29 Jan — Inner Power

In this weeks campaign, Inner Power, we unlock your personal magical power!

- Power generation change: about half of your power is generated by your character and the rest by your Dominators. This means that even if you don’t have all your Dominators generating power, at least some of your power consuming things still work. This way you can take more risks with your Dominators.
- You can only have one beacon.
- Energy gain for destroying a Dominator reduced.
- Energy gain for destroying a trap removed.

Battle on, Mages!

28 Jan — The Animators are victorious in the Energized campaign!

The Animators prevailed against the Architects in this week’s campaign!

With the new rule set we saw more battling over urban gateways instead of industrial scale harvesting in rural areas.

In addition, both attacking and defending was rewarding when players were able to receive energy from healing.

This week’s top players were:

1. The Gandalf - Animator. 100 potions.
2. Hoomikko - Animator. 50 potions.
3. Jamimy - Architect. 50 potions.
4. Reign - Animator. 50 potions.
5. Kendaali - Animator. 50 potions.

Congratulations to all!

The next campaign starts tomorrow at noon!

21 Jan — Energized

The Energized campaign adjusts the rule set by adding a couple of new energy sources to the game and adjusting two existing rules.

- Conquering undiscovered Gateways yields less points than before

- You can only Harvest your own Dominators

- Instead you now get energy for healing friendly Dominators

- You also get energy for banishing enemy players

- You get energy from destroying enemy Beacons, Traps and Catchers

Go!

13 Jan — Age of Chaos

This weeks rule set brings mobility back to the conquering game.

- You can again summon Dominators while warped.
- Gateway conquer cooldown dropped from 2 hours to 30 minutes.
- You can retire your pumps again as the penalty points for giving up conquered Gateway are back.
- You can Harvest your own and your teammates’ Dominators when not too far from your physical location.

- Harvest made cheaper.
- Warchant back to its original self
- You get more points for destroying harvest ready Dominators.

Go!

12 Jan — The Animators took the Fresh Tears home

Congratulations to the Animators! After a tight campaign the Animators were able to seize the victory and take home the Fresh Tears campaign. During the campaign we saw the campaign image change color many times, which means the fight for gateways was fierce and plenty of spirits were donated.

Although the Animators won the campaign, the World Leaderboard was mostly crowded by the Architects:

1. mdmx - Architect - 100 potions
2. Reign - Animator - 50 potions
3. Shadows - Architect - 50 potions
4. patse - Architect - 50 potions
5. Saragorn - Architect - 50 potions

Congratulations to all!

The coming campaign’s rule set will bring mobility back to the conquering game. Read more about this tomorrow.

The next campaign starts tomorrow at noon. Get ready Mages!

5 Jan — Fresh Tears brings a new play mode

We have seen the fierce battles and the epic wins just as the falls conquering nodes. It’s time to expand and get some harvest time in.

In this weeks campaign you will get to see the following changes:
-Back to the roots. You can build dominators only from your physical location.
-Harvest is back with a vengeance. You can harvest all the friendly dominators, also on a warp.
-Simplify. Conquering a node will give you at least 50 points the first time you take it over plus the bid value effect.
-Cool down. When taking over a particular Gateway second time within two hours you won’t get any points. Come back in two hours and you’re game again.
-Spells. You can do six war chants with one full mana charge.

Let’s fight like it’s 2011.

4 Jan — Architects took the New Hope campaign

After fierce campaign the Architects prevailed over the Animators.We congratulate the people of steampunk and follow with great interest which team will prevail in Fresh Tears campaign. The top scorers in A New Hope were:

1. The Gandalf - Animator
2. Phobius - Architect
3. Cruzan - Architect
4. Cloacamaxim - Architect
5. Sateenvarjo - Architect

Battle’s up, mages!

27 Dec — We Have A Lucky Winner

First off, congratulation to the Architects for pulling off yet another win by taking Yule-Tide Fete week campaign. The World Leaderboard on the other hand looked much more colorful:

1. Panostaja (Architect) with 39887 Energy Gathered
2. Reign (Animator) with 31536 Energy Gathered
3. Zzu (Architect) with 30212 Energy Gathered
4. Moss (Architect) with 29495 Energy Gathered
5. The Gandalf (Animator) with 29262 Energy Gathered

Congratulations to all. Well done Mages!

The past week this was not all that was going on. We also had our iPad competition going in which one of those players who reached 5000 (five thousand) Energy points in the Christmas campaign got a brand spanking new iPad. And now we have the lucky winner. The lucky winner is… Ilmora of Animators! Congratulations to the lucky Animator and all those who reached the magical 5000 Energy point mark. A respectful 25% of all the players hit that milestone.

The next campaign will start December 28th at 12pm and will last long into the new year. What a better way to welcome the 2011 than destroying couple enemy Dominators and leaving a few traps. My prediction for 2011? This year it will not only be fireworks exploding around the neighborhood

20 Dec — Mages Ahoy! Win an iPad

During the recent campaigns we have seen several epic battles around the city. We have heard many taking a tram around the city just to do hit-and-run drive-by-spell-casting, which I did as well with the consequence of missing my tram stop in the midst of fighting in Punavuori.

The other day we played Shadow Cities with iPad and loved drawing massive attack spells on its big touch screen. We figured we should reward those passionate players that have invested a lot of their time into battling over different neighborhood for their team by letting them also draw those big spells. Thus, we are giving out an iPad for one of those players who has reached 5000 (five thousand) Energy points in the forthcoming Christmas campaign. So spread that Christmas love among your fellow mages and you could be drawing runes on a large screen while celebrating New Year!

We will run the Christmas campaign until December 27th, so you will have ample time to hit the magical 5000 Energy mark and enable your team to win. After the campaign we draw the lucky winner from the pool of those players who have reached the 5000 Energy mark.

The rules of the campaign will be a bit more relaxed to give you time to enjoy your Christmas holiday as well. Eruption will be disabled so you don’t have to time your playing with a wall clock and harvest points will be increased slightly.

We hope to you see most of you on the better side of 5000 mark by the end of the campaign. Game on Mages!

26 Nov — Step one in the conquering game

Satisfying your energy appetite by dominator farming in safe locations has been one of the main ways to score points. While havens for dominators will stay one of the strategies also in the future, we decided to start rolling in some changes that will bring conquering and combat more to the forefront.

Clearly battling for your familiar active neighborhoods has been one of the coolest things in Shadow Cities. We decided to reward Mages directly when conquering an Energy Gateway for your team. Based on the Gateway activity (how fiercely the gateway is fought over) and its strategic importance, the conqueror will get the Gateway’s value in points for turning the Gateway for her team. So, everytime you see a Gateway that is held by the enemy team, it is in your interest to destroy the enemy Dominators and conquer the Gateway for yourself. For this you will immediately gain the points that the Gateway has.

Mages, expect the importance of Gateways to change in the next week’s campaign. While remote havens will still exist, some Gateways will be heavily fought over, and the most important Gateways will be the ones giving you the points to win the campaign!

This will be the first part in the coming changes. On Monday you’ll see the rollout of this conquering game play. After this, we’ll look into introducing incentives to hold your territory from enemy attackers. This will be the energy release mechanism discussed last week.