Thursday 29 July 2010

2 days left of the July competition



Just a heads up that is 2 days left of the mystery July competition. Details can be found here.

May the luckiest vampire win.

Ash

Thursday 22 July 2010

Voting changes & suggestion for hourly reset lag




Okay I've made some new changes to the voting system. You'll see it labeled "V2.0 Beta".  What's been changed? Well, when I started to log players to see who completed their vote or not I got a lot of complaints saying some voting sites won't accept the vote etc etc. It's funny that these errors come to me now and not before.

The problem is that you can vote at 11pm game time, then when it resets at midnight, you can vote again, so of course it won't work because you voted an hour ago!

So what's changed?
- When you vote it sticks a timer on that vote site. The vote site will NOT pop up again for another 24 hours (12 hours for the 12 hour ones). Which means you'll be able to fully vote once every 24 hours properly without any problems. This won't change the way the voting daily quest works. This will also take less lag off the main midnight reset.
- There has been some cosmetic layout changes done
- The 5 second block has been  removed. Now we're logging all votes we have no need to for the 5 second block.

Please bear in mind you're still being logged and this...

 















 



...will happen to you when you're caught not completing your votes.

Everyones voting has been reset now. So you can vote NOW but when you do it will be 24 hours until you can again (doesn't matter if you've already voted today)


There may be glitches over the next 48 hours whilst we test this in the real environment, so if you're having issues, please report on this forum thread ONLY. We will be watching closely on this.

The coven life bonus was causing a lot of lag on the hourly reset. Now more people are battling because of the wars its started to creep up again. I've had a suggestion where I add turns half past every hour, and just the revival at top of hour. The turns would add HALF PAST each hour instead of ON the hour. (I.E 22:30 instead of 23:00) What do you think? Let us know on this forum thread.


Thanks,
Ash

Monday 19 July 2010

Coven Wars V1.4 Open BETA



Afternoon,

No more coven war rounds now, it seems like the majority are happy so I've decided to run a 6 weeks beta of the coven wars. This will give 6 weeks of analysing trends and really lets you get a feel of the playground to start making strategic decisions.  This "out in the wild" beta run is basically a period of time where we can see how it runs as it would when fully released (and to fix any bugs that pop up).

Only a couple changes this round:
- Co-Owners can declare war, buy white flags etc etc
- When you surrender you do now get a 24 hour protection.
- Coven lockout reduced to 4 days

There were a few good ideas on the last feedback thread but unfortunately it wouldn't be viable to add them in, if you want to know why, head over to the forum thread I made and ask, we also want more feedback there too. We're open to more changes if they're viable over the course of the open BETA. Go ahead and start a discussion on the above forum thread.

Thanks & enjoy
Ash

Saturday 17 July 2010

400,000 signups



Last night ReignOfBlood hit the amazing milestone of 400,000 signups. It's incredible and I really never thought I'd see things like this happen when I started to make this over 4 years ago.

I've added the promo code "400k" for everyone.

Big thanks to everyone who has supported and played over the last 4 years. Lets get another 400k :)

Use the link on the bottom of the logged in page to use your promo codes.
Thanks,
Ash

Thursday 15 July 2010

Abusing the free turns & voting system



First off, there is a reason why I've put a blog link on the top of the pages this time. The reason is because I want your attention. I had several blood letters and help tickets over the last week asking "Where has my coven life gone?!?!". I post these blogs to keep everyone up to date on what's happening on the game, if every time I post a blog you read it you'll know everything that is going on. A new link (&box on the default layout) pops up on the right when there is a new blog post, doesn't take a couple minutes to read  and it will save our time and your time when things look odd or a certain change has been made.


Moving on...

Some people, and you know who you are, abuse the voting system. The turns you get from voting are not FREE turns, they are rewards for you supporting the game by voting for us on several top sites. Unlucky for you, I've teamed up with a couple voting sites (obviously not going to tell you which ones) that have agreed to give me a list of successful player IDs that fully complete their vote. As from now, when you click a vote link your id and that vote site is stored in the database, I can then cross reference with one query to see find the players who are voting and the players who are not. If you are indeed one of the players who are not fully completing the vote, why is it fair you get some turns too? It's not. So when you're caught, this is what will happen to you...

























