Super Battle Opera scandal, staff can't count to 32.

There's a lot of rumors flying around about the AE brackets for SBO, but this is basically the confirmed truth.

SBO staff had 33 teams for a 32 team bracket.

The problem starts in the Last Chance Qualifiers.
Normally, a single "wildcard" spot is reserved for all the teams who didn't get into the main bracket through the red/blue ticket qualifying tournaments in sort of a battle royale.
This tournament is called the Last Chance qualifier.
To make matters worse, because there are usually tons of people or teams trying to qualify, chances to even play in the last chance qualifier are drawn out of a hat.
So you have to have good luck to even play in it.

For AE, they had already written up the brackets with an unprecedented two "wildcard" LCQ spots, so the top two teams of the LCQ tournament would get to be in the main bracket.
Furthermore, Daigo and Iyo, who did not qualify through normal tournaments, were given a guaranteed spot in the LCQ bracket.
This means the hat drawing was actually for only 15 teams in the LCQ.
This is why poongko didn't even get to play in the LCQ, his name wasn't drawn from the hat.

So the top two teams out of LCQ are Daigo and Iyo's team and Neurosis and Shiro's team.

And then shit hits the fan.

They forgot to put the Taiwanese team into the final bracket list from at LEAST a week ago, so they now actually had 33 teams instead of 32 teams in the main bracket.

When they realized their mistake, they decided to REMOVE the American team that qualified from Planet Zero, namely, Hsien Chang and Jose/BananaKen.
Keep in mind that for SBO spots, while Planet Zero compensated travel for the Blaz Blue spot, they said they would not for AE spots.
Hsien also qualified for BB at Planet Zero so no problems there, but Jose basically spent 1K plane ticket to NOT BE IN SBO.

Anyway, fubarduck negotiated with SBO staff for a long time and in the end, the decision was made for the USA team to fight the Kuwaiti team, who also had a legitimate spot.
When Bananaken said that was unfair to the Kuwaitis, SBO flat out said their alternative was not playing at all.

SBO REFUSED to have the two Last Chance Qualifier teams play each other so that there would be a single Last Chance Qualifier team entering the tournament.
Instead they chose to fuck over two foreigner teams who already had guaranteed spots in the main bracket (Both their team names were already in the program menu), and who had paid 1K+ to fly there.

Dragon Nest Japan's GMs pull upgrade "hack" stunt

So basically right now in Dragon Nest JP is an event where the first team to beat the new boss "Seed Dragon" get 1000manen. That's 10,000,000 yen, aka rounded down 100,000 dollars. For beating a video game boss. Pretty fucking crazy promotion. Apparently though Seed Dragon is some crazy unbeatable boss with 30 life bars; it has been theorized you'd need a full party (actually I think you can bring 8 people against him) of at least +12 or so equipped characters against him. Equipment in this game breaks at level 6.

Anyway in game, someone of the name of ハヌホメsdaa was upgrading basically the final tier of equipment, presumably for an attempt on the Seed Dragon. Global messages indicating +12, +13, and +14! Apocalypse Mace had been reached (Priest weapon) and people went crazy with excitement. And then someone posted in global chat: "Try to block the dude who got +14." And lo and behold, "YOU CAN NOT BLOCK A GM." appeared. Moments later the character (who was max level), was deleted. People flipped out. Why would a GM be upgrade haxing a final tier weapon in game? The first idea that came to everyone's mind was, "So they could win the Seed Dragon contest by rigging it with supposedly normal players who happened to have really high upgraded equipment." If they announced the winners and honuhome san showed up, no one would be surprised since they saw a fucking +14 in global. Shortly after this there was an "emergency maintenance," that supposedly addressed "security exploit." The community more or less called bullshit and said it was a coverup. According to the community, honuhome san was also a notorious upgrader in Arad Senki way back before the game was transferred from Hangame to Nexon.

So more or less everyone is calling Hangame on basically troll fishing the entire community with a rigged contest using rigged GM characters. Truly hilarious.

To Love Ru timeline

I know the truth of the first few parts (Ine is the horse head musician on nico, he did have an affair with the wife of the To-Love-Ru author) but not the rest.

English is hard

Random amusement while looking up GG backlog on the series they are subbing.
Not sure how you could mix up Mayoi with Moyoe.

