BC2 is here to stay

It's nice to see that hard work at times receives proper payment. In this case I'm speaking of my recent endeavours to promote the activity in the area of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the latest installment in the series made by DICE.

Though after the poor support from EA for Battlefield 2142 I swore never to buy an EA title again recently they seem to at least partially have changed their ways as activity from admins on EA official forums etc seems much higher.

Quite some people in The Conclave now play the game giving us a solid foundation to continue with and pretty much removing the uncertainty which plagued some members whether this game was a stayer or a hype. Though BC2's community is not as large as its main FPS competitor, Modern Warfare 2, its players tend to be more mature as the game has a steeper learning curve and attracts people that prefer to focus on teamplay rather than on running+gunning.

With our own server up (multiplay.co.uk :: [CC] The Conclave) we have also recruited several people into the community. More and more members come up with ideas (jeep races, ladder wars etc) so activity is still increasing which is heartwarming to see.

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.