2007 Behind the Scenes Flashback

Wow it's been more than six months since this guild web thingy was started and look how it has grown. What started off as an information page for the 3rd job advancement quiz spun off to a few more pages of cute photo-album like screenshot collection of our guild members, and then news articles, advertisements, events and other stuff. It was a way for me to draw parallels with real life and maple life, injecting some real life situations into maple and vice versa, allowing me to escape into the other world when one proves to be too stressful. This post reveals some behind-the-scene thoughts as I did each post, and also acts as a roundup for the posts of 2007. Also a good summary for newer readers who never tried to scroll all the way back to the first post. However, for readers who like to look a pictures more than read, this post contains a lot of words, few pictures. Well too bad.

Photo Albums: CNY Pics Part 1
Oracle guild members are a photogenic lot, and the CNY 2007 pics were the first time we had ever gathered as a guild to take a group picture. The thing about taking group photos is trying to coordinate everyone to smile at the same time. The coordinator, which was Whister was on the verge of puking blood. It was also the first time I ever tried taking screenshots in maple, having discovered that my @#%^#@ Toshiba laptop had conveniently left out a key called Scroll Lock. After connecting an external keyboard to the laptop, I felt empowered and armed with a scroll lock key and became the guild paparazzi thereafter and the rest was history.

Photo Albums: John's Massacre
The guild is filled with a myriad of colourful characters with very interesting personalities. The one that stood out the most is JohnJon. Guild pervert, stalker, skirt-poker, and always scheming to release a summoning sack when Chip was afk. So it was a rare occasion that we found him afk in Parking Lot and kachecka, mm76 and I tried to murder him.

Photo Albums: Reann3's Wedding
At that time, Reann was the first one in the guild to get hitched, much to the dismay of John. John appeared at the wedding intending to snatch the bride but was largely unsuccessful.

Photo Albums: Blink Blink
Photo Albums: Twins Effect
These two posts were made from a collection of random screenshots that I took, armed with my powerful scroll lock key and put together as a mosiac of blinking characters and clones. It's funny how you manage to catch so many blinking people when you least expect it, but when you intentionally want to take a screenshot of yourself blinking, you are never able to. Right Yuri?

Photo Albums: Candid Snapshots
This was the first of a series of candid snapshots, where secret screenshots of people were taken, coupled together with a funny caption and then displayed for the whole world to see. A certain guild member became very wary of agrin after this, not wanting to meet her in person for fear that she'd end up online in a compromising pose. Yes Rainie I'm referring to you!

Ads: Movie of the Month - Curse of the Nependeath Flower
The very first of the advertisement series, this ad was inspired by the recent popularity of the movie Curse of the Golden Flower featuring Chow Yun Fatt, Gong Li and Jay Chou. Skoo was game enough to go to Strolling Path and pose in a variety of sacrificial screenshots to get the perfect mud splat on his face. Ouch.



Newsbytes: Missing I/L Wizard Found After 5 Days!
This was also the first of a series of newspaper reporting style articles. Angelrainie, being Skoo's Maple kuai lui disappeared from the game for a few days, sparking off some worry and anxiety. In game, he spoke about making police reports and pasting posters all around town. Other guild members who were unable to see the humour in it thought that Skoo really lost his real life daughter when he lamented "Aiyah kids nowadays are like that, don't listen to parents anymore, blah blah blah... Police ask me go home and wait for news... blah blah blah". That was funny. Can't really remember who were they... mogcat and kacheka? This article was also the first of many where the good-for-nothing Chief Superintendent of Zipangu Police Station was featured.

Ads: MapD Plumbing Services
This ad features an unfortunate victim who was just holding a toilet plunger at the time of the screenshot. I guess he knew what was coming and tried saying one whole lot of things but the pro paparazzi still manages to get a final shot of him smiling.
Apparently Mapdragon got various whispers that night requesting him to come over immediately to repair an overflowing toilet and choked sink. (Good job Yuri!) But in all due respect, plumbers are cool right, look at that guy in Desperate Housewives...

Newsbytes: Thousands queue up as agrinomy gives out free ice-cream
Agrin informs guild members residing in Singapore that to celebrate her 3rd job advancement, she'll be giving out free Ben & Jerry ice-cream at all B&J scoop shops on 17th April 07 from 12 noon to 6pm. "You just had to queue up and inform the counter girl that you are agrin's friend and she'll give you a free cone," agrinomy tells the guild. John was very excited and plans to stuff his face with B&J the whole afternoon. Agrin is planning to hold a similar ice-cream giveaway this year to celebrate her 4th job advancement. Watch out for the notice!

