Difference between revisions of "User:Echoez"

Starting Out

So one day I happen to long onto Steam as I normally do and I'm greeted with a banner advertising a mysterious new free-to-play published by SEGA, bu the name 'Spiral Knights'. Figuring it could be interesting I asked around and since I was apparently not the only one to have their interest piqued by this new release myself, 'UnusualGoth' and 'Rink' all joined up and started playing. Over the following week or two we progressed and enjoyed ourselves although the nature of energy limiting progression put people off and unfortunately Rink whom couldn't play with us much anyway due to being of a different time zone decided to quit, and goth too moved on to brighter pastures. Despite this I perservered on since I found the retro inspired design of the game endearing and eventually made my way up to tier 3 (Admittedly due to the... 'assistance' shall we say of the Starter Pack). At this stage I was growing bored of the solitude of soloing through the content and decided I should join a guild.

Gunslingers, Priests and Noodles

Now I'm not one to dive into a well-established large guild where most people have already built up their groups and the like, no I decided I should look for a newer guild; one that was tight and budding, showed promise to expand and the like. Well after browsing the forums for a time, I stumbled upon an insteresting thread by a 'Trihelix' advertising a smaller but nonetheless interesting tier 3 guild called 'Gunslinger Priests'. After tossing a few coins and rolling some dice I decided to join up and so began what would be several hundred hours of playtime on an otherwise decent MMO game. Shortly after joining I was immediately aquainted to 'ftxblackdahlia' and 'aukto' two of the guilds' most active members and alongside myself we would go on to form what was a more or less an established trio of the most active people in the guild, and run Firestorm Citadel many a time together. Soon people like Vaerin and Rock-Zombie would join in on the fun, but for the most part we remained the most active members and likely spent far more time than is healthy down in the Clockworks. A month of non-stop fun and I was quite at home within the guild and being the wonderful person that I am, I decided to create the Gunslinger Priests wiki page. Little did I know where things were going next!

Promotions, Dissapearances and Explosives

Following my joyous contributions to the guild, Trihelix decided to promote me up to Officer making me at that point the first and only member in the guild to be promoted in such a way, an honour if I do say so myself. Following this I continued to mantain and update the wiki page, invite new recruits and just generally be active within the guild, a lot like before I was promoted come to think of it. However shortly after the Blast Network update and many, many rounds of myself and Aukto blowing each other up, I went on a two week holiday to the Netherlands. Irrelevent detail perhaps, but when I returned I discovered that ftx had mysteriously vanished and in the following weeks Aukto and a few other older members of the guild vanished. Who knows what triggered it all happening at once, perhaps it was just a natural domino effect of people not being active encouraging others to stop being, but suddenly the guild had lost many of it's active, most enthusiastic members and it was a sad, sad way to end the month.

Nonetheless new talents like Smur adn Brackets joined up and the guild continued expanding, quite fast in fact; we topped 50 members by the end of the August (All due to my promotion clearly /ego). After many a run alongside Rock-Zombie whom I suppose somewhat replaced ftx & aukto in the enthusiastic, active member department, I decided to take up bombing, a rather substantial change in style given that up until this point I used a rather generic swordsman set. Despite this throughout September I formed my bombing set and soon fell in love with the play style, it was fresh and enjoyable and soon alongside Rock and Vixter I was one of the main bombers within the guild. All was once again good in the world.

Revamps, Updates and Quitting

Well all good things must come to and end, and that more or less appeared to happen in late October. Throughout the month many changes were made to the structure of the guild, as we broke the 80 member mark myself and Tri revamped the recruiting process and made the ranking system actually mean something and with our new testing process Rock-Zombie was appointed Officer, making him the second member to achieve the promotion. New members popped up like Djokson, Tikrit and so forth, and all in all it seemed like the guild wasn't going to far off the reaching the 100 member milestone. And then the Shadow Lairs struck.

