Ginnunga news

What's you character name and how did you come up with it?
My main is a rogue called Daarck, formerly Darckcloud - the stupid spelling was down to me being beaten to the punch by a damn dirty Orc. I changed when I realised Darckcloud was far too hippy for an assassin, and some bugger had Dark and most of it's variations too. But at least I didn't resort to some weird ascii character that made it (even more) impossible for an honest rogue to get work.

How old are you?
I was 40 in December. I am, by my own definition as a younger chap, old. Everything snaps crackles and pops when I move. Maybe I should stop keeping cereal in my pants.

Where do you live?
I stay just outside sunny Glasgow, in the west of Scotland. I say sunny, as I have a nice big lamp in the computer room and the curtains shut - in reality, it's generally pissing down so often that wellington boots are considered evening wear.

What MMO do you play at the moment?
At the moment, WoW.

Any other games currently?
It varies - over Christmas I had the original Dawn of War loaded up for a quick blast, and the original Icewind Dale. I never did finish the second one, and was too afraid to load that one. I've tried other mmos including EVE (sweet zombie Jesus, no) Conan (boobies!) and Lotro (erm...hairy feet...), but nothing comes close to WoW to be honest.

What was your first computer game ever?
I played on a ZX Spectrum when I were a lad, and would have been hooked on Manicminer and Jet Set Willy, but I couldn't tell you the first ever (see above, question about age).

The first game I played on an actual, honest to God pc was Baldur's Gate - spent ages playing that, the sequels, Icewind Dale etc - I had the first game before I had a pc to play it on, in a rare fit of blinding optimism and then had someone build me a machine that would run it. It did, badly, and I ended up buying my first real pc for the sake of getting gibbed by kobolds in that bloody mine at Nashkel. Gits.

What was your first multiplayer online experience?
World of Warcraft. Got hooked on a trial when running around Elwynn Forest and have been skinning defenceless bunnies ever since.

What was your first MMO?
Same.

What is your favorite snack while gaming?
Either fruit or toast. A 5 minute raid break is a frantic run-around to load the toaster, boil the kettle and get to the toilet and back before pretending I'm so hardcore I didn't move at all, and just keepa bucket by the desk. Which there is, but it's for something else.

When/How did you join Ginnunga?
I joined Ginnunga last year after the guild I was in previously disbanded. A group of us were set on staying together and Thejudge and co were kind enough to offer us trials. I was, and continue to be, surprised and pleased by the generally helpful attitude of the guild and the commitment to Raids and the raiders that the guild shows.

Tell us your most memorable mmo moment?
An attempted all-nighter at lvl 70, where a few of us in a former guild decided a great way to spend a Friday night was to go through Karazahn in one go. Friday night rolled around and so did we, but the inhabitants of Kara didn't seem to realise that we'd be drinking, and didn't cut us any slack whatsoever. We eventually got up to the Prince and hit a stone wall of infernals and wipes. By the time that happened, secrets had been shared (the last funeral I had cried at was Spock's in Wrath of KAAAAAAAAHHHHHHNNNNN!), reputations made and destroyed and our collective drinks cabinets had been liberally emptied. Lovely night.

Tell us something nobody in the guild knows about you.
I love Christmas but hate New Year, flying in the face of centuries of Scottish piss-ups. And I love Bourbon (the drink, not the chocolate biscuit palaver), but hate Scotch. Both of those should really be enough to get me kicked out of the country.

Magicka is a friendly fire-enabled comedy fantasy game developed by Arrowhead Studios where you play one of up to four wizards through 13 levels filled with monsters. You can play the game either online, offline-couch* or LAN, trying most of the time to avoid being killed by your teammates.

* offline-couch means if you have multiple controllers for your computer, you can all play on the same computer and screen

Does this sound like fun? Even if it doesn't, the game is an absolute blast.

Anyhow, thanks to Paradox Interactive (the games producer) we are able to launch an awesome magicka competition / lottery for 5 serial keys to use with Steam!

How a winner is picked
To decide the winner, we will randomly draw 5 people who have followed the competition rules below. The random drawing will be done by David Johansson.

To participate in the magicka competition, this is what you have to do:

• You have to register on the forums.
  
• Create a picture of a Moose wearing some form of wizard paraphernalia (Wand, Robe, Hat, Spellbook, etc).
  
• Attach it as a .jpg format picture in a comment to this thread.

Times / Dates

• The competition will run until Sunday, 6th of February 2011, 18:00 CET. Any entries after that will be disqualified. An entry means a comment to this thread with an image attached to it. You are free (and encouraged) to comment (within the forum moderation guidelines) on pictures posted, of course!
  
• Winners will be notified via the forums internal private message system before Tuesday, 8th of February 2011, 23:00 CET.
  
• Prize must be claimed via a response in a private message before 12th of February 2011 23:00 CET, or it will be forfeit.

Participants forum alias will be made public in a news announcement after prize has been claimed.

Additional Rules

• To participate, you must be at least 18 years old. Only 1 entry per participant is counted, and using multiple accounts is forbidden.
  
