Borg

Anyplace filled with my brethren in arms will suit my spirit fine.....may we honor our anscestors belief in us. Remember Warboss....the clan is still young...we all are....Ragefire is a fine test to their skills as a clan. The Counterstrike quest against the Centaurs is a great challenge as well. Ragefire.......ukee dokey 15-25 level challenge Counterstrike....ukee dokey 20-25 level challenge Wailing Caverns.....ukee dokey 20+ challenge All would do well to bind our spirits in battle....all will hone our art of war. *casts ancient blessing to the clan*

Click on the Image(s) below to place your order in support of T.H.E website....its clompin' time!!! A Collectors Edition also is listed and the first run was a smashing sellout success.... looks like another round is coming up. >;]

Click on the Image(s) below to place your order in support of T.H.E website....its clompin' time!!! LIMITED EDITION BINDER version of the help guide. The save version used by your Skullcrusher Warboss!!!

If you have the beta already on your harddrive you only need a new game code.......and it will upload patch after you create an account.

Morgh has pushed to level 8........435am time to nap Grulg has pushed to level 7. Names I have reserved for brethren on Argent Dawn Grawulf Wolfy Soke Martok

*Hears WAR DRUMS BEATING* Raid................RAID Time to clomp Humans at Walmart........... *slips extra herbs in pouch and grabs new staff of truckstop whooparse* I will be there my Hoard brethren

