Nothing but #Love4ArenaNet Following on the heels of Activision and Trion a few months back, ArenaNet was hit with massive layoffs this week. Several of our own Gaiscioch members were let go from the company after NCSoft’s massive reorganization ripped through their ranks. More than 100 ArenaNet Devs have been laid off. Our heart breaks for all of those displaced devs, but we know that the industry as a whole will benefit from their knowledge and skill. These are some of the best developers on the market and will continue to make great games in the future. Hopefully our paths will cross again.
February 27th, 2019 | Read More | 451 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Signups for 2019 Extra Life Charity Event are Now Open For those of you looking to join us in raising money for the the 2019 Extra Life Charity Event, November 1-3rd you can sign up now at: https://gsch.info/extralife-register. Over the next few months I'll be updating the site to include our new logo.
January 28th, 2019 | Read More | 469 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Winter 2019 Gaiscioch Community Summit This weekend we have our quarterly Gaiscioch Community Summit on February 2nd, 2019 at 5PM PT. Join us as we cover some of the latest news in our community and in the gaming world. This event typically runs 1-2 hours and includes live polling, giveaways, and a AMA session with myself Foghladha. This is a great opportunity to learn about our community and participate in some fun discussions about upcoming titles. The event will be streamed on Twitch at: https://gsch.info/twitch with voice support on Discord: https://gsch.info/ce
January 28th, 2019 | Read More | 488 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Let's Get Mobile! This past month I deployed our new navigation system and updated a few of the more trafficked pages on our site. While our site is nowhere near 100% mobile friendly it is a constant path I plan to be moving over the next year. We have 16 years of code to update so it's going to be a bit of an undertaking, but the navigation was the first step to allow us to enter the glorious mobile world. It also adds some pretty nifty features to help organize our site for easy browsability.
January 28th, 2019 | Read More | 484 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You December 2018 Patreons! As always, I cannot express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
December 30th, 2018 | Read More | 480 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
The Horizon - January 2019 We've got a lot of games working their way to our desks and here's a roundup of a few that we'll be involved in during the month of January. Our Pioneers have been very hard at work the past few months and the testing kicks into high gear this month. Here are some of the games we'll be testing as a group.
December 30th, 2018 | Read More | 461 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
It's Party Time! Gaiscioch heads to Vegas! Got some good news for those of you who live in the SW USA. We're going to be holding our first ever Las Vegas, Nevada gathering on Friday March 22nd at 8PM PT. If you’re interested in attending, help us choose the location at: https://goo.gl/forms/K6tczaBXQWSHjPHo1
December 30th, 2018 | Read More | 534 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
The Streams of Epic Adventure are Back! I am pleased to announce the return of one of our family’s best livestream shows, The Streams of Epic Adventure. The first stream will be Episode 86: Grim Dawn on Sunday January 6 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Join us for the return of this epic livestream adventure. Be sure to add your Twitch handle to the Gaiscioch.com site to start earning Social Points for watching livestreams.
December 30th, 2018 | Read More | 501 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
In Loving Memory of Ron Moments before sending our newsletters I was given some disheartening news. It is with deepest sympathies that I report Ron "Olestra" Bishop has passed on at age 65 due to complications during a surgical procedure. His son reached out to us to share the news.Ron was well known within our Rift and Guild Wars community and led a group of Guild Wars 1 players back to the classic. He joined our community on July 23, 2012 while we were in RIFT and made the jump with us into Guild Wars 2. Over the years he earned the rank of Caomhnoir de na Iomproidh. He will be a huge hole in the heart of Gaiscioch and will be missed greatly.
December 30th, 2018 | Read More | 517 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You November 2018 Patreons! As always, I cannot express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
November 28th, 2018 | Read More | 456 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Portland, Oregon Holiday Gathering For those of you local to the pacific northwest United States, we will be holding a Holiday gathering on December 15th at 2PM PT at Bellagios Pizza at 16265 NW Cornell Rd #101, Beaverton, OR 97006. I will have a little something for all who attend. They offer a wide range of Pizza, Salads, and Grinders with Gluten Free and Vegan options available. Come join us for some family friendly fun and laughs.
November 28th, 2018 | Read More | 480 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Chapter Requirement Changes After some evaluation of our current situation and the ever shrinking guild size requirements within games we've decided to drop the minimum guild size for chapters from 500 to 250. In addition we have revised the way we evaluate the requirements for each area based on where the current player base chooses it's focus.
