I was checking out the market when a fellow faction mate told me about this in-game event. I must have missed the news, but the event itself was a pleasant surprise. As we had to purchase Andre Costume Boxes to gain access to the event, I was not sure if I wanna spend real money to lag. And I wasn’t sure what kind of stuff I’ll get from the event. Here’s how it was stated on the website.
Q: What are the available rewards?
“All human wisdom is summed up in two words – wait and hope”
- Alexandre Dumas Père
Well it turned out it was well worth my time. Not only was the event lag-free, the GMs were feeling mighty generous too with an array of valuable items being dropped. How can I ever solve my armour problems without the lovely GMs! I had fun spamming Chained Lightning. Some screenshots from the event, mainly pertaining to the final battle with Hell Breaker.
Hell Breaker – I
Hell Breaker – II
Hell Breaker – III
Check out my new armour, and yeah the bunny ears too
An extremely large player base can also lead to server crowding, without providing adequate revenue for IAHGames to install and run new servers. It is our goal to maintain an optimal volume of players on all worlds, and to open new worlds as necessary. A free to play system would hamper our ability to do so.
Preventing server overcrowding makes for a great gaming experience, I mean, having 15-20 families squeezed in a small part of Porto Bello’s Cabin is pretty claustrophobic. Ever since the game has gone P2P, I find that there’s a noticeably less overcrowding, so that’s a plus point there.
However, I still have gripes about the server lag and disconnects. After every Thursday’s server maintenance, you’ll find that the game is extremely responsive. The elementalist swings her arms and fireballs zoom in on target without any hesitation, the fighter slashes the wolf with a smooth, clean stroke, the musketeers cocks her rifle and unleashes a bullet to the skeleton’s mid-section with nary a delay, and you get from A to B without unexpected pauses. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the world is happy and at peace.
But come every Saturday and Sunday, things start to go awry. You can’t switch stances easily. You can’t get your party to follow orders promptly. You can’t get from A to B without the screen stuttering. At times, you can’t even stay in-game for long. Well, usually it’s not that bad but sometimes it’s irritating to click on a monster to attack it when you’re in the heat of the battle only to see your party stay rooted for 10 seconds before getting slayed.
The problem gets a lot worse for major in-game events like the ‘Dark Lord Returns‘. Supposedly a exciting event where players unite to fend off the forces of evil, the greatest thrill you’ll get is actually registering a mouse-click in the game with all the screen spasms going on. IAHGames , I’ll expect to get better connectivity when I’m paying for it, thank you very much.
Well, the long-awaited business model for Granado Espada has been announced, and along with it a lengthy piece on the rationale behind the decision. The goal is simply to make money, question is how to make it viable. Like, how do make sure 90% of the players don’t quit once you start charging them in some form…lol. The dungeons don’t seem to be congested with players today. :p
Plenty of talk about it on the forums (here, here, here, here…) and blogosphere. Don’t have too much feelings about it, but generally I feel it is (might be?) a fair price to pay, provided they fix a few bugs, get rid of the botters and continue to create new content for the game. So what’s the pricing gonna be like?
Granado Espada will run on a hybrid pay to play model.
Gamers will be required to invest at least SGD$9.90/P300/RM$20/USD$5.60 into the game per month via various payment methods. Minus a nominal fee, this amount will transfer into G-Points which can then be used at the cash shop for premium items. Players have the option to invest more than the minimum per month for large cash shop purchases:
Players will get locally priced game value cards from their local distributors. Watch your local distributor’s official GE websites for more information.
Not sure if I’m understanding this correctly buy if you spend US $40, you can play for 1 year. That’s around SGD $60, or 5 bucks per month. Seems affordable to me. But that’s not saying I’m gonna subscribe to the game, cos there’s other considerations like time.
And speaking of creating new content, look at what else has been revealed about Granado Espada recently. (First spotted in the House of Reclusion.)
Yeah, that’s the scout and fighter with more than their armour removed. (And getting a bit too intimiate too)
The gang’s enjoying a bit of the sun and the breeze.
I suppose we’ll soon be able to see them on our shores. It’s nice to see that new content is being rolled out even as the players have to start paying for the game, hopefully it will enrich the whole experience. Customisation is a huge factor in MMORPGs. IMHO. Check out the Japanese site and the Korean site for more potential content coming our way.
One of the things that some high-level players like to do, but yet is very irritating to lower-level players, is the releasing of powerful monsters. These monsters are released through something called a “spinelle”. It’s supposed to be some sort of gem with a monster trapped inside, and the monster is usually a “normal” one (ie, not those chieftains or bosses). Usually, lower-level players can’t even scratch them. You’ll see a bunch of players just shooting, slashing or casting spells on them but all the attacks will simply miss. They are truly a bane to us.