Newsbytes: Second victim to fall prey to Umi
Most Newsbytes article are inspired by actual events in the game, or carry some amount of truth in it. This was one of them. While Veira tried to warn the guild after being scammed by that no-good Umi of 5 million mesos, Chiplao was mersmerised by the former Miss Zipangu and fell prey to Umi again. With this article, all guild members were subsequently warned of this vicious scamming incident and have proceeded to give her an F5 face everytime they pass her. It was also after this article that the name Meso-Laden was synonymous with Veira4.

Continuing from that article, hordes of Newsbytes readers sent in screenshots of themselves to show how much they hate Umi by posing with F5 faces at Umi. The best F5 ones were selected, and also included some gloating about the incident, and a shocker awaits as we see who is in cahoots with the former beauty queen...

Ads: KFC - Kaka Fried Chicken
Korean Folk Town was launched and quite a few of us got this gigantic drumstick weapon, which inspired this post. I just needed someone who's name started with K...


Newsbytes: Hermit Spotted Skinny Dipping in Fishing Pond
It was during this time that the fishing pond was launched in Maplesea. Good way to re-emphasise the pervert-ness of a certain guild member. The culprit was described as having long black hair and owning a chubby blue penguin. Although no names were mentioned in this article regarding the identity of the skinny dipper, this article was placed on the same page as the next ad, and the culprit's two closest friends were interviewed. It was also through this article that I realised half the readers did not know what "skinny dipping" meant. For the record, it means to swim naked. =)

Ads: Latest Issue of Pervert Magazine Out Now!
John said that his birthday was in June. I told him that I'll feature him on a magazine cover. He was so happy. I didn't tell him what magazine though...

Resources: FM Suicide Guide
Ever seen people's ghost in FM and wondered how they did it? Here's agrin's FM suicide guide for you. No muss, no fuss. Just reduce your HP to zero and soon you'll have a crowd of bystanders f6-ing to you. Great fun.

Oracle Vocabulary:
to go to nearest town - to die

Guild Members: Guild Members Page Version 0.40
Seeing that the guild was made up of a melting pot of such colourful characters and interesting personalities, this page was done with the intention of looking more at the person behind the computer screen rather than the maple character itself. Who cares about levels, rank, job and other Maple KPI... The difficult part was to do a write-up on everyone. This wasn't so hard when there were only 24 members in the guild... This post also shows the various names that we are known by, including those funny names that Chip gave to each one of us. Gringrin, rara, nienie, whateva...

Resources: Skill Builds According to Grand Master Whister - I/L Mage
Resources: Skill Builds According to Grand Master Whister - Priest
These skill builds were written by Oracle's guild master Whister, just before he disappeared from the surface of the earth. Of course it was written in a more boring word document format and I just spiced it up with some pictures, gamely posed by various guild members, including the Magic Guard Boogie. The Magic Guard dance was really cute and was introduced to the guild magicians by Rainie... or was it kacheka... Forgot liao.

Other guides available include Yuri's Sharenian Guild Quest Guide and Zakum Quest Part 1 Guide.

Photo Albums: The Skirt Pokers Club
Our guild pervert complained that I've portrayed him as a skirt poker and have tarnished his innocent good name. But we see all evidence pointing towards him, poking the skirts of girls, guys and even Mr Chubby, his blue penguin.

Photo Albums: Yuri's Wedding
The first mass wedding I've ever attended, with half of Cassopeia invited. Generated a healthy amount of lag that I couldn't really do anything except to stand in one spot. Ya, there I was, just standing in one spot when people came and started to attack me. OMG, even my own guild member... Nice collection of pictures of the various brides and grooms.

Newsbytes: Drink Traveling
With the recent reports in real life of celebrities like Christopher Lee and Paris Hilton going to jail for drink driving, we also see some familiar maple characters teleporting and flash jumping under the influence of alcohol. I've chosen Chip for this post as I heard that he cannot hold down a 330ml can of beer without ending up hugging the toilet bowl... That big glass of long island tea is real by the way. I drank that...

Oracle Vocabulary:
hug toilet bowl - puke, vomit

Newsbytes: Oracle Guild Master - Missing, Kidnapped, Dead or Alive?
This was the first of the Veira-Whister saga. Whister, the GM of Oracle has been missing from Maple for a period of time and all suspicion points towards junior master Veira4, who had ever expressed overthrowing Whister and taking his throne before. Could it be brutal revenge after finding out that Whister was in cahoots with Umi, scamming the meso-laden Veira of his 5 million mesos?