November 28th, 2018 | Read More | 453 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
2018 Gaiscioch Conference Recap I would like to thank everyone who was able to make it to this year's conference. I feel the new format went really well and the live polling was epic :D. I will work on incorporating that more in our future summits.
November 28th, 2018 | Read More | 484 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Extra Life Charity Event Wrap up There is a certain level of pride I feel for seeing so many people work so hard to raise money for kids in need. It reminds me that there is good in this world and it is worth fighting for. This has been our 8th year participating in the Extra Life event and we have raised a total of $41,054 over our 8 year history. This year with our smallest community yet we still managed to bring in $2,282 and had a blast over the 3 days of livestreaming.
November 28th, 2018 | Read More | 471 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Gaiscioch has become an official Twitch Team! After nearly 2 years of trying to get a Gaiscioch Team on Twitch approved, we have finally done it. With the help of our first Twitch Partner and former elder Dreamtrip, we managed to convince Twitch to give us our own team. This just shows that whatever our community puts its mind to we can accomplish with hard work, devotion, and most importantly, each other.
November 28th, 2018 | Read More | 515 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Trion Sold, Rift Chapter Returns to Hibernation Mode It's unfortunate that the turn of events that transpired, led to our chapter in Rift drying up again. This past week, Trion was sold to Gamigo and their staff minus 25 people was promptly laid off. Our hearts go out to all of the Trion folk and we wish them the best on their next chapter. This does however mark the end of our time in Rift officially.
October 29th, 2018 | Read More | 738 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You October 2018 Patreons! As always I can not express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
October 29th, 2018 | Read More | 426 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
The Gaiscioch Conference - November 10th at 2PM PT In a last minute decision I've decided to break away from the "State of the Family" name and brand our annual press / member conference the "Gaiscioch Conference" or "Gaiscioch Con" for short. I feel it's a bit less political sounding. Everyone is encouraged to attend the Gaiscioch Conference live on Twitch, YouTube, or Mixer for a look into the community and what we have in store for year 17.
October 29th, 2018 | Read More | 468 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Extra Life Charity Livestream Event The ball is about to drop on Gaiscioch’s largest charity event to date! This time, we'll be streaming 3 full days across 15 games that we feel highlight the very best of 2018. You can join us in game or by watching live on Twitch / Mixer / YouTube for your chance to win Raffle Prizes including Games and special grand prizes donated by the developers.
October 29th, 2018 | Read More | 521 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Changing how we keep in touch Many of you have received a note from me in the past asking you to check in to keep your spot in the guild roster. Since its creation it has helped keep people checking in, but it also has created some unexpected reactions. Some people were taking it as a if you don't do this we're kicking you out. That simply isn't the case. They aren't in trouble of being removed from Gaiscioch just that they might get rotated out if they remained afk too long. They could easily get invited again at any time. This led to many members "Re-Applying" to join the community which they didn't need to do. Once a Gaiscioch always a Gaiscioch.
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 456 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You Patreons! As always I can not express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 614 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Earn Social Points For Watching Us On Twitch! A new feature has been added to Gaiscioch.com this month. You can now join the Twitch Community Social Adventure using your Twitch Handle to automatically accumulate social points every time you watch a livestream. This allows members who might not be playing any game with us to be able to obtain veteran member status without having to play a game we play just by participating in the twitch community. You do not need to claim events to earn points as they are automatically tracked via the Twitch API.
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 458 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Another Batch of Patches Heading to the Mailbox I've got all the labels printed and ready to send the latest batch of patches out. This time all of the Patreon supporters who met their $25 Patch goal will be receiving them if they've put in their address information into Patreon. In addition we've had a few more Laoch provide addresses and they can expect mail soon. At the current rate I'm gonna need to order more patches :D. I want to thank you all for supporting the community and I look forward to seeing how you use them :).
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 430 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Opinions Needed for Fall 2018 Poll I've put together a little bite sized poll I plan on publishing to the Magazine Audience and help guide our focus on content. If you would take a few moments to fill this out, it would help me put together a good plan of coverage for our next year of publishing. It's very short and should only take a tiny amount of time.
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 501 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Gaiscioch Extra Life Charity Livestream 2018 We're in the final month before the event and we've got a long way to go to meeting our goal. We could really use some social media exposure on this and I personally will be paying to have an ad floated on Facebook to help raise money for the event. It's time to rally the troops.