By RANDALL STROSS Published: November 21, 2004 CHARLES DICKENS himself would shudder, I should think, were he to see the way young adults are put to work in one semimodern corner of our economy. Gas lamps are long gone, and the air is free of soot. But you can't look at a place like Electronic Arts, the world's largest developer of entertainment software, and not think back to the early industrial age when a youthful work force was kept fully occupied during all waking hours to enrich a few elders. Games for video consoles and PC's have become a $7 billion-a-year business. Based in Redwood City, Calif., Electronic Arts is the home of the game franchises for N.F.L. football, James Bond and "Lord of the Rings," among many others. For avid players with professional ambitions to develop games, E.A. must appear to be the best place in the world. Writing cool games and getting paid to boot: what more could one ask? Yet there is unhappiness among those who are living that dream. Based on what can be glimpsed through cracks in E.A.'s front facade, its high-tech work force is toiling like galley slaves chained to their benches. The first crack opened last summer, when Jamie Kirschenbaum, a salaried E.A. employee, filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, accusing it of failure to pay overtime compensation. He remains at the company, so I spoke with him by phone last week to get an update. He told me that since joining E.A. in June 2003 in the image production department, he has been working - at the company's insistence - around 65 hours a week, spread over six or seven days. Putting in long hours is what the industry calls "crunching." Once upon a time, the crunch came in the week or two before shipping a new release. Mr. Kirschenbaum's experience, however, has been a continuous string of crunches. Crunches also once were followed by commensurate periods of time off. Mr. Kirschenbaum reports, however, that E.A. has scaled back informal comp time, never formally codified, to a token two weeks per project. He said his own promised comp time had disappeared altogether. At this point, he said he would be glad to enjoy a Labor Day without laboring, or eat a Fourth of July spread at some place other than his cubicle, pleasures he has not enjoyed for two years. The company said it had no comment on the lawsuit, but it is likely to argue that Mr. Kirschenbaum's image production position is exempt from the laws governing overtime compensation. A few days ago, another crack opened - one large enough to fit a picture window. An anonymous writer who signed herself as "E.A. Spouse" posted on the Web a detailed account of hellish employer-mandated hours reaching beyond 80 hours a week for months. No less remarkable were the thousands of comments that swiftly followed in online discussion forums for gamers and other techies, providing volumes of similar stories at E.A. and at other game developers. I learned the identity of the E.A. employee described in the anonymous account and spoke at length with him in person late one night, adding a third shift to the day's double that he'd already worked. He seemed credible in all respects, in his command of technical detail, in his unshakable enthusiasm for the games he works on - and in his pallor. For around $60,000 a year in an area with a high cost of living, he had been set to work on a six-day-a-week schedule. On weekdays, his team worked from 9 to 10 (that is, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.), and on Saturdays, a half-day (that means 9 to 6). Then Sundays were added - noon to 8 or 10 p.m. The weekly total was 82 to 84 hours. By tradition, Silicon Valley employers have always offered their bleary-eyed employees lottery tickets in the form of stock options. E.A.'s option grants, however, offer little chance of a Google-like bonanza. An employee who started today with an options package like that of the E.A. worker just described (and who stayed with the company the four years required to fully vest) would get $120,000, for example, if the share price quadrupled - and proportionally less for more modest increases. The odds of a skyrocketing stock grew much longer this month, when the company said competition had forced it to cut prices on core sports titles. Still, the company is a generous warden: free laundry service, free meals, free ice cream and snacks. The first month, the E.A. employee recalled, he and his colleagues were delighted by the amenities. But he said they soon came to feel that seeing the sun occasionally would have had more of a tonic effect. This employee, who has not had a single day off in two months, is experienced in the game software business. But he said he had never before had to endure a death-march pace that begins many months before the beta testing phase that precedes the release of a project. Jeff Brown, a company spokesman, declined to comment on E.A. Spouse's allegations. Mr. Brown did say that the company was interested in its employees' opinions, as illustrated by its employee survey, conducted every two years. This suggests that it needs to conduct a survey to learn whether a regular routine of 80-hour weeks is popular among the salaried rank and file. Asked about reports of employees working long, uncompensated hours, Mr. Brown responded that "the hard work" entailed in writing games "isn't unique to E.A." He is correct; smaller studios demand it, too. The International Game Developers Association conducted an industrywide "quality of life" survey this year documenting that "crunch time is omnipresent." The study urged readers to tell "the young kids just starting out" in the industry to reject the hours that lock them into "an untenable situation once they start wanting serious relationships and families." Electronic Arts' early history has none of the taint of present labor practices, and many who are acquainted with the old E.A. and the new E.A. have publicly lamented in Web forums the disappearance of the generosity practiced by Trip Hawkins, who founded the company in 1982. Mr. Hawkins, who has not been associated with E.A. for many years, said that he was not surprised by E.A. Spouse's story. He called today's E.A. a corporate "Picture of Dorian Gray," its attractive surface hiding a not-so-attractive reality. INDEED, E.A. is noticeably young in appearance. After Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, spent a sabbatical last spring as a researcher at the company, he wrote, "I am 43 and I felt absolutely ancient during my time there." He said the place felt to him like "Logan's Run," the 1976 science fiction movie in which no one is allowed to live past 30 - and he felt even older when he realized that the 20-somethings were too young to know the reference. The company has 3,300 employees in its studios developing game titles, and it hires 1,000 new people a year. (Company officials said voluntary turnover is about 10 percent annually.) In the past, it has hired only about 10 percent of new studio personnel directly from college; it has set a goal of increasing that to 75 percent, which would skew the median age still younger. Professor Pausch listed cost savings from lower salaries as one reason E.A. wishes to shift hiring to a younger group. The company also recognizes that fresh graduates are the most suggestible; Professor Pausch said he heard managers say that "young kids don't know what's impossible." That, however, they will learn when they get their schedules. Randall Stross is a historian and author based in Silicon Valley.

Seems like our Olympus area has some new visitors...... *looks around area* Bridgett Gypsy in Cemetary Gorman the Gambler at the Jousting Smith Lars the Curator in Olympus Hall of Heroics Annabel the Watchmen(woman) in the Great Hall Joining....... Librarian in Olympus Hall of Knowledge the FAMOUS Tod the Sentry at Olympus doors Oakley the Sentry at Jousting Smith Volf the Cemetary Curator Wesley the Jousting Herald Yardley the Waiter in the Jousting Arenas Royal Box NOTE: Edmund the Apothocary and Amos the Chef are broken....sigh NOTE: either greet them with Hello or ask them for News to begin a conversation.

