Super Werewolf Fighter 3 Turbo HD Remix Deluxe Episode 3: The Reckoning. ...Collectors Edition

Werewolves 3! It's coming!

..but the power of santa claus forbids the existence of werewolves therefore it's probably coming sometime after Christmas. Award pictures have finally been churned out, so the Directors will be the first to know when the next game is about to begin as the awards will be discussed, dismissed and resubmitted on the Mondays that will precede it.

The issue with running a game like this is that once strategies have been developed the game becomes very one sided very quickly if the players that know them get to be on the same side. Another issue is the number of players seems to have stalled around 13-ish which is a dreadfully low number. The last game was possibly the worst game yet. The story was largely ignored because the right innocents 'knew what to do' and everyone else kind of just went along with it.

The way the rules have been changed still allows for the most potent part of the innocent strategy where a large number of innocents are linked together in early rounds, while giving the wolves a bit of room to breathe. In the current rule set, once a couple of innocents get promoted to 'known' innocent everyone else in the game can be mindlessly slaughtered until the wolves are killed. Not fun. Efficient though.

By changing the rules all the time I run the risk of excising strategy entirely. The rules of this particular game are going to have to settle sooner or later for the scoreboard to have any real meaning.

While near enough ready development wise, the next game will bide it's time somewhat until activity is likely to be at a prime.

New Werewolf Game

The last werewolf game completed (finally!) a couple of days ago, with the wolves staging a coup and coming out victorious.

With that said, the sign-up thread for the next game is open!

Going Somewhere?

One of the things that makes The Conclave great is the beer meets. While The Conclave has been attending LAN gaming events in the Benelux region for several years, this fine tradition started a while ago in London, but has since spread across Europe, taking place in Utrecht and Warsaw.

Another addition to the arsenal of events that The Conclave has set up are our summer parties, sometimes lovingly called "beer meats", because there is usually a barbequeue present. Last year, we had a session of paintball and a session of archery tacked on; this year it was laser gaming (aside: I'm usually reasonable at laser-gaming, but I forgot I was playing against people who spent hours a day on first person shooters for years).

Anyway, we seem to be experiencing a resurgence of Conclave events recently. In September, a few of us are piling around to Xanthos's place for LAN gaming and beer for a few days, and then in October the beer meet returns to London. Manny's also organising an evening's entertainment at Wzzrd (a gaming bar near Enschede) in November. These events and more can be found on our new Real-life Events board.

Super Werewolf Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix

Hello.

Today I wrote a review for Street Fighter 4, because it is great. http://www.conclave.cc/forums/viewtopic.php?p=370887#370887

In other news. Werewolves 2, the heavily tweaked sequel to the moderately popular Werewolf forum game has been progressing well on the off topic board. The new rules and tweaks have to a large extent functioned exactly as planned, very much in contradiction to my life's ventures in programming. Only mid way into Werewolves 2 have I realized that I promised awards would be coming with this game, luckily I remembered why I made that promise and it is because the concepts and text behind the awards have been finalized. They're much better than the rubbish ones I posted on the directors board a while back and this is largely thanks to the new ruleset. They follow all the same guiding principles as the first award set but.. they're better. They just are. You'll see. Trust me.

Pictures for these awards are another issue. I know I could dial 0800 NORIAN but I feel somewhat compelled to try and create the artwork myself. Probably a bit silly, as they will end up losing aesthetic consistancy with the other conclave awards. So assuming Mr Norian is feeling generous as ever I might just have to rudely demand the favour. Time will tell.

Rules wise there are some minor developments already planned for Werewolves 2.0.1 thanks to a combination of player feedback and me agreeing with player feedback but so far it looks as though the game will largely remain unchanged next time around. Who will host it? Probably me. The game master knowledge gives me an illusion of power.

I'd very much love to have said I have hidden a clue for Werewolves in this blog post, but I have not. For I am not that clever.

-Greyfox.

