Last night I discovered why. Admittedly it was just after midnight and that is a tiny bit unusual for shopping. But, we do live in a twenty four hour society now. So Tesco stay open twenty four hours a day.  So I can shop twenty four hours a day.

At the back isle near the bakery there was a magnificent chorus of shelf stackers singing: “Banana!” So, it might be that Tesco now have a policy of only employing people who can stack shelves and say “Banana!” at the same time. That will be on the list of interests and talents when I get an application form.

Along the various isles were trolleys of stuff. The generic stuff of supermarket commerce. There is a warehouse somewhere with stacks of stuff that is magically transformed into things when it is stacked. Perhaps that is a talent I need to develop (possibly using Java classes) for future employment with Tesco. Making thing stuff stacks.

Having hunted down a few bottles of this, some bags of that and box or two of the other, plus one chocolate orange, I headed to the checkouts to pay for my booty.  To my amazement and chagrin, there was not a single check out operator.

Which explains why they never sent me an application form: they do not want the mess of actual people hanging around the checkouts. So, carrying the Booty – and feeling increasingly piratical – I headed to the exit. With thoughts of shouting “Arrrrr!” with loud, passionate, grog induced joy at getting this, that and the other – as well as a chocolate orange – for nary a penny I spotted the “Self Servile”  tills.

I have only taken three Pirate Lessons. So, realistically, when the opportunity comes to pay for stuff, I take it. And the Self Servile Tills had pretty touch screens on them. Appealing to my inner geek. Which is how, despite the fact I should be getting paid  to work on one of the tills, I started checking out this, that and the other for Tesco.

The tills are magnificent examples of how to turn your customers into free checkout staff. First you scan the item. It shows you a picture and then you stack it on a weighing machine. This is to stop you from cheating. It occurred to me that Tesco were cheating me out of a job by not paying me to check out stuff. Not only that, but they were obliging me to get the task right. To be responsible for the safety of their goods until they were paid for by my boyfriend who was with me.

So surely, I was being a check out clerk. Surely, Tesco have become so modern that they no longer require application forms. Tesco just imply a contract at the tills. You either go to a self servile  till and accept the contract or you go to a till with a person and reject the contract.

Which leaves me confused. With an implied contract I should get paid. Tesco did not have anybody to accept my invoice there and then – but it was late and the office staff had obviously gone home. So I shall be invoicing Tesco for my time.

It stands to reason. There is a job there and I would apply for it if they would let me have an application form. So I am willing to work. There is a job to be done as my boyfriend – who enjoyed the stuff and the chocolate egg – will confirm. He wants to have people serving him in the shops. He thinks part of Tesco’s profit (£5,21 per second) should go to having polite people stacking stuff into his hands. As a clumsy person he needs all the help he can get.

So I think I should Invoice Tesco for the job the implied contract obliged me to do. £197.23 should do it.

That should pay for the next pirate lesson.

With that out of the way a bit of an introduction is probably in order. I’ve been playing RuneScape for over five years now and FunOrb since its launch. I’ve been a RuneScape Forum Moderator for around two years and a FunOrb Forum Moderator for around a year. I’m going through a phase of being a bit bored of RuneScape and FunOrb so you probably won’t see me in-game very much.

For my first post Raz has suggested writing a bit about what being a F-Mod is like and all about so if you’re still reading this, that’s what you will be reading next. Be forewarned, I can be rather long winded.

I suppose that the best place to start is at the beginning. I had been using the RuneScape forums for around two years when one day upon logging in instead of the front page I saw in invitation letter to become a F-Mod. I immediately thought that somehow I had been redirected to a hack site and that someone was trying to steal my password. After reading the address bar about twenty times and realizing that it was legitimate, I couldn’t decide whether or not to accept! Thankfully there was an option to decide later so I choose that and started posting normally on the forums. After about three days I finally decided to accept the invitation.

While I can’t go into specifics, I can say that when I first logged in, I immediately realized that being a Moderator wasn’t going to be a picnic in any way shape or form! As a Moderator you are expected to know the rules inside and out, forwards and backwards and even sideways. Which totals up to a major headache as you delve into them as they are far more complex and detailed that the regular watered down easier to read version made readily available to the public.

On top of all that I spent the first week being terrified that I was accidentally going to ban someone or make some other mistake resulting in Jagex giving me the boot. Thankfully that didn’t happen and after the first few weeks I started to get my footing and confidence. From that day forward I’ve never looked back and I’ve enjoyed nearly every moment of it.