One day after the Newsbytes article was published about Whister's disappearance, the guild master appeared in maple running around Japan in his striped underwear and harrassing female guild members in Candid Snapshots - Whister Returns. Also features a topless picture of agrin and Veira4's sibeh haolian godly scrolled Codar.

Whister disappears again and the suspense continues. Rumour has it that his meso-printing machine is stored in his mansion's basement. Newsbytes: A Peep into Veira's Basement reveals that... and more...
Long after that, Whister still gets dubbed as the "ramen slave" because of this article. Hyak hyak hyak.

Newsbytes: Unknown Mob
One hilarious post inspired by mapdragon featuring his mob-looking friend.

Ads: Fashion Police
And his mob-like friend ahboy0618 gets featured on the front cover of the Fashion Police magazine. It's funny that he didn't actually understand what "Fashion Police" meant. Heeheehee.

Photo Albums: The Great F1 Challenge
Nice collection of screenshots of people in various F1 expressions. Thank you everyone who so gamely posed for me. And then there were some people who had like 15 costume changes just to pose F1 for me. Ahboy ahboy...

DIY: How to Make Your Own Golden Mole
This was the guild member who attacked me at Yuri's wedding, and interestingly with a weapon that looks like it was cut out of Spongebob. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to make your own Spongebob hammer.

Guild Slideshow
Really nice slideshow made by Reann3

Ads: Save the Octopus
This picture was wonderfully done up by Yuri, with she and Dang posing in the picture. I was trying to spoof one of those charity shows where you have the emcee asking the audience to call in or sms to different numbers to donate different amounts of money. And then there's always some amount that goes to Singtel as service charge. Funny enough this "Save the Octopus" charity became Oracle's adopted charity for the rest of the year.

Newsbytes: Brutal Murder of Level 76 Ice Mage at Henesys Hunting Ground
Like I mentioned, all Newsbytes articles carry some amount of truth in it. This article is one of those based on a true story, and names have not been changed at all. It was only during this post that I started to learn photoshop. No more needing to ask people to post for pics for me. I feel so empowered...

Video: Lonely Princes Part 6
This is one of many of Maru's masterpieces, also available on youtube. Great job! This blog is also open to contributions from guild members or other readers. Just contact agrin in game and let me know, or leave some comments somewhere...

Guild Members Version 0.46
This was my first post after moving all old content from the old yahoo geocities website to blogspot. Lots of things to move, but the geocities was a bit too leh chey to update already due to it's primitive template. So on one day when I was on medical leave, I spent the day moving all the posts over. Shhhhh I told others that I was resting... But the new blogger site is easier to update and has a nice time stamp for all my posts. It also has the option for readers to leave comments.
Oh well, the guild expanded again!!! It's getting harder to do a write-up about everyone, so there were a few with just their pretty faces featured. It's funny when I ask three weeks in advance for guild members to do their own write up and hardly anyone responds. And when all is said and done and posted, I get one whole lot of requests to write certain things in their own writeup. Zzzzzz. Among all my posts, guild members page is the hardest to do. Shortens my HP/MP by 90%... Haha. Need time to recover after that.

Oracle Vocabulary:
slave - storage character

Newsflash: Rescue the Octopus Fundraising
The fundraising efforts of the Octopus fundraising have been sabotaged and Popo once again shows his inadequacies..

Grand Return of Johnjon
Our resident guild pervert had disappeared from the Maple scene shortly after he was featured on the June cover of pervert magazine. I was informed that he was making a comeback and to show the guild's appreciation to him, I had taken the liberty to organise a welcome party back for him in the form of this notice. Very interestingly enough people really came to register with me, which leads me to post a disclaimer on everything they read on this blog. =)
On the night of 25th Sept, certain guild members really did prepare to welcome him at FM but were greeted by a four-legged unknown mob with a menancing snarl...

Newsbytes: In Loving Memory
This post was really written with a lot of sadness as one of our guild members we had grown to love left us forever. It's not one of those sent-back-to-nearest-town kind of deaths, or leaving-Oracle-to-join-friend's-guild kind of goodbyes, but more of a how-the-hell-did-that-ever-happen kind of tearful, heartbreaking farewell. Goodbye... Sob....
I actually had to do some preparation work when doing this post. I've never really read orbituaries before, or took note of what was written inside. But for this post, I was carefully scrutinising all the orbituaries in the Sunday newspapers to come up with the appropriate layout, wordings and of course, that black and white mugshot of our dearly deceased.

