Realm of the Titans

Closed Beta
I got an invitation from Aeria games to join the closed beta of Realm of the Titans. I decided to try this out. The game is free to download and play (at least for now), happens mainly online but uses its own 'client' (not your browser). After downloading and installing 500Mb of whatever (windows only) I was set to go. If you don't know about MOBA, Aeria Games and Heroes, this is your post. I don't know either, so let's see what this game is like if you enter entirely blank.

Getting started
I found a goodie-code here, and signed in. This didn't work at first, but after logging in-and-out on the website first, I could get in. I confessed I was an amateur en started with the tutorial.

Tutorial
The game starts with a fully interactive in-game tutorial. I try to ignore the huge amounts of stats and panels at the top, bottom and side of my screen and follow the tutorial step by step. Right when I'm about to slay the inner tower my computer freezes. Patiently I restart, update my video drivers, grab a mouse (much better than a touchpad) and try again. I redo the whole tutorial and enter the main menu.

Play!
So, let's play. I missed the AI option and went straight into Match Making. This process picks 2 teams of 5 players each that all have roughly the same skill (skill as in: how good you are in playing the game). Every game starts by picking 1 Hero. Each one has different characteristics and special abilities. Once all players are set to go the game is loaded.

Level!
You start from scratch with your Hero at level 1. There's a battle field that contains buildings and scenery. You see the game from the top (there is a fog of war), and solely control (move / attack) your Hero. By collecting XP and gold you can level up, buy new items and improve your special abilities. This all will make you more powerful.

Battle!
On the map, players from both teams can freely roam around. There's other players to fight, but also Bosses, neutral creeps and spawned enemy units controlled by the computer. Fights happen real time (not turn based). Apart from normal attacking you can also launch special attacks. These cost mana. When hit you will loose health points. When they're all gone, you die (but will respawn after a timeout). Both health and mana can be restored in many ways (spells, items, potions, the fountain). There's also ways to heal others.

Win!
The goal is to knock down the opponents inner tower. There are also other towers in the game. These spawn AI-controlled units from the team that owns that tower. These will go to battle all by themselves. The map is mirrored and at the other side the same type of units will spawn. So without player interaction, there's a lot of fighting going on but this is well balanced. Players can strategically join parties of spawned troops and thereby shift the balance in their favor.

Titan Powerrrr!
Each player has a set of Titan powers he/she can choose from. These powers grow stronger over time (they do for all players). You can switch special power every 3 minutes.

Balance
There's a lot of balancing going on in the game. Death-timeouts become longer and more expensive (if you want to 'sell out' and immediately respawn by spending gold coins) at the end of the game, AI-controlled units become stronger, Titan skills more powerful, etc. A game will take between 10 and 45 minutes (very rough estimate based on my own games).

Meta-stuff
The fun part is that you all players will start from scratch at the start of each game. Well, there is some meta-leveling, badge collection, ranking, Titan power tweaking (this part seems not completely finished, or at least very unclear), in-game-money-spending and item-gathering going on. I am however not really sure whether this can actually bring in-game advantages (over other players).

Overall verdict
The game looks nice, is very fun to play and addictive. I do think there is many more games in the same genre, but since I don't know them I can not make a comparison and might be more positive than others would be. The game is also relatively accessible, I got the hang of it faster than I had expected when I first saw all the stats and panels. The tutorial will help, but will also leave a lot to discover. But over time, things will become more clear. And there is a lot of information in game about the effects of spells and items. One can always play an AI game to experiment, learn and get to know the different heroes and their strengths and weaknesses.

PS: This game is called a MOBO game: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. It's a new and upcoming genre.

Social News Site // Digg.com

Digg.com is a social news site. Everyone can submit stories (ranging from keyboard cat tributes to election debates, with a lot of web/tech/science stuff in between). People can vote on stories, which is called 'to digg'. Popular stories reach the front page. Negative votes can be placed as well. This is called 'to bury'. Without an account, you can't interact, but you can read the articles (ie skim the most popular stories).

(Most) Popular, upcoming, etc
There's various algorithms that determine which article is placed in which list. There's lists with popular stories, but also more personalized lists for those that are logged in. With an account, you can also follow others (ie your friends or interesting people), so that their stories and diggs are brought to your attention.

