News

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Aloha Closed Beta!

Are you playing Lagoonia?

If not, you are about the only one. Closed Beta began on the island paradise game this past September 6, and the Lagoonia team and PR are hard at work organizing Beta key lotteries with top German gaming sites, as well as man-aging givaways on Facebook and Lagoonia.com. Right now, the reaction has been positive, and more keys are being used than expected.

Still haven’t won your key? Lagoonia’s Facebook Fanpage and blog are giving them away!

Don’t forget to visit the Lagoonia DevBlog, where game designer Kathleen Kunze discusses ideas, challenges and how Lagoonia came to be. The blog can be read in English and German (depending on which language site you visit).

See you in paradise!

September Edition

BHO: Deadly Fieldtrips to Cambria

Congratulations Team Lagoonia!

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After many months of late nights and weekend work, the Lagoonia team reached a huge milestone this month: Closed Beta.

Congrats to everybody working on the project... and thanks for the tropical cockails at the launch celebration!

Version 1.099 of Bounty Hounds Online has been in the making for a few months now. The update contains all kinds of great changes such as a whole new gathering system for Mercenary Legions to get those much needed materials. The update also contains two missions that offer you a free skill/attribute reset that the community has been ask-ing for.

In this article, however, I want to highlight the new level 60 instances. Instances are special areas de-signed for an organized team to take on a tougher challenge than the monsters you encounter on the quest maps. A new space route is opened that takes your mercenary group to a dangerous planet called Cambria. This planet is less industrial and has more wilderness than Clear

Sky. You can clearly see that back in the new map designs, which are not symmetric and more or-ganic in layout.

The instances are themed as various elements: Fire, ice, poison, thunder and light. Each instance features several enemy groups leading up to a big boss fi ght. Each instance comes with a twist where you have to tactically use a new “symbiotic” buff that can be found on the map. The buff on Bleigh-man Glacier (Ice) for example provides you with a high block chance and defense, but you will lose power. This buff would be needed for your tank, but if your healer will pick it up he will be close to powerless. Luckily an antidote can be found scattered in the area that cancels this effect if you

caught it unwillingly. My personal favorite is Floating Fins Gar-den. In this instance you will be taken up high in the sky of Cambria, fi ghting on a giant monster’s back that fl ies through a thunderous storm! When you look around, you see breathing holes going up and down and giant wings fl apping to make him stay in the air. This gives a great atmosphere to the map.

I’m looking forward to see how the community reacts on these fi ve fresh maps that will provide high level char-acters with a new challenge!

Maurice

has more wilderness than Clear caughtMy peden. Ihigh gianta tharouup ato mgre

I’mcomac

SommerFest 2011

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There were shorts, hawaiian fl owers, and a lot of tan lines at this year’s Sommerfest, an annual offi ce party held to say goodbye to Summer, and hello to Fall.

The beach themed event took place at Beach Center Hamburg, an indoor/outdoor recreational facility with two pools, a waterslide and countless sand volleyball courts. The day began with a social cocktail hour - oth-erwise known as warm-up for “InnoGames Olympics”.

Over the course of the next two hours, all employees were split into teams to com-pete for the title of “InnoGames Olympics” champion. It was a grueling (not grueling at all) battle of team building activities, designed to improve communication and comeraderie between coworkers. By the closing call of activity time, the sun and heat left all in dire need of food and beverages.

After a barbeque lunch, the afternoon and evening were fi lled with volleyball, swimming, and loung-ing in the sun. With all the new faces around In-noGames recently, this was a great time to social-ize with newcomers and reconnect with those in other departments. On top of all the fun, a valu-able lesson was learned that day: sunblock is our friend.

Alexa

s o

ere split into teams to com-

Awinnizoaf

The West: The Future is Not What it Used to Be

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Dear readers, I dare you to take a leap of faith with me. Ready? Ok, let’s go:

I have to disappoint you; you might have guessed that this is the new map for The West. Unfortu-nately, it is not. But it could be. Or it could be even better! This is in fact a mock-up on how we want the new map to look like: more vibrant colors, more details, and more usability. The main goal is to clear the map of all the job symbols and actually show more of the map. We want to show the cur-rent position of the player and of the other players, and we want the jobs to be position-sensitive. This means that when you are standing in a forest, you can chuck wood, hunt, collect berries; when you are standing near a river you can fi sh, pan for gold or similar activities. The jobs are supposed to be shown around the player and should only be visible when they are possible to do. That should clear the map up a good bit and show what is really impor-tant: the landscape, the forts, the towns and the other players.