You'll lose getting turn bonus for voting. I hope you agree its not fair on the people who dont support the game and dont fully vote should get the same turn bonus as those who do.

If you missed the info about the coven relics & July competition, you can read that blog here.

Enjoy!
Ash

Some edits...

If it says "you have already voted in the past 24 hours" you wont get punished for that. The same with code errors, although it should always work, so try again. And its not everyone, just the people who abuse it will lose the turn bonus from voting. 


You don't need to worry, if the site does not load, or something goes wrong, it doesn't matter. Don't worry. It'll be analyzing the data over a long period of time, as long as you have a average ratio of completed votes, you'll be okay. This isn't something I want you to worry about, its just a warning to the players who don't vote at all. This is to catch people who don't vote at all, so don't worry if the sites mess up etc.

Wednesday 14 July 2010

July Competition & Coven Relics Refunded

Good Afternoon,


With the July competition, I was going to launch it half way through July (around now) and make it last through August too. So the competition has changed to "Augusts Competition", which I will release on the beginning of August. So here are the winners:

Morganika Bellator (93008)
CorpseCollectorLukasCytes (189598)
Lord Arucard BlackAdder (40911) 

You guys will get your prizes soon.  If you're really interested in what they suggested, you can go to the forum post & read up on them. On the 1st August Morganika's competition idea will be put in place.

Then I thought to myself, what about the rest of July? Well Aftershock "Spot" came up with the idea of "A competition to see who can do something the most, but don`t tell people what it is that they have to do...". Now that sounds like a giggle. So you have until 1st August to do something that you don't know what you have to do, whoever does it the most will win!

Here is the prize breakdown:

1st - 50 Plasma
2nd - 25 plasma
3rd- 10 plasma

Go wild :)


Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas :)


As for the coven relics, you now should have the correct amount refunded to your coven. The life boost has been removed and you have 7 days (yes only 7 days) to use those relics for FREE. If you don't use them in 7 days, you'll have to pay the full price to use them again.  Coven owners go to the relic shop on the coven page for more information. I have also reduced the relic costs from $1000xlevel to $800xlevel & all stats are the same price. Going to have to start encouraging your members who are fighting more in the wars earning more money to donate more eh? ;)

No updates on the coven wars yet :)

Stay tuned.

Ash

Sunday 11 July 2010

Site status updates



The main midnight reset last night decided to update some stuff and not others. So I ran a manually reset about 6 hours ago. I found out that one of the things that DID reset properly was VIP & VIP+ days, so I've added everyone who is VIP an extra day, the same with VIP+ members.  The lottery tickets didn't get reset either (well not all). I'm assuming the server must have gone down at midnight and cut off the reset scripts half way. So if you have still got tickets left over from last week, consider them another free go for this weeks jackpot.

As for now, the coven life bonus has been TURNED OFF. So please do not go posting loads of bug forum threads or submit tickets. I've been working a few hours playing with different formulas but I'm going to have to surrender and say it's more hassle than it's worth. What I'm going to do is refund the relics for you to use on strength and toughness (Which is what most people wanted anyway, i took the easy way out which turned out to be more complicated than I thought). This will happen over the next couple days, I'll blog again when coven owners can re-spend their relics at no cost. So just sit tight and try to survive without the boosts for a couple days.

Coven wars, okay looking good so far. Interesting suggestion made just now about changing the way the *tiers* are worked out. Click here for the thread. Let us know your thoughts.

Thanks & sorry for the mess ups
Ash

Saturday 10 July 2010

Coven wars V1.3 Beta



A very good evening to you all,

One change this time, I think we're getting there! It's been fun & I'm so glad to see most of you enjoying them. Here are the changes that have been made:

- The war duration has been reduced to 48 hours.

