By tribalwars developer Morthy

Heya everyone,

We originally announced that we were working on Tribal Wars app for iPhone way back in March, and since then have been relatively quiet on the subject. We’ve now finished the original specification for the app.

However, we’ve decided to hold off on releasing the first version so we can make several improvements and add new features. We want to make sure you get the best possible experience when using it.

So, what features have been implemented so far?

• Quick access to all worlds on all our versions of Tribal Wars (except the Korean market, for legal reasons)
• A customizable overview giving you easy access to various parts of the game, as well as providing live information on number of incoming attacks, unread mails, reports, etc.
• Quick switching between all your worlds without having to login again or return to the homepage.
• Easy purchasing of premium points via your iTunes account.
• Instant customizable push notifications to your phone for new attacks and mails.
• Play using our mobile optimized version of the game even if you do not have a premium account.

We’re now going to be looking to add the following features before release:

• Optimized iPad version.
• A native speedy version of the map instead of relying on the standard mobile version’s map.
• A native lightweight version of the reports system.
• And the same for the messaging system.
• Translation of the app into various languages other than English.
• An easy way to manage your account sits via the app.

At this stage we are now hoping to finish development in late August.

For now, here’s some screenshots of what we have so far to prove I’m not making this all up (click for full version):

  

  

By Tribalwars Developer Typhi

We’re wrapping up 7.3 Production here at the office – you can expect localized announcements about the content and update times in the various forums in a few days. For now though, here are some of the most relevant bug fixes:

• Forwarding reports: we adjusted the auto-deletion trigger for forwarded reports to reset when they are received by a new user. We also fixed a problem with forwarding not working for a number of players.
• Reports: fixed problems where the forward and backward arrows (>>) didn’t display.
• War stats: Tribes should now only be reported as disbanded when they really have been disbanded, and all actions should now be shown properly in the Tribal Events feed.
• Address book: fixed problem with recipients disappearing from mailing lists.

Keep an eye out for the full 7.3 Change log.

Concept Art by Tribalwars Artist Andrei

Concept Art for some new Unit Info on the Unit Info pages

By TribalWars Developer Robert

7.3 production is proceeding well, though a bit more slowly than originally planned.

The majority of our effort so far has gone into improving some backend items, so there won’t be as much “ooh shiny and new!” stuff for you to fiddle with as usual, but we’re pretty sure you’ll like the few simple things we managed to include.

Our current notification system.

Fade out notification

Above, you can see our in-progress replacement for some of the popups that you need to click away before you can do other things that some players find inconvenient. (I personally agree completely).

Instead, we have developed a fade-out popup that gives the information you may want or need to know, but then leaves your screen after a second or so without you needing to do anything about it.

We’ve already replaced a few of the more obvious ones that came to mind, but would love to hear from you guys about which of the other numerous popups we should work on eliminating.

By TribalWars Dev Team

Roadmap ’11

This is our continued Roadmap for the third and fourth quarter of the year. No detailed implementation in this roadmap.

Q3 July

Version 7.3

• Containing the killing of unnecessary pop up confirmations
• A lot of Backend refactoring for making parts of the game more stable and easier maintainable
• 2 Major new Premium features to make it a bit simpler to get support and resources from your villages.

iPhone App

• Sale start of version 1.0 in the end of July
• Implementation of an app-native map

Q3 August

Version 7.4

• Very small version with some smaller MDS and non-critical bug fixes
• Implementation of some very few minor improvements
• Implementation of our Script API for scripters (More info later)

iPhone app

• Implementation of the app-native map
• Version 1.1 is released

Q3 End August – Q4 End October

Version 8.0

• Production of 8.0 starts in the end of August. Will be parted up in 8 sprints, each sprint on Beta every week for testing to increase quality
• Roll out is planned for the start of November
• Addition of usability and consistency of various features
• Focus on Tribe and Team work features
• Improving old features and making them better
• Implementation of some of the most popular and used user-scripts
• Our new End-Game feature, which will be a major feature

 

Dear players,

We are currently looking for players interested in beta testing our Tribal Wars application for iOS devices.

Unfortunately due to limitations enforced by Apple we have a limited number of beta tester slots and so cannot run a full public beta. However, if you meet the below requirements we would really appreciate your help!

In order to beta test, you must:

• Have an account on beta.tribalwars.net
• Have a forum account on forum.beta.tribalwars.net
• Own either an iPod touch, iPhone 3/4 or iPad 1/2, running a minimum firmware version of 4.0
• Be able to spend 1-2 hours in the next month testing

We’d just like to reiterate that the final point is very important. We have a limited number of spots, and once we allow your device access to our testing we cannot revoke your spot for a year.

