Bealtaine 2014
(May)


Cead Mile Failte!

Happy Beltane everyone! Did you see that? What you ask? I think I saw an April, but I blinked and it was gone! Yeah we are on the brink of May and with it we begin some of the most exciting and chaotic months of the year.

The next few months are going to be wild. PAX East just passed, Many don't know this but between April and September there are over 100 gaming conferences worldwide. The big ones where we often times hear some major news or have several members attending are: PAX East, Aus & Prime, Gamescon, E3, Comiccon, Quakecon, Dragoncon, and Blizzcon. If you are going to any of these be sure to post on our forums and let others know. Who knows you may be able to connect with other Gaiscioch and Tuatha members! Additionally if you have any favorite conference photos be sure to post them so we can use them in our Magazine. Anyone who would like to write an article regarding one of these conferences and what you felt was noteworthy be sure to send your article to magazine@gaiscioch.com.

Lastly the summer time also marks the time when I get to see my daughter so my availability may be lower during July as I spend more time outdoors with my not-so-wee one. Additionally this month I will be moving into my first Real Home. May - June will be a bit chaotic for me and I may not be able to make all of my events, but rest assured I'll still be around for some events and the eldership & warlords will help keep our regular family events going in my absence. This new home will offer me the stability to hopefully bring our family into a whole new era and bring forth some opportunities that were previously unexplorable.

But enough of that lets get on with some exciting news!

Gaiscioch Family News

Give Children A Friend In Their Darkest Hour
Gaiscioch DoubleUP Stuffed Animal Zerg Begins!

The Charity section has been updated with the latest DoubleUP Stuffed Animal Zerg toys. This year we've got quite a few options including Birds, Dogs, Frogs, and Monkeys. This year we've got 3 special charities we'll be sending these to.

Project Smile - New England
The goal of Project Smile is to provide all emergency responders, throughout New England and eventually throughout the nation, with a continual supply of comfort items to help ease the pain and fear of traumatized children.

Project Night Night - Ohio
Project Night Night donates over 25,000 Night Night Packages each year, free of charge, to homeless children who need childhood essentials to feel secure, cozy, ready to learn, and significant.

Candlelighters For Children With Cancer - Oregon
Candlelighters is a non-profit organization providing support to over a thousand families affected by childhood cancer in Oregon and SW Washington.

Simply place your order on Kohls.com using our registries and the items will be mailed directly to these 3 charities. Once you receive your order numbers place them into Gaiscioch.com to receive contribution credit for your participation.

Be sure to check out our progress at:
http://www.gaiscioch.com/charity/

Up Next: The Extra Life Event

The Extra Life Event is an annual charity event to benefit the Children's Miracle Network by recruiting gamers to play 24 hours straight to raise money for CMN. Sign-up Now to participate in this event.

Around the Web
MMOBuff.tv Features Gaiscioch Leader Foghladha

So this month I was asked to be the resident expert on a web show called "Campfire" which is put on by MMOBuff.tv. The topic was Inclusive vs Exclusive guilds and the roles they have in community. The show was about an hour and 20 minutes and featured all kinds of misc topics thrown in.

Be sure to give it a watch and share your comments on:
http://www.gaiscioch.com/tavern/family_news/post_79921.html

Gaiscioch Magazine
Holy Smokes! What a lineup!

When we first came up with the funny idea of "Hey we are Gaiscioch, we can do whatever we can dream up! Oh yeah well lets make a magazine!" It was mainly a jest. It was something that would be fun and show off our creativity. We didn't quite expect what would follow. In its first week it had more than 15,000 reads. Various writers from the magazine got approached about writing for gaming websites and it gained the attention of several gaming sites that wanted to schedule interviews with us to talk about the magazine.

So this month we sat around the campfire and said, ok we knocked issue one out of the park, how do we compete in issue two? Well we came up with the idea of focusing issue two on the birth and life of the family as well as the games we play. In issue two you will find a 10 page article about the life and evolution of our family, the original 8 page origins story of the Gaiscioch na Anu from Dark Age of Camelot, as well as exclusive interviews with the game developer masterminds behind the various chapters including Scott Hartsman from RIFT, Colin Johanson from Guild Wars 2, and Matt Firor from Dark Age of Camelot and Elder Scrolls Online.

All in all this issue is shaping up to be massive. In addition to our regular sections this time we are launching a new section titled Home Town Gaiscioch where members write overviews and reviews of the cities they live in and the things they can do in their area.