...
written by anonymous conscript, July 28, 2009
hey...here's a crazy idea, bear with me:

IF ENGLISH ISN'T YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE STOP TRYING TO TRANSLATE TO IT.
...
written by Rhaine, July 29, 2009
Dips**t, English IS my first language. Now how about you learn grammar and how to spell right.

It isn't bear, it's bare.
...
written by anonymous conscript, July 29, 2009
There are actually three words here. The simple one is the big growly creature (unless you prefer the Winnie-the-Pooh type). Hardly anyone past the age of ten gets that one wrong. The problem is the other two. Stevedores bear burdens on their backs and mothers bear children. Both mean “carry” (in the case of mothers, the meaning has been extended from carrying the child during pregnancy to actually giving birth). But strippers bare their bodies—sometimes bare-naked. The confusion between this latter verb and “bear” creates many unintentionally amusing sentences; so if you want to entertain your readers while convincing them that you are a dolt, by all means mix them up. “Bear with me,” the standard expression, is a request for forbearance or patience.
“Bare with me” would be an invitation to undress. “Bare” has an adjectival form: “The pioneers stripped the forest bare.”

dicks, put them in your mouth.

Goonswarm wins Eve Online

http://www.kugutsumen.com/showthread.php?t=3604
Long story short, in a game where corporate espionage griefing is tolerated and even encouraged, where people will make internet friends over the course of years just to lure you somewhere and blow up your internet spaceship and take your internet corpse, the largest alliance in the game was disbanded from within by a traitor working for Goonswarm.

Eve always looked too boring on the micro-level and too serious on the macro-level, but the faction interactions of the game are truly fascinating.

EmoGate

Planet Zero, an arcade run by EmotionGear, has done it again.
This time however, instead of failing to pay players and randomly making the Grand Finals of a double elimination tournament single elim on the fly, he has outright spit on the Fighting Game community.

Witness these threads:
Shoryuken
Dustloop

In a nutshell:

So.. we waited the 3 months to hear about this GGAC qualifier and little be known emogear substituted one of the players of the winning team with a "Planet Zero Rep". I don't know about you but to spend all that money on a tournament announced to the general public 2 months after it was known by texas players(giving us 4 weeks to prepare) then when a non Planet Zero based team comes in and wins they take out one of the players?? This is just tom foolery and a man of this stature shouldn't be fucking with peoples time and money like this, where is our justice as game players? Shouldn't the winning of an sbo qualifier be enough to go to japan to compete?? I guess in his eyes its not... so.. this is not the first time this has happened and I'm sure others who have qualified *cough*arturo*cough* have been given bullshit in the past.

SO WHY IS THIS MAN ALLOWED TO HAVE QUALIFIERS?!

In short, the Guilty Gear AC team that won the American Super Battle Opera (Tougeki) qualifier spots...isn't going as the same team.
Rather the man holding the qualifiers is replacing ONE OF THE MEMBERS WITH HIS OWN "REPRESENTATIVE."
I don't even begin to understand how this works.
You won the qualifier tournament you should get to go, but because the organizer is making up rules someone else who DIDN'T win gets to replace you on a trip to Japan.
Anyway yeah, this level of crap is HUGE, like the fact the man has the gall to do this has touched off a spark.
Emotiongear doesn't dare post on SRK, but his posts on other forums (ones he owns) come up with the brilliant excuses that basically equate "winning" with "not the best choice to go."
How does an arcade operator get so much influence and money and yet fail to comprehend the simplest rule of competitive games.

I don't see how this guy still has defenders (he does, believe it or not,) but this is the best response I found to them.

Here's an analogy you can cram into your skull. I'll start a tournament series where the winner might not be the people who actually prove their skill. Maybe my friend needs to buy some watermelons, and I decide "I'm going to give him the 70% winnings over the guy who raped everyone". That would show some professionalism, wouldn't it?

The Trouble with Tomboyish Witches

Studio Siesta is making an English? version of their shooter Trouble Witches.
Odd.
Also, Zepy reveals in the post comments that the leader Tsuji of Studio Siesta posted on their own BBS under a fake name on how Touhou was trash and Trouble Witches was arcade quality.
Course board logged IPs, drama llamas, etc.
So he stepped down.