All is calm at the summer front

So, July has come. The month that the Conclave always relishes more than anything else as it's the month in which we celebrate our birthday. Our community was created on the 7th of July 2002, making us 7 years old now which is very respectable indeed for an international multi-gaming online community.

Though we've lost some people along the way who went inactive we've also gained a lot of new people who are not only very active in the games they like to play but also on Teamspeak and the forum: Gunge, Firion, Pannunuhu etc.

With some upcoming promising games (BF43, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 etc) our future looks bright indeed. I particularly like the new wave of activity that goes on on the forum, both in the posting by people and the stories and games that take place: The wolf game, the interactive stories made by Nimrod and Entropy etc.

The future looks interesting for sure. Game on, and see you for our 8th birthday celebration on July 7th 2010 :)

PayPal frustrations

And now it is time for us to discover the wonderful world of PayPal. Once you have set an account up everything is peachy, but when your attached credit/debit card has expired the fun starts.

For the Conclave PayPal account the attached credit card had expired and as a result of that we could not perform any payments. When I tried attaching another credit card, i.e. my own, it does not accept it. So we had to get in contact with the original account owner and credit card owner: Shiner. But as it turned out even his new credit card was rejected and as a result our glorious director Kaz fronted us the cash for server payments and we are still in his debt (literally).

Due to the troubles with the Conclave PayPal account we decided to make a new PayPal account. The account creation is easy, but then we got to the credit card attachment procedure and lo and behold it did not accept my card ... AGAIN. So once again our glorious director Kaz went into the breach and attached one of his credit cards.

Now you think "phew we're finally done." Not quite. As it turns out we now have limits imposed upon us by PayPal for sending and receiving money. To lift those limits you have to link your PayPal account to a bank/debit account.

So all in all PayPal needs to know everything about you before you can actually do something worthwhile. So this is the last time I will ever use PayPal it's easier and more secure to just make a bank account somewhere and have people transfer money to it.

Frustratedly yours,
Duke Raven.

So much history, so little time (part 2)

Now that the Conclave was founded the idea was that it would become a democracy. A democracy you say? Yes. Most clans are based upon a leader (usually the founder of the clan) and he makes all the decisions. The Founders of the Conclave wanted her to be different from all the rest.

The idea was that three separate Houses would be created. Each House would have a specific theme and a direct representative, a Senator. One House had a military theme, another was fantasy based and one in honour of LSF a sci-fi/Star Wars based. This was the most evident when it concerned our avatars, which are House related.

The idea was that every six months the members of the Houses would elect a Senator (their direct representative) in a Senate. This Senate could then discuss with themselves and the Founders and propose stuff to happen within the Conclave. E.G; the formation of guilds (basic translation a normal "clan"), form competitions within and between the Houses and rules members should abide by.

Although great in theory, most members couldn’t be arsed with these finer elements of the Conclave. That however shouldn’t come as a surprise as members join up to play games and not to have other stuff happen. So the first parts of this demise of the Houses could be felt when the Star Wars based House was eventually replaced with a more general sci-fi House. They have stood the test of time though, so there may be hope for them yet. As I am a sentimental old fool I couldn't live without them. But I'm old. And sentimental.

Meanwhile the Guilds did their thing. They were formed when a demand was made and a certain game was played. Some guilds were dissolved as the games they supported lost popularity while others have been here from the start (Desert Foxes, the Battlefield 1942 guild).

In the beginning of 2004 the Conclave has grown from a fledgling community to over 100 members and a need for chance is heard from its members. Multiple members gather around and try to write up a more formal agreement on how to run the Conclave. The (in)famous Constitution has been born. New titles were created and general guidelines for acting within the Conclave, our Code of Conduct, were formed and implemented.

Outside of the virtual life, members were starting to meet each other in real life as well. Beer meets were organized in various places all over Europe (London, Groningen, Utrecht, Warsaw) and Conclave members started attending LAN parties in England and the Netherlands. This even led to a real conclave baby. Who says the Internet can’t help you meet people.