Read Issue One at:
http://issuu.com/gaiscioch/docs/gaiscioch-issue-1

Call for Photos
Far Reaches of Gaiscioch

In Issue Two, we are starting a fun little game using the art of our very own Neoyoshi, called The Far Reaches of Gaiscioch. We have come up with a mascot for Gaiscioch and we will be making 8.5x11 printable PDF's available for all members to go take pictures of the print in random locations around the world. We want to collect pictures of our members, our mascot, and our name in the far reaches of the world. Going to the Eiffel Tower? Take a picture and send it in! Going to Mars? Send us a picture! Great Wall? Rest then send us a picture! We want to see all the cool places you are traveling to or hang out at. Local Pub? Favorite Restaurant? Local Hiding Spot? Send it in!. We will be devoting a few pages of the magazine to these pictures and it's our hopes that by using this section we can show just the reach our community has.

Download the Spring 2014 Printouts at:
http://www.gaiscioch.com/downloads/gaiscioch-world.pdf

Send your photos to magazine@gaiscioch.com

Elder Scrolls Online News

Hopesfire Campaign: Ebonheart Pact
A Formidable Foe Arises.

Hopesfire has become the campaign we've waited for. A lot to siege, a tough foe to face, and enough breathing space to move. If you're looking for a fight Hopesfire is the place to be. Our foe is largely Aldermeri by night and Daggerfall by day. We've been pinned in our corner for weeks. However when the family takes to the field we explode into enemy territory leaving nothing but rubble in our wake.

Now that we have an active playing field, I have begun bringing more guilds into the Tuatha of ESO and am working on building a unified Ebonheart Pact front in our home campaign. The good news is there's never a lack of things to do and people to fight. The bad news is most of that which you fight is largely ex-empresses and VR10 folk. But for those that like to explore you can often find a wandering solo kill here and there. I've spent a few hours in hostile territory and have found lone runners in plentiful supply. I've had some great 1v1 and 1v2's lately.

Head out to Cyrodiil and lay waste to our enemy! Let's have some fun!

Be sure to check out my new sector map for quick reference at:
http://www.gaiscioch.com/tavern/ava_discussion/post_80798.html

Marketplace Progress
Researchable, Alchemy,  and Enchanting Items Now Claimable

Looking to research new traits for crafted goods? You can now order a level 1 item with the requested trait on it via the Marketplace. These are all placed at 50 FHP and award  8 Artisan Points  and 38 Contribution Points to the crafter. This is the first of many updates to the marketplace. I will soon enable the recipe creator for Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning. Later I will add the Weapon & Armor Builder (still have a lot of programming to get this to work right).

In addition we have brought the Alchemy and Enchanting systems online. Players can now enter a recipe once they have obtained the Lorgair rank to earn a few discovery points. When recipes are added and approved they will become available for order on the marketplace. Provisioning is the next up on the list and should be online in the next week.

Check out the Marketplace at:
http://eso.gaiscioch.com/marketplace/directory.html

Top 10 Elder Scrolls News For May, 2014

  1. Official Tuatha ESO Campaign Post - Updated 4/4
  2. Subscription or Game card required to continue to play beyond Sunday
  3. Massively.com: One Shots: You won't believe what color this horse is
  4. State of the game address -Matt Firor
  5. Taking Action Against Cheaters In ESO
  6. Elder Scrolls Off The Record: An Open Letter: Why I’m Playing ESO
  7. Massively.com: The Daily Grind: Do you feel pressured to level faster?
  8. Elder Scrolls Off The Record: Major Bank Bug Terrorizing The Elder Scrolls Online
  9. Tamriel Foundry: ESO Adds Target Caps for AoE Abilities
  10. Massively.com: Leaderboard: Does Elder Scrolls' lack of an auction house bother you?

Elder Scrolls Links of Interest

Guild Wars 2 News

April Feature Pack
Feature Pack Brings Both Celebration and Mourning To Guild Wars 2

When we first saw the April Feature patch on the horizon, excitement was running rampant. So many awesome features that made life easier and brought some exciting new features to the game. I mean "Last Login!" We've been waiting years for this one! Woo hoo! Sorry got excited there. But one piece would change the face of Guild Wars 2 and send Sanctum of Rall into an even deeper pit.

The megaserver. This has turned every zone in the game into a jam packed nightmare for event leaders. Getting players onto the same map, having guild missions available when you need them and getting hits on creatures has turned into the greatest challenge. On paper this concept seemed like a good idea ,but there was one major drawback. For the past year and a half players have been pitted server vs server. Some communities were known for their WvW while others, like ours and Tarnished Coast, have been known for our community lifestyle in the PvE arena. With this change there is no more Sanctum of Rall PvE culture. We're mixed into every other server. This change also placed enemies into the same map together which has led to all out fighting and insults flying every which way. It would be like taking the Oakland Raiders and making them share a locker room with the Cleveland Browns before a playoff game.