Interesting how SHMUPS creators aren't all one big happy family, you'd think because they're so niche that they all share the same cup.

James Chen (among many) tells it like it is.

For those of you who haven't been rolling with the Showdown lols, basically Emogear's "Showdown" tournament and upcoming SBO qualifiers have been caught by drama llamas after quite a few people had problems with how Showdown was run.

The entire thread is sort of a civil point counterpoint style, with some flames but everyone trying really hard to keep their patience.
What's ticking everyone off is basically:
1. If showdown is an example of what type of tournament Emogear will run then why the fuck does he control SBO spots? (Yes, people have still not been paid.)
2. His rule 7 basically states that if he doesn't like you you're not going to SBO even if you qualified.

Tons of arbitrary bullshit, everyone now knows that Showdown was basically an attempt to get Texas, and specifically PZ players, to Japan, not any sort of team USA effort.
Thing is it FAILED spectacularly.
Out of staters won everything and now Emotiongear is dragging his feet.

Arturo in particular really wanted to flame Emotiongear down to the ground, but Emotiongear holds the SBO spots for Arcana Hearts, and thus his tickets, so he really couldn't post his full opinion at all for fear of reprisals.

Anyway the tide is turning.
Arturo learned Empire is backing him; even if he doesn't get the qualifier spot (because of llamas) Empire will send him to the last chance qualifier in Japan.
Arlieth and John Choi have also stated (not in the thread cough) that they will back Arturo.
SRK mods are posting like crazy in the thread (they are also backing Arturo *political maneuvering*)
Unfortunately Aruturo still didn't let loose cause Arlieth played nice guy politics, it'd be bad form if he flamed (too easy.)
But he did lay his cards out on the table and basically say, "You have jerked us around, and I'm not happy about it."

Anyway Emotiongear pretty much does not answer Sabin and goes and attacks ChaoticBlue in the thread because it's an easier target.
Then jchensor shows up and tells it straight.

And that's the drama llama news over Texas showdown.

It's Sarda to the north!

Well, I finally can put faces to names for my iRO guild. What can I say...Tanzy is well...sort of what I expected her to be? >< What I DIDNT expect was miss perfect's picture and the fact she's only 13. Bloody hell that's in illegal territory right? Jazzy is...NOT what I expected. Not sure if that's good or bad. I don't know Go very well, but he oozes coolness from the one picture I saw. Taz is taz is first picture I saw and remember. Now if only I could see bean/sm/zed. Shifty little buggers they are.

I am a moron! I forgot this week was reading period cause you know what? AT LEAST ONE CLASS IN EACH OF MY PREVIOUS SEMESTERS HAD FINALS DURING READING PERIOD. Meaning I never really had a break to study during reading period, just strings of finals. So the philo final on Tuesday is NEXT Tuesday. Der. As is the rest of the bloody finals, next week, well they start this Thursday.

Let's see, Zed got pwned by sending me a link to the subservient chicken. That shit is old! Gloating over my link whoreness, I challenged Zed to find something quirky and NEW. He's one for four so far, having shown me walking in circles.com, which is a devilishly hard adventure game, to the point that I'm starting to hate it. I keep it always up in a window, and it's godamn natural cricket noises have woken me up when I've passed out.

So what am I doing these days? Besides envying that godamn n00b? I spent time reading up the history of the gamefaqs boards and how one board has been choked off of members because it is basically a cesspool of idiocy. It is the LUE board, or life, universe and everything. The only reason Cjayc doesn't completely destroy the board is cause the fallout would be enormous. Any user past 888113 can not ever see this board, and before it had a very very short registration period to choke off even more users (all who did not register can not see this board either). So I'm curious. Lots of e-drama and real life fallouts, who knew.

RAPE THE SYSTEM!

Long update:
Anyway

1. Hager's computer vision assignment owned me. I could sort of see how to make sense of it, I just couldn't find a framework of anything to go upon. So with that, owned.

2. Diff eq's second midterm also owned me. I will now REQUIRE myself to attend every class, whether to just sleep and hear like 3 seconds of the lecture, it's better than what I do now.

