Meán Fómhair 2014
(September)


Cead Mile Failte!

Where to begin, August was a tragic month. I was just starting to be ok with the loss of a friend and co-worker who passed away June 11th in a car accident and now this month I lost my Grandmother who was the inspiration behind this family. She taught me the core values, the legends, and inspired me to create this community and encouraged me every step of the way. Several years ago she had her second stroke which took from her the ability to speak and use 70% of her body. Since then she has been trapped inside of her own body. Her passing August 17th, while sad, is also a relief. For she is free now, no longer tormented by her body.

What this means for us? I am a living legacy of her kindness, compassion, and family values. As long as I continue on, her memory will not be forgotten. I will be writing a piece in Gaiscioch Magazine issue 3 about this wonderful woman who saved my life in my youth. It will feature some pictures and some of her art.

I want to apologize if I seemed distant the past few weeks. Trying to digest sending my daughter off and not being able to see her again for another year, then walking into the passing of my grandmother has undoubtedly put me off base. This week I am traveling to California for her funeral, and then return to Oregon Thursday night to Drive to Seattle for PAX Prime Saturday morning. So while I'm away there won't be any of my regular events. Things will go back to normal come September.

Gaiscioch Family News & Events

PAX PRIME: Saturday, August 30th @ 8PM Pacific
West Coast Gaiscioch Fleadh at Fado Irish Pub, Seattle, WA

Come one come all to the West Coast Gaiscioch Celebration at Fado Irish Pub in Seattle, Washington. Sign the Gaiscioch guestbook, view our family album, and meet Gaiscioch members for a night at the pub. Join us during the great nerd invasion of Seattle that is PAX Prime.

View Details At: http://gaiscioch.com/q/p85496

Tuesday, October 14th @ 8PM Eastern
East Coast Gaiscioch Fleadh at Fado Irish Pub, Buckhead, GA

Who says you can't mix business with pleasure? I will be traveling to Atlanta, GA for our 2014 Franchise Leadership & Development Conference on Oct 14th. While I'm there I plan to host our first ever Gaiscioch Fleadh (Festival) at 8PM Eastern. Join me and Yulishka for a night of laughs, drinks, and memories.

View Details At: http://gaiscioch.com/q/p86323

Earn Epic Loot!
Gaiscioch & Sanctum of Rall team up for this years ExtraLife Event

Help give a child a second chance at life by joining us for this year's ExtraLife event. This year the Sanctum of Rall community joins the fight to earn $5,000 for Childrens Miracle Network. Join us in our mission to help save lives.

Even if you can't donate you can support us by joining the team and sharing the link with your friends, family, and coworkers. The top earners will receive one of many prizes.

For a full list of prizes see: http://gaiscioch.com/q/p85252

September 20th, Portland, Oregon
Join us at the Hillsboro Renaissance Faire

Here ye here ye! Come one come all to Hillsboro, Oregon to the 2014 Hillsboro Renaissance Faire as Gaiscioch stages an all out assault on the festivities. Join Foghladha, Donaliam, Yulishka and more.

Learn more at: http://gaiscioch.com/q/p86569

2014 Comcast SportsNet Summer Football Challenge
Gaiscioch Win's First Ever Flag-Football Tournament Showing

In the dead heat of summer with a whopping 98 degree temperature... ok who's laughing. I hear you in the back there... pipe down for us pacific northwest folks thats pretty bloody hot. Anyways. 12 of us came to put our skill to the test for the first time as a team. Lead by Quarterback Anthony Davis we took to the field and won our first game. Our second game victory would be called tragically short with a last 6 second penalty that would place our opponent on the 4 yard line. We brushed it off and went on to win our next 2 games entering us in the final round. By this time we were down to 9 people for this 7-on-7 team with 3 of our members leaving the game due to injury.

By the championship game we had played 4 games straight in the dead of heat. Heat exhaustion was setting in and we were all tired and sore. In our final game of the day, we managed to outplay our opponent and win by a score of 34 to 29.

This is the first time Gaiscioch Football has ever entered a tournament and we managed to pull in a victory on our first try. We plan on continuing our tournament play and will be participating in the Rain Bowl this winter. For more information about Gaiscioch Football visit: http://www.gaisciochfootball.com/

Gaiscioch Magazine
Fall 2014 Member Survey

The Gaiscioch Magazine is looking for your opinions! We are putting together a new section which will track the success of the games you play. This is our first ever Fall Member Survey and we are looking to see what interests our player base at this point in time. Additionally this will allow us to focus our articles on the games that interest you most while forgoing the things no one cares about. All members who fill out this survey can choose to receive 250 Contribution points by clicking the "Claim Reward" button on the homepage once you have filled out all of the sections.

