We received a lot of complaints when Forumwarz launched about not supporting Opera. Unfortunately Opera had some problems with our game, and we didn’t have the resources to fix them for such a small segment of the browsing population. However, recently Opera 9.5 was released, and the game breaking issues are now missing! I have happily updated our code to allow Opera 9.5 users into the site. Unfortunately, it has some visual quirks, but the game should be completely playable! ...

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on the introductory sequence to Episode 2. One thing that got a lot of positive attention with Forumwarz Episode 1 was the beginning, where Excre-Bot and Shallow Esophagus ease you into the universe and gameplay. We spent a lot of time designing that sequence and I think the effort paid off, as our number one complaint when we launched the episode was that players were left wanting more after their first hour or two of gameplay was up and their daily visits were gone. ...

This week we’re running a new theme in Forumwarz Domination called Five Finger Discount: It has two differences: If you Dominate 4 forums on your own, you will receive a reward of 5 vanilla scoops (it is normally 1). There are no shield cards in circulation. The first change is designed to encourage more people to try and solo domination, since the reward is so high. The second change makes it impossible to hoard shield cards, and should mean everyone is on an open playing field to get screwed over. ...

On Sunday night we launched our latest forum build, [b]Faux News[/b]. Tired of being spoonfed lies by the liberal media? Then come join Faux News, where we discuss the truth! The infallible truth, told to us by rich old men. After all, history is written by the victors! It’s our 36th forum in the game, so we’ve also added A new E-Peen(tm) to celebrate. The name for this one was actually suggested to us by Big Brother! Thanks for that. ...

Um, I guess I should’ve announced this a week ago when it started, but you still have a week to submit your “emo-ku,” or emo kid haiku, in our latest official Forumwarz contest. Check out the rules and submissions here!

Episode 2 of Forumwarz gives us a great opportunity to introduce changes to the gameplay balance. Since it’s a large content update we can piggyback on it with a bunch of adjustments to the balance between classes. We have been collecting feedback on the balance between classes forever, and we have a bunch of great ideas for where to start tweaking. The only problem is, tweaking even small stats on our classes means a lot of additional testing is required. When developing Episode 1, the best tool I had for this was my “Clone character” and “Reset character” tools. ...

As promised, we’ve created E-Peen(tm) in increments of 4 for people who have won medals in Forumwarz Domination. The idea is to encourage people to play even if they have no chance of winning a season. SG94 has created a thread listing them. Like most of our “x-in-a-row” E-Peen(tm), each of the new ones has a bizarre cultural/historical reference. I’ve also added an E-Peen(tm) for completing The great Firewall of China. Enjoy guys! ...

We’ve just launched our latest build, Internet Movie DoucheBags: Do you constantly argue about movies? Is your ego directly correlated with other people’s opinions of your favorite film? If so, you’ll find yourself at home among the Internet Movie DoucheBags (IMDB). Mock the tastes of your obviously misguided companions, nitpick every detail of movies that most people only bothered to watch once, trade inane celebrity gossip, and use pretentious film-school terms to defend the movies you like. ...

Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes when you click on an action on your toolbar in Forumwarz? The action might perform an attack. It might heal you. It might even do both! Some attacks are stronger when you’re weaker, others spawn buffs that protect (or harm you) for multiple turns. How does the game know what to do? Putting Effects in the Database When I was first prototyping Forumwarz, I stored the information for each action as rows in a database table. An Action would have multiple Effects. ...

Forumwarz: Domination Fiesta Our next Forumwarz Domination round will be a Domination Fiesta! Scoops will still be earned for the same activities, only you will receive them in random flavas instead of what you earned. There’s more about it in this thread from BINGEBOT 2015. New Stuff ForumBuildr v2.0 BETA forums are now listed on your bookmarks tab, underneath the Community sub-tab. The ForumBuildr v2.0 Beta list has been shortened to the previous 5 forums. ...