As it seems the Conclave isn’t only an online community but a meeting ground for friends who share the same interests, namely gaming and having fun at the same time.

We Are Angry Robots - Guild Banner

A mini-competition was held to determine the Guild Banner for the We Are Angry Robots guild. We had some superb entries from both of our resident art experts, Norian and Entropy. Entropy's was selected, and I present it here for all to behold in awe.


Thanks, Entropy!

[DoW2] WAAR vs bYd

We came, we saw, we conquered.

Random.

The law of progression

Last week during the World of Warcraft 25-man raid for Naxxramas we were, for the first time, facing the effects of the law of progression:

The more progression you have the quicker you run out of content and the faster people will be bored and turn to other stuff like other games, levelling alts etc resulting in making it harder to keep on raiding.

It's a hard to grasp concept this issue of progression. Too much of it and people run out of content, too little and they'll get irritated over the fact that there's no visible forward movement towards vanquishing new bosses etc.

I'm really pleased with our progression in WoW since Christmas of 2008. We're currently the 6th Horde Guild on Auchindoun progression wise and with the new patch 3.0 coming out anytime soon in April we're right on track. The players with sufficient gear of a proper level can move to the new raid instance of Ulduar, which as we have been told will be no walk in the park, while the people with gear of lower quality will find a new incentive to gear up some more in Naxxramas 25-man and then move to the new areas.

I'm looking forward to exploring the new areas along with some of the veterans of our Guild like Incomplete, Psyclone, BlueWarlord and lots of other members in The Conclave's WoW group that I cannot think up right now (don't take it personally guys, my memory is a black hole when it comes to recollecting names :D).

Ulduar or bust I'd say!

[DoW2] WAAR vs FinalV - VICTORY!

My first tale to tell is one of glory and victory. Our opponent, who Random referred to as "The Germans" was a bit slow in getting in contact and getting the game together, but before long our first round would begin on Typhon Arena. Scientifically termed Mappus Gargantuos. 

Despite Random's loathing of the map he managed to solo the two northern victory points fighting against a Space Marine player who.. well, I never saw much of in the game. But suffice to say he heard the cry of OM NOM NOM enough to decide to switch race to Eldar next map. Me and Manesni together battled for the bottom point against an Eldar and Tyranid player. I found my forces, despite getting munched early on were more than able to contest the bottom point with Manesni while Random's domination of the so called 'Emperors Finest' sapped away their points.

Twenty points from the end of the game their already laggy leader finally bit the bullet and crashed. The game ended literally ten seconds later in our favour. No debates to be found here. GG.

Round two on our home map (Argus Desert Gate) was simply hilarious.  It started off pretty rough as my sluggas ran head first into Grav platforms up top and Random's gaunts ran head first into an enemy 'Green Tide' of Sluggas, but things improved once me and Random reversed roles. Being lord of the Slugga that I am I drove off the Ork wannabes from the middle with Manesni while Random took his sweet time claiming Top away from Eldar suppression guns. However the game was still very much in the air. They held two points long enough to sap us down to 150ish points while they had a strong 340ish. Manesni had just pushed through the middle and claimed back ground we sorely needed while me and Random battled to keep hold of the northern Victory Point.

Disaster then strikes. Or so you'd think. Manesni falls off the internet, blissfully unaware ofcourse as he continues to play in some parallel universe rendition of the very same game while all we get is an AI that decides to spam pings on Req points and throw his troops aimlessly into the enemy. We asked the enemy team if they wanted to Restart.

Their response? Here it is in it's entirety:

"jasaad: LOL"

Random seemed concerned with their less than polite response but with my third squad of Nobs heading to join the fray I was personally of the opinion "Fine. Screw em. We'll kill em without Manesni."

The game ended ~140 - 0 in our favour. GG.

That's not even the best part. When their score dropped to 40 and we held the entire map using Nobz, Zoanthrobes and a suicidal AI they said: 

"Ok then let's restart?"

Amazing. They had their chance and blew it in exchange for a humiliating defeat.

