Newsletter

Hou hou hou Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year! Welcome to the Hand of Unity
Christmas special. For those who didn’t know each month we publish a newsletter giving you
a detailed overview into our day to day operations and what the community get up to from
Theresa Rays Brexit deals, Bobby’s bald gamers anonymous, providing back up “g” keys for
destructors GG keyboard habits along with important announcements! It’s all here so keep
reading!

Firstly, after many technical faults and plunders! please thank Centego on compiling our first
HoU game compilation video wishing you all a happy Christmas!

Video By: Centego Rayven Link: Here

Guild Activity
New Recruits
• Takimanji • Lukas
• Shylax • LordZeusCannon
• WiktorDxD • Yussefoh
• Krimkarl • EthanLordx
• Mayy997 • Kocur aka Lynx
• Ghillie • Shanti Ananda
• Redguard • Alluka
• Ezerarcu • Xephu
• Larrokone • Zetherios
• Zombs • Kaestiz
• Jinos23

Member Promotions

o Hopper o Dong (Dong)

o Kins o Achilleas440
o Auromyst o Gaeleath
o Bellybuster o Kocur (Lynx)

Tea Party Summary

Tea Party meetings are held every two weeks to help progress the community ensure
everyone’s happy and content these meetings are optional for all members just us poor
officers are subject to Narys micromanagement whip and his rambling ones although he
loves to blame that on Aria!

Please see below on a summary of what meetings we have had this month.

Tea Party 23/12/18

1. Application Re-work

o Applications consensus is that it’s questions can be too vague and into interpretation
promoting basic undetailed answers for potential recruits – Ray
o Several good suggestions e.g. “why do you think your fits for this community” “how
would you like to contribute” – Aria + Destructor
o Some Questions can come across and intimidating – Sam

2. Stills + Animations for Streams and the Logo

o A new montage video created to promote and wish HoU a merry christmas – Centego
3. HoU Merch for Gamescom

o Mousepads, Mugs, Beanies, Posters, Capes, Cockrings.

o Suggestion of self-serve merch such as making our own using a supplier or service
we see fit meaning the financial burden is not on one person – Aria
o Suggested Services – AliExpress – Sam

4. Possible Guilded gg channel

o People get updates via discord more so than GG – Sam

o Notifications from several sources may get annoying – Ray
o Most people are fine with the idea.

5. New UNITS (Point System)

o Rewards members sacrificing time and resources to help the community.

o The trade of Tolkens for members goods and services may need more explanation –
Jjampong
o More progression and design is to be made to further solidify the system.
Christmas Cheer
Yata Santa has visited the plains of the mortals to spread his Christmas sack of cheer through out the
community of HoU!

Christmas Easter Egg winners

Sneakily throughout the night Yata Santa has placed some dodgy subliminal messages throughout
our discord some members caught him out on his corrupt ways of the Cosby clan and won
themselves a lovely ashes beta key!

Congratulations Aria, Rivril & Rosspiano!

Ashes of Creation has decided to come out of its bedroom like a moody teenager to join the
family! From delays, server issues and queuing issues AoC Apocalypse is ready to play! All
of our trials and tribulations wrestling with the servers and broken features where not in vain!
As the game has stabilized and is now in a very playable state the community has been
enjoying its small successes.

The community has been hard at work testing Apocalypse and being quite successful on the
battlefields!
Ashes MMO Stream
On the 7th of December 2018 Intrepid treated us to a stream with FINALLY some new
content on their MMO development if you missed the stream see below!

By Intrepid Studios Link: here

New Community Manager

Please welcome Margaret Krohn to the Ashes of Creation team she has had many years of
experience in the gaming industry having served roles in NCSoft with Blade & Soul,
Daybreak with Planetside and Lord of The Rings Online. But no Yatas sadly
https://twitter.com/MargaretKrohn
Herdo’s Ashes Informational
Herdo had arose from his nerd corner hidden in the depths of Narys basement to kindly treat
us to some information regarding Ashes!
For guilds, Ashes of Creation will offer three different kinds of options to build a get-together.
The smallest obtainable guild building is the guild hall. It's a focal point for a guild, inside the
borders of a node, offering benefits to the members, while also being customizable in the
looks. A guild with a guild hall will be able to participate in the shareholder system. The next
bigger version will be guild fortresses. These are similar to the guild halls, but are built
outside a node’s borders, yet inside its zone of influence. While guild halls are protected by
the node, a guild fortress can be sieged, yet offer the same or more services. The last option
for guilds is a guild castle. Five of those exist throughout the world of Terra, granting unique
benefits to the guild ruling over them. One main benefit of a castle is the ability to raise
taxes. As castles are very complex - e.g. they require the management of three military
nodes around them, and are monthly siegable - they require a lot of organization and PvP as
well as PvE dedication
Community Gaming Highlights
Welcome to HoUs Community Gaming highlights a quick peek at what we all get up to and
what games we play!

