Tuesday 30 November 2010

Christmas is coming...



I love Christmas. Christmas is one of my favourite holidays of the year.  The one thing I do dislike about Christmas is it gets earlier and earlier every year. Half way through November I could go into town, walk into shops and they'll be playing Christmas music. I'd walk into a supermarket and they'll have an entire isle already dedicated to Christmas stock, it's crazy!

Anyone moving on, I have created an advent calendar for you all. Every day you can go get a free treat until Christmas. Just head over to the Dead City and check it out! More Christmas stuff will be coming your way over the next couple weeks.

The November competition results will be posted soon, as well as a competition for December.

Some of you may have noticed that some TOH's (hourly resets) haven't been going through. We have found the problem, and working on different fixes to get around it. So please be patient as we sort it out. To make up for some of the lost turns, you can go ahead and use promo code : tohbeingsilly

More coming up!

Take care,
Ash

Sunday 28 November 2010

Few changes and chance to win 5 FREE PLASMA TONIGHT!!



Before you say anything, I know it's a Sunday, how dare I work on a Sunday? But I've made a few small changes, here they are...

MP changes
I've had several reports of people with odd amounts of MP which is annoying as all the powers are a multiple of 0 or 5. I have added an option to "Clear" your MP if this ever happens. You can find this on the vampire powers page.

Equipment ranking changes
Thanks to Mayne for pointing out the amount of kills needed to get your weapon skill maxed out. A mistake on my part made the expmax add 500 each time, it shouldn't do this. The expmax should be 500 each time I.E not increase each time you level up. As everyone who battles has been effected by this, I won't take any action making numbers up.

Top Vampires page
I have extended the top vampires (hall of fame) frame to more is displayed on the page. I have also made it so jailed members no longer appear on the top vampires statistics.


November competition
Just 2 more days of the competition, get your entries in quick!


WIN 5 PLASMA TODAY!
Competition closed!


Enjoy what's left of the weekend,
Ash

Wednesday 24 November 2010

NEW SERVER & thanksgiving special



New Server
First of all, I am very pleased to say the new server is installed. Already the resets run so much better. An investment paying off I hope. As this server is running a fresh install of MySQL, it will take some tweaking to get the performance just right for the way RoB uses it. So it should still get a little bit better as the results are monitored and tweaks are made.

Thanksgiving & Black Friday Plasma & VIP Special
We don't celebrate Thanksgiving over here, but I know "Black Friday" is becoming quite an international thing these days, so I've decided to run a simple 2 day VIP & plasma sale for everyone.  The offer is 20% extra on all regular VIP & plasma packs. This will end Friday night. (Paypal & Google checkout only. Want to buy with Wallie or UGC? Contact me first for details.)

November Competition
Just under a week left to enter the competition. I've had a couple questions about it, and you are allowed to submit as many as you want (in one blood letter), our favourite of yours will be put forward towards the prize. I hope to see lots more entries before the end :) Read about it here


Missed the blog posted yesterday about the new accomplishment medals? You can give that a read here.

Hope you guys enjoy!

Thanks,
Ash

Accomplishment medals & achievement changes



Good evening vampires,


Accomplishments
Accomplishments have been added to game. They are non rewarded milestones in the game to show off to other people. The quote direct from the page:
"When you hit certain milestones in the game, you unlock medals as shown below. These medals show the accomplishments and milestones you've reached in the game. The medals are also located on your profile for other vampires to admire your progress."
A lot of you will be shocked with what is required on the top accomplishments, but keep in mind, I've made this very future proof.


Medals
The medals you unlock completing the accomplishments show up on the top of your profile. Hover over the medals on other players profiles to see what milestones they've hit. You can view your complete and un-complete accomplishments via your home stats page. The medals are coloured, they change colour from RED to WHITE the higher you go.

Achievement changes
Some of you may have noticed the achievements pages have been down the last couple of hours. As you can now see, they have just had a bit of a face-lift. A gold trophy now appears next to the one that you've completed, and a gray trophy next to the ones you haven't. There has been 1 change to an achievement on list 2. The 50 link click achievement has been reduced to 25 links clicks for some of the reasons listed on this thread. I know the people who have got this would think it's unfair because they had to get to 50 to get the achievement, I understand that, so I've thrown everyone who has already completed list 2, 3 free QP as slight compensation.

A big thanks to Sirus_Bladewing (266460) for creating the images!

New Server
I've received information that the server could be installed tomorrow afternoon. No set in stone confirmation yet, but I'll post on the site if this is the case. WOO!


Thanks!
Ash

Monday 22 November 2010

Promo code for downtime



Morning,
It's always fun waking up to a Facebook page full of raging fans wanting their fix back. Now we're back, I thought I'd be nice enough to issue a promo code for some of the lost turns.