Submit Your Survey Today at:
http://www.gaiscioch.com/vote/2014-interests.html

Elder Scrolls Online News

1.4 Patch
New Changes Come to Tamriel

The next patch is arriving in ESO this month and with it comes some new improvements and features. Here's a quick rundown of the major features of this new patch.

Upper Craglorn
Venture north from the badlands surrounding the city of Belkarth into new territory! With the western rockslide cleared and the Iron Orcs’ barricade sundered, the roads to Dragonstar are now open to travelers. Here, the insidious Scaled Court and their Iron Orc allies prepare a new invasion force for their master, consisting of terrible monsters created using the ancient alchemy and magical processes of the long-dead Nedes. Six new group delves, three new group instances, and the settlement of Dragonstar await you!

Serpent Trial: Sanctum Ophidia
Enter the heart of the Scaled Court’s power and face off against the Celestial Serpent himself. Make your way through the most loyal members of the Scaled Court and fight the monstrous Trolls and other nightmares the Scaled Court command in defense of their god. Those that return to Hel Ra Citadel or the Aetherian Archives after facing the challenges of the Sanctum Ophidia will find their actions have not gone unnoticed.

Dragonstar Arena
In the mountains north of Dragonstar, an abandoned ruin has been repurposed to serve as a blood sport arena by a heretofore unknown champion. Warriors from across Tamriel now flock to compete in the arena games with the promise of great glory and fantastic treasures–if they can survive. Available in both normal and veteran modes, a group of four players can enter the ring and pit themselves against some of the deadliest challenges yet seen!

Nirnhoned Crafting Trait
A new crafting trait, Nirnhoned, has been discovered in Craglorn! The necessary trait items can be found rarely while harvesting in Upper Craglorn, and Nirnhoned equipment can be obtained by completing the main quest line in Upper Craglorn.

Larger Delves
The delves found in Bangkorai, Reaper’s March and The Rift are now larger, and contain more monsters and loot. This is an ongoing effort to make all delves in the game larger.

Grouping Improvements
We have begun our grouping improvements, and have made more quest conditions group-shared and condensed/removed the number of layers for a particular objective. This will dramatically reduce or eliminate the amount of time you will be separated from your group or other player characters. This is the first of our ongoing effort to keep groups together as much as possible throughout the game.

PFX Prioritization
We have implemented a priority and distance-based culling system that ensures all pertinent ability FX play on you and your group, and take priority over other effects so combat cues are not lost. This system was implemented to improve FX memory management so that important FX are not being culled out in a high-density combat situation. In addition to fixing issues where ability FX may not render, this system will also improve overall performance in some PvP scenarios and Dungeons.

New VR Rank
In order to provide for new itemization and to ensure a better feeling of achievement in Dragonstar Arena, Sanctum Ophidia, and Upper Craglorn, the maximum Veteran Rank has been increased to 14.

Ability Altering Enchantments
We’ve added powerful new ability altering enchantments that can drop on weapons found in the Dragonstar Arena, the Serpent Trial in difficult mode, and from the Alliance War Leaderboards.

See the Full PTS Patch Notes at:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/127711/pts-patch-notes-v1-4-0

Gaiscioch Storefront
ESO Storefronts Introduce a new Minigame with a high cost

Well that was unexpected. This system on paper looked awesome, and I thought I had everything streamlined to best handle it when it went live. How I was mistaken. There are a few footnotes about this system I wasn't expecting.

  1. You can only bid on 1 merchant per guild per week
  2. There is no way to tell what the highest bid is.
  3. There are no refund for bids, If you lose you lose your gold.
  4. Profit for the storefront does not cover the price required to lock down the prime real estate.

For the past 2 weeks we have lost over 50,000 gold on our failed bids. At this time I am placing bids each week on different merchants throughout the land to try to find one in our price range. Each week we lose I turn to the lesser desirable places and buy the merchants outright. I am measuring the bid cost and profits for each location to make sure we're getting a return on our investment. So far the few locations I've tried are over 15,000 gold per week. Each week and each bid is a gamble and I'm hoping I can build a clear map of where we can setup shop and turn a profit rather than constantly sinking and requiring so much support from the family to keep the stores open.

I have to send a huge thanks to everyone that has donated. We've raised quite a bit of funds to support these stores. If you're interested in helping support the bidding process please send gold to @Foley. I will award you 100 Contribution per 1,000 gold you send.

