Ok so many of my posts have been deleted and I have been a lazy blogger. Prepare the lash for me...

But seriously. December has been kinda crazy for me, and I thought maybe I could relate my "tale" here and make this blog interesting. Also it will be a nice way to tell my friends and family how I feel about this.

I have decided a couple of month ago to totally change my life. I have been trying to work in the video game industry, MMORPGs to be accurate. And my goal was to go and work in another country.
As you know I play Aion and I was looking forward to try and be a part of the company that makes the game, NCsoft.
After alot of time working on my resume and letter, I finally had a positive answer and filled some emails for them.
It led me to an interview in the company office in UK and oh boy I will work there!

So begins my tale of a froggie going to live in the UK and finally work for what he believes in.
Right now I'm packing, making phonecalls so I got everything ready for my departure. I got many things to do actually.
I do not think yet of my friends and family I won't be able to see for a long time. I think I'm gonna realize this when I'm in UK. But I got full support from them and really want to thank them for that. It's been really great to have them cheer me up when I thought I couldn't do this.
For now, I really look forward to the work I'll do and the people I'll meet. Working with people from all over the world was also a huge motivation for me, as well as improving my english.
I'll try and tell you how it goes for me there, I'm moving this week-end and can't wait for that :)

Hopefully there's gonna be some place I can play the piano, I played it alot these last months and it would be a shame if I can't keep doing this. It was like 5 years or more without playing it and I realized I really need music. But I hear english people do play alot of music so...

In the meantime, happy new year to everyone here and may 2010 rock!

Baptiste / Mudjai

And this blog is gonna be much more updated!

My char, inspired by a manga character

First Aion interview is coming : POGO, guildmaster of a very critisized french guild "Xeo Frenezy" which will be on the biggest EU server Spatalos. Hope it answers some questions about the game to a few people here...

My guild's website is on its way, feel free to comment and say it's a fat piece of crap!

The Legion Emblem I'm working on :

Aion release is now coming up very soon. Which servers are hot? Where the dramas are gonna take place? Those are essential questions I will answer soon...

Interviews incoming !

Peace

Baptiste / Mudjai

Hello!

As maybe some of you know, it's Aion Open Beta this week, and I had time to play until this wednsday and so I did.

But first there is something I'd like to ask the people reading this. DingBlog is about games, all the good ones hopefully, and Aion is going to be one huge game. This open beta started crazy with thousands and thousands of people rushing into this new world. I hope the Aion community here will be interesting, and I'm planning to try and make it grow.
So my question is : what do you guys want to know about Aion? What do you want to watch and read?
Please answer this in the comments if you have any interest in the game!

Anyway, I'm off for a few days but I will tell you that once again I had tons of fun. The game was patched and greatly improved on some aspects. I really can't wait for the upcoming release of the game, but I already know I will have fun during the long leveling process with my guild. We better not be drunk while PvPing in the air, it's already strange enough to battle like this for the first time :D

By the way, have you tried Windows Seven? I'm willing to take a look at it... Still on my good(well, more bad) old XP.

Hey there

A lot of things going on in my life atm, I think I'll have a long story to tell once I'm done with everything I have to do.

In the meantime I'm trying to change my blogtheme here. This should do for some weeks, I have no time for more atm, sadly.

Anyway in a few days we should know more about the Aion Open Beta, I'll keep you in touch. You will read interesting stuff here about Aion :) If you plan to play it or atleast try it, let me now.

Cya soon, keep bloging guys!

Baptiste / Mudjai

I don't wanna go back to Paris! Being back here in the south of France (Perpignan near Spain), I almost forgot how cool it is.

A long trip awaits me tonight, and I don't wanna do it. But it's not like you can do as you like every single day of you life isn't it...

So, hopefully I'll be back in one piece and blog soon enough.
Cheers

Baptiste / Mudjai

Hey hey! Back on dingblog live from south of France at a friend and guildmate's house (Acouna, that's his name. Of course his pet is always named Matata...). Its sunny, the sea is beautifull and Aion cbt6 was nice indeed.

This time I kept playing my Cleric and tried to reach level 25 in order to see at least once the Abyss! With the beach calling us, it was kinda hard. But between two escapes to the tourists zone, we managed to grind some quests and kill some mobs and had some big laughs.

