Blog for servants! Earn 10,000+ servants!

As mentioned a number of times, we are actively looking for ways for our players to earn servants. Today we are rolling out a ‘blog for servants’ offer! Basically, we want to reward you for helping spread the word about Realm of Empires!
So, if you have a blog, know someone with a blog, write for a magazine, know someone who writes for a magazine etc, and you can either write a favorable blog, publish an article about us, or influence someone to do so, then we would like to reward you handsomely!
You do not actually have to write the article, but at least influence someone to write one. If the author will confirm you as the reason for writing the publication you will be rewarded!

Rules

• The article / blog must be favorable towards realm of empires and must include a link to http://www.realmofempires.com/
• One offer per person unless you clear it with us first
• NO SPAM! Anything that could be considered as spam is not allowed.
• This is a limited time offer.
  

How we determine the reward amount
We ultimately decide if the article/blog is acceptable for this offer and every article that is accepted will earn a minimum of 50 servants. We will then decide how much more is the publication worth based on the following:

• Popularity of the blog / magazine
• Quality of the publication (is it engaging, is it well written, proper grammar and spelling, length, presentation, how favorable it is to Realm Of Empires etc)
• Relevance of the blog / magazine to the game (an online strategy game magazine/website will be considered more relevant than a food magazine :)
• Presentation of the publication - does it include nice screen shots of the game? Does it include nice images?

How much can I expect to get?
A paragraph length blog entry on a personal blog with minimum popularity will earn you 50-100 servants. Article on a relatively popular gaming website will easily earn you 10,000 servants. Get us into wired magazine, and there will be servants coming out of your … ears! :)

However, a new blog, created just for this offer, with no readers, will normally not be accepted.

Maximize your reward - Include nice images!
Feel free to use any of the game images you choose. We also creted a few nice images for you to use here: http://s650.photobucket.com/albums/uu225/RealmofEmpires/

Maximize your reward - promote your blog!
Remember that the goal of this promotion, is to help spread the word about realm of empires. If you write an blog that no one reads, it has very minimal value to us. However, you can increase its value greatly, and hence increase the reward, if you try to prmote your blog in some way. Consider posting it on:

• digg.com
• buzz.yahoo.com
• delicious.com
• slashdot.org
• stumbleupon.com
• reddit.com
• ping.fm
• twitter
• etc

How to claim your reward

Email cases@roe.fogbugz.com with subject “blog for servants offer” (please get the subject right for prompt response!). Include a link to the article with any explanation, or metrics on the blog/website/magazine that you feel are relevant. Send using the email that identifies you are the author of the publication. If you are not the author, include the author on the email and he will have to verify you are the reason for this blog/article.

Remember to help us out in determining the popularity of the blog, website or magazine. Help us get the proper information, or offer us the matrics if you have them.

We will review your entry and will get back to you as soon as possible ( we aim for a 5 day turn around)


Yeah, yeah, you will just not 'accept' my article won’t you!?
No, we plan to accept every entry unless it is very poorly done/trivial, does not promote us at all, or even worse, damages us. We want to encourage you to use your talents to help us grow accepting articles will help us accomplish this goal.


Can I get an estimate before going to the trouble of writing?
Definitely! If you are thinking of taking advantage of this offer, but not sure if it will be acceptable, or what the reward amount will be, submit your idea to rewards@realmofempires.com and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Include as much relevant information as possible.


Examples of what will NOT be accepted
Remember that the idea behind this offer is to reward you for helping to promote Realm Of Empires.
Creating a brand new personal blog just for the purpose of this offer, a blog that has no readers of any kind, does not promote us and will not be acceptable. This offer is for exising blogs, website or articles with at least some popualrity /reader base.
Blogs with spelling mistakes, gramatical errors will not be accepted

Allowing Realm Of Empires to publish short stories to your wall

At realm of empires, we only publish relevant stories about significant events in the game ( read about stories we publish ).

We strive to make the stories fun, interesting, appealing to the eye to your and to your friends.

Being able to publish stories to your wall, helps us grow! Facebook may publish those stories to your friends news feed hence increasing the chances that Realm Of Empires will be discovered by others.

