Warstorm.com

Interface of squad customization in warstorm.com

Warstorm.com is the origin of Warstorm. It was started by Challenge Games in October 18, 2008 as one of the main games for the company. The other main games included Ponzi, Inc; Plantstorm; Bullstorm; Mechduels; Gridiron

It was eventually closed on August 18, 2010. However Warstorm is growing on the Facebook platform and there might be signs that Warstorm.com will be opened.

Information gathered during the period while warstorm.com was open are posted here. Large portion of warstorm.com history is missing since 10 December, 2009.

Game information[]

Starting up the game[]

All players were called "Generals" in game.

On starting up a character, a player needed to create an avatar, which would be used to show to other players. A choice between Lord General Pozak and Light Priestess Enyi could be chosen, along with six human or elven faction cards. More cards could be earned through different kinds of currencies, tournaments, leagues or completing campaigns.^[1]

Currencies[]

There existed three kinds of currencies, reward points, copper and challenge coins. Copper and reward points were earned through playing and winning against different challenges, including players and pre-built squads. They can ony be used to buy basic packs and Advanced Human and Elf cards with large cost. Challedge coins are bought using real money and can be used to trade cards in Market, and buy Core packs which contain Orc, Demon, Human, Elf, and Undead factions and advanced and rare cards. Reward points could also be earned by inviting friends and having them reaching a higher level.

TrialPay feature can be used to subscribe to business matters, in which some of them do not cost real life money. However all of them give Challenge coins.

Membership (also called paid playing) was available. Players could use extra facilities and extra cards from purchases as they were members. The initial membership outside U.S. and Canada (started service on 17 December, 2008) was 35 USD for 4 months, in the period, player could get 5 challenge coins and 2 packs each week, To a total of 85 coins and 34 packs (4 months is approximately 17 weeks)

Squad modification[]

Manage-army 1 — Squad modification interface

The maximum number of of squads that can be stored was 16 squads. The interface for modifying squads was called Manage Army. The units in Facebook Warstorm, were called troops.

Forum[]

There existed a forum for discussing Warstorm strageties and trading.

Level and ladder system[]

The maximum level a player could gain in early days was 19. The first player to attain level 40 was Blisterguy and he was awarded a T7 Steam Mage.

The ladder system was a system to determine to qualities of a player's deck and the activity of him/her. A player in more advanced ladder can battle to get better rewards. The first player ever to get to the advanced ladder was pjrsven.

All players were in one single ladder, and their ratings were initially 1500. The auto-matcher checked the ratings and matched players with similar rating. It would wait until an acceptable match was found. Over time, the rating search was widened.

The first player that gained over 2800 rating and earned the T7 Cask of Celebration was Waymaker.

Avatar[]

Players could create an avatar, similar to consume editing with specified clothing and accessories. Using Challenge coins players could buy limited version clothes as well.

Tourrnament[]

Tournaments could be created through investing challedge coins, or by automatic parties. Without challedge coins players must wait at the queue on free tournaments in order to play. Paid tournaments must be invested with chelledge coins. The tournament went through single elimination process, and the prized distribution can be changed as of tournament opener's will.

League[]

Each league had a maximum number of 32 players. The initial league signup price was 20 Challenge coins, as of 22 May, 2009, the price was 28 coins. There existed economic leagues which only cost 5 Challenge coins.

Another large feature for this dragon expansion is the sealed deck league addition to multiplayer battles. What this means is that each player will start with a mix of basic, core, demon expansion, and dragon expansion packs. Players will use the cards from these packs to create a 2 squad army to battle against the other players in the league, over the course of 2 weeks. Players will also have the option to get booster packs during the 2 week period to improve their deck as the league progresses. At the end of the 2 weeks, the winners are determined, packs are rewarded. This allows battles to be more about the strategies you can craft as opposed to the volume of cards you own as everyone starts the league with the same number of packs. At the end of the league, you can keep all the packs given out during the course of the league which gives a new twist on how to obtain cards.

Campaigns[]

There were free and paid campaigns. By buying paid campaigns with cash, two premade squads for a specific faction, challenge coins, and a chain of quests were unlocked. All campaigns unlocked achievements when beaten. Completing missions in both campaigns gave copper as reward.

