*Splitting off from the Official player meet thread*

Ah ha, makes a bit more sense then

Join some of the global channels. Which server do you play on mainly? I know for one that Union Chat and sals badgehunters are good channels to join if you are looking for people to team with (union wise). Defiant Channels, not so sure on.

This is the big one. And i mean *REALLY* big one. Ever since they downsized the Brighton office (and as a result lost some *REALLY* good staff members) we (the EU players) have been left in the lurch.

The ONLY public facing member of staff who was kept on was Avatea, and that was because she was *able* to move over to the US at that point in time. There were also fewer jobs in total available for all the staff (some people no matter what would have been let go)

It didn't help the matters as well that they let the Creative Concepts team go as well (Stephen "Rockjaw" Reid, James "Spaff" Spafford and Chris "Aero" Siddel). Granted, Rockjaw is now head of Community for the Bioware MMO, and Spaff is head of community for Medial Molecule (Little Big Planet), so they were able to move onwards and upwards.

We also lost 2 other Community Guys in Ghostraptor and Kerensky (German CM). I keep on forgetting the French one (Palladium i *think*) but i know that he moved on to Lineage 2 Community. Avatea (the lovely multi linguist that she is) was able to cover for them... although obviously 1 person struggles to do the job of 3 (not a knock on Avatea, but its true)

Rockjaw was the main one for organising ALL the EU evnts (not that there were many, but just as the ball was starting to roll, the whole team was let go). Right after the player meet in 2008 at the Omega Sektor there was talk of holding one the following year at the same venue. It had gone that well (especially considering that they only had 6 weeks to arrange everything in).

Then the Omega Sektor closed down just a few months later.

With *few* player based exceptions, the only time we get cossie codes are when they give them away to both EU and the US players as competition prizes. There have been *NO* Paragon Studios organized "meet and greets"/presentations full stop over here in the EU (Although with a *possible* exception of GamesCom 2011 in Cologne... but, y'know that is actually an Industry event as well... so lots of "behind closed doors" stuff happens that the public cannot see).

Not to mention as well that last year 254,000 people showed up for it, so it *isnt* the ideal place for a "meet and greet". Its VERY loud there.

Infact, about the *only* cossie code that I can think that is possibly unique to the EU right now is the "ghoul" costume code (awarded for attending last years player meet). It might have been awarded to US players for some reason or another, i do not know.

Cybercafe's havent taken off all that well over here. Again, mainly in the big cities where people who might not have net access for any reason can quickly check their emails/surf for a couple of hours.

Very few players (if any) actually visit a cybercafe over here to play online games (unless it is indeed a "player meet") at least here in the UK. I know that the Omega Sektor had this issue when it wasnt running an event, in that there werent necessarily enough people going through the doors to keep it open.

Cybercafe gaming though is more of a Chinese/South Korea thing though. There are the economic/social reasons for that though.

In terms of "when do people come online"... mainly in the early evening EU timewise (So around 18:00 UK time till 00:00 UK time). I would probably place the "peak" game time at around 20:00 GMT/BST. You might have some server variation on this, but as i dont play on Vigilence/Zukunft its hard to say.

To make it more EU'centric, we could have researched for a venue in France/Germany, but when I *KNOW* that the UK has a FAAAR larger player base, it makes sense not to make it *harder* to attend unless it is for a *very* special reason (GamesCon in Cologne is the only one I can think of).

Now, if PAX *ever does* run an event over here in the EU (rumours of it possibly happening) then i SERIOUSLY hope that Paragon Studios makes the effort to attend.

Sounds strange, but since Paragon Studios formed, they have *NOT* been over to the EU in force for ANY event. We have had War Witch show up for 1 event since Paragon Studios were formed (Omeka Sektor 2008). Since then, nothing, nada, niet.

This isn't a dig at you, but you Americans are *really* lucky with all the events that you have over in the US where Paragon Studio's show up.

We EU players get only what we can arrange ourselves now...

*Side note: The EU base did use to have player meets at Comic Cons when NCsoft Europe attended those as well... but since the downsizing/downgrading/gutting of the EU office, NCsoft haven't bothered to attend those either.

Which is a shame, because we also had good ties with the "Draw The World Together" guys, and you could get character sketches done by several comic book artists (Andrew Wildman, Andie Tong, Neil Edwards, Karl Kopinski and others) Gallery for more

The EU *used* to be very good for player meets with the US side dragging behind in terms of "official" ones (Some might say that was more due to the community staff organising them than anything else)

Now its the flip side...

*2nd Side note: If you hadnt noticed as well, the EU side have been screwed in general for boxed versions of new releases of the game. The last one was "Good Vs Evil"... 4 years ago.

*3rd note: There have been general rumblings *since* the decimation of the EU office, that the EU players are viewed as "2nd Class Citizens" of the game. Hell, we are pushing (and have been for quite a while) of a merger of the server lists as well... (for better or for worse it would bring the communities closer together).

Those would be "Defiant Events" and "Defiant Chat Channel"

Agreeing with most everything Gangrel has said, but this needs especially repeating - merge the server lists.

That's right, not the servers, but put Defiant, Union, Zukunft and Vigilance on the same list with Freedom, Virtue, Champion, Pinnacle (my old server before I transferred), etc.

The EU servers are already physically in the US, so I can't imagine there are that big a technical hurdles left for it (as there are/were already East Coast and West Coast physically located servers) and only red tape ones.