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 461 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
New Giveaway System We've added a new feature to our community that allows us to do giveaways for our members to award Family Vault Credits (FVC) prizes. These credits can be used to purchase materials, crafted goods, or even new games from our loot vault. To kick things off I'm including a kicker code in this newsletter to help get you guys started. Simply head to our marketplace and "Redeem Code" to claim your free vault credits. Please note these codes will expire after 14 days so use them right away. Additionally they are locked to your member account so you won't be able to pass them to a friend.
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 504 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Save the Date: Annual State of the Family November 10th 2018 Each year the Gaiscioch hold their annual look into the Gaiscioch Community as we look to our Past, Present, and Future. Our Annual State of the Family livestream acts as a look at the cool things we did over the past year, highlights the things going on now and discusses the things we're looking at doing in the next year. This year is an exciting one and I look forward to sharing some news with everyone. Please be sure to be available Saturday, November 10th 2018 at 2PM PT to catch up on the latest news and happenings in the community.
September 26th, 2018 | Read More | 465 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You August 2019 Patreons! As always I can not express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
August 30th, 2018 | Read More | 467 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Gaiscioch Magazine Team Meeting Anyone interested in writing some short articles for Gaiscioch Magazine is encouraged to attend September 15th at 3PM PT. This is your chance to help support the community and be a part of the evolution of our magazine. Earn scholar points for every article you write. Yes, editors we need you too :D.
August 30th, 2018 | Read More | 490 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Extra Life 2018 Schedule of Events We're just a couple months off and I just added another 100 games to the prize vault through Humble Bundle, Fanatical, and Green Man Gaming. Our calendar is almost set and we have a wealth of titles ranging from "Games to keep an eye on" to "Games we know and love". Festivities kick off on Friday November 2nd at 10AM and roll throughout the weekend until Sunday at 8PM PT where we will be holding the raffle.
August 30th, 2018 | Read More | 465 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You June 2019 Patreons! As always I can not express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
July 23rd, 2018 | Read More | 463 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
No Gathering for Foghladha at PAX West This Year It breaks my heart to announce that I will be unable to attend PAX West this year. It seems my calendars were not agreeable this year and I've been double booked. If people still want to get together without me that would be awesome to keep the tradition alive, however I won't be able to make it out for this one. Next year we'll do something big I promise as Soren will be making the trip out too and I can't let our crazy Canadians who drive for 4 days just to be there down. It's the first time in about 7 years that I won't be able to make it so i'm a bit heart broken, but I will definitely be there next year even if I gotta take time off to make it happen.
July 23rd, 2018 | Read More | 450 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Extra Life 2018 Plans & Schedule Last year's Extra Life Event went off tremendously. We had lots of people watching, lots of people playing and raised a good amount of cash for the Children's Miracle Network. This year we're going to expand our party to Friday making it a 3 day Livestream Event that you can pick and choose which parts you want to attend.
July 23rd, 2018 | Read More | 515 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You Patreons! As always I can not express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
June 25th, 2018 | Read More | 614 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Gaiscioch E3 Coverage E3 this year was nuts. We had a wealth of game announcements and new footage on some of our favorites from last year. As E3 progressed, I was at the keyboard posting up all the latest videos and press conferences. Here's our compiled list of press conferences.
June 25th, 2018 | Read More | 475 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You Patreons! As always I can not express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
May 30th, 2018 | Read More | 614 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
E3 2018 Coverage I will be doing my best to cover the various press conferences and provide summary recaps for each of the major E3 events. Feel free to join me in Discord as we watch the streams and discuss what has you excited. If anyone wants to write an article about something they see or are excited about, let me know. I'd love to have support in covering E3. All articles will be posted at: https://gsch.info/mag
May 30th, 2018 | Read More | 495 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
May 30th, 2018 | Read More | 552 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Recognizing our Laoch and Warlords This past month, I finally did something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I have begun sending members that have earned the Laoch rank a little something in the mail to say thank you. It's been something I've talked about doing for a while but never had the finances to make it happen. Fortunately, our Patreons helped with that front and I've allocated some funds to go towards recognizing the men and women who have managed to earn the highest rank in the community.
May 30th, 2018 | Read More | 548 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Thank You Patreons! As always I can not express my gratitude enough to all of those that have supported the community through Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. Your contributions have gone a long way into allowing us to grow and provide us with tools to streamline our operation.
April 25th, 2018 | Read More | 612 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
GDPR & Gaiscioch I want to touch on this as this new European Regulation forces anyone that has a presence in Europe to comply. Being a good chunk of our membership is from Europe I need to be sure you guys know what goes on behind the scenes and you agree to it.
