The Order of the Rose-Croix

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May 20, 2012, 11:32:41 pm

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(December 14, 2010, 06:47:07 pm)

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Evilnature
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Welcome to ORC

Welcome to the Order of the Rose-Croix, the online gaming guild!

We are a group of mature and friendly gamers who have been playing together in online MMORPGs since the launch of Dark Age of Camelot. Since then we've had a presence in most of the major MMOG releases, including Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Asherons Call 2, City of Heroes/Villains, Guild Wars, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Champions Online and of course World of Warcraft. We also have our eyes on SW:TOR, Jumpgate Evolution and Guild Wars 2. Find out more about us by checking the pages in the information section (see links in side bar to the left).

If you are a new user, you may register by clicking HERE!

If you are interested in joining our guild, you should register and check our the new member applications forum. Be sure you have read our Forum Etiquette guide!

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoy our site,

Wivelrod
(Site Admin and Deputy Guildmaster)

Email: wivelrod@hotmail.com

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The Order of the Rose-Croix

25 Apr 2012 First Operation cleared !

posted in Guild News Written by Blood April 25, 2012, 10:39:41 pm 98 Views Print

We managed to kill the final boss in Eternity Vault tonight !

Gratz us for an awesome night and some shiny loot !

Piccies will show up later...

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05 Apr 2012 Raiding fire started !

posted in Guild News Written by Blood April 05, 2012, 06:46:11 am 74 Views Print

A group of 8 proud members under the flag of The Order of Rose Croix managed to kill 4 of 5 bosses in Star Wars Eternity vault on 1st attempt yesterday evening !
Due to some silly bugs and scary jumping mechanics we weren`t able to clean the whole dungeon Undecided

But nevertheless:

We`re still alive and fighting !

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14 Mar 2012 February update

posted in Guild News Written by Grukkaa March 14, 2012, 07:41:40 pm 33 Views Print

I am continuing to produce a joint update because a) it's less work for me and b) it is relatively quiet in both games at the moment.

Star Wars continues to mature and add new content through almost weekly patches. The much-awaited 1.2 patch, where major (hopefully beneficial!) changes are happening, should be with us towards the end of March or early in April.

Since the heady days of early December, where at one time we had 38 members online, things have calmed down a bit. A lot, in fact. Numbers are down to between 10 and 15 most nights, as people decide the game is not for them, or cope with the many and varied challenges of the 'real life' game we all play. Those still playing regularly are enjoying it still, but low numbers makes the guild group nights problematic, with the mix of classes sometimes not being ideal. A recruiting post was put up on the official forums, but I'm not sure if we have had any response to that yet.

The challenges at the top end are both similar to, and different from, WoW. Finish your class storyline, do normal flashpoints to unlock hard mode and then do hard mode flashpoints to improve your gear for end game operations. However, the side missions are interesting just for the mini-storylines within them (the Czerka storyline on Tattooine being a personal favourite) and while there are no achievements to chase, unlike WoW, the gathering of stat-boosting holocrons is another beneficial way to spend time.

Crafting, like WoW, is a bit patchy. Some are useful to just yourself, some to yourself and others, and some not very much use at all. Biochem is popular, mainly for the reusable medpacks, stimulants and adrenals craftable, but Armormech is at the other end of the scale. There are some nice schematics about, but the moddable gear picked up through missions while levelling makes this skill almost redundant. Sad

Overall, the game has settled down for the moment and I'm sure the developers have big things planned to keep current players happy, bring back some that have left and encourage new ones to join.

WoW also suffers from very low attendance, numbers being well down in single figures most evenings. This makes me wonder where the large membership we have are spending their time. Huh?

To be fair, there have been some cracking games out recently – Skyrim certainly still takes up a chunk of my gaming time, to mention just one – and there are more on the horizon (Mass Effect 3 being maybe the biggest). While we are still 'explorers of worlds', it would appear that we are doing so on pretty much a solo basis at the moment. It does worry me a little that the ORC family will become so splintered (with Secret World and Guild Wars 2 out this year too) that we will end up without viable numbers in any game, and our community will continue mainly through our forums. While it will still be a community, the online gaming connection is what keeps it fresh, and I miss the days of many of us online, chatting nonsense in /g and listening to Neevas sneezing on Teamspeak! Grin

I realise everything, even online communities like ours, evolves – I do think, however, we need to give serious thought about how to guide this evolution so that we keep the community vibrant.

Moving away from depression-land, both games regular attendees spent the month fighting their way through the various challengs available to them. Sadly, ORC raiding in WoW has come to an end for the moment, with only 3 or 4 turning up on the designated evenings to try to get one going. At least Blizzard's 'looking for raid' tool allows those still there to get their fix.

The Lunar Festival wound up towards the end of the first week and was overlapped by about week with 'Love is In The Air' – WoW's Valentine celebration. Lots of choccies, flowers and perfume flung around in celebration of love!

Over in Star Wars, hard mode flashpoints are now regularly completed, allowing folk to boost their gear ready for the day operations start.