Speaking of towns, here is another screenshot for you:

As you can see, we com-pletely want to overhaul the way players can build their towns. We want a 3D-environment where you can place your build-ings freely. That also means placing lakes, trees, statues, fl owers and much more town improvements, the pos-sibilities are endless here (think about different building sets, for example a Mexican or and Indian sets!). No town should look the same after we implement this feature.

This will greatly improve the long-term motivation for our players.

Oh and on a side note: this is the new interface for our game, and the best thing is: this is not a mockup, this is what the screens in The West will look like soon.We are in the early stages of creating a new map, but the 3D-town is not too far in the future, we will start working on that after the next update, so keep your eyes open for the next update in a game version near you!

Thorsten

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Grepolis: The Era of World Wonders has Begun

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Last week, on two German worlds, players already began experiencing new exciting features on ver-sion 2.0: World Wonders. The race just started. Players are very keen to see how this all works - and have started wondering one big question: who will be the fi rst?

Today I am going to give you a sneak peek of how everything works: if an alliance controls each city on one island, they are allowed to start building one of seven world wonders on the special place on the island. Very importantly, it is not neces-sary that the alliance owns all twenty cities on a big island, the condition for starting the building is controlling all existing cities. Therefore, if there are some empty fl ags and all other cities belong to one alliance they of course can start building the wonders (but I wouldnt recommend this way). I would recommend founding a new city on all fl agged places so that nobody from the foreign al-liance can settle there and stop building of world wonders on this island.

Creating each of the World Wonders gives the al-liance different benefi ts. For example, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia is the Greeks ultimate tribute to the god of the gods. If completed on level 10, the alliance profi ts with 5% higher production with Zeus. The Colossus of Rhodes can be built after a monumental victory as an acknowledgement of a triumph. Finishing the monument gives your al-iances 10% faster victory processions.

The Temple of Artemis can be built in dedication to Artemis. This wonder gives 5% higher favour with all the gods if it is completed by level 10. If your alliance is interested in having more ressources, you defi nitely should invest in the Great Pyramid of Giza, which ofers you 1500 more capacity in the warehouse or in the Hanging Gardens of Ba-bylon, which gives 3% bonus on the production of each ressource. Also ,The Lighthouse at Alexandria could be very interesting – it reduces the costs of the Phoenician trader by 10%. You also can save resources if you fi nish the building of the Mauso-leum of Halicarnassus which reduces the costs of all mythical units by 5%.

In accord with this topic, attention is being fo-cused on the HeroWorlds. Here we also can give you some internal information: the fi rst Hero worlds on the German version will start most likely between December and January. I hope I gave you an exciting overview about the brand new features and you are looking forward playing the Era of World Wonders, and of course, reach-ing the HeroWorld.

Domi

la

Icywlgnti

WestWars: Bienvenidos a Mexico The times, they are a-changin across the plains! WestWars already covers the plains and mountains of America from coast to coast, and so we decided to cross the southern border and take the game to Mexico – ay, cara-mba! Your journey to Mexico is all but smooth as you have to experience that the south can be a dangerous place the hard way. But don’t worry! You will get to enjoy the perks Mexico has to offer as well during a typical “fi esta” – only to embark on a fast-paced and chase through whole Mexico on the next morning… The team’s goal was to design a more “classic” area after the unique Bounty Hunter area. Mexico is both similar to and different from the other areas in WestWars, the jobs and the setting are an exciting addition within the familiar framework. Give it a try and explore the south!

Nils

You might have already heard rumors about it – Tribal Wars Masters. Although the servers and worlds have been already set up, it will still be a while before we start something that is relevant for a larger audience because the management team is still setting up some organizational structures and running Nordic Masters – the annual speed compe-tition between the Scandinavian versions. Example competitions for the future include European and World championships.