Ads: Adopt Your Ducky Today!
The Singapore maps were newly launched at this time, and sometime in the previous weekend the actual Singapore Duck Race took place at the Singapore River. For those who don't know, I absolutely love ducks and this was a chance for me to put two of the things I like together, ducks and maple. Hahaha. Follows up with a Newsbytes article "The Great Maple Duck Race". It was through this article that I realised that Malaysians don't use the word "kelong" the way it is used in Singapore... But various people gamely posed for me shouting "KELONG" and then later asking me what it meant... Haha.

Newsbytes: Angelrainie gets First Zakum Helm for Oracle!
Rainie has done the guild great honour for being the first to get helmed, hence getting some media coverage for her incredible feat. Interestingly enough people started to approach me to do a post for them when they achieved second job advancement. Second job... Zzzzz... So, if you want media coverage, here's the criteria. The story must fall into one of the following categories:
1. Juicy (eg. gangster wannabes collecting protection money in FM)
2. Scandalous (Haven't actually found one yet)
3. Never happened before (eg. first to get zakum helm)
4. Downright funny (eg. death in HHG)

So, no more coverage for anyone else getting helmed. But you'll get first hand coverage with a front page story if you actually NPC your Zak helm.

Ads: Rent-A-Horse
As more and more people starting to don the hilarious kentaurus four-legged suit, I felt that I just had to do a special feature for them. Drawing inspiration from Yuri, who always says "I want a horse ride" in guild chat, the idea for Rent-A-Horse.com was conceived.
And it so happened that the newspapers had a report about the horses in some Australian racetrack having equine influenza at that point of time, I had to assure maplers that the horses from Rent-A-Horse.com were disease free. =)

Interview: New Amoria Hair Salon Vandalised!
This one is hilarious. Yuri sends me a picture of herself and her new hairstyle. I nearly died laughing. Now this is what you call a juicy story. It was the first time I did it interview style and could reflect the guy's heavily French accented English and Mino's vulgar, grammatical incorrect sentences which you usually cannot portray in a normal Newsbytes article.

This interview was followed by an "Instant Ah-Ma-fication" fashion spread portraying Yuri's spanking new hairstyle and what clothes to go with it for which occasion, just like those Her World fashion spreads. I love the Banned Story simulator. I feel so empowered. *evil laugh*

Photo Albums: Zikbabybear's and iiCeewax's Wedding Photos... sort of...
This album showcases the new Amoria wedding map. Well I was supposed to attend a wedding which was postponed cos' the bride's mother asked her to go to bed. On the day where it actually took place, Sister Clarence wouldn't let me in. Very bad attitude. I shall go write a complaint letter...

Newsbytes: Consumer Advisory - Fake Zakum Helms
With the proliferation of people hankering after fake branded stuff when they can't afford the real thing in our world today, I felt that Zakum helms could be the parallel of LV bags in real life. C'mon, those LV bags are so boring looking, brown, monogrammed... yet you see a long queue of people outside the LV shop at Ngee Ann City every evening. And when they can't afford the real thing there's always the Grade A fake ones from Shenzhen or Bangkok... So here you go, fake zakum helms for you too. Major factor is just the glow or no glow. Haha. I was quite amused by the feedback I got for this post. Dang was so eager to get a fake Zak helm. "I'll carry extra AA batteries!"

This consumer advisory was followed by an Interview with Zakum. I see hordes of people flocking to PC Bunk every weekend to particpate in Zak runs trying to get the helm. Their mentalities were mainly "kill-zak, get helm", hence it was interesting to portray Zakum in a human way with feelings and showing his side of the story on how he sees all these maplers who flock to see him. I particularly enjoyed the part where I featured Pikachu. Anyway to gather enough knowledge to write this, and since I have zero experience in anything relating to Zakum (I haven't even done the quests), I plonked my butt at PC Bunk one Sunday sitting behind a hermit and watching him take Zakum down from beginning to end. Good research.

The "Maple" Way of Saying Hello?
Here you see the guild pervert hard at work again trying to be a source of bad influence to new guild members

Ads: Afro Hair Storage!
I find this hairstyle absolutely hilarious and it reminded me a bit of Marge Simpson's hairstyle where she stores one whole lot of things in that blue beehive hair of hers. I didn't actually feature anybody I know personally in this ad, just that they happened to walk past and I snapped a screenshot of them. Some of them were from some really prominent guild like Deja Vu or Infinity or one of those. I erased their name and stuck some poop in their hair. I hope the owner of that character never finds this blog...

