Tag Archives: Gameforge
Exciting news for Robot Entertainment fans across the globe as yesterday the studio announced that they have secured a minority investment from Tencent, a large Chinese publisher who recently also announced that they would be publishing Orcs Must Die! Unchained in China. A minority interest means that Robot maintains control over its operations, this is an investment which secures additional funding / capital for Robot’s endeavours.
“Taking on Tencent as an investor gives us additional financial flexibility but, more importantly, it creates a long-lasting and valuable partnership with the world’s premier publisher and operator of games”, said Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson. “It’s a very exciting time for Robot Entertainment. We’re looking forward to showing Orcs Must Die! Unchained to fans at PAX East in Boston and releasing the game to market later this year on PC and PlayStation 4.”
This is great news for the studio and will help the studio grow and maintain its already great record at delivering fun games. The future is looking very bright indeed for Orcs Must Die! Unchained. It’s shaping up to be a big 2015 for Robot Entertainment. You can read more about this investment news at the Robot Entertainment website.
Phase 2 and PAX East
Fans who have been eagerly awaiting news about the release of the OMDU phase 2 closed beta can now be informed that Robot will be releasing this major update on March 24th in the US and shortly after in the EU. Feel free to join in on the pictorial discussions happening on the forums!
We are also just weeks away from PAX East taking place from March 6th. Robot Entertainment will be attending with their own OMDU booth. Representatives from Gameforge will also be in attendance. Those who come to Robot’s booth will get an exclusive chance to play Phase 2 OMDU gameplay, and as always, will be able to walk away with some sweet swag as well as closed beta access and a new skin for the War Mage.
This years PAX skin will also be available for anyone who is currently participating in the closed beta. The scarf you see being worn with the War Mages approval will be given out to attendees at the PAX booth. If you’re heading to PAX be sure to pop by and get your scarf and first Phase 2 gameplay!
With thanks to GameForge, REF is excited to run its biggest OMDU closed beta key competition yet! We’ve got a whole 100 instant access closed beta keys up for grabs for people in the EU.
The competition will run for seven days, ending next Tuesday 11th November. This means by taking part in the competition you could find yourself playing OMDU in just a week’s time!
Entering the competition is super easy and we have a number of ways you can enter. Each day you can visit RobotEntFans.com and enter with a daily entry. You can also earn additional entries by visiting us on Facebook, Twitter. Following Orcs Must Die EU also scores you entries too! To get started complete your entries now with our form below!
Win one of 100 Orcs Must Die! Unchained Beta keys! (EU Only)
Starting next week Gameforge are introducing their own regular Twitch stream schedule with community manager FaTeReLLa taking to the new official OMDU EU Twitch channel at www.twitch.tv/orcsmustdieeu.
Programming is complete with four different streams detailed below. All of these streams ave been added to our Twitch Stream calendar, so you can now view all of the Robot, GameForge and community streams all from one place. Head on over to our Twitch calendar to check them out. If you are a Twitch streamer yourself, you can add your streams to our calendar too by submitting them.
GameForge – OMDU EU Twitch Schedule
MONDAY
4PM CET – Hands-On Highlands
Monday is 3-lane map day! Join the Custom Room and enter the Gameforge Room to play the exciting Highlands!
THURSDAY
9PM CET – Pixie Cups or Beat the Bot-Invasion
Pixie Cups
From time to time FaTeReLLa gets challenged. Challenge matches are streamed on Thursdays. Would you like to challenge her? Team up with your friends and throw down the gauntlet here
Beat the Bot-Invasion
On Thursdays when there are no Pixie Cups challenges, join the TeamSpeak Server and help FaTeReLLa to Beat the Bot-Invasion in Co-Op matches.
FRIDAY
4PM CET – YOLO-Solo
Tune in on Fridays for some exciting Orcs Must Die! Unchained matchmaker gameplay. Join FaTeReLLa as she tries not to die too often in public matchmaking games!
Changes Robot’s “Orcs After Dark” stream
There is also scheduling change for Robot’s popular “Orcs After Dark” stream. Following fan feedback the stream will now commence from the earlier time of 6:30pm – 8:30pm CDT. If you havn’t already been to Orcs After Dark stream, be sure to tune in sometime. Its a great stream with chances to win prizes, Free card packs, Beta friend codes, and even instant access Beta Codes. There are reasons to join whether you are in the OMDU beta or not!
REF look forward to seeing you on either the GameForge or Robot streams!
