Shot Online is hosting a set of four tournaments in the month of July. The overall prize for first place is a full set of repairable Hurricane clubs while 2nd and 3rd walk away with a full set of non-repairable Hurricanes.
San Jose, Calif. (June 26, 2008) - San Jose-based online game publisher, Gamescampus.com (www.gamescampus.com, run by OnNet USA), announced today that it will launch the Hurricane Cup, a series of four Shot-Online golf tournaments, this July. The tournaments will take place in the following order throughout the month of July Tournament 1: Prometheus National Tournament, Tournament 2: Freya Classics Tournament, Tournament 3: The Player’s Tournament and Tournament 4: Potter’s Bank Championship. The game can be downloaded and played for free at http://shotonline.gamescampus.com/index.asp.
The Hurricane Cup is a championship where players participate in online golf tournaments to earn points. Points are awarded to the top ten players of each of the four tournaments, and then combined at the end of the fourth tournament to determine the overall winner from the series.
The top three players of the Hurricane Cup will win a sponsorship deal from Hurricane that gives them a full set of non-repairable clubs and the first-place winner will receive a full set of repairable Hurricane golf clubs. Each tournament purse will also include in-game currency, GamesCampus cash, and other in-game items as prizes.
Like real life golf tournaments, each of the four tournaments will run weekly and last four days (Thursday through Sunday). The first in the series will commence on July 03, 2008 and run through July 06, 2008. The subsequent tournaments will be scheduled as follows: Tournament 2: July 10, 2008 through July 13, 2008; Tournament 3: July 17, 2008 through July 20, 2008 and Tournament 4: July 17, 2008 through July 20, 2008. The Hurricane Cup invites anyone from newbies to experienced players to participate, as long as they make the cut!
As the title of the post makes obvious, this was a very slow gaming weekend. I messed around a bit in Call of Duty 4, working toward getting my gold AK-47 (I have no idea why I want one) and spent an hour or so in World of Warcraft leveling up my mage to level 39. I need to have several twinks because I get bored to quickly with just one or two classes to pwn with. Right now I just have my druid and my warrior. I need more!
I noticed in WoW that there was some kind of festival going on, the “Midsummer Fire Festival” I think it was. I didn’t really get involved because the rewards for the holiday events are usually just trinkets that I’d never use but there was a nice effect that came along with it, just for being near the festival grounds (in my case Arathi Highlands) I got a nice damage bonus of 360 fire damage to all of my spells, well a 30% chance of the bonus anyway which hits pretty often considering how many spells I put out there. So at least the festival helped hurry my twink mage along nicely. I made up 3 levels in about an hour and a half on Sunday to reach level 40. I should have this guy complete with gear hopefully in a week or two.
Other than that I think I maybe shot one round of golf in Shot Online and spent the rest of the rainy Florida weekend watching movies with the exception of a few hours of sunshine, enough for me to sneak out to the beach with the wife and my daughter. But, as chance may be while sitting on the beach we talked a little about WoW, since I’ve gotten back into it. My wife will sometimes watch me play but hasn’t really gotten into the MMO scene herself yet. She used to be addicted to the Sims and wants me to find a game that is more like that we can both play. With the option to build fortresses in Age of Conan, I was kind of hoping the devs may include the ability for players to own land and build houses in the future but that is looking pretty bleak, besides she nor I really enjoyed AoC - she got up to level 5 before she stopped. I trudged along a little further before I finally gave up on the game. She’s watched WoW and actually likes the look of the game over AoC, but still doesn’t like the game play.
Her favorite question, “Is fighting all you do in the game?”. Well, no not really. It is a lot of what you do but there are some non-combat quests and some pretty cool things to explore - but ya, mostly combat. We need a game out there with more potential for a wider audience. There are some games out there with good combat for the guys and good social traits for the girls but not really any that mix the two very well. Star Wars Galaxies was the closest one I’ve seen but that one unfortunately bombed. We need a new MMO that can be combat oriented but with some total non-combat roles people can play that are fun! I’ll be looking out on the horizon for the answer but don’t have one quite yet. Anyone know of anything like that coming soon or better yet, already out?
I just finished reading a post from Syp over at Waaagh about his predictions on how Warhammer Online will fair in the MMO market and what he thinks are the keys to getting it there. Syp lists 10 points that he believes will influence the outcome of WAR’s fate down the road, starting with number one, a smooth launch.
You could argue the importance of this being the first thing to make a game successful, which I am. It’s important no doubt as many games have shown in the past with rocky starts - but overall many have recovered at one point. Age of Conan numbers wise, even though I’m no longer a big fan, shows a smoother than average start for an MMO can rocket the game right to the top of the charts. But for the long term health of the game competitevly in a dog eat dog MMO world, I’d say it’s not really that important. Syp I must respectfully disagree, it’s a good but it’s not number one good. I’ll agree with the other 9 points you make as strong but for me my number one would be different.
My number one reason an MMO will either succeed or fail is accessibility. WoW is a shining example of this in that they have succeeded even beyond their own expectations. World of Warcraft is such a popular game for the most part because you don’t need the latest and greatest computer available the year after next to run it. It runs great on average systems and runs good on below average, that’s key. For all the shine and polish of the latest and greatest video and game effects out there they tend to alienate all the more casual gamer base who don’t meet the minimum system requirements. And WAR looks like it’s not going to be any different unfortunately. Please don’t take this as me beleiving the game will fail but I beleive unless you design the game to be able to run on older model systems it won’t be WoW great. That’s my 2 cents, for what it’s worth.
Blackwings
