For a limited time, we're offering Episodes 2 and 3 together in a package for 150 Brownie Points!

That's a savings of 50 Brownie Points versus buying them individually, and means you can now pick up both Episodes for under $15. The feedback for Episode 3 has been phenomenal so far, so be sure to take advantage of this sale while it lasts!

Log in, and check out your Support Us tab for more information.

Thanks to the grand efforts of our Beta team, Episode 3 launched today with very few issues. I'm watching the server right now and many people are playing through the new content!

As I've said before, this episode is really important. Releasing it means that we've followed through on initial plan. If you check out the updated credits page, you'll see that we were only able to do this with the help of many other talented individuals! I thanked them yesterday, but I'm going to do it again.

What's new in Episode 3

• The conclusion of the storyline that begun in Episode 1
• All new attacks, forums, characters, cinematics and mini games: in fact, there's more content than Episode 1 and 2 combined
• Enhancements to our user interface: there's dozens of tweaks included in this release
• More moral choices, and different content depending on your alignment
• Multiple endings, depending on your choices.
• Several major storyline branches that you can complete independently of each other.

Forumwarz Orange(tm)

We've also launched a trial of Forumwarz Orange(tm), which is an enhanced interface geared towards power users of the site. All users who have reached the end of Episode 1 will receive a Tubmail inviting them in and explaining what's available. The interface is free right now, but we plan to charge for it in the future once we figure out a fair price and gather user feedback on the new tools.

The Shit Hit The Fan: A disgusting bonus game

If you're not busy playing Episode 3, you might want to head over to Kongregate to try out The Shit Hit The Fan. It's a filthy mini game that occurs right near the beginning of Episode 3, but we've decided to release to the public for fun. Don't worry about spoilers: the game reveals almost nothing of the Forumwarz storyline.

Thanks so much to all our users for being so supportive! The game is better because of all of you! -ET

As you all know, tomorrow we're opening the flood gates and launching Episode 3 of Forumwarz to the world.

I'm super proud of this Episode. It is by far our biggest update to date, and it concludes the story arc that we started out on years ago.

I want to take this last moment of silence before the storm to thank all the non-CZ people who contributed to this episode. I'm talking about all the writers who dreamt up the characters and missions, the artists who created new images, the people who recorded their voices for tubsonics and the testers who relentlessly helped to polish the whole thing.

It was a monumental effort and I think everyone who plays through the new content will appreciate it.

Launch Details

I'm going to take down the site at 9AM EST. As the regulars know, it often takes hours and hours to get things ready, so expect the game to launch sometime in the afternoon. While the site is down we'll set up a cool chat room to chill in and watch people doing nothing on their web cams.

-ET

I'm delighted to announce that Episode 3 of Forumwarz will be released on January 20th.

This is by far our biggest Episode yet, and the amount of work it's taken to get to this point is staggering. It would have never been possible without the hard work of dozens of people, so I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone who has helped getting us this far!

buildrs will be suspended

I've been thinking about it recently, and one of the hardest parts of pushing out a new episode is the merging of buildr content with the new episode's content. In order to make this easier, we're going to suspend the buildrs until we launch on the 20th. By doing this, I can merge the data in advance, and it should make the launching effort a lot easier. The benefit is that everyone will get to play the game earlier, we'll have less downtime and I should be less tired on launch day to fix any issues that may pop up!

I'm sure the inconvenience will be worth it!

See you on the 20th :)

-ET

I'm delighted to announce that yesterday we launched the beta of Episode 3. Don't be dissapointed if you didn't get an invite! We only had a limited amount of slots available and we filled them up quickly. We will be running a second beta round once the initial bugs are sorted out, and then we'll be launching the game in January!

Last year, pre-orders of Episode 2 were successful, so we've brought them back. For the measly price of 100 Brownie Points (about $10), you can snag a copy of Episode 3, as well as a Free E-Peen(tm)!. Note: that all characters attached to your account will get the peen, so it's a good way to bump up your penile length in one fell swoop.

Pre-Order Forumwarz Episode 3 on the Buy Stuff Page.

Want more Episode 3 news?

You might want to check out the Episode 3 Minor Spoilers thread on Flamebate. I've been updating it about once a day and will continue to do so as long as I can think of minor spoilery fun :)

It's been a while since we released the Episode 3 podcast and our users have resorted to threats of ransom for updates!

