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Gleemax Shutting Down

Posted on July 29th, 2008 in games, pinoy, video games by darthvid
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I just read over at ICv2 that Gleemax, WotC’s ambitious social-networking/hobby gaming site, will be shut down sometime in September.  The announcement was made by Randy Buehler, WotC’s VP of Digital Games.

Wizards of the Coast has made the decision to pull down its Gleemax social networking site in order to focus on other aspects of our digital initiatives, especially Magic Online and Dungeons & Dragons Insider. We continue to believe that fostering online community is an important part of taking care of our customers, but until we have our games up and running at a quality level we can be proud of, it will be the games themselves that receive the lion’s share of our attention and resources.

Our plan is to shut down Gleemax completely sometime in September. (I can’t give a more exact date because the timing depends on what’s going on with other projects.) To those of you who have posted to Gleemax, I thank you for your contributions over the past year. It is community members like you that made this project worth trying, and it is your efforts and words that gave it heart. You should save your blogs by copying that text somewhere else. Meanwhile, I encourage you to head over to the Wizards forums. The Wizards online community continues to thrive, and there should be lots of fun stuff to talk about over the coming months, including our digital offerings.

ChattyDM has some commentary on the matter.

In related news, WotC is also “discontinuing their novel lines that do not relate directly to D&D or Magic“.

Wizards of the Coast today announced the decision to refocus publishing efforts on the company’s two core brands — Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. As part of this strategy, the Discoveries imprint will be discontinued after the end of the 2008 catalog year.

“There is still so much more to discover in the rich fantasy worlds of Magic and ,” said Casey Reeter, VP of Marketing for Wizards of the Coast. “Refocusing our publishing resources allows us to tell those untold stories and expand the reach of our core brands.”

Beginning in 2009, any novel or series that does not support these core brands will be removed from the publishing schedule. The 2008 publishing schedule will remain unchanged.

Even though I thought that the Gleemax project was a bit too big, I was really hoping it would succeed.  Given Insider (the success of which based on its current plans are still iffy to me), as well as the number of issues that still need to be fixed in , WotC does need to focus in its digital endeavors.  Unfortunately, as the months went by, I didn’t see Gleemax moving along as quickly as it should have based on that it wanted to accomplish. So, the fact that the master plan of an online hobby gaming hub is being put on hold for now wasn’t that big a surprise.

With all the brands it carries, WotC itself huge.  and are probably their current revenue makers, so I can see why they would want to focus on those.  I just hope their boardgame section (Avalon Hill) won’t suffer because of this focus.

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Magic: The Gathering Online III “Soft Opening”

Posted on May 6th, 2008 in games, video games by darthvid
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In case you missed it, I mentioned last April 16 that v3 (Magic: The Gathering Online III) has left beta and gone live! Well… sort of. Worth Wollpert mentioned that they intentionally didn’t announce the launch date so as to prevent a huge influx of players that might bog down the system. Looking at the launchblog, it appears that there’s A LOT of work that still needs to be done, which Worth basically admits.

Ergo, it’s a “soft opening”.

If you want to get into the action already you can the client here. Be warned, though, that few features are working as of this post and things might still feel beta-ish.

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Play Selected Avalon Hill Games Online at Gleemax for Free!!!

Posted on May 3rd, 2008 in board games, games, video games by darthvid
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For a limited time (as of now, at least), you can play selected Avalon Hill games at Gleemax for free!

The games available as of this post are:

  • Axis & Allies
  • Robo Rally
  • Vegas Showdown
  • Acquire
  • Guillotine

The following non-Avalon Hill (but still Wizards of the Coast) games are also available:

  • Magic: The Gathering Online (though technically this isn’t under Gleemax)
  • Desktop Tower Defense

The Avalon Hill games apparently uses the GameTable Online engine. You’ll need to create a new account for this (it’s free) even though you already have a Gleemax account since it seems to use a different account system (for now, at least).

We all know MtGO has it’s own software (though I didn’t check how they plan on letting you play for free), and the Desktop Tower Defense seems to be flash based.

If you’ve been itching to try these games out, do it now while it’s free!

goto -> Gleemax Featured Games

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Magic: The Gathering Online III Open Beta

Posted on August 6th, 2007 in games, video games by darthvid
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Finally, Magic: The Gathering Online III is now in Open Beta! No need for a Fileplanet account for this phase! It started around 2007.07/31, but I noticed it just now.

As part of the open beta, they are supposedly testing the New Account Creation system, so the MtGO v3 launchblog has instructions on how to create a new beta account. New accounts will walk through the new account creation system, which includes a dummy payment system for creating new accounts (since the online store isn’t linked yet). Since the summy product store isn’t up yet either, an official beta bot (WOTC_autobot) was made to provide you with a means to get packs for testing.

