It's the day you don't believe anything you hear

Well, it's true :) Today is that ONE day I don't want to post any legitimate announcements.

It seems more and more gaming companies/websites are getting into the prankster activity each year. This is cool, but the more it happens the less likely you can get someone to fall for ANY of it. Bah. Too many pranks were attempted around the same time this morning....it's probably best to pull the pranks real early on April 1st or really late on April 1st. If you post it real late and they can't read it until the next morning it's not cheating, right?

On to other things.

I really can't wait for our new message board software. I just got admin access to an internal testing version yesterday and I do plan on putting it to good use this afternoon. We've been using the same version of UBBthreads for sooo long. It's time to get with the times!

Once we have a decent version running internally we'll have a better idea for a live publish date :) My goal is to give as much advance notice as possible since some downtime is inevitable. I dread the actual conversion process but I want to get it all done and over with. The quality of life features alone are to DROOL for. The only thing it doesn't have right now is a Dev Digest, and that is a concern of mine. It doesn't necessarily have to be a Dev Digest but we need SOMETHING just like it. All red name posts need to be flagged...we have to make it so official comments don't get lost in the mix. We'll get something worked out. I've seen the difference a Dev Digest can make now that Exteel doesn't have one. The Exteel one broke, and rumors (intentional or otherwise) run more rampant now. They are easy to debunk, but I would prefer it if we could remove that problem all together. And we will. I have the faith and the determination needed for that :)

ACC Video Game Seminars

This news really only applies to those who live in the Austin area (sorry!) but I still thought it was worth sharing...

Austin Community College regularly holds a variety of Video Game Seminars that are free to the public. The next one focuses on "ActionScript for Casual/Web Games" and I urge any interested Central Texan to go check it out. It is free, and we all know that "free" is quite possibly the best damn word in the universe.

More info on ACC Video Game Seminars

With all the bad publicity video games seem to get in general I feel very blessed to live in such a pro-game industry city.

Inconvenience.

You know, it's a shame, but such is life - the things I think you all would find interesting are generally the things I cannot go into details about. Maybe one day I can write a juicy "tell all" book and pray I don't get sued. All the names could be changed to protect both the innocent AND the guilty...HA!!

Okay, new topic.

I've seen this too many times - several business oriented software programs use imported spell checkers that are completely whacked. And there is one particular program we use here likes to auto-correct by default. I'm the typo queen, so I love spell checkers. But I'm not a big fan of auto corrections. When I used to write Knowledge Base articles for CoH it would drive me crazy.

But it's not even so much that. Businesses tend to use the word "inconvenience" a lot, yes? Well you can mispell it *oh so* slightly and it will switch to a COMPLETELY different word, and why it is ALWAYS this word, I don't know.

And that word word incontinence.

"We apologize for the incontinence."

WHY oh WHY?

Busy Bee

I've been quiet...I've just been really busy lately so I had to slack on posting for a bit.

I'd also like to add that daylights saving time is a pain in the you-know-what.



You know, I really wish I had a flat panel monitor at work, but at least I can put stuff on top of it. Here we have Butters from South Park, (my fav SP character) an official Lineage II Coke can from Korea, and Heroclix piece of Lockjaw, who is the coolest superhero dog EVER.

Speaking of dogs...Houston, we have a problem.



Charlie the forum avatar dog is now apparently a movie critic, and he is NOT a fan of the movie Sean of the Dead. I'm still not sure how he got his hands on it, nor do I really understand why he did this. He's normally a good dog. You can also see what looks to be a somewhat cluttered living room. We have my sneakers, a PS3, a Wii, a Wii controller and a laptop case, amongst other things. The PC and my laptop are just out of sight ;)

Back to work. I'll post again soon.

NCsoft GM Interview

I did want to draw some attention to this one because it is VERY RARE for a GM to speak publicly. I wish they did it more, but I've been in their shoes and I completely understand why it is the way it is.

