My name is Mathew Anderson, or as I like to go by in the online world, "Berek Halfhand", or just Berek is fine. The name is referenced from the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, an excellent series of books that sit on the shelf right behind me as I type this blog. I chose the name because it means courage, conviction and self-motivation. It also stands for the ability to do what you need to do and be able to get it done.

One goal in my life recently, besides landing a career at Quest Online of course, is to row a tug boat across the Pacific and land on the sandy shores of Hong Kong. Through my courage, conviction, self-motivation, and a bit of random luck thrown in for effect, I did just that. Well, I did everything but the tug boat part. During the 2007/2008 school season I spent the year teaching English to middle school children, while exploring Asia.

In crossing the Great Wall of China, I visited the war museums in Vietnam, walked through Angkor Wat in Cambodia, took a very rough bus ride from there to see the temples in Bangkok, Thailand, flew down to Phuket's beaches for a weekend, took a train to Kuala Lumpur to see the Petronas Towers, and somehow made my way up to Taiwan and then Japan for a few weeks. After getting back to Shenzhen I got into my old routine of nights in Hong Kong and days in the old Portuguese gambling city; Macau.

What have I learned during this time? I am not going to bore you with the details, so I'll jump to the most important thing of all; Asian games! Japan has some very excellent arcades, Shanghai was a game town in itself, and my own city had plenty of Internet cafes to explore. The Asian way of playing online games is different in a few ways. I will try to get into some of those details for you in future blogs.

In the meantime, on the professional side of gaming I have been a community manager for over seven years at various media websites. It is an honor and pleasure to be able to join the Quest Online team to bring you an MMO that excited me the moment I started learning about it. I have experienced dozens of MMOs and always came away from each with something I have learned about the industry as a whole. I hope to share with you those experiences while you learn what Alganon is about.

I also spend time playing games from other genres as well, reading a good book, or going on a long bike ride. Ask me what my favorite turn-based strategy game is and I will say "Heroes of Might & Magic III". Ask me what my favorite real-time strategy game is and I will say "Age of Empires II". Ask me what my favorite movie is and I will say "Beverly Hills Cop IV". I have a thing for series, what can I say.

What do I want to do for the Alganon community and how do I intend to get it done? Quite simply, I will need your help in deciding what WE do and how WE get it done. Being a community manager is not just about guiding our content releases and showing you what our game is about. It is getting you involved in deciding its future, so you can be content that it is an enjoyable and fun experience that partly comes from your ideas.

I want to hear what your expectations and interests are for the next MMO you are about to experience. There are a lot of exciting things in Alganon that I will share with you. In turn, I will provide feedback to the developers for features you see a need to update. We are not perfect, so I ask everyone to please be patient as we keep fine-tuning content that may involve the entire community. You can be sure there will be some good stuff coming too!

In the meantime, take a seat in the forums and tell us your life story!