As you can imagine, a lot of progress has been made towards finishing Episode 3. I am looking at my Episode 3 flowchart right now and far more is crossed off than isn't, and every day I cross off some more. Right now the majority of the development is in my hands, as all the conversations/items/forums have been built for some time.

A couple of weeks ago during our meeting, I told Jalapeno and BingeBot 2015 that if I worked my ass off, I could have a beta out quickly. But we all decided it was in everyone's best interests to take our time with it and not rush it out. We want Episode 3 to be as awesome as possible, and if that means launching a little later so be it.

I'm still not sure how long Episode 3 will take to play through (we'll need beta testing for that), but content wise it's pretty enormous. I think in most metrics, Episode 3 is bigger. I found out this morning that there are more sTalk conversations in Episode 3 than in Episodes 1 and 2 combined!

So please be patient with us. The worst of the wait is over, and it's just a matter of time before we're ready to open our beta testing and announce a release date.

-ET and the crew

As many of you know, we ran a multi-stage puzzle on Halloween. It was authored by handofg0d, and edited/programmed by the Crotch Zombie team. It went over very well for the most part.

When we first envisioned how it would play out, we imagined that one eager player would work his or her way through it before the others. What actually happened was people tackled the puzzle in groups, through Skype, chat rooms and IDC.

So in the end, while there was an individual who finished the puzzle first the correct way, it was only on the shoulders of other players who had helped them work through the earlier puzzles. In the end, we decided that instead of rewarding the first one through the gate, we'd reward everyone who finished the puzzle in the first 24 hours. This way, all the players who took part in the teams (and those who worked through it on their own in the morning) get the reward too.

We're giving out the E-Peen right now. You should receive it within the next hour or so of this post, assuming you solved the puzzle properly within the time frame.

For those who want to still try the puzzle, we have no plans to take it down any time soon. You won't get an E-Peen™ for solving it, but you might still enjoy working your way through it. The link to start the puzzle is here.

Happy Halloween 2009!

I was feeling a little nostalgic today, and looked through old blog archives I had. I found this curious entry from 2006:

Collaboration - September 7th, 2006

A couple of friends and I are working on a small project in our space time, and it’s been a lot of fun so far. One of the first things I did was set up a Writely document and added the other three guys as collaborators.

Writely, in case you haven’t heard of it, is an online word processor that was purchased by Google. It’s not as fully featured as something like Microsoft Word, but it’s got more than enough of the basics to be useful for writing documents on the Internet.

The best part is that anyone can edit the file at any time, make their changes, and they’re logged so they can be reviewed, integrated, etc. Multiple people can actually edit the document at the same time (which we’ve done) and as one person changes things the other person sees those changes after a short delay. It’s very cool.

The other tool we’re using to collaborate is CVS, the popular open source version control system for writing programming code. I use it at work and am a huge fan of the way it works. Like Writely, multiple people can write code in the same base at the same time and it can merge most of the changes.

These kinds of tools are so useful for working on things in groups. I can’t believe that I used to send word docs back and forth in emails, have people change them and forward them on.

Any guesses as to what that small project turned out to be?

One interesting thing to me is the date. It's proof that we've been working on Forumwarz for over 3 years now. I'm not sure how long before that work actually began, but early August 2006 is a good guess.

Another interesting thing is that back then I was praising Writely, which is now just known as Google Docs. We still use it heavily, especially for Episode 3's development.

I'm NOT using CVS any more. Soon after I wrote that article I switched to Subversion. About a year and a half later I switched to Git, and am much happier with it. Live and learn!

Hey everyone,

As threatened in our last post, here's the podcast for your listening pleasure:

The Episode 3 Development Podcast

We did our best to cut it down to size, but it's still an earful. We hope you find it an interesting and informative masturbatory aide.

Thanks for listening!

So the great news is the gameplay upgrade launched quite smoothly. We also made some major server software upgrades and the site is running much faster for it. For the geeks reading this: we upgraded to Ruby 1.9.1, which is quite a big change from Ruby 1.8.6. It's over 3x as fast in most of our benchmarks!

Following the gameplay tune-up, I have turned my focus to Episode 3. While I haven't been working on Episode 3 full time until recently, Jalapeno Bootyhole and his talented apprentices have been churning out content for months. There is a lot done, and I will end up spending most of my time integrating it.

