Catching up

[Pirotess]

It was one of those Fridays last week where everything hits the fan at once. Today its time to pick up the pieces and get our news section caught up!

Before we get to the news though I'd like to welcome Lycrist, the Vanguard Spheres Fan Art contest finalist, to the Vanguard Spheres team. Lycrist will be joining the team as our Graphic Artist and is already making a huge impact on the look and feel of the site behind closed doors. With any luck we'll all get to see the fruit of his labors sometime in the near future. Welcome aboard Lycrist! In other promotion news, GM Aruspex has apparently morphed into Associate Designer Aruspex. Congratulations Steve!

To start the news off Genda at Vanguard Crafters has brought our attention to an article on Gamasutra regarding Microsoft Gaming Studios inking a deal with AT&T to host both the infrastructure and bandwidth needed to support the Vanguard servers. This is great news as AT&T is well known to have one of the most advanced backbones in the world which should allow for speedy access to and from the Vanguard servers for a wide range of users.

Martuk of TenTonHammer published an article entitled "The Evolution of Gaming" on Friday. The article is a delightful walk down memory lane and touches on many of the major changing in the gaming industry since its inception. Also on TenTonHammer is a new article by Aunraye in the "A Tale of Two Players" series. In the new article, entitled "Clutching to Pieces of the Journey..", Aunraye discusses the death penalty and how it will effect Vanguard and its players.

Heartless of GamerGod has published an article entitled "Overcomplicating the Beta Process". In the article, Heartless complains about the way Sigil is handling its Beta process. While we here at Vanguard Spheres dont agree with him, its always interesting to see a different perspective on a situation.

Silky Venom has a new contest called "The Vanguard Sages Challenge". Each week Silky Venom will release a new set of questions for fans to answer. The fan who PMs the most correct answers to SageBot will receive a special title at the close of competition. Head over to Silky Venom and try your hand at this weeks quiz. Silky Venom also has released their two newest episodes of the MMO Renegades radio show. You can download both episodes here. Finally Silk Venom has put up a new feature called "The Book of Oloh" which is a compilation of all the new Beta info Oloh, Silky Venoms owner has published across various sites recently. Enjoy!

Forum Debrief:

• Zombella assures us that UI windows can move - Full thread
  
• Silius explains which crafting class will create ships - Full thread
  
• Silius comments on bows and arrows in Vanguard crafting... - Full thread
  
• ...And confirms that arrows will not be craftable - Full thread
  
• Silius teases us on several exciting crafting possibilities - Full thread