April 25th, 2018 | Read More | 499 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Please Welcome Gilliebod to the Eldership Team We are proud to announce the addition of Gilliebod to our Eldership Team. First introduced to the community through GmaFog, Gilliebod will be assisting us with having an Elder presence in Guild Wars 2 during European primetime. Many of you know her from her kindness and caring personality. She's very approachable so please feel free to reach out to her if you have any questions or need assistance during the European Primetime hours.
April 25th, 2018 | Read More | 492 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Gaiscioch Community Summit - Q2, 2018 It's that time again. Time for us to discuss our past 3 months and give an outlook on the next 3 months. This is also a great time for new members to actively participate in the community by asking questions. I welcome everyone to bring a question to this quarter’s Gaiscioch Community Summit which will be on Discord for discussion and streamed on both Twitch and YouTube.
April 25th, 2018 | Read More | 477 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
In Memory of Wally "Pops" Anderson Some of you may have seen the news on our site, in discord, on the magazine site, or in game that our dear friend Pops has ascended to the next place. We have posted a nice tribute for him in our Gaiscioch Magazine and wore the color Red for the month of April in memory of him. Pops was a huge influence in our community and we will keep his memory alive. Please feel free to visit: http://gsch.info/a/230435 and share a few words if you please.
April 25th, 2018 | Read More | 558 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Marketplace 3.0 in the works So over the past month I've been developing a materials auto-pricing system to allow us to rapidly deploy new marketplace systems in our chapters that will balance material costs across all games we play. I've enabled the test in Warhammer Online to see how a small community handles the system and what pitfalls it encounters.
March 28th, 2018 | Read More | 583 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Coming Soon: Earning Social Points for Watching Livestreams I've been playing with the idea for a while and have decided to move forward with a plan to allow members to claim their Twitch accounts on Gaiscioch.com and then earn Social Points for watching the streams. Viewers who link their account to Twitch will be given credit watching our streams. In addition members that follow our channel will earn 100 social points. There will be a new Social Adventure known as Twitch where our viewers can discuss the show and get involved. You can even check your Twitch Rank. Our hope is this will help us grow our Twitch presence to help introduce our community to more gamers.
March 28th, 2018 | Read More | 460 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
2018 Extra-Life Registration Now Open The 2018 Extra Life Registration is now live. For those just joining Gaiscioch for the first Extra-Life event, every year for the past 7 years we participated in this event in a big way. We have been hosting a multi-day livestream event to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network for the past 5 years. Last year we evolved our event series to include giveaways and turned it into a full scale Public Community Event (PCE).
March 28th, 2018 | Read More | 476 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Please Welcome Our Newest Elder: Haggal A few months ago the Eldership team met and discussed a few new Elder potentials what we wanted to keep our eyes on. We watched and observed how they handled various situation and it just reassured us that they would be perfect for the job. As with all our elders, these members have a natural tendency to put others first and go above and beyond to help others even when it isn't beneficial to themselves. It is with great pride that we announce the addition of Haggal to the Eldership team.
March 28th, 2018 | Read More | 536 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
The Mysterious Disappearance of the Check-in Button Over the past few weeks I've managed to get parsers running for ESO, RIFT, and WAR that allow me to sync your last login time of your characters with the gamelastlogin time in our website. This makes the "Check-in" button obsolete and allows us to pull more accurate timestamps of who's playing what. The catch however is, non-ESO players need to claim their characters so that the parser knows who each last login timestamp belongs to. You can do this by clicking the "Claim Your Character" button on your command center after login. Then just click the game you play and add/claim your character. This process however doesn't work for Guild Wars 2 as the guild API only exports the joined date, rank, and arenanet.id. It doesn't have character or last login data.
February 26th, 2018 | Read More | 524 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
Parsers Parsers and More Parsers! Recently I brushed up on my LUA skills and found a few mods that answered questions I had on how to make a guild parser mod work. I finally had my "Ah ha!" moment and off to the races I went. I've been able to build parsers for both ESO and WAR that allow me to /dumpguild (like we could in RIFT) and export the guild roster. I then built a module for the website that can read this file and import/sync the data to our website. This allows me to build a third piece of the puzzle which is a macro export that my keyboard can run that will sync everyone's ranks with their role on the site. So at this point RIFT, ESO, and WAR all mirror to in game.
February 26th, 2018 | Read More | 508 Reads | 0 Likes | 0 Comments