20 league points for us! Onwards to glory!

-Greyfox

So much history, so little time…

So much history, so little time…

It has been many years since the Conclave started, 6+ apparently. Now as my first lecture, I’d like to give you all some history lessons. Because you should know your history, or you are doomed to repeat it. This sometimes might not be a bad thing, but for now, assume it is. This is about my arrival at the gates of the Citadel back in good ol’ 2002.

Around 1998 I joined a group of gamers called LSF (Last Starfighter League). Apparently some parts of the website are still up, ooh the memories. It was a group dedicated to playing all kinds of Star Wars based video games. The most popular games within this community back then were Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and X-wing vs. TIE-Fighter. I myself played JK and some Rebellion (or Supremacy for you Brits). When I left LSF, due to increased study pressure, it was around the summer of 2001. Some time later I heard about trouble in paradise and the fact that LSF had split up in different factions due to differences in the approach of games and members in general. One of these were Ghost Legion, a former pie-rat faction within LSF. Another community was about to be formed…

At that time I already knew most old time Conclave members that are still active today. Chief started to bug me with spam mail (not the Monthy Python kind). He was constantly filling up my mailbox so I finally decided that it was time to start annoying the sh*t out of him in return.

I arrived at the gates of the Citadel in September 2002 and haven’t felt let down since.

Self-loathing Part 0

Well as I've been branded an author on this blog I might as well give you all an introductory post. I am Duke Raven, short for His Grace Duke Raven Greyhawk of Arien, which was a fictional character I invented for the Conclave. I've been around since the beginning minus a week or two as I was on holiday when the Conclave was founded.

Within the Conclave I am the only member that has fulfilled all of the positions, but if I did a decent job remains to be seen. I am now one of the five Directors who bicker on TeamSpeak every monday evening about what was, what is and what will be.

As for gaming I've played Battlefield 1942 which marks the beginning of the suckage. I've tried to dabble with Unreal Tournament 2004, but it is official First Person Shooters are not for me. Since then I've focused on Real-Time Strategy games and RolePlaying Games. When playing a game from those two genres I probably can describe my skill level as mediocre. But as they say in the Olympics "Participating is more important than winning!". I say, "Bollocks!". If you win once in a while it motivates you to continue playing, but constantly losing (read: being ground into a pulp) does not motivate at all.

On top of my genetic disposition to sucking at multiplayer gaming I've been diagnosed with an eye disease which forces me to wear sunglasses during the day, whether there is a sun or not. So I do get weird looks and glaces from people, but if they don't even bother to ask why I wear the sunglasses I think, "sod them!". As it stands I have a visus of 10%, which means that I can see about 10% of what normal healthy people see. This is just a number though, the point is that when I focus my vision on something it becomes a blur, that is why I look more peripherally and by doing so I can still function.

That's it for the first part. There might be more later, .... or not.
Duke Raven.

February's Picture of the Month

The Conclave holds a Monthly Photo Competition. The winner has the prize of selecting the next month's topic. There are a good many pictures in the archive there. It's worth a look.

February's topic was "Attention to Detail", and the winner was Sandstorm, with this picture.

The other entries can be found on the forum thread here.

March's topic is "Sports".

[DoW2] WAAR vs NonSense Match Report

Almost everything conspired against us not to play this match last night.

The match was scheduled for 8pm UK time, but a message from NonSense asking us if we could play at 11pm threw us a bit. Especially when they said, "or not, 21 is fine". We eventually reasoned that, they being Polish, meant 9pm in Europe, which is 8pm here, the original time.

It was really hard to get clarification from them, though. We joined their listed IRC channel, where they were nowhere to be found -- indeed, the people in that channel had no idea who they were. They also couldn't be found in our channel.

A message on the ESL match page appeared just after the time the match was supposed to start saying that the match was "Now I guess. We're waiting in the lobby." This was even more confusing: they game doesn't have a lobby!