We have a much better idea of what shape Episode 3 is taking and can now answer a lot more of the questions we've been putting off since Episode 2 launched. It seems like a great time to do another Podcast, so we'd like to invite anyone interested to post their questions in this thread on Flamebate

Finally, a public service announcement: We have been updating the blog far less frequently since we started using Twitter. A lot of our announcements are better suited to short sentences than long posts. If you are looking for Forumwarz news you should watch us there, too. You can find a link on the right hand side of this blog.

When Episode 3 of Forumwarz launches, there will be hundreds of new items available for players to obtain, trade and use to their advantage. Since we've covered the basics of Episodes 1 and 2 with itembuildr already, we're going to hijack itembuildr for a while to create Episode 3 content.

The content you guys create will exist when Episode 3 launches in addition to the hundreds of items we've created internally, so there will be plenty of new shopping opportunities.

This is how it'll work:

• The stats of items will be hidden. We will assign them later.
• All winners will get a special Episode 3 item contributor E-Peen(tm)
• The winners will also get an IOU for the item once Episode 3 launches. These IOUs can be traded via Kyoubai in the meantime, so it's a great way to earn extra Flezz.

You can start building Episode 3 items right now! Have fun!

I'm delighted to announce that after months of development, we're going to launch the new gameplay enhancements on September 10th.

Addtionally, the new gameplay features will also herald a new Domination season!. We due for a new season, and since things are changing so much we figured it would be better to not mess with the existing medals and winners too much.

Important Launch Notes

The migrations for the new gameplay changes are HUGE. The database has to change in about 20 different ways, some of which could take hours to process. So rather than do our typical "The site should be down for a few hours" thing, we've scheduled a full 24 hours of downtime. This will happen directly following the ending of the current domination round, at 9:30PM EST on September 9th. So we can expect the site will be up by 9:30PM on September 10th.

The road to Episode 3

We haven't talked about it much, but Episode 3 has been under heavy development for months. I'm really happy with the progress the writers have made. Following the gameplay update, the integration of Episode 3 will be my primary development focus, so you'll be hearing more about the cool things ahead.

Until then, I'm hoping these new gameplay enhancements will keep everyone busy, and keep the game feeling fresh.

Thanks again to all the testers, apprentices and regular users who provided feedback to help get this release out the door!

Features in the Gameplay Revamp:

In early June, we begun development of a new fork of the Forumwarz code base, with the goal of making the core gameplay more varied and interesting. For a long time we've been happy with the storyline and textual content of the game, but the gameplay just hadn't scaled up as quickly.

While role-playing games are notorious for repetitive gameplay (there's a reason it's called grinding), we had a lot of room for improvement. We started with a long list of enhancements that was built from community suggestions and our own gameplay ideas, and drilled through it until we'd gotten a lot done.

At every step, dozens of players helped bug fix each feature, and at this point they're more or less stable. There will still be a second and third phase where we integrate the new features into the game properly before they're open to the public, but we're comfortable enough now to announce exactly what is going to be available to all players.

Gaining Fans:

At the end of every battle right now, you are told that people noticed what you did and it affected your cred, but then these so called fans of yours never appeared.

In the upcoming update, you will gain a certain amount of fans based on how well you pwned the forum. The fan mechanic will replace the speed run mechanic currently in place. Instead of being based on time (something which is annoying if you play on a slow connection), fans are based on how many turns you took to beat a forum, and how how much damage you dealt and took while doing it.

Fans are also somewhat finicky, you'll lose a certain amount of them over time even if you're doing well. But you can lose fewer by pwning forums with more diversity. Of course, there will be a leaderboard to keep track of who has the most fans at any given time.

The leaderboards for fans are also split up by class. Previously, some less offensive classes had a difficult time competing seriously for lemon scoops. Now you're judged against your class, not the entire game.

Status Ailments:

Threads can hit you with status ailments (known in some other games as de-buffs). While the status ailment is active, your player will feel a penalty on each turn in the battle.

Status ailments can be removed by consuming items.

Preventable Attacks

Threads can do special attacks that can throw off your strategy. For example, Line Noise causes all your abilities to require a refresh, effectively rendering you offensively useless for a turn.

These attacks can be prevented by taking consuming a particular item (in this case, a routing script, in advance.)