Without derailing this into some sort of rant about my thought on gambling mechanics in a game that a great deal of younger people play, the idea of limiting what is essentially end-game content behind a arbitary slot machine is simply not something I can endorse. For the unaware, Shadow Lairs can only be accessed using 'Shadow Keys' which at the time of the update could only be obtained via opening an Iron Lockbox; a process that cost 750ce all by itself, and keys had a drop rate of less than 3%. This of course resulted in prices skyrocketing at auction, ensuring the vast majority of players would be forced to gamble with their crystal energy if they wished to experience the new content, and although I can justify these elements when they're applied purely to optional 'fluff' like accessories or UV rolling, limiting actual content behind them was not a decision I could endorse. At this stage it seemed like Three Rings were simply attempting to extort their playerbase with no regard for younger players or the damaging addiction these sorts of games can cause and I felt that it was time to jump ship, 24-10-2011.

I gave away a lot of my stuff to guild members and turned away from Spiral Knights, never would I forget the time I spent here, and I didn't rule out returning one day should Three Rings get their act together, but for the time being it was time to go.

Sudden Revivals

The date is the 5th of December 2011. I haven't touched or look at SK since I left it in late October. Although I no doubt missed the guild, I otherwise didn't have much desire to return at least not if the game was in the same state as when I abandoned it. I probably wouldn't have even considered checking if it wasn't for a mysterious friend invite popping up on my Steam account.

An invite from ftxblackdahlia.

As if returning from the dead, the long lost ftx had suddenly appeared after abandoning us all months ago (In all honesty, most of us thought he was dead) and unable to overcome curiousity I soon learnt that ftx had more or less simply gotten sidetracked and forgotten to let us all know he'd be inactive for a time and that he decided to get back into Spiral Knights. Totally unexciting compared to what I'd hoped, but all the same I figured if ftx was coming back, why not pop in and say hi to everyone? Much to my surprise upon logging in I found out that Shadow Keys were now purchasable, a suggestion I had made before leaving and more shocking than anything else the guild had broke the 90 members mark, Vixter and Grumpet were now officers and most surprisingly, Rock had made Guild Master. I still remember the newb running around in his heavy demo set back in the day, it was a genuinely touching moment to see how far he's come. Slightly less so when it dawned on me that this probably meant Trihelix had left, although as I soon learnt he'd merely taken a break from the game, but I digress. Anyhow I decided to check out the Spiral Knights forums and although most of stuff in development is basically more fluff, the promise of European servers has restored my faith in Three Rings and given me motivation to stick around, at least for now.

Barbarous Thorn Blade

Dread Venom Striker

Divine Avenger

Gran Faust

Triglav

Blitz Needle

Polaris

Silversix

Ash of Agni

Dark Briar Barrage

Electron Vortex

Nitronome

Radiant Sun Shards

Shivermist Buster

Venom Veiler

Voltaic Tempest

Heavy Demo Helm

Ice Queen Crown

Mercurial Helm

Skolver Cap

Volcanic Demo Helm

Heavy Demo Suit

Heavy Plate Mail

Ice Queen Mail

Mad Bomber Suit

Mad Bomber Suit

Nameless Poncho

Skolver Coat

Vog Cub Coat

Barbarous Thorn Shield

Dread Skelly Shield

Grey Owlite Shield

Swiftstrike Buckler

Volcanic Plate Shield

Elite Boom Module

Elite Boom Module

Elite Quick Strike Module

Elite Quick Strike Module

Elite Slash Module

Elite Slash Module

Elite Trueshot Module

Elite Trueshot Module

Penta-Heart Pendant

Penta-Heart Pendant

Chapeau of the Green Rose

Plasmatech Bombhead Mask

Plasmatech Demo Suit

Ruby Bombhead Mask

Sniped Stranger Hat

Snowy Santy Pith Hat December 12th 2011 - January 23nd 2012

Spiral Bombhead Mask

Tabard of the Green Rose