July 2011 Events & Double Points weekend

July is going to be a big month for RoB. We're going to get some new cool features and an interesting test project.

So what's happening in July?

- Project: RAHP

- A new location!
- The come-back feature
- Faster hourly reset with new database structure (killing off 503s [yn])
- & loads more

Help For Heroes Charity
I can happily confirm I got this email recently:
"We are delighted to tell you that your Help for Heroes fundraiser has been
approved! We would like to say a huge THANK YOU for your amazing support."
Show your support by buying a charity park of Trik's potions.

Merchandise Poll

A year or two back we had a CafePress merch site setup. We didn't really sell much so I decided to close it down. Although recently we've had a wave of people interested in getting their hands on some merch. Would you be interested? I want to get a general poll of people who would be interested. Please give us your thoughts here.

Double points this weekend
Earn double points this weekend (Starting now) on all points offers. I.E. If an offer says it pays out 20 points, on completion, you'll get 40 points!

Bloodbot!

There is a new blood bot around these parts.... the ID of this bot is 3. Click here to view his profile. Hes a weak rank 100.  How many people are going to fight over him each hour?

Blog Pages
If you've not already noticed, I've added some different blog pages above just for more general information for people who come across the blog who are not RoB members.

Top 5 June competition dirt finders
Here's an update to the top 5, in no particular order:

- Aislinn (54285)
- J0k35t3r (164141)
- Blade (424861)
- Shawn Breach (245670)
- Footman DCXLV (40487)


Enjoy the weekend :)
Ash

Plasma lottery feature test, new coven donate options & June comp status

Plasma Lottery
Going to buy plasma this week? Good call. I had this idea brought to me a while back, and spent 15 minutes coding it up. I don't know whether it will be successful or not, the only real way is to try out. A new plasma lottery (this week only for now) has been launched! It'll give people who buy plasma this week a chance to win a bit more! If you go to the BUY VIP page you'll see the amount of entries you get with each of the plasma packs. This also includes the charity plasma pack. Whether this will be successful or not, we'll have some fun with it this week. The draw takes place on Saturday night and you can enter up to the draw. (The exact time has not been decided yet). Just a little extra thank you to our supporters. You can find the link below the regular lottery in the Dead City. If you love the idea and want this feature to continue, support it! :) The future of the feature could be just turning it into the regular lottery but buying tickets with plasma itself, rather than entries direct from the packs, that's possible too. Let me know your feedback on that. Of course the only problem with the feature, is you're gambling with the most valuable currency on the game. Will people be willing to do it? We'll see. (Paypal and Google Checkout only at the moment) The formula for working out the jackpot will not be displayed at this time. Not into plasma? That's fine. You can ignore this feature for now :) A way of earning free entries may come at a later date. Stay tuned.

Coven storage

Due to the horde of requests, you can now donate plasma and potion credits to a coven. Coven members with the option to "Give/Lend funds" have access to distribute the plasma and potion credits. Plasma/Potion Credits will not add to your "total donated" variable.

June Competition

I've been asked quite a bit about the status of the June Competition. Let me tell you that you will be able to see how many grams of dirt you have found next week. And the total leaderboards will be posted at the end of the week. I will however tell you the top 5 dirt finders to date (in no particular order):

Footman DCXLV (40487)
Shawn Breach (245670)
Blade (424861)

Linus Tourettes (252462)
Dreamweaver (248485)



This weekend is over, but try to enjoy the week!
Ash

ReignOfBlood DENIED by charity, new competition & May's winner

June's Charity
This months Charity was going to be UniCef, they help children all over the world and also one of main charities which are helping with the Haiti Crisis. But after I setup the fund-raising page, I got this *DENIED* email:

Hello Ashley,

I wanted to make contact to inform you that we have unfortunately needed to remove your myfundraising page. Although we are very grateful for your support here at UNICEF, after careful consideration we have decided not to accept the funds raised through your ‘reign of blood’ game. We feel it would be inappropriate to accept funds raised through a vampire computer game. We are also guided by the public view and perceptions of companies in the UK. Whilst we understand that that these might not always be totally accurate, we must take these views into account in order to avoid any negative publicity.

I didn't realise charities could afford to push away donations. I guess a vampire game isn't good enough for them. Their loss!

UPDATE: They sent me another email.

So this months charity will be...

Everybody knows the Help For Heroes charity. We're going to do our bit to help those who are injured fighting in the current wars.

Thank you for all your continuous support & allowing us to be one the few online games that help out good causes (or at least try in some cases).

Real time Clock

If you've not already noticed (or read the last blog yet) we have a new ticking clock! Pretty cool huh? But remember, if it doesn't work properly in your browser/mobile device, you can turn it off the account options page.

May competition winner

Here is the winner for the may competition. Why? Simply because it speaks truth. Congratulations - Xenia Le Doux (319314) [ View Image ]

June Competition

This month's competition is being held in Greenwood. Special grams of dirt are hiding around inside caves, the top 3 players with the most amount of dirt found by the 30th June, will win 100 plasma, 30 plasma, and 10 plasma. Leaderboards will be put up later in the month.

Blood shortage
Battling activity is at a all time high. Although that's a good thing, but with the lack of ~20,000 blood filled accounts being killed an hour, there isn't enough to go around anymore. (Even with the 200-300 new vampires each day). We are working on more ways to get blood to you all. Yummy blood. Stay tuned.

Enjoy the weekend to come,
Ash

The evil 503 & new real time clock

The evil 503

I apologise for the recent 503 nonsense. We have found what is causing it, and taking several steps in order to stop it. I invest wisely into a good server back up system which backs up everything every hour without interfering with server performance. Because of this, we have made some server log changes to help prevent the 503s. They should happen a lot less (even at all now) but there a couple other improvements we'll be making to keep the game running as smooth as possible. Growing pains can be painful!


As for the midnight downtime last night, the server guys do apologise because inconveniently their mail server was doing a software update and they didn't get the notification. (They get notified as soon as the server is down). They have SMS alerts too now, so they're always in the know, keeping a close eye on RoB.

Real time clock

Oh yes, we have a ticking clock. It's quite mesmerizing too. If you don't like it, you can go to the accounts page and turn it back to the static clock.

Potions

People lurrveeee potions. People also lurrveee that a portion of the potion credit sales go to charity. Have an idea that would be cool for a potion? Trik is always open to new ideas. Click here to discuss.

Thanks!
Ash