As a Forum Moderator I often get asked if I’m treated differently. Sadly most of the time I do, for better or worse. For some Moderators this sadly doesn’t seem to bother them but I’ve never been a fan of being treated like I walk on water. It’s just not for me, so I generally find myself wondering if someone is being abnormally nice to me because of my post color or if they are genuinely a nice person. On the flip side there are those that treat me like fecal matter simply because of my post color. There isn’t much one can do about it though, you just have to deal with it or quit.

Being a Moderator isn’t all negative though, being able to help keep the forums safe and clean as well as helping the community out through education or just by editing titles and such can be a very rewarding experience and by that I mean that warm fuzzy feeling, not actual rewards.

Well that’s pretty much all I could come up with off the top of my head about being a Forum Moderator so Raz has kindly supplied some questions for me. If you have any questions as well, post them and I will do my best to answer them.

Q: Do you have any tips for anyone who might be aspiring to a green crown?

A: Probably the best thing that you can do is to have good posting etiquette. That means that when you do post, you should try to make it as constructive as possible, with good grammar and spelling. Being helpful and respectful on the forums helps as well but don’t confuse being helpful with WBMing as this will decrease your chances. Basically, don’t tell users that they are breaking the rules or making a mistake, leave that to us. Also be patient, it doesn’t happen overnight, it took around two years for me and I’ve known it to take longer.

Q: Would you rather be a Player Moderator?

A: Not in a million years, being a Forum Moderator is the most rewarding and challenging of the two, I wouldn’t refuse a duel modship though.

Q: Do people recognize you as a F-Mod off of the forums?

A: Sometimes, I have more people recognize me from the FunOrb forums than the RuneScape forums though, since the RS forums are much busier and I spend more time on the FunOrb forums now.

Q: Do you think that being a F-Mod has made you stick around more?

A: Definitely, I have stayed on as a paying customer of Jagex’s for way longer than I normally would have otherwise. Knowing that I am in a great position to have a good impact on the community (which I love) has caused me to stick around.

Q: Do you think that Jagex always chooses F-Mods wisely?

A: No, Jagex as a whole (Though they will rarely admit it.) does make mistakes, as they are only human (arguably). I’ve definitely raised an eyebrow over some of their choices. Take for instance a certain person who everyone on the forums saw as a WBM and a kiss-up being crowned. Overall though I think they do a really good job of who they pick.

Q: Do you think that FunOrb needs more F-Mods?

A: While I always like to see new modlings I think that FunOrb has more than enough at the moment. Hopefully FunOrb will continue to grow and I will get to see some very deserving people obtain their crown.

As we were walking, I had taken the money I had in my pocket out, and was holding it in my left hand. I was picking up a coin with my right hand and tapping it against the others before dropping it on the pile and picking up another.

We were all debating about tips. When should you give someone a tip, and how much to give. The only part I remembered us agreeing on was that you shouldn’t tip delivery drivers, as they get paid to drive the car/bike and don’t really do anything else.

After a while we reached the edge of the park and were stood at a road, on the opposite side was a petrol station. We started to walk over there. The short guy disappeared at this point leaving me with the leather coat man.

As we were standing by the side of the road talking, a bus skidded on the road and span out, the back end flew onto the pavement missing my by inches. Leather coat boy just laughed.

The bus, which at this point turned into a petrol tanker, skidded off round the corner towards the entrance to the petrol station and span out again. Eventually he managed to get inside and started to refill up the tanks underground at the station.

I said a few harsh words about the driver (the sort you wouldn’t say in front of your grandparents). He had just almost killed me so I felt quite justified saying them. Leather coat boy jumped right in at  the drivers defence, and apparently they seemed to know each other. He shouted over to the driver “Alright Stan?”.

I noticed that he was filling in the underground tanks, and felt a little unsafe seeing him handling things that could cause a very large explosion after seeing him drive, so I said so and started to leave.

Leather coat boy seemed to share my opinion as he started to follow me.

And that’s where the dream ends…

Well I logged back on the next day, checked, nothing, checked a little later, nothing…This continued for a few hours. Eventually, I refreshed a page, and found a game half added into the website. The banner was up but the everything else hadn’t been changed yet.

I quickly logged on as I love the buzz of a full lobby all excited about a new game. I entered, well a full lobby buzzing with excitement because of a new game… I said hello to a few people in the room I knew and sat talking for a while. I saw my clan leader (Mod Sallyd) had created a game, so I clicked into it, and after a brief exchange we started to play.