If you are enjoying the game, and would like to help us grow, we would very much like to ask you to allow us to post stories to your profile. As explained here we publish very few stories, and only of significant events in the game.

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE for helping us grow!

Allow Realm Of Empires to post stories to your wall in 60 seconds.

Step 1: Login to Facebook and click the Applications button on bottom left of the screen


Step 2: Click the Edit button.


Step 3: Locate Realm of Empires and click Edit Settings



Step 4: On the Wall tab, select 'Allow Realm of Empires to publish specific story size (...)" and select "Short" as the story size.

Stories Realm Of Empires publishes to your wall

As seasoned facebook user, you probably know that Facebook Applications you authorize, can post stories to your wall.

Those stories are supposed to tell your friends significant events in your 'life'. Unfortunately, many applications spam their members.

Many game post as many stories as the they possibly can, mostly of trivial events events such as of you inviting friends to the application ("Bill has invited his friends to join him in something wars") or clicking a complete quest button ("Bill stashed away a hoard of gold in Dragon Wars")

At Realm of Empires, we aim to only publish significant stories. Here are the stories we publish:


You registered at a realm


You joined or created a clan


You accepted a new title


You conquered a new village



We plan to make those stories more interesting and relevant by including unique graphics to every title, different graphics, and your statistics in conquered village story etc.

Cannot enter realm of empires - 3rd party cookie issue

Problem

I cannot enter the game. Everytime I click on Login or Enter, it just takes me back the main screen.

Reason

We use cookies to remember who you are, ie to log you in. Because Realm Of Empires is running inside Facebook iframe, Realm of Empires is considered a '3rd party' so you must enable 3rd party cookies.

Solution

While in Beta, we only support Fire Fox 3.x and Internet Explorer 7. If you are using a different browser and find a solution to this problem, please send us some information so that it can be added here

Fire Fox 3.x

Enable 3rd party cookies. Go to Tools->Options go to Privacy tab and check mark 'Accept third-party cookies'

Internet Explorer 7

You must allow Third-party cookies or, add http://www.realmofempires.com/ as a trusted site.

Under Tools->Internet Options, go to Security Tab

There you can add http://www.realmofempires.com/ to trusted sites:

OR, go to Privacy tab



There either lower the security level to High or lower OR, click Advanced and enable third-party cookies

Changes to premium features based on your feedback

Many of you have expressed your displeasure at our recent game update with regards to the features in RoE. As many of you know, there is no such thing as a "free" game. Games must be financed whether it be through advertising or by the players themselves.

Banner Advertising
Early on we decided against using banner advertising in our game. This is for several reasons including the fact that facebook gives us very limited room on the screen to work with, as well as the ads being intrusive and disruptive. Any advertisment you see outside of our game window is a facebook ad, and the proceeds go to facebook and not to us, not even a portion. But, we are re-examining if advertising could be a better or alternative way to finance the game.

No direct advantages
Our original intent was that we would not allow players to simply buy themselves to the top. Ie, premium features will not offer *direct* advantages such as buying silver or troops and unlocking special troops or buildings. Our aim was and still is to make the game completely playable without having to unlock any extra features. The goal of premium features is to make the game more convenient to play, to save time on tasks, etc... Every features we locked provides a function that can be accomplished in other ways but less conveniently. That was and is our promise.

Ways to earn servants
We also understand that some players will not pay to play a facebook game (regardless of the reasons), and we want you to continue playing and enjoying the game. For these players, we hope that the basic features are enough to keep the game fun and enjoyable, however we also give these players the ability to earn servants to unlock premium features by several means:

1. Players that are of Knight status will get 15 servants for each friend that you invite that also reaches the level of Knight. We put this restriction so that we abide by facebook's terms of use on not encouraging spam invites.


2. Our weekly fan draw - we give 1 lucky fan 500 servants each week


3. Future contests and giveaways that we are planning.


4. We are in process of offering a ‘complete an offer’ to earn servants like other facebook games


5. and various types of advertising – this is very time consuming and will take some time for us to develop necessary relationship to offer this.
   
