Episode 2 is now only two weeks away, and we’ve still got some surprises! Previously, I’ve alluded to an unannounced gameplay feature that will be released at the same time as Episode 2, and I’m finally ready to announce it! One thing lacking from Forumwarz is item drops when you beat enemies. Sure, we send you junk the next day, but if you are just 50 flezz short on an item you want, it sucks to have to wait, especially if you have forum visits remaining. Also, there is relatively little to collect in our game, since there are a limited amount of stores and items you can buy from them. ...

Today I’m happy to announce that we’ve launched our official merchandise store! We have partnered with Zazzle.com to bring you a variety of Forumwarz themed products, including t-shirts, buttons and posters. One of the best things about Zazzle is that each product can be customized in many different ways, so you can play with all sorts of settings to make the items into exactly what you want. This is our first stab at merchandise, so we’d love to hear your feedback. Do you like the products we have? What kind of products would you like to see in the future? Let us know! ...

Yesterday, we decided to promote TUBSWEETIE to be a new moderator for Forumwarz. With Episode 2 coming up soon we figured we could use all the help we could get. There’s a thread here if you want to say congratulations!

We’ve added a new panel (Profile > Addiction Level under on your home page) where you can view some stats about your Forumwarz usage, including an estimated amount of hours you’ve spent on the site. The estimate is very weak because we don’t track your usage habits that closely. It just pulls up the stats we do know, then multiplies each one by an average amount of time it takes to do each of those tasks. Many things (like your time spent in Internet Delay Chat) aren’t tracked at all. So for most hardcore users you can view it as a “minimum” amount of hours you’ve spent on the site. ...

So after many many months of work, we’re delighted to announce that Forumwarz Episode 2 will be released on October 15th. People who purchase Episode 2 will get: A hilarious new storyline 21 new forums to pwn Brand new stores with shiny new equipment and consumables Many conversations with new and existing NPCs New and exciting puzzles, quests Class-specific missions A long and detailed text adventure game from flamebate superstar BirdOfPrey Boss battles A cool new way to interact with NPCs A new avatar for the character of your choice All players will get: ...

I just got this tubmail: Hey Trout, On building forumwarz the past 1-2 years, would you say that you’ve learned more about web technologies and web business than you would have if you were to work in a typical 9-5 IT company? thanks - udo I liked the question a lot so I decided to post my answer here on the blog. Yes. Absolutely yes. First a bit of history for those unfamiliar, which I think qualifies me to answer this question. Feel free to skip to the next section if you just want to know my answer and don’t care about how we got to where we are. ...

We get all sorts of interesting emails through the “Contact Us” form here on Forumwarz. Sometimes I even get hundreds of emails saying “EVIL TROUT IS A .” Earlier this week, I got the following email (I’ve edited out the boring parts but I promise I didn’t remove anything important to their message): From: Blog Writer Subject: Marketing Op Hey ForumWarz, Apologies for the cold-calling. I’m (name removed), and I’m co-manager and advertising lead over at a media company known as ‘The Three Rs’. Our main site/blog over at Reviews, Rants and Randomness attracts around everywhere from 10,000 to 55,000 hits a day from our global audience. Many of these views consist of a loyal readerbase, whilst attracting referrals from enterprises such as The Escapist Magazine, PC Gamer (UK) and ABC as well as our continuous close work with sites in the Gawker Media network (Kokatu and Gawker Artists respectively) [update from ET - see bottom of this post]. So, you know our credentials; what do we want from you? ...

To celebrate the launch of tomorrow’s Episode 2 Beta, I recorded a podcast this afternoon. Download the MP3 (9MB). Jalapeno had some technical difficulties so it’s just me talking. As a gift, I’ve included a newly recorded audio tubmail of Bruce bear in the beginning!

A lot of Episode 2 has come together over the last couple of weeks. I remember it being this way before we launched Episode 1. It seems to take forever to get the ball rolling, but near the end so much comes together so quickly! I included an illustration of a permanoob in our last update. It’s actually a tiny piece of our new homepage! For Episode 2 you’ll be greeted with a beautiful piece of artwork from the guys at Dooomcat. We liked their artwork so much that we had them re-design the character selection portraits too. I think our moderator, Mc Banhammer, had an orgasm when he saw the full artwork. ...

A few days ago, I checked in the last piece of code to Episode 2 that made it playable from beginning to end. It took a lot longer to stich together the storyline than Episode 1 did, I think because we tried to add variety to missions wherever possible. In Episode 1, the majority of the missions are “Pwn this forum.” While the gameplay still revolves around pwning forums in Episode 2, we tried to vary it up as much as possible. This meant a lot of extra programming, but I think the end product is worth it. ...