Just over a week ago OMDU had a presence at the yearly Gamescom event in Germany. At Gamescom we first learned about the new hero, Tundra and the new captain system. Gameforge staff were on hand at the event to show off OMDU to the masses and some of the bots flew out to join them.
Gameforge have produced a video as below giving fans an inside look at the event and interviewed Robot staffers – producer Chris Rippy and Lead Designer Ian Fischer. Check out the video below!
More Orcs on show this weekend at PAX Prime
Hot on the heels of Gamescom is PAX Prime taking place in Seattle this weekend. Robot will be at the event showing off OMDU including hosting their own Robot / OMDU panel taking place in the HEDGEHOG THEATRE on SATURDAY 8/30 1:30PM – 2:30PM. The panel will be streamed on Twitch as well – so don’t miss it!
Day 2
Following part 1 of the heroes on tour blog the fun continues as we look at Day 2. After waking up we met with FaTeReLLa once again outside the hotel as we began our tour around the city.
- Just woken up and ready to explore Karlsruhe!
As we travelled into the city we also met up once again with SiS and we bagan to make our way to the beautiful Botanic Gardens. Here we were able to relax in the peaceful setting and also got to see people pass in costumes as they headed to the second day of the festival.
We also managed to find an ideal place for an OMD killbox!
After a bit more walking around the gardens it was time to head to lunch. We walked through the city to an awesome pasta restaurant called Vapiano. This has become one of my most favourite Italian restaurants of all time. The meal is prepared fresh in front of your eyes and you can make your own dish by choosing the pasta and sauces you like. Its a bit like going to Subway, but for pasta instead! They also have some great pudding choices, I decided to opt for the more dangerous death by chocolate option.
Healthy options!
Following lunch, next up was to travel to the Karlsruhe Zoo. We didn’t see any Orcs, but we did see a whole host of other animals and have included a small gallery below. We had a good time at the zoo but boy, was it hot!
At the Zoo
After a nice time in the zoo it was time for us to tragically begin to think abut going home. We headed back to FaTeReLLa’s car to collect our bags. Her car is quite easy to spot, seeing as it has her name “FaTeReLLa”, engraved on it! With our bags in tow we headed back to the train station. I travelled back with Artimunor, Daeforce and Alastaire61 back to Frankfurt where we went our separate ways at the airport. Then it was back on the plane back to the UK taking back a Gameforge pack which we were all given which included a OMDU T-Shirt, comic book and buttons.
We all had a brilliant time on the Heroes on Tour trip. It was expertly organised by Gameforge and FaTeReLLa who looked after us very well. We hope that there will be another chance for a future trip. If you ever see a competition to visit Gameforge – be sure to enter!
REF would like to thank FaTeReLLa and the rest of the Gameforge team for a such a great weekend!
Robot Entertainment and GameForge are celebrating their one year old partnership this month. Although announced publicly in February 2014, the partnership has been forged a while before then. Today one of the producers on the EU side “IronFresh” posted in the OMDU EU forums about the one year anniversary and how far OMDU has come over the last year. Here is what he had to say:
It has been a long and interesting road to get here, but at long last we’ve achieved Closed Beta status! Additionally, this month the partnership between Gameforge and Robot Entertainment is officially one year old. I think I can speak for the whole team when I say that watching the project grow from early prototype to ‘almost live’ status has been a sometimes stressful, but always rewarding experience. Since our initial reveal at PAX East, player feedback has been regular, varied and passionate. The enthusiasm for our unique blend of PvP action and strategy, particularly from our most dedicated players, has been especially gratifying and validating. Now that most of the foundational back-end integration work and core game loop is established, we feel that the game is on a good trajectory to open the doors wide for Open Beta in a few months, and then Full Release towards the end of this year.
Special thanks are due to our dedicated group of loyal Founders, whose feedback has been instrumental in the ongoing evolution of the game. We may not always agree with or implement every suggestion, but the feedback is being heard and influences the day-to-day planning and prioritisation of features as well as ongoing balance and core gameplay refinement. Thank you! Things to look forward to in the short & medium term include: social management & player-reporting systems, team matchmaking, and ranked play. Our pre-release expansion content is also coming soon, and new heroes and skins will continue to be regularly released. By now, all Founders should have received their extra gold and content. We will likely see a couple more account wipes before Open Beta, so now is a perfect time to spend your gold, test out the shop, and experiment with our first wave of heroes, minions, traps, glyphs and gear!