Yes, in Aion you have ways to transform for fun purposes, just like this :

Or this :

Anyway, we met some Asmodians players and fought them. It was fast, PvP will be pretty violent for the better! Duels are some kind of a piece of cake for us Clerics, but once you got two people beating you up, its hard to even cast a single heal. You really have to focus on +concentration stat to avoid those cast stops or else... Well I guess we'll see that at lvl 50.

Some dead Asmos, most of them didn't know why the hell I was in their quests zone, or so it seemed.

We took the opportunity of this final beta to reach guild lvl 3 and try the personnal cloak logo system. Here's the first result.

Later you can have other nice stuff to make your cloak and gear look cooler, can't wait to see that!

So, after some silly quests and stupid bashing, I was 25 and went to the Abyss. It's really huge there, a bit empty because on this server a very few people reached this lvl, but it will be a blast when release is here.

Some Abyss SC :

My comp had some troubles with the heat for a minute xD

That’s it for closed beta. Keep your eyes opened for open beta as hopefully more and more Aion content will be released on dingblog from other Aion players.

Baptiste / Mudjai

Hello Dingblog!

For a change, I'll tell my "story" of my second closed beta test of Aion, this time as a Cleric.

I already had a Sorcerer, but more friends and guildmates wanted to try the game, and so we started new characters on a new beta server.
I didn't want to heal at first, but the dark side (or maybe light?) is never too far and I was too tempted to resist. I just had a little fun on the character creation page, which is amazing with like 1000 options, and went back to serious business!

The cleric travelling through her memories

I wanted to try the guild system, so we bought our cloak and the rank 1 of the guild. The cloak is pretty cool since if you are guild level 3, you can bring your OWN logo or anything as a guild symbol. I think it rocks :> Too bad its kinda buggy with a shield.

Shield + cloak = bad.

What can I say about the class and the game so far? It's still really really nice and smooth. There is almost no bug, there is no lag, no crash. I don't say the game is perfect, we'll have to wait and see for end game. But the foundations are rock solid. Let's hope they will make some great game out of it.

Cleric is the only real healer of the game and has every tools. It's hard to be killed, you rarely run out of mana, and you can equip shields. Killing mobs is slower than a DPS class of course, but you can chain mobs and never stop. I played with a guildmate (an Assassin) and the quests went fast.

Level 2 cloak!

I managed to reach level 21, not bad as a healer. One guildmate was level 27 tho (limit was 30), with his Spiritmaster. So far leveling is pretty fun and easy. I didn't take a look at craft skills but it seems longer than in WoW. But nothing undoable like in some games.

Did I mention group quests with elite mobs are really fun. I don't really mind bashing in this game. But I hope I'll get to PvP a bit during the next beta. I'm not rerolling again for sure! After all, PvP is the reason we are playing this game...

Everything must end.

Bonus : a drawing of some Aion char.

As I said, here is a short movie as a Sorcerer (2min30 :p)

Download it there !

I'm currently trying to make a whole new website for my guild, check it out on www.guilde-everlast.com It's still a work in progress tho.

To finish this short post, here's a drawing i made very late, I know the mouth is strange :D This was made with a black bic pen in about 15 minutes on a A3 sheet.

Yeah, really need to draw more, why am I so lazy...

Baptiste / Mudjai

Hey hey sorry guys I didn't update my blog since a long time now. Not that you care anyway :p

So, what's up? Gaming related, we can say WAR is pretty much dead for us HL players. In France at least. Servers are pretty much empty since the last patch. PvE in end game RvR is really not a good idea ><

My guild is therefore in some kind of a break, but a few players are betatesting Aion at the moment. Me included since this last week-end. I was really afraid of the game, because it was korean style. I never really liked their character design and the bashing style of their MMO's. I still remember RFOnline... It was pretty bad.

But to be honest, Aion impressed me. First, its really smooth. No lag, no crash, graphics are really cool... Good start !
What about the gameplay? Well I tested a Sorcerer, and it's dynamic and fast. Since I only reached level 19, I fought only once in PvP with a group against another one in our quest zone, and it was a blast! Battles are quick and intense. Maybe because it's a new game and people don't master their character... We'll see.

Anyway, the quests were good, some were really stupid in a good way. It's easy to level up and really fun. But be carefull, it's "harder" than WoW. It's not really hard but aggro is different sometimes, you can aggro alot of mobs by moving in a bad spot. Carefull too you dps classes, we are very fragile. Like if I lose my shield, even a normal mob can kill me quickly. And it's even worse in PvP, I feel like the glass cannon, but this is the way it should be :)

So, I can't really say how this game will be in HL and everything, but I had a good feeling during this beta session. I'm definitly going to playtest again and hopefully we can play it at the release with my guild :>

Small video incoming, see you soon!

