Pet system released, plasma special, new charity, competitions & loads more

Hey vampires,

This is a pretty long blog as there is lots of cool stuff happening! I hope you're sitting comfy.

4th July fireworks

Hope you liked the fireworks, a total of 12,534 turns were giving out yesterday.

Pet system released

That's right vampires, you can go get your hands dirty. This months round begins right now, it will be only 3ish weeks instead of a full month. I hope you'll all take part in using the feature, report bugs, give feedback & make suggestions to make it even better. Want to know how it fully works? Read the FAQ posted on the pets page (must be located in Mount Tilia to view).

Just to clear up a few questions not on the FAQ:


- The VIP days are not taken from you, you are just required to have that many days to have that pet. If your get the 200 VIP day pet, and then your VIP days slip down to 199, that doesn't matter, you still get to keep your pet. Only if you discard your pet (coming soon) you will need 200 vip days to buy it again.

- I know there there wont be many kills to start with, as there are around 750 pets at the moment created, after this month, i'll make any necessary changes to accommodate the way pets work.

I have a couple more features to add to the pets... but for now, we'll run it this month with what we have. The QP wins needed, the battle timer limits etc may all change, we'll see how it goes. (This includes adding extra security)

There will never be any Paypal interference that will give you any game advantage in the pet system. Everyone has an equal chance to get prizes and QP.


New Charity!
In order to celebrate the release of the pets this month, it only seem fitting to have this months charity in aid of animals. 20% of the revenue from the charity packs and Trik's potions will be donated to the RSPCA. Thanks for everyone's support with the Help For Heroes campaign last month.

August Charity!

I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but to keep on the pet spirit, the August charity will be an adopt an animal campaign. Whatever it made from the packs will be spread out over a year to adopt an animal. But which animal? You get to choose! By buying a charity pack this month (includes potions) you get to have your say in what animal we adopt next month. When you've got an RSPCA charity pack, go to the Dead City under "government" and cast your vote.

New Dark Ruby Pack

As you probably know, each weapon and armour has 3 available ruby slots. Due to popular demand, I have added a Dark Ruby VIP pack which includes 3 sets of both (saves time of people having to buy the pack 3 times separately), there is also a bit of discount by doing this as well.
 

June Competition Winners

The top 3 dirt finders were:

1 - 1657 grams Aislinn (54285)
2 - 1633 grams Darren Iceshard (245670)
3 - 1598 grams Misha Keates (208044)

Congratulations.  Thanks to everyone who took part. If you had over 50 grams of dirt, you get a free QP!

July Competition
This month's competition is a nice and easy guessing game. The new lottery system opened on the 21st February 2010 (Can you believe it's been that long?) The winner of this month's competition is the person who guesses closes to the TOTAL amount of money that has been paid out. (Until July 3rd 2011). Everyone gets one free guess by posting on this thread, if you guess dead on, you will win 1000 plasma. If nobody guesses dead on, the closest person will win 25 plasma. No guesses will be counted if they're posted past the end of the month.

Plasma special

Due to several requests, there is a 2 week summer plasma special! (Don't forget to put on your sunscreen) All packs gives you a sun image in chats & forums too. Go get your hands on some cheap plasma & VIP!

And for those who pay by mobile phone...

I've heard & listened to your requests, and now offering special packs using phones too. Head over to the mobile phone packs page for more details. This will last for 2 weeks also. The specials are still up for ultimate game card and Wallie too, these will be taken off after this special too :)

This weekend (PROJECT RAHP)

This weekend I'm going to be doing something I've never done before, it won't be a permanent feature (as though many would like it) but every now and then won't hurt, right? Stay tuned to find out what Project: RAHP is.

Hope you enjoy =D
Ash

Comeback feature: PETS - Located in Mount Tilia

So, the Big July is about to start. Are you ready? (We know it's not quite July yet, read on)


Mount Tilia
Mount Tilia, just west of Ghost Town, is a place where vampires can home their pets. Pet fighting in the Dead City is forbidden, so all pet battles and tournaments take place over in Mount Tilia. You can get to Mount Tilia through the portal, as it's now a new location on our map.