(The rank bonus has been removed)

You have 24 hours again to declare a war and they will last for the new 48 hours. Lets get some more good results.

For all those that are interested, I'm releasing another set of our formula.  Below shows the exp tax for covens attacking outside of their tier.

Diff:      EXP:
0 diff = 100% of the exp
1 diff = 75% of the exp
2 diff = 50% of the exp
3 diff = 40% of the exp
4 diff = 30% of the exp
5 diff = 20% of the exp
6 diff = 10% of the exp
>7 diff = 1% of the exp


You lose a lot of potential exp fighting outside your tier. Indeed you cannot attack more than 5 tiers away from you, but during the war covens could lose members or gain members which could shift the tier further than 5.


As always you can give your feedback on this forum thread. Please give us feedback if you haven't already!

The July competition which will run through august too (for reasons I'll explain later) will be announced hopefully next week.  The thread was locked at the beginning of the month which dictated no more entries.

Thanks & Enjoy!
Ash

Thursday 8 July 2010

Changes to the coven life bonus



I've read through all the feedback and decided to go with option #3. Which is the "Battle shield" idea. A lot of people wanted to ditch the life bonus and get the relics back to use on strength and toughness, but I think for everyone that's going to be more hassle than it's worth. I didn't bring this up to remove the idea of the coven life bonus, it was just to get it off the hourly reset to help speed the resets up. Option #3 does this.

In this example the player life is 100 and the coven bonus they get is 25.

How it used to work
On the hourly reset the 25 coven bonus is added to your life, which shows as  125/125 on the left side bar.

How it works now
The sidebar shows your actual life, which would be 100. The coven life bonus is added when you battle. So it'll appear you have 100 life, but when you enter battle your life will increase to 125. The 25 acts as a "shield". So the first 25 damage that is hit against you doesn't come off your actual life. Hourly resets should be a little faster now. Thus making coven life bonus only applicable in player battles.

On a side note, speed being added to the coven bonus will probably never happen.

Notice any bugs? Please let me know!

Over the next couple days we have a couple more updates to make to the coven war system (V1.3) which will be the last BETA run, as we've got only a couple tweaks to do we must pretty much be hitting perfection. Look forward to that very soon!

Thanks,
Ash

YOUR LIFE BAR ON THE LEFT SIDE BOX WILL APPEAR LESS IF THE COVEN YOU ARE IN HAS A COVEN LIFE BONUS. YOU ARE NOT ACTUALLY LOSING THE LIFE, THE COVEN LIFE BONUS JUST IS NO LONGER APPEARING ON TOP OF YOUR ACTUAL LIFE. YOUR ACTUAL LIFE IS NOT CHANGED! HOW IT SHOWS NOW IS WHAT YOUR ACTUAL LIFE IS, GO TO YOUR "HOME" TAB AND VIEW THE COVEN SECTION TO SEE THE LIFE ADDON YOU GET WHEN YOU GO INTO BATTLE. THE COVEN LIFE BONUS NO LONGER APPEARS ON THE LEFT STATS BAR!

On a final note, the world cup plasma ENDS TOMORROW! So get your last lot of cheaper plasma in now.

Monday 5 July 2010

Coven life bonus changes (updated again)



Due the coven wars a lot more people are fighting which is fantastic to see. Unfortunately the downside to this is more lag at the hourly resets. So I've spent some time optimising some of the code but there is one main thing that is adding quite a bit of extra lag.

Coven life bonus.
Some of you have noticed that it takes while for it to add. This is something that needs be sorted. Coven life bonus needs to be changed or removed. If removed, the relics you've spent on life bonus will be returned for you to be used on strength & toughness. Speed will not be added at this time. The money you spent buying the relics will not be returned because you'll be able to re-allocate them for free. The other option is not to have life reset at the hourly resets, and the final option is to keep the life bonus and it being used more as a battle shield. I.E you don't get the coven life bonus added to you at the hourly reset, but it adds to your total life when the system works out how much life to give you when you attack or get attacked, the same way it does for strength & toughness. This would only make the life bonus effective in the normal battles. So your life will be displayed as your life in the side bar but will just be added to battle as you attack (or get attacked). Hope that's clear.