Right now, however, they are also having problems with the New Account System, so they have temporarily allowed access to the v3 open beta from all current MtGO v2.5 account holders. They should be closing this access again when the New Accounts Creation system is fixed.

I really have to free-up some disk space so I can update my beta.

— update —

v3 is on “soft opening“.

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Magic: The Gathering Online III (semi-open) Beta Schedule Update

Posted on April 6th, 2007 in card games, games, video games by darthvid
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Based on the official Magic Online III Launch Blog, this is the beta schedule for Magic: The Gathering Online III ( III Beta):

- April 9 - FilePlanet.com will make the beta client available for non-subscribers! You’ll still have to be a registered FilePlanet member, but you don’t have to be a subscriber to get the beta client.
- April 11 - “Some” previous beta set testers will be invited to to join the beta, even if they are not FilePlanet members.

Apparently, as much as they want to increase load, they don’t want to increase load too much, so they are controlling the floodgates. I guess this also means that this is just a “semi-public open beta” for v3. I think there most probably be a “public open beta” phase before they deploy the final system. No hints on the schedule from that as of yet.

As usual, I’ll give you a heads-up when updates occur.

digg it | reddit

— [edit] —

Members of FilePlanet.com can now the v3 beta. Please note the is around 1gig, so it’ll take a while.

I’m downloading my copy now! :D

— update —

v3 is on “soft opening“.

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Magic: The Gathering Online III Beta Slots for FilePlanet Subscribers

Posted on April 2nd, 2007 in card games, games, video games by darthvid
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Do you want to help beta test the new Magic: The Gathering Online III before the open public beta? Are you a FilePlanet subscriber? Then sign-up for the MtGO III beta now!

Magic: The Gathering Online () made a deal with FilePlanet to host the III beta, and FilePlanet is giving it’s subscribers accounts to the closed beta. The promo is exclusively for FilePlanet subscribers only, so if you just signed up for the free account, I’m afraid that you ain’t eligible for the promo.

There will be an open public beta coming up soon, but the schedule isn’t clear yet. Stay tuned for updates regarding the open public beta.

digg it | reddit

— [edit] —

Update here.

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Can’t Sleep (Verdant Gleancrawler Force)

Posted on March 29th, 2007 in card games, random ramblings by darthvid
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I was planning on writing some nonsense about sarsaparilla yesterday afternoon, but it got bumped out of my schedule. Turns out, aside from the other stuff I’ll mention, it kept nagging me. So now, I’ll mention it: I tried a bottle of some healthy version of sarsaparillas (root beer) from a health store two days ago, and I liked it. I wanted to try it out ‘coz it was in a twist-cap glass bottle, and you don’t find much of that in the supermarket around here, but I was surprised when I read the labels that it was low on calories(which probably meant no sugar) and it had no caffeine! What kind of a softdrink is that?! Fortunately, it tasted pretty good. I’ll get a tad more of ‘em next time I pass by the store.

I decided to get myself some more stuff to enhance my existing deck at Magic: The Gathering Online. After doing some price-checking, I decided to get a set each of “Verdant Force” and “Gleancrawler”. Verdant Force in particular seems to be good fattie candidate for a Thallid deck. Gleancrawler, on the other hand, well, I just thought it was cool. :P I have been considering making a dredge or dredgish deck sometime, so this might be useful there.

For some reason, I woke up around around an hour and a half ago and I couldn’t stop thinking of how to make these work with my current cards at hand. The thought kept nagging me so I just gave in and tinkered around.

Some experts have mentioned that Thallid decks are bad, mainly because they are a bit slow, and I guess tournament play just doesn’t wait for the thallids to do their thing. Since I just play casually, I don’t mind as long as I have fun. Regardless, I have been trying to get myself out of my thallid rut, so I decided to try and come-up with something that would use these cards as a base. The deck I ended up with didn’t turn out to be thallid at all.

Upon testing on solitaire, it seemed that the deck it might work, but I have some risks of mana screw (mainly from a mana drought at the start). The synergies aren’t so clean yet, since mainly I’m scavenging from cards I already have, but after some games, I’ll probably know what I’ll need.

For now, I’ll try to settle down and get some sleep again. Later, I might take another peek and do some tweaking. Hopefully, I’ll come up with something decently playable.

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Magic: The Gathering Online III Initial Screen Shots and Updates

Posted on March 22nd, 2007 in card games, games, video games by darthvid
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I think a lot of Magic: The Gathering Online () players have been waiting for this update. Unfortunately, form the looks of the blog entry linked by the article, they still have quite a few issues to fix. That’s fine with me, better to make sure you deploy a good working version than a buggy version.

Still, with the open beta coming soon, and with some initial screen shots, at least it indicates that they’re not as far off as they could be (or at least, I hope it does).

official site | digg it | reddit

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