Here we have LemonCobra (Lineage I) discussing about his GM duties:

Q&A with GM Lemoncobra

"I NO BOT!! I NO BOT!!"

MMOFury and Dungeon Runners

"Dungeon Runners certainly deserves a pat on the back for a great content update to a game that we feel was already a blast to play. This patch is also a reminder that NCsoft is committed to keeping fresh content on this free to play title, which adds value to any gamer that invests the time to level a character."

- Quote from http://mmofury.com/

MMOFury was gracious enough to award Dungeon Runners their "Patch of the Week" award. Sure, it was for last week and I'm slow, but hey, we seriously feel very honored here :) Thank you, MMOFury!

*bows*

Read all about it here:
http://mmofury.com/gamingnews/news.php?extend.14

Dungeon Runners

Or, Stephen Nichols'(TM)Dungeon Runners(TM).

Hey, I like to boost his ego. It seems to make him all giggly.

"Is it really free-to-play?"

I get asked that question a lot. The answer.... yes, yes it is. There is NO catch. You don't have to pay for any software either, just download and start playing. We don't try to lure you in with some free content then pull some evil bait and switch on you. For some reason a lot of people think you have to pay for high level content, but there is no CUT OFF. You can play, play, and play, leveling all the way up to level 100. (BTW, whoever started that rumor, I will find you one day and set the record straight!) And I'm not talking about agonizing, painful "OMG I must start paying now because I take this anymore" type of gameplay, either. The balance is pretty solid. You may not have some of the extra perks paying members have (which is still only 4.99 a month) but it still quite do-able, and quite enjoyable.

So how do we make money? Surely we're not some non-profit organization. Alas, we are not. We got bills to pay, bling we want to buy.

Like I just mentioned, premium content is 5 dollars a month. Most people like paying because they don't ever have to see an ad (although we haven't seen too many of *those* lately...). You also get extra bank space, which is a BIG plus, because it's always nice to have extra space for your extra gear. I personally like having the major potions that together nicely. Members can also wear purple and rainbow loot - that's the good stuff - while non-paying members will find they can only wear certain types of purple and rainbow gear. Certainly, being a member usually means you can up your quest difficulty (which in return boosts the chance you'll get something sweet) while non-paying members may find they will need to weight the risk vs reward a little more carefully.

HOWEVER....you aren't gimped as a non-paying player. You just don't get the extra perks, but there are plenty of perks there already. Dungeon Runners isn't meant to be a hard game, although there is enough of a challenge to keep the interest up. It's very casual, very fast paced.


SO WHY DON'T WE HAVE MORE PLAYERS!!

I often wonder why. Why don't we? Sure, we got a decent player base, but as a gamer I've tried a playing a zillion MMOs. And they are not forcing me to say this when I say Dungeon Runners far surpasses the expectations I have for any "free to play" game.

Well, Dungeon Runners was originally intended to be a "word of mouth" game, ala online viral marketing.

*Shivers at the mention of the word 'viral', but continues on*

The idea is that the game would market itself, just by being free. Well, unfortunately, it takes a little bit more than that; if not enough people know about the game in the first place then how on earth can we expect them to tell their friends? Awareness is the first thing any product needs.

And is it the responsibility of the community to tell the whole world? Isn't that a lot to ask? We're a low budget game, yes, and to keep our prices low *insert yellow smiley here* we do have to have to keep our marketing budget small. That is something we may have to live with.

So, let's go on the theory that we want the community in the streets in ridiculous costumes holding big DR signs. (Hmm, I see a future contest idea brewing there....) The game is still intended for casual game play, yes? It seems kinda strange, we do want to attract the casual gamers, yet this is basically volunteer WORK that you primarily only see out of hardcore gamers.

It's a pickle. So where do we strike the balance between the two....?

Tools. Hand over the goods, and throw it all out there, and see what happens. This is the current goal, we'll see how it goes from there.

That, and I try to do what I can :)