Please do not volunteer if you just want to try the app for a few minutes and then forget about it.

If you meet all the requirements, please email the following information to removed – all slots filled.

• Your account name on beta.tribalwars.net
• Your forum account name on forum.beta.tribalwars.net
• The type of device(s) you own (e.g. iPhone 4, iPad 1, iPod touch 2nd gen)
• The firmware version installed on your device
• The UDID of your device (instructions on how to find this here)

Thanks everyone,

Jon Dawson
Developer

Start of World 57

It’s been a couple of months since our last world so it’s now time for World 57 to start. After our ‘no hauls’ experiment on World 56 we will of course be reverting back to allowing looting on this world.

World 57 is provisionally scheduled to start on Wednesday the 8th of June at around 17:00 server time (CET).

If you have any feedback or questions please click here for the discussion thread.

The settings

Not sure what some of the settings mean? Click here for more information.

• Speed: 1.25
• Unit speed: 1.0
• Paladin: Yes, with weapons
• Archers: No
• Church enabled: No
• Noble system: Gold coins
• Morale: Points and time based
• Bonus villages: Yes
• Barbarian villages: Grow to 2500 points
• Tech system: Simple
• Beginner protection: 3 days
• Tribe limit: 150 (ranking based on top 20)
• Other info: Players can choose their starting direction. There will be an attack and support gap of 100ms. This world has a fake limit.

Tribalwars is a free browsergame by Innogames.

Speed World Championship 2011

Speed World Championship 2011, celebrating Tribalwars.net’s 1000th Speed round. We have more than 5000 premium points up for grabs in this tournament, which will be played over the course of 12 weekends – starting this Saturday, on May 28th. We also have five Tribal Wars T-shirts to give away as prizes, too.

How does this work?
Every weekend, one championship round will be played, where you can collect “championship points” for a variety of different objectives during the round.

At the end of each championship round, your championship points will be added to your total score for the tournament.

Once all of the rounds have been played, prizes will be given to the winners of the tournament, and the overall champion will also receive the special forum title of “Speed Champion 2011” to show off their achievement.

Objectives

During the tournament, you gain championship points for achieving a variety of objectives, which will go towards your overall championship score. Some objectives are easier to achieve than others.

You can gain championship points by simply surviving the round and ending it with a single village no matter how small.

Or you can aim for the top and gain points for being a highly-ranked player at the end of the round.

Prizes

In addition to the regular round prizes, at the end of the championship tournament the following prizes will be given to the overall tournament winners:

• 1st place – 2000 premium points AND a Tribal Wars T-shirt AND forum title “Speed Champion 2011″.
• 2nd place – 1200 premium points AND a Tribal Wars T-shirt.
• 3rd place – 600 premium points AND a Tribal Wars T-shirt.
• 4th place – 400 premium points AND a Tribal Wars T-shirt.
• 5th place – 200 premium points AND a Tribal Wars T-shirt.
• PLUS! All players who participated in at least 6 of the 12 rounds will be entered into a prize draw, where five further lucky winners will receive 200 premium points each.

* Anyone caught breaking the rules during any tournament round may be disqualified from the entire tournament. Additional rules apply to the speed world, so please ensure you are familiar with them. Speed rules

How do I join?

Every player who joins a championship round will automatically be entered into the Speed Championship. The first 100 players to join each round can play for free; after that, you will need an active premium account in order to join a round.

Further information

Every tournament round will be announced in a new post in this thread, so check back for upcoming championship rounds.

You can view all forthcoming speed rounds by visiting the Speed World round planner here.

Championship leaderboard

Visit this link to keep track of how the tournament is progressing.

New updates for Tribal Wars are always on the horizon – we’re hope you’re looking forward to the improvements and fixes as much as we are.

If you’re interested in taking a more active role in the direction of the game we all know and love, we would welcome your presence on our Beta worlds. The Beta is where we first roll out the intended changes to get the community’s help with bug finding as well as your feedback on any and all changes. We hand out 14 days of free premium on a monthly basis (non-premium needs to get tested too!), and you can earn additional premium points with good bug finding.

What we look for in Beta testers:

• Game knowledge. Do you know Tribal Wars’ ins and outs?
• Motivation. We’ve currently got a great forum community on Beta; everyone is there to help us make an even better game. Can you put your pillaging and destroying instincts aside and work constructively towards a common goal?
• English. All communication on Beta is done in English – it’s the language everyone has good reason to know, so that’s what we use. Your English certainly doesn’t have to be perfect – as long as you can understand what is going on and you can make yourself be understood you’ll be fine.

Are you what we’re looking for? TribalWars is looking forward to meeting you!