Two of the human, orc, undead quest chains were released before end of beta testing.
An unknown named quest chain was released on 12 November, 2008.
The Demon quest chain was called: "The Gate Open" it was released on 10 December, 2008. It was free to play.
The Elf quest chain was called: "Emissary to the Elves Campaign" it was released on 18 December, 2008.
The Dragon quest chain was called: "The Dragon's Hoard" it was released on 6 March, 2009.
A free quest chain was called: "Dev-Chain" it was released on 1 April, 2009. The card gained from completing the chain was Demonic Snipe. The campaign was removed on 1 May, 2009.
The mercenaries quest chain was released on 26 June, 2009.

Holiday event[]

The first holiday event was The Snowman Cometh which lasted during 12 December 2008 to the end of month. A Snowball Guardian card was given to everyone who went to battlefield for free, and any battle gained them the achievement "Badge of Hoidays".

Deploy ordered squads[]

It was only able to be accessed by players haive level 15 or more. Players were able to choose which squad to appear first and which later. This also means the drawing order of a deck can also be controlled in terms of 7-card squads. However the order of which card would appear inside the squad was random.

Game development[]

Opening up[]

On 20 October, 2008, the beat testing of Warstorm was ended. All beta accounts were wiped as a result. The beta period lasted for about a month. In the same day Warstorm was officially released. There existed two kinds of playing, free playing and paid playing. Pad playing benefits from several advantages such as extra card from purchased goods. At that time marketplace already existed.

Four days later, boxes which each consisted of 20 packs (total of 60 cards) were released for purchase on marketplace. Members could get 2 extra packs on purchase (10% of total). Avatar design was released on October 29th, 2008. Tournament was opened on 3 November, 2008.

Warstorm was connected to Facebook on 17 December, 2008.

Leagues costed 20 Challenge coins until 20 March, 2009. The leagues lasted two weeks until 21 Merch, 2009 in which warstorm was updated to make leagues last for only 1 week.

On 24 March, 2009, Warstorm has registered on Twitter.

Major updates[]

Warstorm underwent a very wide and frequent minor updates to keep the game attractive and running smoothly.

The ladder system was redesigned and released on 7 January, 2009. Before that the ladder system was divided into three tiers.

League play was released on 6 March, 2009. It was expanded to a maximum of 32 players per league on 27 May, 2009.

TrialPay feature was released on 15 April, 2009.

Deploying ordered squads was released on 19 May, 2009.

Basic and Core packs retired on 1 June, 2009, replaced by Novice and Expert packs.

A new battle engine which runs faster, smoother and easier to programme is implemented on 28 October, 2009.

Economy leagues were expanded to have maximum of 32 players each, on 12 November, 2009.

From now on, large portion of data was is missing since 12 November, 2009. However since the opening of Facebook Warstorm, Warstorm.com was left not updated until its closing. ^[2]

Introduction of new cards[]

The demon cards were released on 10 December, 2008.
A expansion of elf cards were released on 19 December, 2008.
Dragon cards and a number of artifacts, spells were released on 17 Feburary, 2009.
Dragon expansion beta was exclusively opened to top 300 players on 28 Feburary, 2009. On 6 March, 2009, The Dragon's Hoard expansion was released to all players. A large number of new cards including dragons for each faction and abilities such as flying, firebreath and boost were released.
Wandering Bard was a featured card released on 23 April, 2009, it was gained by player who had logged in over the last week.
Book of Faces was a featured card released on 13 May, 2009, it was gained by player who logged through Facebook, and was a celebration of Facebook connections.
The werewolf was a featured card released on 2 June, 2009. Players needed to invite friends to gain this card.
The Mercenaries beta was open to members on 12 June, 2009. The full version was released to members on 24 of the same month, and was open to all players two days later.
The Monsters beta was released on 19 October, 2009, in which the best 260 players are selected to experience the new game. The Monster expansion was released to members on 28 October, 2009, and released to all players on 30 October, 2009.
Since then all the new card releases were based on Facebook Warstorm, and no new cards became available in Warstorm.com ^[3]

Closing[]

On July 30th, 2010 it was announced that Warstorm.com was going to be closed on August 18, 2010. Players who made purchases in the website within the past 90 days could receive credit in Warstorm on Facebook. They were contacted directly by Zynga Customer Support via their payment email addresses. However, all the accounts could not be migrated onto Facebook as Zynga did not take measures to preserve those user data. As a result all previous purchases and achievements were lost on closing of the website and only extremely few advantages were gained from transferring items from warstorm.com to Facebook. A major cause of this was cards could not be traded or exchanged between the two kinds of accounts as Challenge Games stated that the games are separate and Zynga did not take measures to preserve, being said once more. ^[4]