Clan Wars

Official Blog for the popular Browser MMORPG "Clan Wars". You can play Clan Wars at clan-wars.org

Author: highborn

Contributor: Slayback

Greetings Disciples!

With the release of our facebook application last week, our app has already become very popular very quickly. Within the first we have already received close to two thousand facebook members. Everything has gone as well as expected, except for one small, but rather important detail.

If you are familiar with facebook, then you are familiar with requests. No doubt you have checked your friend requests and seen requests for other applications, groups and more in the same area of your facebook profile. This is the core function that causes applications to spread so quickly on facebook. Our application, unfortunately does not have requests working appropriately right now (though we have done quite well without them).

The reason for this is that facebook only allows 750 pixels of width for the canvas page of the application (this is the page on facebook that app actually sits on). Because our application is over 800 pixels wide, we were faced with the decision to either redesign our entire UI, or simply make the app appear in a pop-out window. We felt that leaving the screen size wider was the best choice, but realized later that this kept the player invitations from being sent to the requests are of the site. Since our app is not technically running inside facebook, the players never see the required confirmation window for sending requests. As a result all invitations are being sent to the notifications area of facebook rather than requests.

Thanks to our brilliant engineering team, we have found a solution. With clever use of Ajax and other Java tricks, we are working on a solution that will make the confirmation box appear inside the game even though it is playing outside of facebook. This solution should be in place before weekend, so all of your invitations will be sent to the right place.

Once that is complete, you may see further optimizations inside of Disciple, but our new focus will be twofold: iPhone and in game expansion.

We will be working on an iPhone application that will be free and available in the appstore once it is finished and approved by Apple (probably a few months). Our aim is to make sure that the iPhone application ties into the same servers that you play on for both the web and facebook app, so you should be able to access your existing characters and account with no issue.

Simultaneously we will begin introducing new content into the game, such as quests, weapons, armor, and eventually new races and classes.

Thanks everyone for your support, and I will see you in the game.

Greetings Disciples!

We are proud to announce that Disciple is coming to Facebook sometime next week.  Facebook is an excellent platform for games like Disciple and we are very excited to port our game to this Platform.

Why Facebook, and why now? As the growth of browser based MMOs sky rockets, facebook has become the de-facto platform for these types of games. Some of you may be familiar with games on facebook such as Mafia Wars, and Mob Wars. Mafia Wars has obtained over 12 million active users in its first year on facebook alone. Since Mafia Wars has become a hit, many "Me-too" Mob type games have popped up trying to emulate the success of Mafia Wars. We feel that Disciple has some advantages that will make it very popular on facebook. The first is that we are not another Mafia game. Disciple is set in an original fantasy universe that should provide facebook gamers a relief from the dozen of Mafia related games currently trying to grab their share of the facebook market. In addition, all of the Mafia games are text based with some static images. Disciple has rather rich graphics for a browser game with no downloads or plugins required. This means a whole new level of facebook gaming.

We started the development of Disciple in May of 2008, and at that time it was impossible to have Java/Flash applications on facebook.  Facebook started supporting Flash and Java early in 2009, so we knew this would be a next step for us after the game was launched on a stand alone website. The advantages to playing on facebook instead of the website are the plethora of social options that will be available, such as adding your facebook friends to your Clan, Allies, and Enemies. In addition, your friends will be able to keep track of your progress in Disciple via wall posts and the like.

In addition to the facebook application, we will be adding facebook connect to the web version of the game. This means you can both register and login with your facebook login information directly on disciplemmo.com, which should save new and old players time getting into the game and the action. In addition, players that login in with their facebook id on the website will have all of the social options to interact with their friends on facebook, as if they were playing on the facebook app itself.

Another great thing about they we built the facebook application is that players on the website and players on facebook will be interacting with one another. Facebook and the website live on all of the same servers, so it doesn't matter where you play.

Once our Facebook application is released, our next step will be to build out an iPhone application for Disciple. Many of you may not realize this, but Resistor, the company behind Disciple has also been making iPhone applications not related to Disciple, one of which is among the top downloaded paid applications of all time.

The last piece of all of this is that we are integrating new 'payment' options into Disciple similar to what you see on other facebook games such as Mafia Wars. This means that if you do not want to pay with cash, you can simply fill out a survey, or take advantage of one of our sponsor's offers to gain the subscription points or in game currency you need. Don't worry, you will not see display ads anywhere in the game.

In closing, we feel that both the facebook application and facebook connect will bring an entire new and very large group of players to Disciple that will make the gaming experience that much more rich to everyone. We hope you enjoy.