The only achievement of note this month, guild or personal that I've been informed about, is Moocen's acquistion of the 'Loremaster' title. Well done, Mooc - a bit of a grind to get that one, so well done for sticking with it.

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08 Feb 2012 December/January update

posted in Guild News Written by Grukkaa February 08, 2012, 09:43:44 pm 37 Views Print

Due to the hiatus over the holiday period and the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I decided to combine the December and January updates into one.

In some respects, this is the most difficult (and the saddest) update I've had to compose in the four years I've been responsible for them. On the other hand, seeing ORC grow and change, with new people coming into the guild and old hands returning, mitigates that sadness somewhat.

The sadness comes from seeing our vibrant family in WoW suffer problems through lack of numbers logging in and keeping it the beating heart of ORC. That, for the moment at least, appears to be beating within the new realms of SW:TOR (referred to as SW from now on).

Since mid-December, from the start of the early access period for SW, numbers in WoW have taken a serious hit. So much so that there have been no ORC raids since December 16. While a lot of our members from WoW have found new homes in the SW chapter, we are starting to see those that prefer to stay in WoW drift away – either from the game itself, or off to other guilds.

Personally, as WoW GM, I am torn – I still like WoW, but the story-driven system of SW outshines it in every way. This may change, as I am yet to see what awaits at the top end of the game, once all levelling and missions have finished. I try to log into WoW regularly, but when I do, I see very few people still there. Still, ORC is not just WoW, and although it has been the game of the majority of members over the last seven years, we have seen chapters form in many other worlds: Warhammer, Age of Conan, LoTRO, etc. It may be that SW cannot sustain the interest of our members, much like Rift or AoC, due to the lack of meaningful fun at the top end of the game. Conversely, our WoW chapter may become like our LoTRO one – fading away, then people popping back in from time to time. Whatever happens, ORC remains a strong family across whichever world you choose to adventure in and I am sure that will remain the case no matter what game the majority of the membership is in. Thumbs Up

Moving on to each individual game now, I briefly covered the changes to WoW in November's patch in the last update. The first week of December allowed everyone to experience the new Darkmoon Faire area, and much fun it was! Shooting out of a cannon, playing at being a tank, and having fun at the shooting gallery being amongst the many new attractions there. Before the raiding break for Christmas, the reduction in power of the bosses gave us some good attempts at Ragnaros again, but we still didn't manage to finish him off!

December saw WoW's version of Christmas: The Feast of Winter Veil, with seasonal fun and pressies being given out and enjoyed by all. This year's 'special' present was a very fetching sweater, which gives you the ability to sing a seasonal song. I'm sure Deathwing will be suitably impressed! Grin

As we moved through the Christmas break and into January, the expected upturn in activity in WoW did not appear. This left our raiding schedule in limbo, the only raid of the month being a joint operation with some folk from Borderland Legion, which happened after the scheduled raid had been cancelled for the evening. Perhaps this is only temporary, as with the previous release of competing games, or maybe it will become a long-term problem. We shall have to wait and see...

The Feast of Winter Veil wound up shortly after our own real life New Year, on January 2, then our real-world Chinese New Year was reflected in WoW with the Lunar Festival, kicking off on January 22. New clothes to buy, a boss to kill and more collectables – another reason to run (or fly these days) the length and breadth of the world.

As far as achievements go, congratulations are due to Mooncat, who reached level 85 on his Death Knight in the last few days of January, giving him a level 85 of every class – well done!!

Guild achievements have really slowed, but this is hardly surprising, as we are mainly missing the PvP ones, and we're not really a PvP-focused guild. We did, however, pick up Better Leveling Through Chemistry as our 3000th flask came off the production line on December 3, followed by Master Crafter as our 500th epic item was constructed on December 10.

As far as Star Wars goes, we are into the second month of the game and there are quite a few level 50 characters now. Congratulations to Putte as the first ORC to hit the top mark.

The launch was relatively painless, with a few queues over the first few early access days, but they seemed to get things sorted very quickly and the actual release day was less fraught than expected.

ORC busied itself around the various planets, each character following his or her class storyline, while taking in the many side missions available for boosting skills and gear. It seems a very tight game, although there are still bugs around, but in the main the design is good, and the use of voice acting for every single quest/mission giver is particularly impressive.

The ability to keep pieces of gear you like the look of as you level is a nice touch. These pieces have slots within in them where various modifications can fit – weapons have a crystal, barrel/hilt, etc.; armour has its own 3 slots to fill. This means you can just get more advanced pieces to fill these slots as you level, keeping your trendy-looking armour/weapon appearance the same.

The companion system is a nice touch, meaning you are never alone after about level 8. You end up with 6 of these in the end, and each has certain roles they can fill – healer, ranged/melee dps, ranged/melee tank. More importantly, these companions drive the SW crafting system. You can send them off making items, or you can have them gathering the materials to do so. The only pain is trying to make sure their equipment is of a semi-decent level. They have the same armour/weapon slots as your character, so at least you can use drops to fill them if it is something you can't use and they can. Actually, there is another pain - C2-N2, your ship's protocol droid! I know of no player who would not happily space this walking, pompous junkheap if they could...

