The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, hey, remember that game I used to play? Forumwarz? Well, I stopped playing it because I hit a point where it was a needless grind for no real benefit… like, when I grind in Twilight Heroes, I’m at least earning Silver Stars for cool shit… but I had kinda gotten all the cool shit from Forumwarz, and so I stopped, only to stop in and play the new custom forums I’d missed every once and awhile.
This doesn’t mean I no longer like the game. Far from it. I think it’s a really damn good game, and you should go play it if you haven’t yet. However, endgame competition holds very little appeal for me, and once again, this was a community I was too shy to try to get into… so there was nothing there for me. So I was biding my time and every so often checking the devblog, waiting for when Episode 2 hit.

Today, they posted this. They’re going to charge money for the next episode! Now, I’m sure like many internet people, I immediately had a kneejerk reaction against it when I read the title… but moments after, I realized I was going to drop the 10 bucks to play it without any hesitation. If they deliver on giving as much content as Episode 1 with new, awesome features, it is completely worth that money. I drop 10 dollars on IoTMs in KoL and Twilight Heroes basically every month, and get much less content in return. I also buy 60 dollar games with similar lengths of gameplay, and I honestly enjoy these sorts of browser RPGs close to if not as much. Add all that to the fact that people making things so awesome deserve to get paid for it, and it’s a no-brainer to drop 10 bucks on more content.

I donate for KoL and TH IoTMs for two reasons. 1, often the items are fun and, you know, I like fun. That fun also helps to keep my interest in the game, for often, by the time I feel like I’ve completely wrung the fun out of what a particular IoTM has to offer me, there’s a new one ready for me to pick up and try. Reason 2, though, is that I think Ryme and Jick’s team deserve to get paid for making something that gives me so much enjoyment every month. I love free as much as the next person, but they deserve it. So I give it to them. At least for as long as I’m not budget-crunched enough for it to be an issue.

Forumwarz is not designed well for that sort of content, the sort of small monthly, fun perk content that you could get a constant stream of donations for. I really think that might have hurt them. I honestly don’t know what they would put out that would seem worth it, especially with all the custom forums, but if they, I dunno, could come up with a custom quest with a cool reward every month, I very well might add them to the list of monthly donations as well. But again, that seems hard. Forumwarz has items, but they’re not… they’re not impressive. They affect the game. They’re important. But they’re not publicly visible, they don’t change how combat looks in any way… they don’t currently do the kind of cool things that, say, one of my KoL items does. I think it would be hard to design monthly paid-unlock quests into cool rewards within the current system that would be worth it. I’m not surprised they haven’t done it.
They have their vision, and I’m glad they have the guts to stick to it and stick with it and keep making an amazing game the way they want to. I’m also proud of them for making the hard decision to put this next episode up for pay. I want them to be successful. I will be picking it up the moment I notice it out, and I will probably be buying a second character to try out another character class all the way through around then as well. I’m thinking Camwhore… I mean, they’re coming out with the new Hacker class, but I dunno. I have no doubt they’ll make it great, but Camwhore just seems more entertaining. Heh.

Anyway, I thought that a really interesting decision, and even though I commented on their blog, I wanted to let myself ramble about it fuller here, because, well, the blog is for getting shit out of my head, and also because the main writing guy of forumwarz, the, um, thematically named Jalapeno Bootyhole, has commented here not once but twice. Which kinda blows my mind. Cause I continue to think this blog offers little to anyone but myself. But in case he comes back, just, you know, wanted him to see my opinion. And to say hi.
Hi Jalapeno Bootyhole!
You have a good game.
Hi.