The result of this change has lead to many additional guilds leaving Sanctum of Rall for more competitive WvW fronts. What does this mean for us? We will continue our course. Now is our chance to be the shining light in WvW and show people a good time where there otherwise wasn't one. Life is not going to be easy for us but that doesn't mean we can't have fun. The PPT / Winning / Losing game needs to be fought on other servers at this point. We do not have the player base in WvW to make a solid push at it at this point and with the megaserver killing the reason why people wanted to come to Sanctum of Rall, it's going to be even more of an uphill battle. I want to encourage you all to please, if you see someone forming up a WvW group please help them out. Join them and help them gain momentum as a family. In dark times it's family that pulls us through. You don't need to be the best player, you just need to be willing to lend a hand. Just carrying supply from one place to another helps tremendously and your loot and exp gain is phenomenal out there. The future is uncertain but today there's an epic battle waiting for you and it's ours to enjoy. Lets go out there and have some fun.

New Commanders:
Leaders Rise To The Challenge

This month we are pleased to announce a new commander to the lineup. This month we welcome Balor back to Guild Wars 2 after a bit of real life complications pulling him away. As many of you know Balor has on and off led the family to victory over the past year and a half. I am certain that he will rise to the challenge and help lead some fun times in WvW in the near future. Congratulations Balor this was well earned.

Crazy Idea Time:
Sanctum of Rall Community Events [SORC] Change

So over the past month, and with the birth of megaserver I've been creatively thinking of a way to help keep our SOR community connected. I came up with the concept of Migrating SORC into a community chat room. It's apparent that the Great Tyrian Adventure is dead in water at this point as it's impossible to get 100 people on the same map. Until there is a change we won't be able to host a large scale event in PvE. There's not enough people in WvW to warrant one as well. So how can we reward those Sanctum of Rall players for playing together?

Over the next month I will be building a "Code Word" system into the event system on SanctumofRall.com where event leaders can setup a code word that when entered participants can claim their attendance in each event. This will enter them into the weekly and monthly raffle. Essentially turning every event on Sanctum of Rall into a Great Tyrian Adventure. Each week my script will automatically pick a Silver Award winner and each month it will pick a Gold Award winner from all the entries that month. This should encourage use of the SanctumofRall.com and also get people playing together.

To support this change and also help players communicate together I plan to allow people to stay in SORC after joining one of our SORC events. In addition I plan on allowing Soren to start doing her dragon hunts using the mission spawn tokens we have earned in SORC. This should help bring our community closer together and pull what playerbase we have together in a unified front. To keep your spot in SORC you will need to login once every 7 days. If it fills up and we need the spots we remove any non-SOR players and then start with who's been offline longest. To get a reinvite you just need to show up to an event. This will be a very organic guild and will grow and shrink as needed. We will do our best to keep it family friendly at all times.

Top 10 Guild Wars 2 News For May, 2014

  1. Megaservers, Sanctum of Rall, and the Death of Community - Updated
  2. About refunds from the devs
  3. Massively.com: How Guild Wars 2 megaservers affect guilds, WvW, events, and world bosses
  4. Guild Wars 2: Black Lion Trader - Armorsmith
  5. Guild Wars 2 Guru: PAX East Feature Patch Interview
  6. Massively.com: Guild Wars 2 offers 50% off sale on digital editions
  7. Massively.com: Guild Wars 2 inflates your character's head
  8. Guild Wars 2 Guru: Megaserver: Part 2
  9. Guild Wars 2: Release Notes for the April 2014 Feature Pack
  10. Guild Wars 2 Guru: Bags, Banks, and More

In Closing

Get ready for a rollercoaster of a summer. If you have any cool adventures planned this summer be sure to send in those pictures for the magazine! I look forward to sharing some exciting adventures with you all in both Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online. Additionally later this month I may open up a new "Knitting Club" for Archeage if Scott Hartsman needs us. We've been chatting for a while and he's asked me if I would be up to joining the Dev team in testing the alpha client and working through some "problem children" issues they're having. Archeage is not a potential branch, I want to get that out of the way now, but Scott Hartsman is a friend and Trion has been good to us in the past so we want to pay it forward and help where we can. So watch for something about the Knitting Club on the forums when it's time to get signed up.

Slan Go Foill!
(Goodbye For Now)

Benjamin "Foghladha" Foley
Ceannard De Gaiscioch Treubh