The story sweeps across several sectors and many planets. Stepping out of the spaceport on Coruscant for the first time was one of the very few in-game 'Wow!' moments I've had, in any game. The scale and the artwork is amazing. There are others, but I won't spoil them!

Flashpoints are the SW equivalents of dungeons, and like all games, there are good and bad ones. My two personal favourites are the very first one you'll encounter – the Esseles trip to Coruscant – and one from mid-levels, Maelstrom Prison. A tightly-constructed trip through a tricky instance, culminating in both the killing of a recurring villain in the game and another surprising event that I won't spoil!

ORC is very active, with nearly 40 people online early on in the game, and still hitting the 30 mark regularly in the evenings. While everyone gets their characters levelled, there isn't much scope for operations (raiding), but as we are on a role-playing server, there was the official guild inauguration on January 13. A nice little event, culminating in the official induction of the Initiates on trial to Knight Brother rank, followed by a trip to Taris and Tattooine to eliminate the world bosses there.

A great start for ORC in SW, let's hope that the content, enjoyment and activity levels can be sustained as the game matures.

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13 Dec 2011 November in WoW

posted in Guild News Written by Grukkaa December 13, 2011, 07:51:38 pm 48 Views Print

The big news this month was the new patch, which just made it into this month's update, arriving as it did on the last day of November.

Much to talk about, the new content being probably the most obvious. A lot of members raced through the new 5-person heroic instances pretty quickly, gathering Valor Points galore to their weekly limit! This allowed them to sate their greed at the vendors, picking up new items at a level of 397 to further boost their abilities. The 'old' VPs were combined with Justice Points and the old top tier of level 378 items moved over to the JP vendor, again allowing upgrades for the more casual player.

The new instances seem fun, and not too tricky, so they will probably be milked dry very quickly by those needing anything from them. The new raid instance seems more tricky (more on this next month), although the new 'LFR' tool will allow folk to get in there as easily as 'LFG' gets you into heroic instances, so it may be that these bosses will get old quicker than previously. Baradin Hold also got another new boss, so maybe the LFR tool will make that trip a bit less painful than it's been in the past!

Rogues got a legendary weapon to chase after, but they will probably be as elusive as the staff is for spell-users! Still, the extension of this type of quest can only bode well for other classes.

Transmogrification and Void Storage arrived as well. The former allowing you to change the appearance of a piece of armour or a weapon into another one you like the looks of better. Having tried this, there are a lot more restrictions on it than previously thought, so it's not quite carte-blanche to do as you like.

I personally found the restrictions on Void Storage made it almost useless: any modified armour/weapons you put in lose all mods (enchants/gems/reforging); you can't put unique items in it (so I'm still stuck with over 20 tabards in my normal bank); there are probably others, but I gave up with it after that!

The Darkmoon Faire got its own permanent home, with a bunch of quests and rewards to go with it. Quite a nice idea, with a fun variety of daily quests and some new profession quests with a good level of reward (+5 to skill, if you're not maxed out yet).

Too many class changes to go into here, but yet another nerf to Druid healing makes me sigh. Still – they have upped the number of fragments you get from each Archaeology dig (to a maximum of 9), so I might start grinding that again.

Not much to say about our raiding except – Ragnaros still lives!! Angry

Despite several good efforts through the month, our ancient nemesis still holds on to his evil soul. Still, it took us a while to get him down back in the bad old days, so I'm sure we'll get him eventually!

Two fun events through the month: a very short two-day 'Day of The Dead', where a quick visit and dance with Catrina (in any of numerous locations) allowed you to be a skeleton for the day! Pilgrim's Bounty kicked off later in the month, and lasted from the 20th to the 26th. Mucho drinking, stuffing of faces, shooting of rogues (if you could find 'em!) and turkeys, and throwing of food ensued as (slightly chubbier, by the end of the event, at least) ORCs raced around the land chasing the various achievements available.

WoW also entered it's 7th Anniversary week on the 20th (has it really been over 7 years I've been playing this game??), but the reward this year was a bit naff: just a repeatable buff for experience and reputation that vanished at the end of the week. Should have been a pet or a mount!

No personal achievements passed on to me this month, so the focus is on the guild, once again. ORC wasted no time in getting into the new instances, giving us the heroic achievements for all three of the new 5-person heroics (End Time, Well of Eternity, Hour of Twilight) on the night the patch was installed – thanks to those that pulled them in for us. That was it, I'm afraid, but in reality, there are very few left to get, and most of those are in the PvP category.

That's about it, so I'll finish with the usual arrivals, departures, promotions and retirements for November

New Knights:
Toxics
Voash

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Welcome to ORC

25 Apr 2012 First Operation cleared !

05 Apr 2012 Raiding fire started !

14 Mar 2012 February update

08 Feb 2012 December/January update

13 Dec 2011 November in WoW