OverWatch

The love hate relationship we all have with Overwatch is astonishing however we still are
going string introducing new people to the game and having fun and also screaming into our
pillows with rage (especially Ragebird)
Players: Narys, Raybird, Cheesus, Squiggie, Tomster, Ross, Hopper, DestructorGG, Ezie,
Gaeleath, Centego, Sam, Falmin, Walleye, Jaikezz and more….
Dark Yatas (Dark Souls)

Narys faced his fears and finally defeated the tutorial boss in Dark Souls 3 one less thing we
can make fun of him for :[
Players: Narys, Herdo, Raybird, DestructorGG, Cheesus.

Arklas

Ark Re-skinned has released quite a few of us are eager to play sadly their servers didn’t like
any of us it seems to be working now join us!
Players: Raybird, Bobby, Cheesus, Squiggie, Vordel, Taki, Tomster, Ross.
Light Bearers

Lightbeares still a strong contender for our game sessions! Plenty of new content each
week/month for us all to enjoy!
Players: Raybird, Bobby, Cheesus, Squiggie, Tomster, Sam, Falmin, Rosspiano, Hopper,
DestructorGG, Ezie, Gaeleath, Larok, Centego and Beltbuster

Kingdom Two Crowns

Narys dream of an elven kingdom has comne true Jjampong came along to try and ruin it <3
Players: Narys, Jjampong.
Table Top Sim

Cheeseus busted out his boardgames collection to play with some of the members!
Players: Cheesus, Narys, Jjampong and Shiphu
Gamescom Meet up!
Snow hoho sends her regards and a Happy Christmas! I’d like to thank her for compiling a 1
terabyte file of information for me to decipher for the newsletter! <3 love you snow! She
worked super hard! be sure to thank her for planning and compiling all of the Gamescom
related information and content!

For those of you who are not aware we plan to do a fairly large meet up in Gamescom if you
are interested in the specifics or what Gamescom even is please read on!

Gamescom?
Gamescom is a gaming convention open to the press and public alike. The convention
consists of unreleased and unannounced games for gaming enthusiasts such as ourselves.
People have the opportunity to see new technology software and meet game developers.
Over 355,000 people have passed through its doors in 2017. Meanwhile, E3 2017 another
similar convention based in America had an attendance of 68,400. Gamescom is one of the
biggest gaming shows in the world.

When and where?

Gamescom is held in the German city of Cologne. However, it’s spread over two locations.
The main exhibition is held at the Koelnmesse from Tuesday the 21st of August to Saturday
the 24th of August.
Meanwhile, the Gamescom city festival takes place in Cologne’s city centre from Friday the
24th of August to Sunday the 26th of August. If you’re lucky enough to be heading over to
Gamescom, pop on over to the city festival for street-food and live music!

What a great opportunity to experience over the top, fun filled, crazy, Yata loving guildies of
HoU!

Are you Interested?

Gamescom being 4 days long, we wanted to get an idea of how many days people
interested will be attending. Please go ahead and check out the poll linked below and let us
know how long you will be staying :D
http://www.guilded.gg/Hand-of-Unity/forums/WJLMxB8v/1452731817

Hotels / Accommodation
We have found decent accomodation in a hotel in Düsseldorf. The reason for choosing
Dusseldorf over Cologne was that it was too expensive this ensures that costs will be kept
down for the majority of us interested in going.
A few members of the Ruling Council have booked suites that include a lounge area for
groups of people to hang out. For more information please check out the Pinned messages
on the Gamescom-Kiosk in Discords or click here

Plans
The plan is to get the group together get to know each other and enjoy Gamescom together,
explore Düsseldorf and Cologne as well! search for bars/restaurants and meet in the Hotel’s
restaurant most nights for some drinks too!