The past year more and more player complaints arise how InnoGames operates, a lot of people liked InnoGames as they where different that GameForge which some players call GameFraud.

And InnoGames should know better as they got their tribalwars engine stolen …

Anyway, the free to play with premium options to not buy yourself to the top is finished at InnoGames games. It’s now cold hard cash needed and players respect doesn’t count anymore. And even having staff members compete vs paying customers so they spend more cash (see mass exodus on grepolis topic).

Here is a recent complaint about their game WestWars, taken from their forums (before it gets deleted)

I think it is time to be discussed at a critical point in the game … Skills / gold!
The price is quite a joke … example to purchase 10 skills, increase the price of 1 gold
Today I bought 30 skills, my price was high, starting at 10 gold for a skills .. results were as follows: 30 skills = 10×11 + 10×12 + 10×13 = 360 gold

At lvl 1420, 30 skills are of no help, if I want to raise my Intelligence 1% will cost 66 skills …
Who want to play, if your skills are getting worse, even if you use a crazy amount of money on the game..??

Consider this example:
If I want to maintain my Intelligence of xx% will cost me 1000 skills to move from lvl lvl 1400 to 2000 ….. Who will do it, I will not, nor Bjarne .. We are good customers in your store, but we are not idiots !!

We pay YOUR SALARY, and without mine, Bjarne’s and certainly others players pleasure to buy gold, you get problems … The game will die slowly but surely!!

It is obvious that I have no strategy and common sense .. people without such skills will be kicked out of my company!
Come straight into battle Inno Games, doing something about the problem, otherwise the players disappear… no players, no money and no West Wars!

Yours Jakob aka Gun Jake

I have a copy of Bjarne’s email to Peter here, which shows that I am not alone on this:

Bjarne Tidemand
2010-08-31 23:54:19
Peter, i have two take this question up again!

I just talked with my friend Jacob Nielsen (gun Jake, no two in the world)
He told me that now, the price on skills, raise one gold for each 10 buy …

Have you considered, that it is not good business for Inno Games, for one simple reason.

When things get to expensive, people dont want to use gold, and they stop buying it!

Jacob just told me, that he bought skills, 10 for 12 gold 10 for 13 gold and 10 to 14 gold.
Calculate that, its allmost 400 gold for 30 skills!

So he will not buy gold anymore, and he has also being a big spender.

Continue like this, and the gold players will stop.
I have seen it before.

Set the parameter’s two half of it, that will be better.

Just my five cents.

Yours Bjarne aka El Bismarco

The original forum post can be found at http://forum.westwars.com/showthread.php?617-WestWars-Problems-SKILLS-GOLD-not-a-BUG!!!!!!

A issue a lot of players have at various games is that they don’t have money to buy premium features.

I’ve been testing for 3 months a program that only takes a minute a day to check.

Result is +$100 of pocket money which I can use to pay for my online gaming.

The program I’ve tested is called MatrixMails and exists since 2002, so they have a reputation.

Do not expect a lot of cash, it’s just enough to pay some premium features at various games.

Screenshot of the past 3 months.

I did use the first earnings to upgrade the membership at that site, so I see nearly 4x more for my daily minute at that site.

Is it worth it, well if you have no ways to buy premium features at a game, this is a way to get some cash but as said it will be a bare minimum. It will feed eg a monthly subscription or some basic items but that’s it.

Hello,

Teamplaying and working together has just become even more important in this new version of Tribal Wars, and today is the big day: Tribal Wars 6.0 is online now!

With this huge update, we have plenty of great new features for you. By introducing army camps into the game, we make teamplay even more important for your tribe. As a tribe, you can create army camps in any empty space on the map to use as a base camp near your enemies for upcoming attacks. When the camp is attacked, you will automatically defend it side by side with your tribemates. So as a team you can use these mighty forts to bring victory to your tribe.

Besides this, you can gain achievements on your own. From now on, we will give you awards for several different achievements, which you can show off to other players in your personal profile. This may be a certain number of points or a great battle victory. Sometimes, you may even get an award if you were extremely lucky – or unlucky. It does not matter in which period of the game you play, you will always have the chance to gain awards.

Furthermore, we have a special addition for premium account users: You can now play Tribal Wars on your mobile phone with an improved user interface. This works on iPhones and mobile phones running Android. All you have to do is to start your mobile browser and visit the Tribal Wars page – as you will see, the whole design has been adjusted for mobile browsing. It works just like a special Tribal Wars app. But since you can run it with your browser, there is no need to buy special software.

This is not all: There are several other updates and new features being introduced in this exciting new version. You can see details of these on your Tribal Wars forum.

All these features can be tested on our new worlds that have started today. We hope to see you there!

Your Tribal Wars team

www.tribalwars.net