Half way though the game (I was losing badly by this point), Sallyd complained that it wasn’t her making the moves. AI had taken over and was had started making (very bad moves) for her. I quickly beat the AI and returned to the lobby thinking it was all a little strange.

I played a couple more Jmods, and was spectating a game containing a couple of people I know playing when I got a message though all the lobby chit chat.

This server will be shut down in 5 minutes.

“Ahhh, Sallyd has told someone about the bug and they’ll be updating a little fix for it” I thought. Just before the 5 mins we’re up I logged off and headed to my FunOrb sanctuary, the Forums and joined in with some discussions about the new game.

A few mins later I checked the server list to see if anyone was back on the game yet, as I was keen to carry on playing – well, there was no server there. I checked the forums to see if there had been a message posted in announcements. The game thread had been hidden. I clicked back to the homepage, gone, achievements page, gone. No sign of it anywhere.

Well they can take the game away, but we can still talk about it…right? No, all threads about the game we’re also…yup…gone.

And that, is the story of the Incredible Disappearing Game

If anyone who wasn’t able to see the game before it was removed wants some information about it, then read on.

The game was called Ataxtix and it was based on the same style as Tetra Link and set in the same place. There is a grid just like the Tetra Link one, though you could change the size of the grid when setting up games. One player controls the white pieces, one controls the blue. You start with 2 pieces, in opposite corners, so you either had the top left and the bottom right, or the top right and the bottom left. You can move one of your pieces 1 or 2 spaces per turn, moving it two spaces jumps the piece to that position, moving it one space clones that piece, so you have one in the old position AND one in the new position.

The aim of the game is to dominate the grid by having the most pieces, or trap your opponent so they can no longer make a move.

Easy to learn, hard to master. NOTE – The game is completely free.

The new video is below feel free to pass the link around, I really wont object

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6wVDbR7KqI

It set me off thinking, why are these games unpopular, and why did they fail? being unable to answer this question myself, I thought I’d ask you guys, the FunOrb players

36 Card Trick

The first game I investigated was 36 card trick. I checked the highscores and found that only  838 highscores were recorded for the last week, and in many you could tell they had quit very early in the game. Now there are about 400,000 users of FunOrb, so that really isn’t a lot. I asked a group of people, the same question, “What do you think of 36 card trick, and why do you think it failed”. Here are the responses.

Will said…

“It’s okay; it’s not anything new, really. I’d be willing to bet most people who have highscores/difficult achievements on it paused and wrote down the things on paper as they moved and such, rather than basing it off memory. It’s near impossible that way.”

Philip said…

“This game really annoyed me, first off the graphics and sounds are just horrid, even more so than usual. To be honest I’ve never made it past level one. Normally I’m not to shabby at this kind of game but this one I just couldn’t get into.

If other people are anything like me, it failed because not many people felt like wasting their time on a game that did not seem to have any real reward at the time or arguably now for that matter. The fact that on easy mode the first level was so hard (for me at least) probably didn’t help either.

I’m sure it’s more complex than that but for me, that’s why it failed in my mind.”

Dan Madeley said…

“When FunOrb was first released, 36 Card Trick was one of my favourite games.  I believe the downfall is that once you have obtained a few achievements, the game doesn’t have much else to offer.
The music is catchy on 36 Card Trick though!”

Dor Min said…

“I get a little bored of 36ct, mainly because I don’t like memory games. I think it failed because it doesn’t have as many features as most of the other games.”

Tetra Iink said…

“I think 36 Card Trick just doesn’t kinda have the full involvement, and it doesn’t sorta have the “likeability” factor (;D). It’s the sort of game I’d rather play vs my ickle sister with a real pack of cards as opposed to on the computer. I’m not good at memory and it just doesn’t appeal to me. D:”

Sleeping Dojo said…

“I think that 36 card trick is simply too luck based. A number of players therefore struggled to attain achievements simply because they never picked the right cards. The only way to get some achievements is by spending ridiculous amounts of times on it until your hand changes.
It could be made more appealing to gamers by increasing the time margins and misses for certain achievements. It’s a fun game and has good potential if made fairer.”

The Verdict

A Very difficult to even get past the first level, and it’s not very in depth. It’s a simple game based on luck that is too hard.

People play games for fun, and if a game is frustrating, then they wont find it fun and therefore, wont play.You can bring out a brilliant idea, with pretty graphics and special effects and awesome music, but if the game play isn’t fun, well then you’ve just wasted a lot of time.