We will be publishing a rough timetable nearer the date that will include plenty of free time.
These activities are just a suggestion as we expect members may want to branch out to do
different things or even their own things during the day, this isn’t a problem!

Intrepid After Party

Nothing as of yet has been confirmed, rumours have it Intrepid will be attending 2019
gamescom and there may be a possibility of an after party more information may come
soon!

The ‘’WhatsApp’’ App

We have a group on WhatsApp mainly for the people who will be attending GamesCom.
This facilitates our arrangements for the meet-ups, times and events. You will need to
provide your personal number to join the Whatsapp group. Having your personal number will
also allow us to be in instant contact with you in case of emergencies. Please message
SnowPaaw on Discords to gain access to this

Please check out the Gamescom kiosk on discord if you’re interested!

 Falmin + Narys Question Round
For this year’s FINAL 2018s edition of the newsletter Narys and Falmin have taken the time
to answer questions and concerns from the community when really the only concern is how
crazy Narys is and when Falmin will go postal and kick us all from the guild :poggers:

Jokes aside please enjoy the brexit sized document provided by the devils themselves!

Sitting under the Christmas Tree with Mary (Narys) and Flamin (Falmin)

1. What do you both do for a living? (Gaeleath)

Falmin is a Nurse working for the NHS and I’m a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at a local
University.

2. What will happen if Ashes of Creation fails? Will the guild continue? (Gaeleath)
Believe it or not this has happened previously with another game, good old ArcheAge which
was run into the ground with XLGames and Trion using their massive pay2win plans.

The group endured however and rose from the Ashes, since then we have played lots of
different games such as Black Desert Online, ARK etc until Ashes of Creation appeared on
our radar. Should the game fail it will very much be a case of keep calm and carry on given
the fantastic community we have as well as the strong friendships. No Ashes of Creation will
certainly not change that.

3. Why is Narys so obsessed with those Yata things? Referring to himself as the Mother
of Yatas is strange, why does he do it?
Narys was the most hardcore breeder when we played ArcheAge, he bred so many Yatas
that he started giving them out to guild members every week. He was the first on the server
to breed every type during Alpha and release. What started as a joke, being called Narys,
Mother of Yatas was in fact a rip off of Dae(Narys), Mother of Dragons from Game of
Thrones. Since then he embraced it and it stuck! This breeding fascination continued into
Black Desert Online and any other game with breeding since.

4. Why don’t we see Falmin in the voice chat as much as Narys?

Well firstly because Narys talks a lot! More seriously it has to do with a difference in
personality, I tend to believe actions speak louder than words whereas Narys is the people
person. It is why we tend to gel together so well, I am the brawn and he is the brain. I also
play comp Overwatch which requires you to join in game voice a lot.

5. How long have you two known each-other? (Kahlan)

I am older and have known Narys for his entire life, so thirty years.
6. The guild seems really popular with new people joining each week, how big is it going
to get? (Cheesus & Walleye)
At the moment Narys and I are mindful of the benefits that guilds below 300 members will
receive. Alongside this we want to keep that community feel as we have run zerg guilds in
past games such as Rift (The Magisterium) where you didn’t know people and they seemed
like numbers. We are aiming for a soft cap of 150 members, when we hit this (we are at 127
atm) then a mini-purge will take place where we message and remove the inactives. After
this we will go back up to 150 and recruit very selectively based upon what we need to a
maximum of 200.

7. Can you give us the definitive list of mmorpgs you have played together in the past?
The list includes (some time spent on more than others); Ultima Online, Everquest, Matrix
Online, Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, Rift, Riders of Icarus, Skyforge, World of Warcraft,
Bless Online, Black Desert Online, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, TERA, Wildstar,
Warhammer Online, ArcheAge, Everquest 2, Darkfall, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot,
Dragon Ball Online, Echo of Soul, EVE Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Neverwinter, Lord of the
Rings Online, Aion, Perfect World, The Secret World, Star Trek Online, Wurm Online and
Mortal Online.