Code: novdowntime (Go to this page to use)

You have until Wednesday night to use it :)

Shouldn't be too long now to the new servers. Will update you when I know more.

Enjoy,
Ash

Saturday 20 November 2010

New weapon ranking system



Good evening,

An idea was brought forward a while ago about an equipment ranking system. I've had it written on my to-do so I thought I'd give it a go.  It's nothing major, it just gives those who actively battle a bit more of a free stat boost from your skill using a particular weapon or armour.

The basics
- Battling other vampires gives your equipment exp. 1 exp for attacking a rank lower than you, 2 exp for attacking the same rank as you, and 3 exp for attacking a higher ranked vampire.
- Every time you level the equipment up it gives + 1 damage or + 1 defence boost. (Depending on if the weapon levels or the armour)
- Weapon and armour have different exp bars, although they will be identical if you keep the same equipment equipped as you get the same exp for both.
- There is a maximum cap of level 50 for each equipment.


The negative effect
- Each piece of equipment is unique, I.E no two sticks are the same. The damage or defence boost from a particular equipment stays active as long as the equipment is in your possession. You sell or give away your equipment your bond with that equipment will be lost and the the equipment will be reset back to 1. This is because this is designed to give you an extra stat boost for actively using the equipment, not for adding extra sell value to it.

If this is well received, there are many ways to expand this in the future.

You will also see a slight layout update to the equipment page too.

Hope you like. Please report any bugs.

Ash

Thursday 18 November 2010

Server update & couple other small things



Good evening vampires of the Dead City,

Server

Just a quick update on the server. I was informed recently that there is a delay unfortunately, I don't know the reason, but as a "gesture of goodwill"  they have doubled the RAM in the server for FREE. I paid for 32GB and they're giving us 64GB. I'm happy waiting another week or so and getting that free upgrade. The delivery date is set to 24th November. Give it another few days after that for transporting it to the data center, getting it ready for installation etc. So hopefully we'll be up and running at the start of December.  Believe me, I want this baby installed as fast as you guys do.

Some of you have been asking about specs, I am more than happy to tell you the basic specs as its you fine people that help pay to be able to have these upgrades! This spec is the for the SQL server (which is being replaced), this does not include the 3 Apache servers which are running fine.

Current SQL server spec:

2x4x2.13GHz processors  (8 cores total ~ 12GHz total power)
24GB DDR3 RAM
4x73GB 10,000RPM SAS disks

New SQL server spec:
4x 12-core 2.2GHz processors (48 cores total ~ 105GHz total power)
32GB 64GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM
4x73GB 6Gbps 15,000RPM SAS disks

Pretty beefy huh? If the write speeds that become a problem in the future (even though they're pricey at the moment) I do have the option trade in the SAS discs and get some SSDs.

Screws
Somebody has finally found all 30 screws! Still a long way off? Don't punish yourself, some people are more lucky than others. Look out for next weeks Bloody Herald to get this guys thoughts.

Herald
The 5th Bloody Herald edition will be posted in the morning (I have it all ready now). You've been spoiled having 2 a week, it won't be like that every week. Another big thanks to the writer, you're doing an awesome job!

Novemeber Competition
Not had many entries yet to the November competition, for 100 plasma, it's surely worth a shot! I may even choose a couple winners if there are some good ones. But I love having a huge selection to choose from, you've only got a couple more weeks to get your entries in. Have any questions about it? let me know! Check out the latest competition page for more information.

444,444
This week we passed 444.444 total accounts. Pretty cool huh? No promo code for this though. At 500k? Maybe.


Enjoy the rest of the week,
Ash

Tuesday 9 November 2010

UGC in Canada, Pre-Paid card offers, server info & November competition



UGC for Canadians and pre-paid card offers
It has been brought to my attention that the Ultimate Game Card pre-paid card is appearing more commonly around Canada now. Maybe because their competitor Wallie is flooding it? Anyway, because of this, you Canadians will see two options for pre-paid cards, Wallie & the Ultimate Game Cards. You're so lucky.


On the subject of Pre-Paid cards. As I said in the previous blog Wallie are running a special for all US & Canadian Wallie card purchases gets 10% extra. Now the Ultimate game card company are doing a competition too.





















On the subject of payments, remember we've got a new awesome mobile phone payment company. Really easy to use and adds your stuff right away, it's been a real hit. VIP starts at just $2.

Server information
 I've been getting lots of questions about the new server, and quite frankly, I didn't want to give much info on it until it came close to it being installed. I've got a estimated installation date, the 20th November. There will be *some* downtime during the installation. At this point in time I don't have a clue how long. Who would love to know the monster spec of the thing?


