going to win or at least make it very far in the elims. It would be a waste if we could not include that in the tribute.”

They both agreed (bless them for trusting the local guild seeress lol). And the procrastination was worth it because we did win some in the RPC, and it will be included in the tribute. Hooray!

Originally, the plan was a single thread that was to be posted in the major forums we frequent, including our own. The downside to that would be the visibility (i.e. if someone makes a new post, it will be wiped out of the main page). The idea of a weblog for my guild came to me as i was updating my blogs.

The Armada-Immobil.org webpage is lovingly dedicated to my guildmates, and thanks to z^ro (Eric) and Angelo, the header image turned out great! As of the moment, we are squatting at my sister’s site (halohalodeiloko.com) because we are still in the process of looking for sponsors for our own hosting account. I personally can’t blame people for being wary of funding another site for Armada because of what happened to the first one.

Nonetheless, the webpage I created is decent enough to go public. The heart is there and so are my good intentions.

Et voila!

(not much of an official site ribbon-cutting speech eh? lol)

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Rate this: 2.9