Pets
Pets is one of those things that people will love or hate. Don't like them? Don't use them! They're not a compulsory part of RoB. You will however, be rewarded for using this feature.

Pets were originally added in May 2006 (Just a month after the site opened), but were subsequently removed a year or two later. Ever since then, people have been wanting them back. Without a good method of doing so, I haven't bothered... until now.

The pet tournament area located in Mount Tilia will open for battles within the first week of July. As a teaser, you can all now go buy and name your pets.

I do encourage you not to think too much of this until you see it in action :) It's pretty cool, and the rewards for using it is pretty tasty too (Although you won't see all this until it's open).

Thanks to Sirus for spending the last couple months doing the images.

Help For Heroes
The Help For Heroes charity campaign will end at the end of June. If you want to support this charity for a final time, buy any charity pack or potion credits from Trik's.

June Competition
The June competition will end midnight on the night of 30th June (Thursday). I will be staying up until midnight, and on the strike of midnight (game time) I will close the leaderboard and the winners will be revealed. Good luck to all the people who have entered.


Thanks & enjoy!
Ash

New Points company, rank incentive & a couple small changes

Points

For those who didn't know what points are, they are rewards for completing offers/surveys etc. I got an email today saying that our points company #1 (the most popular one) is shutting down so they can focus on their mobile side of the business (Because web apps aren't cool enough). So I've been hunting down more companies to supply the points to you. I've found one! And I want to give them a try.

I've tried to make things as clear and easy to navigate as possible on the points page. The new points company is now at position #1. You'll also notice these guys have a load more payment options too.

To celebrate, points company #1 will pay out DOUBLE the points that's displayed until Sunday. (If it says you'll get 12, you'll get 24!)

Did you know?  Points are currently selling at around $48,000 each on the market.

Slight rank incentive

So you need a little more incentive to rank up? No problem. I've added some rank duration quests.

Chat backlog

You can now view the last 500 lines of each chat.

June competition leaderboard

With only about a week left to go on the Greenwood hunt, a real time leaderboard has been added to the competition page (accessible from the Dead City). Here you can see the top dirt finders and how many grams of dirt you've found.

Enjoy the weekend,
Ash

June competition update

So this weekend my Dad has decided to get married, so unfortunately I won't be around much the next few days. It's out in the sticks somewhere, but I have heard rumours they do have Wifi at the hotel, so I'll be able to get on, check things, and add Google Checkout purchases.

I didn't think it would be fair going for a few days and not tell you how well you're doing in this months Greenwood competition. Below is the top 20 at the moment. A real time leaderboard will be added when I get back next week (As well as you being able to find out how many g you have collected).

797g collected - Aislinn (54285)
773g collected - Shawn Breach (245670)
727g collected - Misha Keates (208044)
720g collected - AngelFire (330366)
711g collected - Footman DCXLV (40487)
698g collected - Linus C. Tourettes (252462)
695g collected - J0k35t3r (164141)
686g collected - Dreamweaver (248485)
686g collected - Lelouch (424861)
665g collected - Arch Aestus (236669)
652g collected - avantgarde (109004)
651g collected - Armand de Anjou (299922)
645g collected - Jessica Rabbit (135259)
630g collected - Jonathan DeLaRosa (411454)
627g collected - Macabress (176585)
623g collected - Legion, White Tiger (142699)
609g collected - honeyb15 (370593)
606g collected - Lady Dionysia Fëaduhith (311006)
600g collected - Akuba Reiko (320073)
596g collected - Gideon (392232)

My last blog post indicated a secret Project RAHP, have any guesses as to what it could be? Post on our Facebook status with your theories.

Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback on the merchandise thread, we definitely see a demand and will hopefully be able to get something up and running during the summer heading into Autumn.

The poor blood bot has been alive for 192 hours and has already been defeated 211 times. That's on average half a million blood it's pumped out already.


See you all next week, enjoy the weekend!
Ash