AvA Campaign Change Coming
Gaiscioch Going on Tour To Find a Less Toxic Campaign

Over the past month we've done our best to help make a difference in Thornblade, we've taken castles, scrolls, and outposts and so far all we've received in return is endless trolling and insults. This campaign has been more interested in tearing each other apart rather than working together and building each other up. Additionally since the campaign began we have not received a single request to join from these events.

So after our current campaign ends (Tues. Sept 2nd), we will be going on tour for the next few campaigns. We will start on Chillrend for 14 days at the end of 14 days. Then we will move to Haderus for 2, 7 day campaign rotations. The Saturday following we will meet up and decide which campaign we like the most or if we just want to keep being a Touring community and help out on all campaigns.

It is unfortunate the effect that trolls can have on a campaign but the families health and enjoyment is our focus and we must ensure that the audience we are trying to entertain is having fun. If you would like to you can just guest on these campaigns with your VR Characters and set Blackwater Blade as your home with your Non-VR Characters.

Gaiscioch Campaign Tour Schedule:

  • Battle for Chillrend - Sept 2nd - 16th
  • Battle for Haderus - Sept 16th - 30th
  • Family Meeting to Decide Home - Sept 27th

Top 10 Elder Scrolls News For August, 2014

  1. Elder Scrolls Online: The Road Ahead – July 8
  2. Massively.com: Report: SWTOR fourth biggest sub MMO, Elder Scrolls has over 770k subscribers
  3. Release date for patch 1.3 announced!
  4. MMORPG.com: Elder Scrolls Online: The Post-50 Experience to be Overhauled
  5. MMORPG.com: Elder Scrolls Online: Is ESO Worth Buying?
  6. MMORPG.com: Elder Scrolls Online: Emperor Reset Please?
  7. Massively.com: Elder Scrolls' Sage explains new Champion alternate advancement
  8. Latest Groundbreaking Feature in ESO
  9. Elder Scrolls Online: The Future of ESO Panel
  10. Elder Scrolls Online: A Guar of Your Own

Elder Scrolls Links of Interest

Guild Wars 2 News

Feature Pack
Guild Wars 2 Brings New Features with the Fall Feature Pack

This month Guild Wars 2 announced it's September 2014 Feature Pack set to launch on September 9th and  focused exclusively on in-game features, and this one is bringing in brand-new systems, improvements to existing features, balance updates, and more. Here are some of the things we can look forward to:

You can read about all of the changes and improvements at:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/feature-packs/

WvW Season 3
Gaiscioch and Sanctum of Rall Poised For WvW Season 3

At long last we face a tier for the WvW season where we actually have a fighting chance. The first season created a fracture in our community, one that broke apart the WvW community and scattered it to the winds. The second season caught us upon our decline and forced us into match ups where we never stood a chance. Yet again causing more people to call it quits and leave. Now we've found a tier where we can once again hold our own and thrive. Our numbers are growing, our points are gaining and we might just be the favorite to win the bronze league. This season is 4 weeks of swedish tournament style rankings. If you've got some WvW left in ya now's the time to fight. Lets show them what we're made of and let them know that they can knock us down but we will never bow out.

Top 10 Guild Wars 2 News For August, 2014

  1. Guild Wars 2 Update: Game Update Notes - July 15, 2014
  2. Guild Wars 2: Zephyrite Rescue Pack and Color Swatch: Red in the Gem Store!
  3. Guild Wars 2 Guru: Scarlet Is Dead - Haiku Giveaway
  4. Guild Wars 2: Watch the Tournament of Legends 2 Qualifiers Live This Weekend!
  5. Massively.com: What you need to know about Guild Wars 2's second season living story
  6. Massively.com: Vote for your Guild Wars 2 International All-Stars tourney reps
  7. Massively.com: Global Chat: Being the bad guy
  8. Guild Wars 2 Guru: Entanglement Begins July 15!
  9. Guild Wars 2: Points of Interest Episode 2
  10. Guild Wars 2: Entanglement Begins July 15!

In Closing

The summer months have come and gone and only one last trip lies in my future. After that it will be back to business as usual. Now to say the least I will definitely have my work cut out for me. Over the summer months our active rosters have dipped quite a bit and I will have a lot of work to do to try to get us back on track or find an alternative that can allow us to succeed. I will need the help of our trusted commanders and event leaders to make it happen but I am certain that the future holds exciting opportunities and adventures.

Slan Go Foill!
(Goodbye For Now)

Benjamin "Foghladha" Foley
Ceannard De Gaiscioch Treubh