3. The second philosophy paper completely destroyed me. Not worthy of passing? Worse than the first one? HOW? I now have to beg my brother's friend to email/send his second paper over to see what I did wrong, cause I thought it was better than my first. The fact that it was viewed as WORSE sends me a message that I have the wrong idea when I write philosophy papers.

4. Heh why do 5 year olds run private ragnarok online servers. I was threatened with banning because I killed wraith deads. Oh noes! 10,000k x 15 = 150,000k exp = .15 million experience PER wraith dead? Go to guild dungeon, kill wraith deads = level 99? Godamn idiots.

5. Reads Sean's blog, didn't know that the Tanzy thing was that serious o.Oa. Poor Val, work things out Jazzy.

6. iRO has 2-2 and sp regen patch and Juno...given my last experience with privates...I think I might just jump on Sakray. (2x too!)

7. Halo...well the mic wasn't stolen by my mail robbing hobo friends who took my modem and graphics card, they probably threw it back after realizing it was eight dollars.

8. I got to really make MY priorities straight, Jazzy says screw you to that, but I consciously know it's slowly ruining my life, inch by inch. This computer is responsible for my poor grades, my health problems, my general shitty quality of life. And yet I could not do without it...is this what drug addiction feels like? I think I can sympathize now...

9. How To Gag On 'The Passion'
Nine fun-filled ways Mel Gibson's brutal snuff film makes a mockery of true belief. Clip n' save!
Stolen from Lah again...
One of the most hilarious articles I have read in a while.

Zee Germans, Part II

Evidentally while I was in my private server land, my iRO guild managed to piss off the entire German speaking population of International Ragnarok Online. The reason? They helped defend a guild hall from the entire German alliance. Ok not enough? Their party name was "Zee germans are coming." Evidentally the Germans found it offensive and mass spam private messaged the entire guild for the duration of the War.

I'm so damn proud /sniff.

Update on the drama!

Well what do you bloody know, Gravity finally classified the bug that's been on the foreign servers for AT LEAST A YEAR+ as AN EXPLIOT. Goddamn tards. Anyway teh jazzy is vindicated, and people are going to be banned maybe probably. Anyway fuckers, stop whining about your lack of info, it is posted above, so if you want to risk getting your ass kicked, be my guest. By the way it's sort of fucking obvious if a group of people are standing around a mini boss for a good hour.

What's the A stand for?

What's worse than failing a really hard test? Failing a really easy one. And that's how I feel after I took my AI midterm. My god skolemized logic? I KNEW IT WAS EASY, but guess what, I don't know what skolemized means! Fuck me. God fucking damn it, I'm really mad at myself...I should have aced that piece of shit. Guess that's the penalty for skipping class cause it's too early...No more. I have to go to AI so I don't shame myself with more repeat performances. MY GOD THE TEST WAS SO EASY BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOO I didn't know what SKOLEMIZED MEANT. ARGH.

International Ragnadrama Online
Well our guild leader, teh jazzy, took it on himself to rat out one of his friends for abusing a bug. Problem is Gravity says it's not a bug. Bullshit. So the end result? Alienation between two former friendly people, lots of hate on jazzy, lots of hate on the guild abusing the bug, and general widespread knowledge of how to abuse it now. Well I did caution him, but he made up his mind...shrug...guess all that's left is to abuse the bug so much that Gravity does a rollback. In case you're wondering, if you get your steal percentage at 0% on a monster, you have an equal chance to steal any of its items. How does that work? Well 0% isn't really 0%, you still have a chance. So basically...take about 45 minutes to an hour stealing off the miniboss of your choice. That's like an hour for 30million zenny...NOT A BUG! Even averaged out, you have four hours for 30 million zenny. Gravity is stupid.

DropRatio*(Dex + 3*Skill Level - MonsterDex + 10)/100
So an example would be:
1/10000 (slot earring rarity)*(1 Dex+3*Level 1 Steal-(no idea what zealotus dex is)+10)/100
which ends with
(14+zealotus's dex)/1,000,000
I believe the percent is truncated, so if you have 0.9%, it's still 0%.
Not too hard right? It's still in the foreign versions of ro also...it's a wonder those servers with all their cheating thais 555 and koreans hukhuk haven't abused this bug to death. (No offense to noncheating thais or koreans)