• Your created picture must be original work.
  
• Any taxation is paid by the winner in their respective country. **
  
• Forum moderators reserve the right to remove entries we find inappropriate.

**This depends on the laws in your country and most likely is not necessary and just there because of legal issues.

To help you on your way, I will provide an example entry, made by me!



Good luck!

PS. You have to use the Reply button to attach a file, quickreply is just what it means, a quick reply, no formatting, no attachments, no nothing.


Entry deadline has passed. No more entries accepted.

Magicka will be released on Steam tomorrow, and although the countdown on its product page has changed multiple times throughout the day, it currently seems to unlock tomorrow afternoon around 18 CET. Although knowing Steam, the countdown might change again and be totally inaccurate anyway.

The official forums have been busy with discussions about the Steam version vs non-Steam (which will come later). Since the two versions are not compatible with each other, if you want to play with us, you must get the Steam version!

While waiting for Steam to spontaneously decide to unlock the game, why don't you join us on QuakeNet via webchat in the #Magicka channel?

There is also a handy Magicka guide to read with 5 reasons why you should not play with Ernesto on RockPaperShotgun.com.

You might also want to read up on Magicka in the latest review, which mentions very interesting plans for DLC and future content, among other things.

Once the game goes live, you can hook up with us on QuakeNet, Teamspeak and our Steam Group!

We picked Halfus as our first boss to focus on in heroic and we'll probably continue the trend when we move on to Maloriak or Chimaeron.

I like the approach they took when designing this fight, the normal version varies each week and requires a pretty standard raid composition while the heroic fight still brings some variety depending on your strategy. If I were to complain about one thing it'd be the heroic version encouraging you to stack healers, of course it would have been a tad easier before they nerf disc healing on main tanks.

Anyway on with the show, more updates real soon.

Cogency has been kind enough to supply us with a little teaser from the Korean Open beta.

You can find the video in our movies section here:
http://www.ginnunga.org/forums/f/124/movies/

or of course, follow this fancy direct link and download this awesome little gem of a teaser!:
http://www.ginnunga.org/forums/t/24369/tera-kob-teaser/

These keys grants VIP access to all the Rift Beta events until launch. The keys are good for 25 uses a piece, so if one do not work, just try the other. Will add more keys as we go.

Would be swell if you left a comment if you used a key!

Quote:

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Every now and then you run into a game that makes you wonder why this hasn't been done a thousand times before, because it is just that simple. Magicka is one of those games.


http://www.magickagame.com/

Magicka is a top-down action game for 1 to 4 playersset in a fantasy world based on Norwegian mythology. You are a wizard and your duty is to save the world from evil! (eventho the game itself doesnt take this job all to serious)
All along the way to this ultimate confrontation, players will encounter humorous references not only to other high-fantasy games, movies, and books, but also to numerous bits of geek culture that may or may not even remotely fit the pseudo-medieval setting.

Eventho every mage can dish out some melee attacks, everything in Magicka evolves around spells, elemental spells. There are 6 elements all accessible with the QWEASD-keys. In total you can combine 5 elements in one spell, the effect of the spell depends on the elements you combine. Combine water and fire and you get a steam blow, add some earth and you get some ball of steam. There are endless combinations and enemies that are react differently to certain spells, so you have to keep making new combinations.


Magicka can be played CO-OP. Of course, we all know how these 'cooperative' game experiences can quickly degenerate, given the right mix of player 'frienemies'. So naturally you can, and probably will, easily end up cooking one or two of your own party members with that hastily-cast fireball spell.

Besides the adventure Magicka also has a few challenges where the objective mainly is destroying as many monsters as possible and then boast your score to the rest of the world.

Magicka will offer 13 levels in the main cooperative campaign game, which should keep you busy for a while. Trying to find secret items, new spells, face challenges and "Experience the parody and satire of a clichéd fantasy world!" as they say at Paradox.

The theme for the mobile version of the forums and frontpage has been updated. It should play much nicer with old phones now and should be redable even on the builtin UIQ web browsers. Please report any issues from newer configs. Would be great to know how it performs on the iPad for example.

Team Nordrassil did their first Cataclysm raid last night and killed Magmaw our 1st boss of the expansion. Well done all!

In an excellent end to our last unofficial Christmas break raiding week we managed to kill Al'Akir and Nefarian for the first time (Al'Akir seems something of a push over, Nefarian certainly is not). Admittedly these are only 10 man raids but it's testament to the groups' composition and ability that we managed this and cleared out the bosses left in BoT.

This of course gave us more protector tier loot. Back in ICC while our DKs, Druids and Rogues were wearing their threadbare greys our Warriors and Shamans were fully decked out in both main spec and off spec tier loot so please Blizzard enough with the bloody protector loot.

Moving onto our first official raid of the new year we will be looking towards finishing off these bosses in 25 man and moving on to heroics, several of our members are not fully prepared for that just yet both from a gear and a full understanding of the boss encounters but this will go swiftly.

Fantastic work today guys, keep it up.