Game designers have to be careful that they don’t base a game too much on luck, if a player loses a game it should be through their own fault, not based on bad luck. If a player loses though their own fault, they become slightly frustrated at themselves, and play again to try and get better, beating your shortcoming becomes a goal that you work on. When you lose through luck players become frustrated at the game, and don’t bother playing again as they don’t see any point, it’s not based on skill.

Hold The Line

The second game I looked at was Hold The Line, during the last week there were just 94 recorded highscores on the classic levels, and the rest of the levels had between 6 and 23 highscores! Obviously not a very popular game. Again I asked a group of people “What do you think of Hold The Line and why do you think it failed?”. Here are the results.

Will said…

“Like any game, it has its problems. The main one I have with it is the set of courses should be rearranged with Desert being first, and the Classic ones later, so the game isn’t so off-putting. Also, bombs that are under bridges which are impossible to see are annoying.”

Philip said…

“I had hoped that this would be a fun game but sadly it was not to be so. I like racing games, in fact I would go so far as to say that I love them. This could have been a good game but the lack of decent controls, customization or even different camera options really killed this game for me.

To start with not just everyone likes racing games, so when you combine that with a game that has a poor camera view, poor graphics, no real customization and no multi-player you can’t really expect a game to go very far.“

Dan Madeley said…

“Similar to 36 Card Trick, I think Hold the Line holds the same principle of that once you have obtained a few achievements, the game doesn’t have much else to offer.
I believe that the game has much more potential as a multiplayer game and I expressed my views to other users on the FunOrb Forums – most of which seemed to agree!
It’s a lot more fun beating your friends at a game than it is beating a CPU.  By making Hold the Line a multiplayer game, it would definitely become a top contender amongst the well established multiplayer games on FunOrb. (such as Armies of Gielinor and Arcanists)“

Dor Min said…

“I find it too hard, although I have gotten better recently. I think it failed because people didn’t like how some of the physics worked.”

Tetra Iink said…

“Hold The Line, ahaaaa. I like this game, I’ve actually completed it myself and got gold on the night circuit this week B)
But about the fail aspect of it, I don’t know, I probably presume people found it too hard, and I know what they mean.. When I first tried hold the line, I actually struggled a lot, but now, I can do it. I suppose people don’t have perseverance. I do, and I guess that’s why I have now completed it (apart from all achieves) (:”

Sleeping Dojo said…

“Hold the Line is one of those games that it can take quite a while to get into. The main issue I came across at first was the control over your chosen vehicle – or lack of it. Your car is often slow to respond and unable to get around corners. This can often be frustrating and annoying for new players, acting as a deterrent.

Secondly is the difficultly. When I originally began playing I found the first few laps hard because of the other cars getting in your way and causing you to crash. This happening even once can ruin your chances of winning. As I progressed to further courses I found them to get easier which was rather surprising. Surely it should be the other way around? If it were tweaked to allow more control and the difficulty increased the further you progress it would certainly attract more players.”

The Verdict

people believe that the controls are too hard, and that the view needs to be adjusted. The difficulty curve is also more of a difficulty zig-zag.  Again these things leave players frustrated, meaning they will just turn off the game rather than strive to be better.

Shattered Plans

My final game. Only 1085 people have EVER played a rated game. Other games on FunOrb get over 10,000 people playing a day! I asked the same question as I did for the other two games. “What do you think of Shattered Plans and why do you think it failed?”.

Will said…

“I’m sure it’s probably pretty good, but I’ve never taken the time to learn it properly. Got annoyed when I couldn’t beat the tutorial. Even if I got into it, I’d end up disappointed. Hardly anyone plays it.“

Philip said…

“This was a game that I was really looking forwards to, I still remember hoping that they would make a game like it. Well they did but somehow they managed to fuck it up as usual.

First off, I’ve never been that crazy about turn based strategy games, I was hoping for a live strategy game as I think this makes for a much more exciting and interesting game.
Why do you think Shattered Plans Failed?

I think that biggest problem was that they made it to complex for the average FunOrb user, the learning curve was just to steep for anyone to really give it a chance.”

Dan Madeley said…

“Shattered Plans never really kicked off.  Obviously the game had popularity for the first week or so that it was released, but that goes for every other game that is added to the FunOrb website.  I feel that the complexity of the instructions for the game are the pivotal in why the game isn’t amongst the rest of the more popular multiplayer games on FunOrb today.”

Dor Min said…

“I’m just really bad at that game, I have no strategy I think most people just find it too confusing.”