Baptiste / Mudjai

Hey there. It's hard to find some time to write these days but I will try to be more serious with this blog o/

The trip to Barcelona was nice, I already knew the city pretty well since I use to live about 2 hours from it. But obviously, 15 hours in a bus is bad. Don't do that. Still, I didn't have the choice due to some ID card delays... I learned my lesson here!
I shared a room with a friend and we prepared our decks together. We ended up with the same deck, named 5 colours cascade. We played mass removal cards like Jund charm or Pyroclasm and strong creatures like Kitchen Finks, Putrid leech, Anathemancer and of course Bloodbraid elf. Maelstrom pulse and Cryptic command gave us some ways to deal with the opponent threats and Cruel ultimatum ended the curve.
The problem we had was that it's neither an aggro deck, nor a control one. It's too slow against control or combo, but pretty nice against any creature deck. We thought there would be alot of token decks, but I didn't face any. My friend did tho, but in the end we lost to a combo deck : Sanity grinding...
For our first GP we did well I believe, and we had alot of fun outside the event. The thing I would change is : sleep more! Playing during 12 hours IS hard, and you need to be in a good shape or else your brain starts to crumble...

Here's a little sum-up of the event, tho I didn't write notes, so I won't go into details.

©www.wizards.com

Match 1

Elementals

It was a fun deck with alot of elementals tutoring fat creatures. In the end I managed to control the board with Pyroclasm and Maelstrom pulse, my creatures finished the job.

1/0/0

Match 2

Reveillark control

This is where I made my biggest mistake. I had to win 7 games out of 9 to make day 2. Any draw was basically a loss. I won the first game due to Cryptic command. He had Meddling mage but kept naming Chandra Nalaar, and hell I don't know why He did that. Nothing on my side of the board could tell him I played it.
During the second game I had a bad hand but Thought Hemorrage. I did play it and named Reveillark, removing the one in his hand and the other 2 in his deck. But after that the game lasted way too long and he ended up playing Stillmoon Cavalier. Since all my removal spells are black, I couldn't deal with it. From there I should have played my creatures and wait for a turn where I could simply tap his team with Cryptic command and strike him. But I was short on life and didn't. He killed me and we had no time for a third game... Damn draw.

1/0/1

Match 3

Dark Bant

Strange Bant deck since I didn't see any Doran. The games were short, I removed all of his threats with Pyroclasm or Maelstrom pulse and killed him with some Finks and Leechs. Btw the guy was like 40 years old! I thinks it's cool to have such a diverse player base.

2/0/1

Match 4

BR aggro

And there I got crushed. First game I had to Mulligan twice. My 5 cards hand featured to lands and some good spells so I kept it. I didn't draw any third land and lost without playing anything. In the second game I had to Mulligan AGAIN. I kept a hand with Wrath of god and Cryptic command. He started the beatdown with Figure of destiny, Mogg fanatic. In his fourth turn I had my mana ready for Cryptic, planning to tap his team and bounce his Figure. He played Boggart ram gang and had one mana open. Attack phase : I play Cryptic : he had Guttural Response... The perfect hand, it was so frustrating. Next turn I Wrath the board, sitting at 5 life. Next turn, he plays... Anathemancer. 5 non-basic land : I'm dead!
The match lasted 10 minutes, I think I was the first player to go outside and have a cigarette. What the hell had happened? I should crush those kind of decks, but hey, that's life, I had pretty bad luck and can't really blame myself.

2/1/1

Match 5

Lark Elementals

At this point I couldn't afford to lose if I wanted to make day 2. His deck was really nice, well builded. The first game was a blowout for him, he just kept destroying my Lands with his Fulminator mages. Did I mention I won only one dice roll during the hole GP? It's a pretty big deal since I almost never play a spell before turn 3 (outside Pyroclasm). The second game was better : I played Pithing needle on his mages and killed him after a long battle. Reveillark is annoying... We had 10 minutes for the third game, so I played fast and won the game easily this time, again playing Pithing needle and removing every threat. I'm not finished! Not yet...