PLEASE GIVE US YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS THREAD.

I'm sure you all want faster hourly resets, and this is the way to go.

Couple things about the coven wars:
- Don't worry about the total war exp you've earned, when the coven wars come out of beta all the data will be reset anyway.
- Please give us suggestions and feedback on the coven wars on this thread, this is your last chance to give feedback or any solutions to problems you think there is.

Enjoy your week,
Ash

Coven life bonus changes (updated)



Due the coven wars a lot more people are fighting which is fantastic to see. Unfortunately the downside to this is more lag at the hourly resets. So I've spent some time optimising some of the code but there is one main thing that is adding quite a bit of extra lag.

Coven life bonus.
Some of you have noticed that it takes while for it to add. This is something that needs be sorted. Coven life bonus needs to be changed or removed. If removed, the relics you've spent on life bonus will be returned for you to be used on strength & toughness. Speed will not be added at this time. The money you spent buying the relics will not be returned because you'll be able to re-allocate them for free. The other option is not to have life reset at the hourly resets.

PLEASE GIVE US YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS THREAD.


I'm sure you all want faster hourly resets, and this is the way to go.

Couple things about the coven wars:
- Don't worry about the total war exp you've earned, when the coven wars come out of beta all the data will be reset anyway.
- Please give us suggestions and feedback on the coven wars on this thread, this is your last chance to give feedback or any solutions to problems you think there is.

Enjoy your week,
Ash

Friday 2 July 2010

Coven Wars V1.2 BETA released



Another big thank you to everyone taking part and giving us feedback on this new coven war system. We really want to make really fun and game changing.

I now announce V1.2 is ready for a BETA run. You have 24 hours to declare a war this round but the wars will last the full 72 hours this time.

Here are a list of changes to V1.2 as well as other changes:


# Added to profiles under coven stats "Total War Exp Earned"

# Added to coven stats in home "Total War Exp Earned"

# Add to Daily stats: "War Exp Earned"

# Coven rankings page now shows Top Contributors: Include "Top Total War Exp Earners" - "Top $ Donators" - "Top Coven Exp Earners"

# Tier added to coven war page, although not real time (see page for more info)

# If you have the home tab coven war box showing, it'll show if you're winning or losing the war there.

# Increase cost of Coven Relics (Cost = Coven level * 1000)

# Upgraded layout of the war archive (finishing off after this blog)

# Number of hours left in protection shown on the declare war page

# Added protection for covens to purchase which last for 24 hours (7 a month max) This is for covens who really don't want to fight or want to concentrate on a war they've started, of course it will cost quite a bit.
Prices are:
level x $2k
level x $5k
level x $10k
level x $20k
level x $30k
level x $50k
level x $100k

So once you've bought the level x $2k one, you'll have to buy the level x $5k one to do it again etc etc until you've bought all 7. It resets back to $2k at the start of a new month. You cannot buy protection if you're a live war which started by someone attacking you. You can buy protection if you're in a war with someone else that you've declared.


# Tweaks to the war exp tax when you attack a higher level coven
Tier:      war exp = covenexp * (100-tax)
same    0
+1        8
+2       17
+3       29
+4       42
+5       55
+6       90
+7       95
+8      100
+9      100
+10    100
+11    100
+12    100

For this BETA round your last attacked coven has be wiped, so you CAN attack the same coven again, but when we fully release it you won't be able to attack the same coven twice in a row.


I hope you enjoy the changes, we're hoping this will be the last BETA run of the coven wars so we can fully release this version. Of course if there is enough people wanting a change we may consider it plus any other tweaks we feel nessesary. Please as always give your feedback on this forum thread.

After the coven wars are complete there are lots of story quests ready to go, help videos being integrated, the automated mail deletion to be finalised, few coven updates & much more.

Enjoy,
Ash

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