Forum Sensitivities

Each forum can now react differently, depending on which abilities you use against it. There are 5 basic types of elements: Misanthropy, Narcissism, Antisocially, Aggression and Incompetence. Each ability in your toolbar will be assigned to one of these elements.

Depending on which ability you use on which forum, you will find it works somewhere on a scale from (immune -> very strong -> strong -> neutral -> weak -> very weak). Hence it will be important to tailor your abilities to the appropriate forum in order to beat it effectively.

To keep track of the various forum sensitivities, you will be given an item you can refer to in battle that will automatically log your findings.

AFK

There's a new ability called 'AFK' which allows you to skip a turn. This is useful in combination with some of the new status ailments and preventable attacks a thread can do to you.

The Battle Log

There's a new window during battle that gives you a line-by-line update of what is going in the forum. It's useful if you miss a turn for whatever reason, or are curious as to what happened a couple of turns ago.

This is what it looks like

Expiring Consumable Items

In order to keep things challenging, virtually all consumable items now can expire if you keep them in your inventory for too long. The dates at which each consumable type expires is variable, so certain items are better to purchase than others.

Instead of vanishing, when the items expire, they morph into brand new items, which can still be sold at the ppwn shoppe so the financial loss is not so great.

Note: When you choose to consume an item, it will automatically consume the item that's closest to expiry.

Forum Moderators

In some threads, you might be unlucky and a moderator will appear. When this happens, they will clean up your nasty posts, and the thread will lose some of the pwnage you've already inflicted on it (read: it will heal the thread.).

We're happy with what we've come up, and the tester feedback was enormously useful. We don't have an exact date for the launch of these new features since we have to make sure they are balanced within the game, but we're targeting within the next month.

Unlike our episodic content, this large-ish update will be FREE to all players, and we're hoping it'll help pass the time until Episode 3 is ready.

(Speaking of Episode 3, we've got a ton of awesome stuff in the pipeline for that too, and we'll start divulging more shortly.)

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since our last post. That's mostly because a) we now have a Twitter feed for everything we do and b) we've all been up to our asses in work — to serve you better.

Nevertheless, I'm sick of my seeing that same stupid Zunecast post of mine! So, here's an extremely vague and unsatisfying meta-update for those of you curious as to what's happening with your seventh-favorite browser-based Internet culture RPG and Twilight fang-fiction repository (see what we did there?).

• The Apprentice thing is moving along nicely. About half the original team picked for the Apprentice has been fired or downgraded to Auditor status, keeping the creative team small, tight and shaved. To keep things tasteful, we'll keep the details behind the scenes. But your remaining Apprentices are: Bashy, blahquabats, crayoncakes, kraigu, PhineasPoe, plk and Shii. A hearty congrats to them all for making it this far.
• You know The Secret Thing that Invariel was hired to work on? That's also coming along well. He recently ran his first testing thingy on the codesy stuff [NOTE TO SELF: FILL IN TECHNICAL DETAILS LATER] and it actually worked! He's also been knighted an official Crotch Zombie recently, noticeably lengthening his E-Peen™. Kneel before him in shame and arousal.
• Meanwhile, Evil Trout is busy working on the gameplay tuneup, which many of you are already involved in. Basically, without blogging you down with details (see what we...aw, fuck it), it's going to change the way you pwn forums forever. And as far as we can tell, it's not completely broken (yet)!
• Contrary to popular belief, BINGEBOT 2015 is not dead. He's alive and kicking and healthier than ever, now that he's taken Auser's advice and gone on Atkins. He's got an overhaul plan for Domination in the works, but we're putting it on hold until the gameplay revision and Episode 3 are ready to roll.
• Finally, with all this stuff going on, here's another one: Crotch Zombie is going to release a hip, new iPhone application soon! Because you haven't pressed "1, 2, 2, 1" until you've done it on a touchscreen.

Until next time!

It's been a long time since we've had a Zunecast (yeah, I'm calling it a Zunecast, wanna fight about it?) and last time I was unable to participate thanks to technical difficulties.

Since we have some major features coming up (Episode 3, Forumwarz Apprentice), and I love the sound of my own voice, I figured now's a good a time as any to answer some of your questions using a medium other than my keyboard.

UPDATEZ0RATION: You can download the 'cast here!