Saturday 30 March 2013

Easter Event Part 1



 I posted a blog just a couple days ago about the new Dead City layout and a new top player rewards system. If you missed that, you can check it out here.

Easter Event Part 1









It's that time of the year again when the bunnies come out to play. I'd like to introduce part 1 of this years Easter event.

Easter Bunny - When you come across any eggs, bring them to the bunny to trade for some more useful.

The Lost Eggs - A quest to find lost eggs around Reign Of Blood. More will be added later.

Bunny Attack - A few evil bunny rabbits have infiltrated the NPC werewolf arena. Although they are failing a little bit, they seem to be unable to overpower the wolves, and some bunnies are even getting eaten by them. This is starting to cause a rage, that's for sure. Find a wolf that has eaten a bunny, and get double blood from that NPC.

VIP & Plasma special - Get yourself a plasma bargain and some free eggs, too.

Enjoy the weekend, more to come.

Ash

Wednesday 27 March 2013

New DC & Rewards



Dead City Facelift

 
Our Dead City has had a little facelift today. I removed the big Dead City image so I could fit on more content instead. The new features include:

- New Information board - which gives you quick access to see the latest blog post, any current events (I.E Double blood), this month's competition, today's QOTD, the current weather (currently RP purposes only) and the game's time and date.

- Individual fancy headers removed to make the feel more compact.

- New Dead City image half transparent behind the links.

- Top players today link added at the bottom.


Top Player Rewards (beta)
You'll see on the homepage that the top 10 blood suckers, and top 10 wins are displayed for everyone to see. Now the top 20 are displayed at the bottom of the Dead City. And with a simple click, it will open up a section that displays that information.

Introducing, WP (Win Points.) The top 10 players (of both most blood and most wins) will recieve a WP at the end of the day. That can be spent at the WP store (which link is in with the leaderboard).

Just a little something extra for the top players of each day. (You'll get a news notification at midnight if you were in the top 10)


April Competition
Because of the delivery delays (damn international postal services) the wristband competition will continue through April.


I think the bunny rabbits are getting angry...

Enjoy,
Ash

Thursday 21 March 2013

Final shout & downtime



This post if just a last shout for a couple things. First off:

St Patrick's day Event
The event and special ends tomorrow evening! Make sure you've got all your shamrocks used.

Wristband Bard Orders
Tomorrow will be the last day you can order a wristband to receive on time to enter the March competition. (Unless you're in the UK).


Server Changes & Downtime
The server guys took the game down for about 5 minutes yesterday to install some different balancing software, which thankfully has made overall page loads a little faster, and TOH and little faster too. Baby steps! We'll continue to optimise.

For about an hour tonight, the server that runs our images (Profile pics, avatars etc) is getting moved to a new faster server. This will happen tonight (Thursday 21st) at around 6pm  10pm game time. The game will still be up and running, but people's uploaded images will appear broken until the migration is complete.

Enjoy the weekend.
Ash

Friday 15 March 2013

RP Update Part 1 & St Patrick's Day



I've been working hard recently getting some RP updates (some of which are not finished yet). I was hoping to get this rolled out last week, but had to abruptly go visit family as my brother's girlfriend was giving birth to my first nephew. (Go little brother, go!)

RP Updates


Character Lists
  • You can now edit any character image
  • You can now put ? in the age box
  • Free text area added in characters to put anything else about your character you'd like to be displayed that isnt covered in our template
  • You can now use font colours, bold and italics in text boxes
  • You can now order your characters with the new "push to top" system
 Houses
  • House staff can now moderate the forum and clear chat
  • Oh, and you can now clear house chats
  • House forums now show new uploaded sigs
RP Forum
  •  New forum layout applied to the RP forum
  • Fixed the bug that made characters appear deleted
  • Character information displayed on top with new tidy layout and link to full character profile
  • RP school board added 
  • RP subscriptions now added to the RP panel for quick reference

Etc
  • You can now edit your family names
  • Coven forums now show the new uploaded sigs
  • Top of the homepage will have new panel links, to give room for more panels added in the future. 

Focus Shift
I am going to be spending time in between my usual daily routine dedicated to optimizing and thinning out the database. This is just part of my ongoing effort to make the game run as fast as possible. I can only thank you for your patience. Promocode: 16thmarch

March Competition
In order to make sure you get your wristbands in time, please make sure you've ordered by March 20th. As that gives just enough time to get to people overseas before the end of the month. Click here for more information.

St Patrick's Day Event








It's time for that awesome green day of the year again, St. Patrick's day. If you head over to the Dead City, you'll see the green bar is back in action! There is of course a juicy VIP and plasma special to go with this event.


St Patrick's Day
Login to Reign Of Blood on Sunday for more ways to get shamrocks and other freeeeee goodies! Keep an eye on the St. Patrick's section of the Dead City on Sunday for information.

 
Enjoy the weekend!
Ash

Friday 8 March 2013

Double weekend & New Quests



I have to go away this weekend, for reasons I'll explain when I get back (Good news). So I thought I'd leave you with a few new quests and double blood for the weekend.

I know the other night one of the servers had a little fit and made the game unplayable for a few hours. We know what the problem is, I touched on it a little here why it wasn't fixed sooner (other than the fact it was going on from 2am my time). We are constantly working on making it better, even though sometimes things go haywire. Things are smoother now, and the server guys will be watching very closely this weekend.

I think they've found a happy medium on the server config to make it run smoothly now. Will continue to tweak and optimise as always!

So, enjoy double blood, and screw it, double minion exp too.

The quests that have been added since the last blog are:

- Strange Request VI
- Strange Request VII
- Strange Request VIII
- Strange Request IX
- Strange Request X
- Ana Wizard
- Ana Wizard II
- Ana Wizard III
- Ana Wizard IV
- Ana Wizard V

I've noticed nobody has yet to complete the 'Strange Request II' quest. As vague as I like to be, I will give you a little clue. And that clue is a poker phrase. I'm sure this will help many figure it out. I like to make things difficult sometimes, but I also don't want to make it impossible!


Enjoy the weekend!
Ash

Monday 4 March 2013

Recent Errors & March Competition




Recent Errors
I am well aware of the current errors that are going on around RoB, and I'm not just sitting and watching. The server guys are actively checking the logs and see what's causing the 502s, and are zapping them as they come in.

As for the top of hour wait time is increasing and hovering over the 1 minute mark, that is unacceptable. With more and more in-game competition and more and more people fighting over blood at the top of hour, things are starting to heat up! Over the last week I've been looking at hardware solutions to help overcome this. I won't go over the nitty gritty of the tests we've had carried out, but I hope to have something done soon.

For now though, I'm going to spend the day optimising the database until my fingers bleed. There are some room for improvement there as we're hitting limits, and I do have a couple ideas how to speed things up a little until we come to a permanent solution.

I think a bit of compensation is required as we carry out this work.  For 2 days (until wednesday evening) enjoy:

- Double Turns
- Promocode: marcherrors (includes the turns for the missed toh)

Things should start to look a bit better towards the end of the day.

New Quests
New rank 50 quests have headed your way over the last week, they are:

- Strange Request
- Strange Request II
- Strange Request III
- Strange Request IV
- Strange Request V

March Competition
Some of you may have heard I've started selling Reign Of Blood wristbands. This months competition will pay out plasma for the top people who buy a wristband, and take a picture of it in an original way. Click here for more info.

Thanks, and I apologise for the inconvenience.
Ash

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