3/1/1

Match 6

Sanity Grinding

This is were I got tired. I mean really tired. I lost the dice-roll, again, and watched him play his Islands and bounce my lands with Boomerang. I lost the first game pretty fast, having no threat at all. The second game was loooooooooooooong, I had like 12 cards in my Sideboard against him, but it wasn't enough. My deck was just too slow. I managed to kill his combo by removing Sanity grinding with Thought hemorrage, but he ended up killing me with Oona despite me having a Cloudthresher. How did he do that? Simple : he just used Twincast on my Cryptic when I tried to protect my Cloudthresher from his counterspell. Oh well, it happens o/

3/2/1

I kept playing for glory (and rating points!) and won some games again Kithkin and something else. Overall I made some mistakes which cost me day 2. And the deck wasn't really the best choice. It had a "unfinished" flavor. One week later in Seattle, some pros tweaked it and made a better version, more aggro. I think it's the good way to go with this deck. Still I liked it and went to a local tournament in Paris with it, placed 2nd. So yes, it's a good deck, but it lacks something to be a really great one.

Final score 6/2/1

In the end I learned alot from my mistakes. I thought I was pretty good, turns out I'm not. And luck is still a part of Magic, you just have to be a better player so you can win more despite luck. My friend went 6/3, also losing to Sanity grinding for day 2. Still we managed to earn rating points and it's good! Can't win it all after a month of tournaments right?

My friend and I are planning to attend some Pro Tour Qualifiers. So I will have some good stories to tell! See ya!

Baptiste / Mudjai

Hey there, yes it's true, I'm on the war-europe frontpage!
Well atleast for those who can read french... I'm gonna have to translate this but It looks like you'll have to give me some cheers for that...

Nevertheless, I've been asked questions about the Disciple of Khaine class, and obviously it's the last time I'll be talking about it since I'm now Order side with my guild, playing a Bright Wizard (and not playing much these days).
Those are general questions but it's allways good to have them answered. And I can make even more advertisement for my guild, seems fair!

Hopefully I'll end up leveling my new character and talk about what my guild is doing a bit more. So far Order players have been more than happy to see us join their forces. Not to mention the help they want to provide anytime. It will be fun to kill our ex-Destruction mates really!

Baptiste / Mudjai

For this new WCPI shoutout, let me introduce you to WAR Underground.
Nice fansite with quite a lot of different things. There you can find podcasts about Warhammer, or listen to the WAR Radio. There are also many links for various stuff like Player Guides along with other Fan Sites.
Overall a fun website with interesting resources.

The WAR Community Promotion Initiative, or WCPI for short, is a player-wide effort for WAR fansites, blogs, forums, and other WAR community efforts to cross-promote and expose content to everyone who visits them. Members of the WCPI regularly promote each other through links, spotlights, and other features. If you have a WAR site and you'd like to join, check out the WCPI thread or PM PhoenixRed on the Warhammer Alliance forums.

Other news : I've been interviewed by GOA about the DoK class and will be featured in an article on the official Warhammer Europe website. I'll keep you in touch about it.

Baptiste / Mudjai, practising Magic for the upcoming GP Barcelona...

Well Well I'm back from the "Trophée Mana Rouge" held last WE in Paris.

All in all it went really well for me.

There were really good players and I knew it was going to be tough. I came with a deck I knew would be weak in the mirror match pre-side, but I thought the decks would have been more varied.

6 swiss rounds and then a top 8 : I would have to make a 5/1 or at least 4/1/1 to enter top 8 and play the finals.

First match : Unearth Zombie

That was an old school player I was facing, with lots of wins back in the 90's, an ex-famous french player. He was totally cool and came to have fun, with an original deck.

In the first game I went too fast and he couldnt do a thing despite his discard spells and green protected creatures.
In the second game I went slower and he ended up discarding my entire hand and killed me.
Last game I controled the board with 3 (!) Planeswalkers and took the win.

1/0

Second match : Esper aggro

He took a game loss due to wrong decklisting. I was both happy and disappointed since I would take no glory from a win.
In the first game he went pretty fast but I somehow managed to control his creatures while attacking with a flying Nacatl (due to Elspeth) for the win.

2/0

Third match : Naya (mirror match)

I had no choice but to Mulligan and keep a poor hand. I should have used Mulligan again tho, for he went far too fast for me.
In the second game he went as fast, but when I was at 8 I casted Martial Coup and killed all his creatures. He said "ok, go for the third".
That was a nice game as I was once again in a bad situation and casted Martial Coup, but he was waiting for it and casted the same spell. I had a second Coup but was 1 land short, he killed me with him also having a second Coup!