Tetra Iink said…

“Shattered Plans. Mhmmm… I like this game too. Why it failed? The tutorial is simply too long and confusing. They should’ve just said, all you need to do, is click where you wanna send your ships from, and where you wanna send ‘em too. Most people with an ounce of knowledge can learn as they play. I know I sorta did. This game also should fail, because it’s a good game. But the font really does suck >.<”

Sleeping Dojo said…

“Tutorial. End of.

I remember entering the lobbies on the day of release and players complaining about how it was difficult to understand and too lengthy. In my opinion these were mostly kids who get bored easily and couldn’t be bothered playing through the tutorial. As these kids are the backbone of FunOrb’s community, filling the lobbies, their lack of understanding lead to a lot of problems.
If no one understands the tutorial no one will play it. If no one will play it newer players will never get the chance to do so. The trend continues.

Fortunately Jagex announced that they would be updating the tutorial to make it more user friendly on the official FunOrb forums several months back. Once this is released the numbers playing will certainly increase. In terms of gameplay I would put it up there with AoG and Arcanists.”

The Verdict

Confusing tutorial, confusing game play. One of the major things you have to do as a games designer is find the balance between guiding your player along, and letting them do their own thing. Go to far one way and you end up with a very liner game where the player has no choice, resulting in a boring game, go to far the other way and you end up with a very confusing game as players have no idea what they are supposed to be doing. Guess which way Jagex went with this one…

The aim was to take over the other castle room by room, by entering it and staying alive inside a room for a certain amount of time.

I was firing boulders trying to break down the walls so that my team could get into the front line rooms easier and try to take over, as I was concentrating hard on this, I didn’t notice that there was a dwarf (it was a fantasy game) standing in the corner trying not to be noticed.

The dwarf had higher attack and defence stats than me,  so I knew if I attacked him unarmed I would lose and the enemy would have hold of our most powerful weapon, so I ran upstairs in my room to a landing, and entered the pod where the HUD was. I checked on how our team was doing, and, for some reason the weather forecast (apparently it’s going to rain), then looked around for any kind of weapon I could use against him.

I found a rusty sword lying around, ran back downstairs and killed the dwarf just in time. Once dead his body was absorbed into the ground, which was quite nice as I didn’t feel like being in a room with a corpse.

We started winning and got the other team down to the last 3 players. By this point we had them surrounded so it was safe to leave our rooms unguarded. I ran over to where the last 3 players were, and someone handed me a small gun like catapult that fired small boulders. Two of the 3 players had now been taken out, and I found the room with the last player. He was in the doorway, popping up to shoot then ducking back down, I fired multiple times hoping to hit him before he had the chance to duck but he kept getting out the way in time.

After a while I finally managed to get a shot, but it wasn’t the player any more, it was Darth Vader, and he wasn’t too pleased.

That’s all that happened, sorry to leave it on a cliffhanger, but that’s all there is. I might tweak this around and turn it into a mini-game some time if I get the chance, cause it sounds like it could work

The woman refused to let us even see him, so we all left. We went around the corner to where the car was, and made a plan. It had been raining, and the little boy loved to go out and jump in puddles, and there were some massive ones in the road. The woman trusted me for some reason, so everyone else got in the car and waited, and I went back to the house and apologised. The woman let me take her son out to play in the puddles.

He was a blond kid, about 4 or 5 years old, I picked him up and carried him off towards the biggest puddle, his mum was watching from the front door. He played around for a couple of mins, jumping and splashing. I picked him up and ran towards the car before his mum could stop me.

As soon as we got in the car the driver set off, and we fled as fast as we could. There was several fights about where to go, so that we couldn’t be found, and eventually we decided that one of my friends would be able to help us. We set off towards his house. When we got there, we all ran inside, me carrying the kid.

My friend explained that he could use a portal to move us into a slightly different timeline so we couldn’t be found, and when it was safe we could come back.

No idea what happened after this point, I either just can’t remember it or the dream ended. If i ever remember more I’ll post it up.

After a while she started talking to the person sat behind me, and for convenience sake, I suggested that we swap seats so they didn’t have to shout. We switched seats and the class carried on as normal. She walked over behind me and asked if I was finished with the sharpener and I said yes, so she took it back. About 5 mins later she showed me a piece of paper with some sums on it, it was a bill for using the sharpener. I complained that it wasn’t fair to put a charge on me after without telling me in the first place, and the tutor agreed that you can’t change a contract afterwards. She complained and insisted that I owed her £240.