Then Veira decided to post a comment asking the guild if he should do an afro hairstyle change. Oh boy. Instant inspiration for the next post as he was featured as the poster boy for Eye Popping Hairstyles. Some hairstyles are really getting too common in maple so this fashion spread features some not-so-common hairstyles so that you can stand out of the crowd. And of course, why stop at only guy's hairstyles? I put Veira in some girly locks as well. (Ooooh love that simulator. So fun). And then why stop at only girly hair? I decided to stuff him in a nice pink dress and then get Whister out in a red dress as well. I laughed so much when doing the pics that my mum was wondering if I've gone coo-coo.

Blog Plagarism
This was the turning point for me and the guild blog. My blog was plagarised and I found my work reproduced word for word or directly linked to another blog. I was so horrified and upset that I couldn't sleep that night. I didn't scold the person involved, just asked her to remove the contents from her blog. However I got a lot of support from the guild (thank you guys!) as they unleashed their fury on the kid. This post had one of the record number of legitimate comments with thesis-long essay-like comments penned by various supporters who usually don't leave comments. It was also through this incident that I realised mapdragon had a brotherhood he could call upon should this matter get ugly. Damn cool.
I closed the blog for a week after that to sort out my thoughts on how to go on from here, whether to password protect it or not. I didn't like the idea of password protection as I intended this blog to be a free-for-all to enjoy, for guildmates and buddies and buddies' buddies and whoever who would appreciate it. I was also thinking that people may find it troublesome to log in to read and not come anymore. Once again I was really happy when kacheka said that she'll still read it even if there were 10 steps to log in. Heehee. Then I thought of this:
Step 1: Key in password to log in
Step 2: Solve a mathematical puzzle
Step 3: Solve a Sudoku puzzle (or is it Soduku, ah you know what I mean...)
Step 4: Spot the differences between two pictures
Step 5: Blah blah blah....

I mentioned this idea to her and she nearly fainted. Anyway, the guild blog was up again one week later (yes it was only one week, you guys kept saying that I closed it for so long...), no password, free for all. Just hope that something like this never happens again.

Newsbytes: Three Gangster Wannabes Admitted to Niora Hospital
This story was inspired by Yuri and is one of my favourites. It was also one of Yuri's favourites and can also be found in her blog. After this post I always left a "O$P$" message when I visited any shops in which I knew the shop owners. Great fun.

Oracle Guild Gathering
It wasn't really my idea really. It was Veira's. I had intended to remain anonymous behind my computer screen for the rest of my maple life but oh well. Veira actually asked me to put up a simple notice to ask the guild which is the preferred date and place for the gathering, but nothing is simple with agrin. It was funny when people didn't respond at first as they thought this was an in-game gathering. I had to redo the post and put "YES THIS IS IN REAL LIFE".

The KL gathering went on as planned, and so did the SG one. The link for the pics for the KL gathering can be found in the comments of the above mentioned post, while those of the SG gathering can be found at at the SG Guild Gathering post. But we're kinda shy, so this is the best we've got. People feedback to say that the pic is very cute... Heehehee.

Ads: Zakout
I personally spent quite a bit of brain power planning this post but I guess the content was a bit more attuned to slightly older people who go clubbing. The concept of beach party and foam party was also not familiar to many Malaysian readers. Adding on, the content was quite massive and worthy to be presented as a microsite instead of a blog post. Oh well. But this site features a naked picture of Whister. Haha.

Newsbytes: Meso-Laden drops out of Maple Fortune 500 List
It was meant as a reminder and warning to guild members to be careful when clicking at stuff when shopping in FM, but of course, presented in a very different way. In the end the take-home message from this article turned out to be that Veira can earn 100 million in one week, and everyone doubted him. Remember guys! He has a meso-printing machine...

Eco-Avadion's Rent-A-Clown
Alibaba was an interesting new addition to Oracle and what struck me most was his clown like appearance. Well, you have to give credit to such interesting looking people, so here he goes. And then he got famous enough to be featured on the 4th job pre-paid card and even has his own fan club. I think he enjoys the attention...

New Quest: Raising the Coconut Tree
This is one of my favourites. Modelled after the "Raising the Christmas Tree" quest during the Christmas period, now we've got our very own Coco Doll and the Coconut Tree with SilkDevil as the NPC. I've got feedback though, that their Coco Doll does not work and the tree doesn't sprout at all from his bald head and no amount of whacking, tickling or pressing of the Coco Doll's tummy seems to work. Oh well, look for SilkDevil for refund. Heehee.

Oracle Vocabulary:
co - actually I don't really know. Probably means to "do serious damage". Usually used in the following manner: "I will co you ah! You watch out!" Originates from Mr Coconut Head SilkDevil himself

Do revisit some of the old posts and leave comments if you like!