2/1

4th match : Control

2 swift games, nothing interesting besides a Sarkhan Vol releasing five 4/4 red dragons :O

3/1

5th match : Control

Again, 2 swift games featuring an Ajani lock on his lands, and a Realm Razer in the second game. I had tuned my deck against control, but as you will see, it wasn't really a good choice.

4/1

Last match : Naya

At this point there is one match left and I have to win it to make top8. Im pretty happy and confident, tho a bit stressy. But my opponent will be Manuel Bucher, a swiss pro player. I'm starting to lose faith and as we begin to play, I'm making mistakes I never did. I'm not at what I'm doing and I lose without even playing.
In the second game I have a very bad hand and have to Mulligan. I fight as hard as I can but he plays really good and has a Naya deck very well tuned against other Nayas. I stand no chance and lose (I'm rank 10). Eventually, Manuel wins the Trophy in the end!

All in all it was a great event with really nice people. Antoine Ruel was more than happy to sign his card (as a winner of the Invitational, he made up a card and has himself turned into the main character on it), the judges were professional and nice. I have learned a lot and know I have a long way to go before reaching the level I'm aiming at.

This is it, see ya! Next step : GP Barcelona on may the 23th...

To all non-Magic players : you won't get a clue :D

Last week I attended a small Shards of Alara block tournament in a local shop in Paris. This was only my second real tournament ever (I had played in casual tournaments a long time ago but I don't consider it to be serious experiences). The first one I went was 2 years ago in a block format too, and I went 3/3/1 (1 being a draw). Pretty average, but it was fun. This time I wanted to prepare myself for an upcoming block tournament in Paris with about 100 players and a Black Lotus as first prize (it's the rarest and most expensive card in the game).


I didn't really know what deck to pick : control or aggro?. I started to look around for decklists and testing a bit of every deck I could find, in order to get familiar with the new cards. I played against myself with a soft called "Magic Workstation", since no friend of mine plays Magic (I'm crazy and played like a hundred games). I really love control but it seemed a bit slow for block, so I tried a sort of aggro deck with lots of Planeswalkers. I added Banefire to finish off my opponents (its a fat direct damage card that cannot be countered).


First match was against a 5 colors control deck.
First game I went really fast and he couldn't stop me in time.
Second game, I managed to put him at 1 life but he discarded my Banefire and played Martial Coup, which killed every creature I had. I drew lands and he won. I was pretty upset but could have won if I had played my Banefire a turn earlier, so my fault.
Third game, I just went too fast again and won. He tried to attack with Broodmate Dragons but I had 2 Celestial purge. I didn't see my good sideboard cards tho.

2/1

Second match was against a Bant deck (green blue white). It's my worst matchup.
First game, I got lucky and went super fast, and controled him with my planeswalkers.
Second game, I had nothing really good in my sideboard against him. He killed me with his super fatty flying angels and Rox war monks.
3rd game, I once again managed to control him with my planeswalkers, but it was really hard. I really have to find something against bant for my sideboard.

2/1

Third match was against an Esper control deck with some artifacts.
First game it went pretty good, until he played a Maelstrom Angel and put a Nicol Bolas for free! But I stole the Angel with one of my planeswalker, attacked and removed it from the game with Path.
Second game I crushed him with my sideboard, he had no lands and I just kept attacking.

2/0

The last match was a mirror match! Only a few cards were different.
First game it was a race which I won, nothing special.
Second game was close and he stole me 2 creatures with his Planeswalker, and then played Path on them. I didn't have enough resources to catch up and lost.
Last game he seemed to be pretty happy with his hand and someone behind him went "oh my god!". I pretended mine was OK by looking worried (what a lamer I am), but my opening hand was INSANE. He put pressure but in the end I had to many threats and won.

2/1

overall I was really happy, I won! But my deck wasn't perfect. I had good draws and no real sideboard plan against the mirror match and Bant. If I keep this deck for the upcoming big tournament, I'll have to find a solution. I'm working on it and seem to have a good plan, but the format is pretty small. Starting is a big advantage and your opening hand has to be really good.
I still don't know what I'm gonna play, but I do know there will be Pro players, it will be very hard to be in the Top 8. Still I won something and that's already great, 6 booster packs and 1 promo Path to Exile with a very nice art.

Wish me luck for saturday! Hopefully this blog will turn out to be a MMO / Magic blog, and I will tell the story of my guild rerolling Order because of the overwhelming Destruction population. We seek challenge, so we took this decision.

See ya !

Baptiste / Mudjai