Virtual Currency and Goods Go Global! IGE Retains Themis Group for Worldwide Marketing Campaign Durham, NC - January 5th, 2004 -- Internet Gaming Entertainment Ltd. ("IGE"), the worldwide leader in the market for buying and selling virtual property, announced today that it has retained the Themis Group to develop and implement a worldwide marketing campaign for IGE's portfolio of MMORPG services. "Over the past two and a half years, IGE has built its reputation by delivering what online gamers want," said Brock Pierce, CEO of IGE U.S. LLC. "With Themis Group on our team, we are confident that our brand value and services will be even better conveyed to the market of MMORPG gamers." Massively multiplayer online role-playing games ("MMORPGs") like EverQuest and Ultima Online are filled with virtual property - things like magic weapons, houses, in-game currency, and characters that are bought and sold on auction exchanges, with thousands of dollars trading hands every day. The total trade volume for virtual property is estimated by Professor Edward Castronova, professor of economics at Cal-State Fullerton, to exceed $400m annually, with as much as $20m in real-world dollars captured annually by dealers in virtual currency and goods. "The virtual property business is fast emerging as one of the most important aspects of the MMORPG industry," said Alexander Macris, CEO of Themis Group. "We are very excited to have the opportunity to work with marketplace leader IGE to help build out this major new consumer offering." The Themis Group is an international provider of marketing, management, and customer support services to developers and publishers of online PC and console games, websites, and other community driven services within the interactive entertainment industry. In addition to past marketing work for clients such as Funcom, CDV, Cyber Warrior, NetDevil, and Tektonic Studios, Themis Group also publishes an annual market report on the online game industry. The upcoming Themis Report 2004 projects that the market for virtual property and services will grow from $25m in 2004 to $680m in 2008.

Morning sleepy heads....... Tis Sunday and I must share with you this simple activity that for at least this old soul brought back great memories and last night provided me some great enjoyment. 130am..... I decide to throw on all my gifts from the GODS (7th anny armor/sword) and venture out to dance with some undead for a bit. I find another soul Uther (old recruit from years passed that created his own guild instead of joining ours) He ressurected my old butt after a Paragon Lich Lord did nastily rise from the ground beneath me and put me in quite the pickle. For the next half hour we teamed up to dispatch the lich, undead and look for more of Paradox's cousins Paragons.....as expected there were more afoot. Enjoying the simplest of duties we conversed about where the game has been and is going.....both in agreement item aquisition is beyond control as is the gold. It seems everywhere there is plunder but no where is there adventure. So today I will return to Gwendons Grave in Ilshenar for some more dancing with the undead if any other melee units wish to join me.....while it is a simple task....it is a simple realm yearning for brotherhood again. See you on the inside....

Thank you greatly.... May the upcoming years be a rewarding to you all as the past years have been for me having you as my extended family. Whilst not a man of the cloth...I do feel blessed by the GODS for such wealth and kinship. *bows respectfully*

closing topic. For the record..... Ive been here on this rock for now over 38 million years... thursday marked that new milestone. Don't sweat the small stuff (wink).... it all comes and goes..... is born, lives and dies and then... eventually replaced with a new improved version. "We seek to improve ourselves....Resistence is futile." Keep smiling everyone.....and see you on the inside....we have alot of new worlds to explore and expand the human spirits exploration of the ONLINE WORLD.....*waves*

hehehhe Galam has had his trials indeed....... Led the Trinsic Liberation standing next to Lord Dupre as the LOCUST Gargoyle from Lord Dupre's past. Gone toe to toe with Lord Ventryn to secure Lord Ventryn an audience with Emperor Borg. Discovered the Necromancer Arena in Malas. Now.... a protector of the realm that is in preparations for War. For the readers.......Galam's spirit here was the first PGoH Hunter/killer......Assassin.......eagerly sought orders to hunt down murderers and thier antisocial psychopaths that ran with them. While he was not within the realm at the time of the establishment of the Praetorian Guards.....Prefect SerBrightblade and his lines would have definetly been doubled in thier power and expertise in eliminating threats to the Empire and realm itself if he had remained. Good to hear from you old friend. May HONOR Guide and Bind thee..... Strength and HONOR!!!