I used to flee when I see them, but yesterday I got an inspiration from a friend and tried to get rid of them. Here, my party of a wizard, a scout and a fighter takes on a level 64 wolf. That’s about 20 levels more than me. As you can see, I’ve managed to hurt it quite a bit.
Dealing more damage to it….
And good-bye!
I’ve replicated the method with huge success on other monsters, including those level 70 and level 80 monsters! How’s that for a little of David and Goliath? Hahha
Was surfing the web for Granado Espada related stuff, when I found out that the game is being integrated into Singapore’s educational programmes. The piece of news can be found on Today and ChannelNewsAsia, though somewhat dated. Quoting the report:
SINGAPORE: So, you think your child is spending too much time on computer games at home. What if he tells you he’ll be playing them at school too – with his teacher’s permission?
Next month, at least two schools here are expected to pilot a unique initiative to introduce students, teachers and principals to the world of online gaming as part of the curriculum.
None of the schools have been identified yet as plans are still being fine-tuned and awaiting the authorities’ endorsement.
Then again, perhaps it was only a matter of time before the drive to harness IT to the Singapore school experience turned to the powerful influence of role-playing games (RPG) among the young.
The initiative represents a “shift” in direction for the education system, said Assistant Professor Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, who sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education.
“I see gaming as a new and broadened platform for learning, and by making it interesting to students, it will help motivate them to learn new skills,” Prof Muhammad Faishal, who was pleased to learn that teachers would be around to guide the youngsters, told TODAY.
Is that cool or what? I wouldn’t mind playing Granado Espada as part of the school programme if I’m still a teenage gamer. What I’m really curious about is what kind of skills they hope the students can pick up or how it can enhance their learning experience.
Granado Espada – a suitable game for this experiment?
First, the game has an awkward number of mis-spellings when it was ported over to English from Korea, not sure if the English teachers are gonna sit up and complain.
Second off I’m not sure why Granado Espada was chosen over other games such as The Sims, Second Life, Command and Conquer or something. Yeah sure the game has great visuals and music, but I’m not sure it has much depth. From my point of view, the game involves a lot of grinding. If you are going to get students deeply involved in it, they will be spending vast amounts of time leveling up or completing quests. I have my doubts about the life-skills and decision-making insight they will reap from the game, despite what the report says:
Following focus group discussions with principals, teachers, students, academics and counsellors, the RPG Granado Espada was “carefully selected” to have its colourful fantasy characters introduced into the school curriculum.
Mr Thomas Chong, director of education initiatives at Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which is spearheading the initiative, said it was “not your typical slash-and-kill” game, but one that can help players learn life-skills such as decision-making and problem-solving.
“This is not an educational game dressed up as an MMOG (massively-multi-player online game). Rather, we want to ask students whether, say, a war can be won without fighting, but instead by signing a treaty? We want them to see the merits of discussion, strategising, and coming up with alternative ideas,” he said.
Singapore is believed to be the first country in the world planning to use Grenado Espada as a learning tool. And lest parents are worried it might open the school doors to other addictive RPGs, the online games operator gave the assurance that any future games introduced would undergo the same strict selection process.
Granado Espada in National Education – GENE
This is pretty interesting to me. Remember the videos Singapore in Clay Art and Singapore in Sand Art? Those were the videos shown by the PM during the last National Day Rally speech when he talked about making National Education less boring. Now, there is contest for producing a machinima (machine animation) for National Education using Granado Espada. The themes are “Singapore is our homeland; this is where we belong”, “We must preserve racial and religious harmony”, and such. I’m guessing we may get to see the winning entries during the National Day Rally this year. A sample is included here.
For the potential of using Granado Espada machinima in story-telling, take a look at the rather famous Lonely Hearts Club clip.
With it’s fierce advertising, I’m sure everyone has at least heard of the MMORPG Granado Espada.
I’ve been playing it for a bit, not too much as I’m preparing for my SCJP. As with games of this genre, there’s always a problem of botting. Well, I was playing in a dungeon in Alt Quelt Moreza, when I saw this.
What I initially saw was a lot of the models of the same characters, I thought my graphics card was acting up or something. But nope. There are up to 50+ characters running up and down the corridors, and when they stopped running they converged at one spot, making it look like only a few characters were present. But when they start running and killing, it’s practically an army.
They just kill and loot running up the same corridor for around 10 minutes, at least that’s about how long I cared to watch. Naruto would be proud…lol.. shadow-clone botting
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