There won’t always been tournaments running. In-between the big events we will be running a longer-

term public competition simply called “The League”. Internally, we’re going to need a strong, extensive and reliable team to keep this running all the time – the organizers will be looking around for volun-teers soon. Tribes from across the world will be able to simply join a world and compete against other groups from around the world in a variety of speed rounds aimed at promoting and rewarding team-work. Schedules, tribe performance tracking and the rest of the infrastructure are still in progress – your CMs will keep you informed.

Robert

Special Edition Monster of the Month: Werewolf

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Starting this week, an ancient curse rears its ugly head in the SevenLands: The Werewolf stalks his prey and there is only one hero to stop it - you!With the werewolf we are breaking new ground in quest writing: You’ll have to go head to head with this wicked monster in over half a dozen quests, stretch-ing all the way from level 10 to level 60 (at least), before you will be able to end the curse for good.

The Werewolf is a truly ancient monster, one of the few legendary evils that has escaped all efforts to kill it. Generations of powerful warriors have hunted and fought the werewolf, few have ever returned.

And those that did carried the terrible curse in their blood: With each rising of the full moon they too would feel the call of rage and destruction. The were-wolf’s unequalled savagery makes him a tough oppo-nent, predictable but still almost impossible to defeat. Some survivors report that they had some luck using fi re against this monstrosity, but it’s going to be your choice if you should heed their blood-crazed voices and haunted eyes...

Anwar

TribalWars: Masters

Team Meeting: Eulogy to the Bungalow Number Six Each year at the end of August all Polish teams meet somewhere close to the end of the world and have a lot of fun at the team meeting. This year, the fi fth meeting, we decided in favor of a very nice place on the Polish Baltic coast.

For the fi rst time in a team meeting Vinko didn’t ask me to marry him. This also was the fi rst time no one in the team threw me into the water (and in case you are wondering... yes, we had a lot water around and I also took also enough clothes to change). You can imagine, my experience with team meetings tought me to take two huge bags with enough dry clothes.

But hey! It was time to change the tradition and have even more fun, or different fun. This year we tried paintball... it is nice to beat up the TribalWars and The West teams and share the glory of winning with the Grepolis team.

Tree top walk was the most chosen entertainment, it really looks like our supporters really love to climb trees and try out new challenges.

Should you hear something about twenty people who let a nice woman make a tattoo on their arms, yes this is about us. We had very nice „6“ tattoos on our arms, which was a sign of solidarity with The West team who lived in the bungalow number six. Are you curious right now? Then contact your friends from the polish team and ask about the crazy story :)

Do you want to take a picture with a pirate? This is a domain of the Grepolis team. They know best how to dress up and ask each beautiful young girl walking by if she wanted to buy a picture with a pirate...

On saturday, we organized a community meeting. We just celebrated the fi fth birthday of polish Tribal-wars. Meeting our players, discussing strategies and hearing their ideas or complaints was a very nice experience. The players could meet the admins in real life and get the impression that we are not all bad :) In the end everybody danced and the evening was just awesome. Domi

My InnoGames Story: Gordon, Community Management

Many of you already know me as Gordopolis from Grepolis.net or Ofl ow from Tribalwars.us . Maybe I

answered a ticket of yours, or posted an announcement you were anxious to read. However, today we are here to look at the man (mod) behind the forum name and the shiny title. So how did I end up at InnoGames?

Once upon a time, before I was a Community Manager, I was a bachelor graduate who moved to Germany to fi nd his fortune. I am originally Canadian but lived in Ger-many for the most part of my life (it’s a long story ;P). Anyhow, I found myself sending out resumes to all posi-tions that revolved around my favorite topic: Gaming (up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, a, b, select, start). Pretty soon I realized that breaking into the gam-ing industry was not as simple as I thought. 3 months of job applications without success made me realize that I might have to get a “real job”. I carefully placed my hopes and dreams in a little shoebox and decided it was time to store them away and play it safe.

I changed the industry I was sending my applications to and 3 interviews and 2 acceptances later, I had to decide which job I wanted to accept. So there I was, comparing the two positions with one another and trying to guess where they would take me down the road, when sud-denly I received two phone calls. Both calls were from very respectable game developers, and both calls were asking me if I would like to setup an interview appoint-ment. Again I found myself weighing my options. “Play it safe” vs. “the chance to follow my passion”. I decided to play it safe… nahhhh just kidding! I informed the fi rms that had accepted me that I had found a better offer, and when I jumped on the plane to Hamburg, I was hoping I was right. The interview with InnoGames went very well. I got along with Domi and Nino (who you might know) right away, and received a tour of the facility. I did go to the other interview I mentioned, but the choice as to where I wanted to work was not hard to make at all.