Each has its merits. Both though travel with a different current as the main pulse. WoW.........Quests thru Teamwork to gain abilities. EQ2.............Epics with Teamwork to gain items. One is more of an item ladder while the other is more of an evolution ladder. Both will rule thier segments of the Online world. EQ2 will most likely replace EQ WoW will make its own nitch and successfully travel over into the online world. Ultima Online........Roleplay adventure EQ/EQ2.................Item adventure WoW....................Quest adventure Shadowbane..........Civilization building DAoC....................PvP adventuring Horizons................Race/species adventuring LineageII...............PvP Clan Adventuring Star Wars Galaxies..Space Trilogy adventuring Star Trek................Space Epic adventuring Anarchy Online........Sci-Fi adventuring WWII Online...........War Re-enactment adventuring Asherons Call..........Microsoft Adventuring Sims......................Social Adventuring Middle Earth............Tolken Adventuring City of Heros...........Comics Adventuring Who do I personally think will still exist in 10 years? Ultima Online.......The first will be forever and always part of the online world. EQ......................Some form of EQ will always exist WoW...................This will be Blizzards stake in Online gaming Star Wars.............SW online will be future place of Lucas's imagination Star Trek..............Only Tolken has a larger base...this will rule space. Middle Earth..........Future generations will battle with/against Sauraman forever. City of Heros or some Comic hero based engine will exist...CoH or Marvel....X generation will maintain this category.

Be safe Galanor. and that is why my mantra is........ May HONOR Guide and Bind thee... it will forever be with you as will us....... no journey is too difficult for you to overcome. Strength and HONOR

As a footnote....the Tradesman smith who has a beam of light from the GODS hitting him is Rusty.....his image turning into a stone replica......becoming an Ancient himself from the dedicated eternal service to the Empire, realm and all citizens. From left to right.... Balandar SerBrightblade Rusty Greg Borg Martok Wolf

Hmmm....... Sounds like Skullcrushers will have OUTPOSTS in the various regions of the world. OUTPOSTS akin to divisions of the overall bloodline of Skullcrushers. Take what they (Blizzard) is giving you and run with it fellow brethren....spend the energy proactively and not burn it up trying to beat em....in the end you will win as we always have. I would hazzard a guess if the success of the game engine lives up to the hype then mechanics to improve x-region relations would occur. Wouldn't that be grand at that time to have complete Skullcrusher Garrisons and Divisions ready to rumble against a common target/foe....(thinking like how the SB cross shard system was forcast)

Borg.....Ithaca Red Knights 90 Wolf.....Toronto Wolfpack 70 Resistence is Futile..... Wolfy now resides where all other challengers over the last 3 yrs.....back at the drawing board. In speaking to my esteemed brother Wolf....it is our hope that next year (2005 and beyond)... that we can field a complete league of our brethren. Martok should be finished with his scars from the 2003 season by now hehehe..... and there must be some other football fans out there that seek to take the title away from me......muhahahaha.

Well Forum Fans...... With just the Monday Night Game left.....the score is.... Borg 56 Wolf 55 The following are still to step onto the field for each.... Borg QB Peyton Manning IND TE Jeramain Wiggins MIN Wolf WR Marvin Harrison, IND K Mike Vanderjagt, IND Soo....this is an interesting dynamic..... Who will win.......who will reign supreme as this years THE HONOR EMPIRE champion? (unless they meet again in the superbowl)

Borg's Ithaca Red Knights for todays match against Wolfs Toronto Wolfpack.... QB Peyton Manning (IND) RB Jamal Lewis (BAL) RB Marshall Faulk (STL) WR Issac Bruce (STL) WR Keenan McCardell (SD) TE Jeramain Wiggins (MIN) K Steve Cristie (NYG) D New York Giants I will let Wolfy post his team....hehehe

And today is the long awaited battle........ The Toronto Wolfpack(4-4) VS The Ithaca Red Knights (4-4) both teams have scored the same for the season....597 pts and the only difference is Borgs defense has only allowed 626pts to Wolfs 647. Literally the match could not be any closer........ Who will win today......

HADES was not pleased.....MERCURY as well was a bit irritated at the move of the event....hope all will be able to make tonights matches. I have the brackets at work with me and will be returning and posting them asap upon return. Good luck and May HONOR Guide and Bind thee all who challenge for the October Championships......on this 'bumped' halloween

Earwen has her first hot seat...........Fire Beetle A pair of players who were taming them in dungeon gave her one for our help in healing them while they tamed a couple for themselves. In the end we learned also they knew our fallen Senator of Genesis Arthil....the good of the many and guild legacy continues....Arthils good will still works to the good of the many, guild and realm itself. May you rest in peaceful slumber Senator Arthil. We miss your everpresent smile.

heheh Soke....ask Nivea how fame can explode your traffic....hehhe With WoW the traffic is gonna be nutz on everyones servers......aye Balandar?