We ended up at the front of the classroom, where (no idea wtf this is about) she attacked me…with a bowl of baked beans…(I’m sane…honest).

She ran out the class and we thought that was the end of it. There was a short break, and we all went off for a bit of a walk and grab a drink and do the normal things you do in a break time. I was a little late getting back, so everyone else was already in the classroom. The tutor was a bit late too, as he was about 10 foot behind me in the corridor. Outside the classroom door was the girl, holding a plastic container full of petrol. She had started pouring it around the doorway. I realised she was trying to blow us up so I started to run away, I ran into the tutor behind me and told him was was going and we ran out the building together.

Once we got outside he had the idea of lighting the petrol so it would all be used up before she could make a bomb (no idea where that logic came from). We only had short bits of fuse, so we placed them near each other and hoped they would set each other alight. It worked and the building  set on fire. A short while later the fire alarm went off, but everyone seemed to think it was a drill. Eventually someone noticed that there was a real fire and everyone evacuated.

For some reason there was a bunch of porta-loos by the area we had to go when there was a fire. My tutor suggested that I hid in there until more people had left the building so that it didn’t look like I was involved with the fire. Not sure what he did cause I didn’t see him again after.

I waited for about 5 mins, then walked out and joined the rest of my class, and no one seemed to notice that I had been gone. After they had checked everyone was out safely, and the fire department had been to put out the fire, we were allowed back inside the building. We went back to our class and this time I sat near the back. The girl was there pretending that nothing had happened.

Someone sat next to me suggested that we get revenge on the girl by getting her kicked out of uni. For some reason I felt sorry for her, and explained that she had a 3 month old son. I told the person next to me that people taking time out of education when they have children normally never go back, so this would be her only chance at going to uni (to be honest, in real life if someone had tried to kill me…sod their education). The other person said they didn’t know that she had a son, and agreed that it would be mean to get her kicked out.

After the lesson, a group of us were all picked up by someone else, and we got in the car and started driving home. On the way we went past the girl, and the other people in the car started talking about her. The driver kept asking me where she lived, and I explained that I had no idea. The driver then kept pointing at areas and asking “is it round here”. I lost my temper after a while and we had a fight, I kept saying I didn’t know (I really didn’t) and the driver just wouldn’t accept it.

After a while we stopped to get some food. It was a fast food place and there was a really long queue. There was someone in front of us that looked a little like one of my old teachers at college, and the driver kept pestering them saying she was sure she had seen them somewhere. Eventually the woman got annoyed and walked off, and the driver called after her “fine, but I know I’ve seen a photo of you before”.

The bins wear near the back of the queue and one of my friends was there, I hadn’t seen him for ages so we stopped and talked for a while.

Someone slammed a door at this point and I woke up, so no idea what happened next. I really do have no idea where the baked beans came from either…

The most resent example of an unbalanced, bugged game is Armies of Gielinor. There have been major bugs when starting rated games, sometimes players don’t even get taken into the game, but still lose rating if they leave. There have also been problems with servers crashing.

The main problem with AoG is that it is majorly unbalanced. People are able to block their opponents portal, meaning they are unable to summon units, while this seems a legitimate tactic, it can be done before the opponent even has a chance to defend them-self.

There are also problems with the map layouts, everything is almost perfectly symmetrical, so who ever goes first has a major advantage, they can reach buildings before their opponent, and capture them. There is also a flaw where the first player gains victory points on a hidden last turn just before the winner is announced. This means in a close game, the player going first has a major advantage and will win.

AoG isn’t the only game to be unbalanced. Arcanists has had many problems with spells being overpowered, and players being unable to defend themselves from cheep tactics. Most of these are fixed eventually, but should never have made their way into the game in the first place.

Another annoying bug that appears across all games, is sometimes when you gain an achievement, when you log out it’s gone. This has happened in several games and needs to be checked before release, as some of the achievements affected are very hard.

Dungeon Assault also had problems when players logged out, some players found that their hard earned dungeon and stable were being reset back to the defaults. Hours of work was being lost until it was fixed.

TerraPhoenix also has many bugs, even though the game has now been out for 11 months, some have still not been fixed. Players progress and soldiers are not always saved correctly.

Having a closed Beta before release with trusted players will highlight some of the bugs in the game, allowing them to be fixed. Players will also be able to find anything that unbalances the game, such as spells that are too powerful and maps that don’t work before they reach the general public.

People don’t want bugged games, and players who experience bugs when they first start to play often never bother to come back. Swallow your pride Jagex, and let us help. It’s for the best.