8. So, which of you is the top leader and will take the spot in Ashes of Creation?
This will depend on a duel in-game (which I will lose!!!). More seriously though, Falmin and I
are partners. So, we will decide based upon what the role has access to when we get closer
to release.

9. What type of node will you guys go for? (Walleye)

That largely depends on when we get the final info for Divine node benefits and Nodes part
3. Currently I am leaning towards a military node for the good fights and pvp whereas I know
Narys is leaning towards economic.

10. How will we stay aware in game given that fast travel isn’t a thing? (Don)
Spies! I know that Narys already has his little birds in other guilds that feed us info.
Alongside this we will have a network of individuals that we pay for information like we have
done in other MMOs.

11. What is your policy towards bullying Falmin? (Tomster45)

Like a Tracer bullying as Mercy, as long as someone dies then it is ok.

12. What are both of your favourite cheeses? (Cheesus)

Narys likes parmesan and I like Black Pepper Cheese

13. What are the guild goals in game? (Walleye)

- Server firsts such as breeding and dominance in certain areas such as the arena and node
mayor-ship.
- Medium to large scale PVP (Arenas, Open World, Caravans, Castles) and PVE Content
(Node Leadership, Crafting, Dungeons & Raiding)
- To provide a stable and sustainable region for all players to enjoy
- To be a major political force on the server we choose to call home
- Securing the best possible information during the testing phases to shape our future
strategy
However, to sum it up both Narys and I want HoU to be a major force in the game and for us
to experience a lot of success as a guild, mirroring what we have accomplished in other
games. We also want to meet new people and forge long lasting friendships.
14. How old are you guys? (Cheesus)
I am 30 and Falmin is a few years older.

15. Pineapple on pizza?

100% yes – Narys
100% no let me get my axe – Falmin

60 Seconds with SnowPaaw

1. What’s your name and what is your role in Hand of Unity?

My name is Natasha or Tash as friends like to call me 😊 and my role here is Community
Manager 😊

2. Which part of the world are you in?

Currently living in Denmark, but originally come from North Wales
3 What’s the last movie you enjoyed?
Mowgli on Netflix, actually not a bad film, I’m all for the Disney re-makes especially the Lion
King in 2019 cannot WAIT for that! It’s my favourite Disney movie 😊

4. What’s your favourite TV show of all time?

Very hard one indeed to pick out, but if I had to choose it would have to be Game of
Thrones. It’s by far one of the most captivating shows I have ever watched.
5. Of all the video games you’ve played, which one have you spent the most time on?
I want to say World of Warcraft, as I have been playing it on and off for the past 10 years,
but it could easily be another that I don’t know the hours of 😊

6. Outside of gaming, what are you good at?

Drawing, cooking, time management, socialising and helping others 😊

7. Can you cook? What’s your favourite recipe to make?

I can indeed, taught myself mostly :P At the moment I am obsessed with making anything
with savoury pastry, so I am cooking a lot of pies :D Can’t wait to experiment with sweet
pastry… BRING ON THE MINCE PIES! <3
8. What do you enjoy most about MMOs?

Social side of them. Connecting with people all across the globe 😊

9. Wine, whiskey, cognac, beer or none?

I would have to choose wine. Red wine in fact 😊 Rose would be the next and if there is
nothing else, white wine.
10. From playing games over the past five years, what words of wisdom or lessons
would you pass on to others?
Have patience and have fun with the game. Everything takes a little while to learn and
gaming is no different 😊 Enjoy what the game has to offer.

11. You seem to be the only person in the guild who isn’t mean to Narys, why is this?

He’s my friend 😊 I’m not mean to my friends, be kind out there people spread the love! <3
Plus he’s one of the people who has a suite for Gamescom so I want to get in there for the
free drinks :D

12. Why are you excited about Ashes of Creation?

Animal Husbandry…need I say more? :D Aside from that I’m looking forward for a world that
is different from any other MMO I’ve played. A place to call home (very literally) with friends I
have made in this community. <3
That concludes our 60 Seconds. We hope we found out a bit more about Queen Snowpaaw
of Ryetonia and her Rye Bread.
 THANK YOU FOR READING
Allow me to thank those who contributed to creating this newsletter also!

Editor / Creator: Raybird

Contributors: Narys, Falmin, Centego, SnowPaaw, Herdo