Community and Commenting
There's a lively community that submits, digs and comments to stories. The fact that you can easily and anonymously bury comments of others is a good weapon against spam. Be warned though that your comments can and will be buried also for other, often unknown, reasons.

Spam
Only a few days active on the site I already got a bunch of followers. Most were newly created accounts that had already submitted a bunch of articles all originating from the same website. Some cases were obviously pure spam, others were less clear.

Background
Digg.com was founded by Kevin Rose. He's now left the company after a roll out of a new (game changing) version caused a lot of fuzz, partially due to technical difficulties. This was a good example of how the foundation of any social site (the visitors) can all of a sudden collapse or even turn against it. Since then, the site seems to have picked up, but its foundations are no longer as sturdy as they used to be. Still, the site is at Alexa rank 143 world wide!

DoNanza

Introduction
If you like to earn money from home, you might want to look at DoNanza. Note that I wrote work from home. This has nothing to do with any get-rich-fast scams. DoNanza enables you to search for work you can do from home.

First experience
These work-from-home projects are visible without logging in, but you can also make an account. This is easily done, apart from name/email/password you only have to select a maximum of five skills you have. This way, DoNanza can both personalize the work-offers presented to you and notify you of new additions.

Only a search engine
I quickly realized that DoNanza is just a search engine. To actually place a bid (ie 'I want to do this work for X dollars') you will have to make an account on the site the actual offer originates from. This is annoying and I wonder what would be smarter: build a profile and reputation on one freelance website or divide your energy over multiple ones.

Pros
DoNanza does however do a good job structuring data from many websites, tracking statistics and posting interesting findings on their blog. Especially as a start, to see which type of offers are placed on which sites and marketplaces, DoNanza might be very helpful!

Publishers Program for webmasters
DoNanza also provides a widget ('project board') that you can put on your site or blog with which you can earn money (a pay-per-click/pay-per-view system). Personally I haven't tried this, if I do, I will tell you all about it in a separate blog post.

Dragons Of Atlantis

Introduction
Dragons of Atlantis by Kabam is a strategic game on Facebook (4M active players / month). You have to grow your empire by gathering resources, upgrading buildings, building an army and going to war. There are many other players on the same server which you can attack or form an alliance with. In summary, the games looks nice, is fun to play for a while but is plagued by imbalances and bugs.

Gameplay
You start 'in protection' and are guides by means of hints and goals. After that, you're on your own, with a lot left to figure out. Other players or external resources may help. Choose which buildings to build, improve research in various areas, train an army and use it to increase resource income by conquering 'wildernesses'. You can do this all without the game becoming a major time hog, but you will need patience because the bigger upgrades may take days or weeks to complete.

Boring
Over time, boring and time consuming aspects of the game creep up, which are nevertheless essential to increase your power. In other words: those who spend the most of their days playing the game will be the strongest. This mainly involves searching for dragon eggs (which 'drop' only once in many times you launch an attack) and gathering resources by attacking 'neutral' camps ('Antropous Camps') over and over again. There's a browser-plugin available to 'automate' these activities but this is against the rules and will probably be acted upon in the future.

Balancing & Strategy
Knowledge about the relative strength of various troop types seems to be quite sparse. Also, a big element of chance (perhaps driven by technical problems) appears to be involved. The major downside of the game is that relative power doesn't seem to play a role in player vs player battles. So, the more troops you have, the stronger you are and there is no penalty for picking on the smaller players. A lost battle will result in loosing all your troops (rebuilding may take weeks), but you can hide your troops: they will not defend your city but won't die. Almost everyone does this, and player vs player make little sense.

Leveling, Money and Friends
There are many online (Facebook) games these days that contain elements to make you spread the game, keep playing and spend money. Getting experience points and leveling up has been a proven incentive. In Dragons of Atlantis, your level is determined by the size ('power') of your empire, but your level does not affect the game itself. You have to appoint your friends as generals, but until now there's no need for them to play the game and if you cancel all feed requests the won't even notice. Perhaps this will change in the future but for now the amount of your friends that also play doesn't really matter. What does matter however, is rubies. Rubies are bought with real money and give a player huge advantage (speed up processes and buy resources and dragon eggs).

Bugs
Over time, the game is often hit by outage and (worse) bugs. These include minor or temporary glitches as well as bigger problems. The game is still heavily under development which means bugs will be solved. It also means new features are added which may introduce new bugs or hamper your strategy.

The Giants // alexa.com

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