The Bloody Herald
In-case you haven't noticed The R-Paper has been re-named to the "Bloody Herald". Much more fitting right? I've talked to the writer and we plan to release an edition every Monday. So you will see at least 1 edition a week. Some weeks you may be lucky and get 2 a week, if that's the case the 2nd edition of the week will be uploaded around Thursday. A big thank you to the writer for the great work so far.

November competition
Not going to go all out this month with an awesome competition. It's quite simple really, some of you may remember this:





















Pinned up beautifully on my office wall. Now, there's a space for another. That's where you come in! Want to be on a poster on my wall & earn some plasma? This is your chance!

The winner will receive 100 plasma. Prizes will be given to all valid entries too.

The rules:
- Must submit to the RoB-Bot by 30th November. Subject "Nov Comp".
- Picture does not have to have you in it, although preferred.
- It can be all photoshopped, but ALL must be your own images. Images just stolen off google and used will not be entered.
- Needs to be dark and in the theme of RoB.
- Needs to be of the same quality as the one above.
- No anime
- Must be very high resolution, it does not matter if the file size is huge

I hope to find a good enough one to go on my wall :) Good luck! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Keep a copy of the image on your computer, don't delete it.

Enjoy,
Ash

Friday 5 November 2010

VIP page layout & options update, R-Paper & new server info [updated]



Afternoon everyone,

Pumpkins
I'm getting this question a lot "What do I do with my Pumpkins?" There is only one thing you can do with them, sell them! Just click the sell link. There is no use keeping them now, as it just clogs up your inventory for things coming up.

Some new changes to the VIP
- Slightly updated the look of the VIP page
- Equipment packs have been added to the Wallie Card packs and the Ultimate Game card packs.
- You can now buy Wallie packs for other people by changing the ID

New Mobile Company
I've been approached by a mobile phone company which has a much bigger reach than Zaypay. You'll see a new section at the bottom of the VIP page which has specific mobile packs. What's even better about this mobile company, all packs are added automatically! Zaypay will (for now) still be used for the equipment pack and VIP+. You can change the ID on mobile packs and buy for other people too. For people who choose "other" as their country, there will be no set packs (yet). This company supports a lot of countries, if you want to make a purchase, there is a link to contact me, make sure you include your country and what pack you want to buy.

Wallie Card for Canadians
Wallie have released their pre-paid cards in Canada!  They are available in ExxonMobil, Canadian Tire Stores and Pioneer. Go to the VIP page and then click on the Wallie Card to search for store locations near you.

Non UK/US/CA/EU/NZ/AU players
For the players that choose "other" as their country on the VIP page, you would have had all your packs charged in USD$. It now changed so you're charged in GBP£. As we are based in the UK all payments get converted into UK pounds anyway, so instead of paying with your currency to USD to GBP we just cut out the USD part. This will help stop your purchase being as expensive if the USD isn't doing so well (against your currency and ours).


New Server
Thank you for all your support over the Halloween special, the new server has been ordered and due for installation at the end of the month, there will be a few hours downtime of course, but more on that closer to the time.


R-Paper bot
The R-Paper bot is now in action! The name will be changed when the next issue is ready (we've already decided on the name). It's basically just for people interested on what's going on with the game. I post all the important things on this blog, the R-Paper will include less important things, rumours, interviews etc etc. It's worthwhile keeping up to date with it. It's not compulsory and you will not lose out on any important information if you do not.



Wallie Card update
Wallie are running a promotion for the US & Canada players only. Details are as follows:



Wallie is a prepaid card for online games, available in over 10 countries and now also in Canada at ExxonMobile, Canadian Tire, Pioneer and about 15,000 other shops. The shops can be found on www.wallie.ca. In the USA Wallie is available at various petrol stations and at over 30,000 other shops to be found on www.wallie.us.

On all Wallie-cards bought in the USA and Canada 10% extra is added for free, so for example a card of 10 Canadian Dollar contains 11 CAD value.
In addition to this, the first 1000 users will receive a free code if they register their email address and Shopping Card ID at www.wallie.us or www.wallie.ca.

Canadian outlets can be found here:
http://nowprepay.net/eFreshMerchantLookupWebPortal/Home.aspx?prodcode=WALLI


Further information on the promotion:
Canada: http://en.wallie.ca/index.php?page=news&contestId=103
US: http://www.wallie.us/index.php?page=news&contestId=106


Players in the US will not see a Wallie link on their VIP page, if you want to take advantage of this offer then go straight to http://reignofblood.net/wallie.php


Thanks guys & enjoy your weekend!

Ash

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