   

Let us now take a moment to address your specific concerns and questions:

What will be locked next ?
Critical, please at least read this
Many times we’ve seen a ‘what will be locked next?’ question on the board; a concern that in next release even more features will be locked down and that the cost of play/package may increase as we offer new features.

It is critical that everyone understands that we will not lock down any more existing features AND we intend to offer new premium features as part of the nobility package AND we intend to keep the package fixed at 100 servants.

What this means, is that as new premium features are rolled out, those who have the nobility package active will automatically get them. Some features we are planning:

• better battle simulator -> auto paste troops from reports and from your villages



• repeat / copy your last command or any command



• quickly support your village or someone else’s village from near by villages done similarly to convenient silver transport



• quick access to your last 10 commands



• your spy reports visible on map



• strength of village indicator show on the map if you have a spy report on it



• easy way to share reports with your clan and others



• ability to put notes in incoming troops



• ability to hide some incoming troops/attacks



• launch attacks and supports right off the map; no need to go to another page



• purchase treasure chest with one click at all/some villages



• mass recruit troops at all/some villages



• a personal assistant that manages your village for you (maybe, not yet decided if this is possible)



• ability to do most of your work such as troops recruitment and commands right on the village overview



• different skins for the game including a none graphical one.



• ability to access the game on mobile devices



• a TON of other improvements, some premium, many at no cost

There may be features such as the giant map, which we consider a luxury and is very resource intensive that may be offered outside of the package. But we don’t have any plans for those at the moment.

Again, there will be MANY improvements to game that will be offered at no cost for everyone.

Cost of play
Some of you mentioned that is costs $4.95 per month to play. Please note that we are offering larger servant packages reducing this cost to as low as 2.49/month. It is our goal to keep the cost to be less than a typical movie rental.

'Essential' features Free ?
We've also heard from some of you that you would pay for what you consider premium features but you will not pay for what you consider essential features. Please note that in this case those essential features are actually free as we priced the package so that it is much more economical than unlocking features on their own. So if you pay for those ‘extras’, you get the other features essentially for free; that will become more and more apparent as we add more premium features but the package stays at 100 servants.

How do I get a refund for old features?
Some of you mentioned that you were not given a refund for depreciated feature you unlocked before this release. You have to manually obtain the refund under tools->unlock features->cancel features.

What is changing?
We agree that it is a bad practice to take away features you previously enjoyed for free. We deeply regret doing so. It was our intention to do this much earlier but, right or wrong, we decided to implement some of your suggestions to make the game better. We neglected to clearly communicate to you what is a premium feature and what is not and for this we sincerely apologize. We tried to accomplish this with the building queue and map being locked with a trial but did not do it for all features that we intended to be premium.

Because of this, we’ve decided to make some changes; we have decided to keep the following features free on both current realms:

• Troop movements on your village overview
  
• Incoming and Outgoing troops from all villages


• Support and Abroad troops from all villages
  
• 'Busy' counters on village overview

In addition we have decided that the Large map will be reduced to 1 servant on Realm 2 (and remain free on Realm 1). We believe that this is more than fair as for $1.95 you can use this feature for over 30 months in the realm. A player can do well navigating the 7x7 map with the mini-map in the top right corner. We also provide you the option to use the RoE Mapper tool http://new.realmofempires.com/roepowertools/roept.aspx for Windows users which allows them to see the entire realm.

Those who have been with us for a long time, know that we listen very closely to your feedback to the extent that due to your suggestions we’ve decide to implement the ‘night build feature’ to alleviate any possibility of offering a direct advantage with premium features (see

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=10471770557&topic=6656).

We regret that this release has stirred such deep emotions. We hope that those changes and explanations will allow non-paying player to continue to enjoy the game. We hope that those with the ability to support us monetarily will do so, allowing us to continue make the game better. For those who cannot pay, we hope you will help us grow by promoting us, and we intend to reward your help with servants in various ways.

We are still in a very active beta. We have a long way to go before we consider the product ‘finished’. We hope to have you all here when we launch the ship.