If you’re a new player, welcome aboard! Thanks a lot for your interest and early involvement: we’re happy to have you here. While there is a lot going on in Orcs Must Die! Unchained, a bit of knowledge and practice can go a long way. Before jumping in blindly, we highly recommend you spend some quality time with the tutorial or check out our Guide and Tutorial section on the forums here:
http://board.omd.gameforge.com/board45-o…e-and-tutorial/
There are also many helpful players out there, so ask questions and follow the advice of your teammates. We all had to learn the basics at some point, so keep calm, don’t feed the enemy team and be sure to upgrade your Warcamps and minions! Usually things start to make sense after two or three matches.
As we have already seen, opening the doors wide to more players has both positive and negative impacts on the general gameplay experience, as the player population grows. While upcoming social, reporting, and matchmaking features will help ensure a better experience for all, please remember that negativity can be a vicious cycle. We all need to be aware of our individual power and influence to counteract negativity through our actions, behaviour and attitudes. It often requires much less effort to help out and coordinate with your team than to flame a new user for their ignorance. The tone we set as players has a cumulative influence on the community at large, so don’t be mean. Kill them instead with kindness!
So on this note, the gates are open and the Warcamps are maxed. Let’s all push the lane into an exciting future and ultimate victory for Orcs Must Die! Unchained!
I’m sure that fans will agree that the future looks very bright for OMDU!
Last weekend Gameforge held their first “Heroes on Tour” event for the Orcs Must Die! Unchained EU community. The event hosted by GameForge offered a raffle where by members of the community in the EU who were alpha players could enter a contest to win one of eight lucky spots on the trip. The winners of the competition were Shim, Alastaire61, Artimunor, Daeforce, apin and cptcrunch. REF was also invited to attend. Haggy was also a winner but was unfortunately unable to attend.
Day 1
From my side I flew out from Heathrow, London via Lufthansa to Frankfurt, Germany. Once in Frankfurt I had to catch a train to Karlsruhe. Luckily I managed to meet up with Artimunor and Daeforce on the train and we travelled south all the way down to Karlsruhe on the Deutsch Bahn. Upon our arrival FaTeReLLa greeted us at the station and we met up with Alastaire61 and Shim who had already arrived. From there we went to the hotel to relax for a bit before heading out to GameForge HQ!
Looking slightly tired!
GameForge have a huge office spanning multiple buildings. If you are unfamiliar about GameForge, they have over 400 employees and support a number of high profile games including Aion, TERA, Metin2, Runes of Magic, Wizard101 and S.K.I.L.L. Special Force 2. They are by no means a small operation. Founded in 2003 they have over 450 million registered users. Its well worth taking a peek at GameForge’s about us page to learn more about them.
After enjoying some pizza and learning a bit about GameForge, we sat down with some GameForge designers and talked about some of their upcoming plans for OMDU. We are bound by secrecy here so unfortunately we cannot spill the beans, but rest assured they have some cool stuff coming. It was great to be able to talk openly about their plans and OMDU in general between the heroes on tour and GameForge staff. Following our discussion we were taken on a tour of the GameForge offices which included the Community Management office and the OMDU room.
The OMDU room is where it all happens, including preparing patch releases and translation. The staff here work very hard (at all hours!) to bring us the best OMDU experience possible. After our tour it was time to get down to playing the game! We were split into two teams across the room and we battled out a few games.
This team, the team on the left did well to win two times!
Look at that level of concentration!
Following the team games we went on to do some matchmaking games. As it happens by stroke of luck one team happened to find themselves on MrOithintfb‘s Twitch stream!
Following the games it was time to return to the hotel to get ready for the evening antics. We took the time to explore Karlsruhe on the way back and did some shopping. We had fun negotiating the Karlsruhe tram system! We met up with FaTeReLLa right on time and then we proceeded to head to the Badisch Brauhaus for our evening meal and OMDU celebrations. We were joined once again by GameForge designers and ES community manager SiS.
Celebrating to the long success of OMDU!
We had a great meal here and portion sizes were certainly very big! The atmosphere was great with outside eating and biergarten feel. Following the delicious meal it was time to make our way to the evenings entertainment – the Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum. This was a fantastic festival event with many people dressed up in clothes from the middle ages. We saw some great music here and a fantastic fire spectacular act and it was a very unique experience definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Check out the gallery below to see some of the photos from the event.
We also have two short videos from the event to give you an idea what the music was like.
Following the evenings activities it was time for us to retire to bed, as you can imagine we were all very tired!
Day 2
Be on the look out for part 2 later this week where we look back on day 2 of the Heroes on Tour where the fun sure continued!