Eventually, we managed to contact them through the incredibly poor messaging system which is Games For Windows Live (part of the Dawn of War II experience). More fun ensued: they had hosted a public game, which meant it kept getting filled up with other people from the internet while we were trying to join it.

A hundred or so NAT negotiation errors later, we all managed to be in the game, and begin with Argus Desert Gate. Which was listed to be the second match played, but whatever. Anyway, we stomped over them on this map. However, they dropped when they saw they were losing. Presumably in defeat, but the rules required us to file a protest, so we have. Anyway, we were in good spirits going into the second match, which was to be played on Capital Spire.

Now, let me take an aside here. While I mildly dislike Argus Desert Gate (I much prefer open plan maps to the blatant "lanes with walls" maps like these two), I detest Capital Spire.

So anyway, we lost the second game. Also, you have to love some of the network coding for DoW2. About 50 seconds from the end of the game, everyone saw that I had "crashed". Well, personally, I saw that everyone else had crashed. Why couldn't the game just pause and wait for me to reconnect? Anyway, we knew we'd lost anyway, so had no problems with handing over the victory.

So we had to play a decider game. After looking all over the ESL website (ESL: you need to organise your website a bit, it's ridiculously difficult to find stuff. For instance, searching for "decider" yields nothing, even though I know it appears twice in the rules themselves!) ... anyway, after looking all over the ESL website, I discovered that the decider map changes weekly. This week it's ... Capital Spire. *Grumble*.

About halfway through the third game, one of their players crashed. The scores were undecided at that point, so we restarted it, as was our perogative. Unfortunately, we lost the fourth game.

What do we take away from this? We need more practice, certainly. There are certain maps we always do well on, and certain maps we don't. Also, there are groupings of players that don't work so well together: I noticed a lot of unupgraded power stations last night, and I play a power-heavy game. That said, I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes too.

UPDATE: As I stated, we filed a protest (as the rules state we must) due to them dropping the first match. An admin has stated the following:

Hi We are Angry Robots,
hi NonSense,

Play one round more, as decider, map from decidermap list. Winner wins the match with score 2:1. I'm sure that you can find a suitable date for both teams on your own :)

Best regards,
Sendil, ESL Admin

So we haven't lost yet!

Update Again: After crashing during a match we looked like winning, we restarted and lost.  Oh well.

Guild for Dawn of War II and Left 4 Dead proposed

You can view the proposal here.

A small group of players have been playing both Left 4 Dead and Dawn of War II for a few weeks now, and have just started playing league matches in the Electronic Sports League (ESL).

As such, a proposal has been made to make this group, currently under the name "We Are Angry Robots", into a fully-fledged Guild.

This would bring the number of Guilds within The Conclave to 5, along with Desert Foxes (Battlefield 1942), Galaxy Puppets (OGame), Eradication (World of Warcraft) and Foxtrot Brigade (Call of Duty 5).

Self-Aggrandizement Post #1

Hi,

In The Conclave (CC), I'm known as Kaz.  On Blogger, that's Kaz Dragon, because Kaz isn't a particularly uncommon name, and I like dragons.  I joined The Conclave in 2004 on the recommendation of a friend, and have never looked back.  I started out by playing Battlefield 1942 in the Desert Foxes Guild, going so far as playing in their first ever organised competition.  

I sucked.

Anyway, since that time, I've been Ambassador (Conclave-speak for the leader of a Guild) for what was "The Art of War", which was dedicated to real-time strategy games, and also briefly for Eradication, which is our current World of Warcraft guild.

I currently hold the position of Director, which means I'm one of a few people responsible for deciding overall policy and direction for CC.  Go me.

A Brief Introduction to The Conclave

Formed on the 7th July 2002, The Conclave is a gaming community that caters to over 200 players. We aim to create a pleasant environment that allows for all sorts of activities to take place. We support both casual as well as competitive participation in a wide variety of games, which are organised on a large scale in our Guilds, and in a smaller scale in our Incubator.

The Conclave's main site is at http://www.conclave.cc.