Unbelievably, this whole story only happened about a year ago. In the mean time I have moved out to Ham-burg-Harburg and am currently settling down in an apartment a short walk away from work (Inno Head-quarters). Needless to say I am glad I revisited my dreams and decided to “take the road less traveled”. In-noGames has a very fast paced work environment with a fun and challenging work routine. I never know what to expect at work, and that is why I enjoy the community management position so much. Leading a support team can be stressful at times, but luckily I do have a team that is committed to their jobs and focused on improv-ing the game. I would like to take the opportunity to say “Hi” to the Grepolis.net Support Team, and to the Tribal-

wars.us Support Team. You truly are the heart of the community and you make Grepolis and Tribalwars a fun place to play in.

So now that you know how I got here, it might be good to tell a little about myself as well. I like to stay active and do that either by doing martial arts (if I can fi nd the time) or by playing football/soccer (poorly). I enjoy going out with friends or staying at home to watch mov-ies. My cooking skills are basic, but they include tacos, so that’s a plus. I would not say I am a handy man, but I enjoy fi xing things in my apartment or calling the landlord to help me fi x them. The most recent Computer game I fi nished was Mass Effect 2, and I loved every second of it. I am easy to get along with and my friends describe me as balanced. So I hope you have gotten to know me a bit better through this text. I started the text with “once upon a time” but I am pretty sure I will get my “happily ever after” as well. Hope to see you in-game on Grepo or Tribalwars!

Gordon

“... I am glad I revisited my dreams and decided to ‘take the road less

traveled.’”

s us Support Team You truly are the heart of

InnoGames’ Facebook Fanpage features daily updates, news and photos from the company and our games. Stay in touch, and socialize with other InnoGames community members on the page!

Like us HERE:

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New at InnoGames

David Ziehm

Graphic Artist

Hagen Fleischmann

Controller

Stefan Lunk

Controller

Minh Hien Nguyen

Senior Web Analyst

Philipp Massek

Game Design, Working Student

Thomas Fischer

Game Design

Karell Sanders

Community Manager,Tribal Wars France

Abigail Wharton

Community Manager,Lagoonia English

Stefan Alexandrescu

Community Manager,Lagoonia German

Joanna Lyzinska

Community Manager,Lagoonia Poland

Kamil Sekalski

Community Manager,Grepolis Poland

Wojciech Rapior

Community Manager,Grepolis Poland

Robert Rubinstein

Community Manager,Grepolis International

Join us!

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: Sep

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Did you know?InnoGames’ Facebook Fanpage has a new“Exclusive Content” section! Beta

keys to our latest games, special in-game rewards and more will be posted periodically.

QA Assistant

Your responsibilities:- Regular testing through the conception and development phases of our

games, using black-box testing- Independent execution and evaluation of game analyses (design, usabil-

ity, and functionality)- Implementation and review of uniform quality standards

- Project related cooperation with game testers- Regular reporting of current project results

- Research new methods, technologies and tools for game testing and best practice models

We require:- Ideally, you have completed a relevant training (IT-Specialist, IT-Systems

Management, etc.) or degree program (Computing and Digital Media)- Initial experience with quality assurance practices

- Good understanding of the Internet and i-Net-Technologies- Solid knowledge of popular hard and software

- Have a penchant for computer games- Approach game play professionally

- Very good command of German, and profi cient in English- Good communication skills and ability to work well in a team

Please send us your application using our online application form or viaemail, complete with cover letter, resume, references, and code examples

(each attachment max. 2MB). Please include your earliest startingdate and expected salary.

Anna Sparke email: career@innogames.deSee all of our available job postings on: innogames.de

Win a 10 € voucher for an online shop of your choicesend the solution word viaemail to sarah.lueken@innogames.de. Have fun and good luck!

Puzzling with InnoGames

Congratulations to Last month’s winner:

Kai Gade,

InnoGames