Podcast Feedback: We Need You!

cat-hate-surveyThe time has come to get some all-important feedback from you on our Flashpoint podcast. With nearly 60 episodes in the can, we are really keen to find out what we can do better and what we can change to make things more enjoyable for you. We are particularly interested in whether you’re enjoying the broader focus or whether your liked things better when we were a SWTOR-only podcast.

All you need to do is answer the handful of questions below and you’ll be helping us in a big way. The survey is absolutely anonymous and we’ll let you know the results once it’s finalised!

Here’s the survey: (if you can’t see it for some reason this is the direct link)

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

Our Most Popular Posts for 2012

storyline1 This probably isn’t of great interest to a lot of people, but to our regular readers you may like to know which stories pulled the largest number of readers during 2012.

Given we only moved to a wider MMO brief in the second half of this year, the skew is to SWTOR but it’s interesting all the same.

So without further ado, the top 10* stories this year in reverse order are:

10. SWTOR Game Update 1.2 Patch Notes: Crew Skills

9. Heavy Damage: Jedi Guardian overview

8. WoW 5.04 Final Patch Notes

7. SWTOR 1.3 Patch Notes

6. Interview: BioWare’s Gabe Amatangelo on PvP, Server Transfers

5. SWTOR Game Update 1.2 Patch Notes: Classes and Combat

4. SWTOR Free Server Transfers: ‘Late April’

3. SWTOR Patch 1.1.4 notes

2. 30 Troopers Fighting Together

and number 1 is….

1. SWTOR Game Update 1.2 Patch Notes: Highlights

So if you look at the past year, SWTOR patch notes were the dominant thing, particularly the 1.2 update. Based on the data over the past three months it’s safe to say that the next list will be a lot more diverse 😉 We say it all the time but I’ll say it again: if there’s areas you want more coverage of, let us know in comments!

Note for transparency: I excluded our World of Warcraft Maps for Stormwind, Orgrimmar etc as they receive far and away the most views but are only used for a few seconds each by non-regular site visitors.

Christmas Greetings From The Oceanic Gamer

il_fullxfull.188510573.jpgJust a quick note to thank all our readers for their support over the past year. If Christmas is your thing, I hope it’s a good one for you with plenty of time to play the games you’re passionate about.

We’ll still be working away over this time: in fact there may be more content than usual! If there’s particular stuff you’d like us to cover over the ‘break’, then let us know in comments! We’ll be having a look back at 2012 and testing some of the predictions we made a year ago as well as making some new ones for 2013.

I also wanted to shout out to the great team that contribute quality stories to The Oceanic Gamer: it’s you folks who make this little gaming site rock in a big way.

[Pic via LiteGamer]

Call for Writers: MMOs, Comics, Opinion

Looking for writersJust a quick post to let you know we’re always keen to expand our writing team. In particular we’re wanting to expand our MMO coverage as well as move into the comics area, a 30+ year passion of mine.

So, here’s who we’re looking for:

1a. Gaming writers: Someone who plays an MMO regularly – you don’t need to be hard-core by any means, but a good familiarity with the game is a must. Which game doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s got an active community. Whether it’s WoW, Rift, TSW, GW2, World of Tanks or anything in between, we’re interested.

1b. Comics writers: Someone who reads comics regularly. Doesn’t matter if it’s superheroes, graphic novels, independent, web comics – you just need to love writing about comics, including reviewing comics you’re excited about.

2. Someone who writes well – don’t be hard on yourself here. Your work will be edited for the odd typo or grammatical error, which is fine. All we ask is that you can string sentences together in an engaging way and not require extensive re-writing / correction by your friendly editor. Nearly every writer we have on our team was convinced that they may not have been up to the task – I’m yet to have one person who hasn’t turned out to be a good writer.

3. Someone who writes regularly – we’d be looking for people that can contribute a minimum of a 400-600 word article each week. Fortnightly gigs will be seriously considered as well, as will guest reviews or opinion pieces if you can’t commit regularly.

4. Someone who has a volunteer sense of spirit: unfortunately TOG is financially a loss-making outfit, albeit a successful one with lots of traffic. If revenue increases, you WILL be sharing in that equally with the other writers on the team. In the meantime, expect the odd bit of swag or attendance at a game-related event representing The Oceanic Gamer, if the opportunity arises. And yes, you do have a byline to tout to much richer publications than our humble selves. Finally, you’re welcome to have a link back to your own blog or related web undertaking in each of your articles.

As far as topics go, we’re looking for people interested in writing on:

1. Games:

– Guild Wars 2: any topic area you like

– WoW: any topic area, would love some class columns but opinion / strategy and the like is always welcome. Will be working with our current WoW guru Luke to cover this game.

– SWTOR: still very keen on class columns, opinion, strategy, guild news

– The Secret World: lore, tips, opinion, news – anything really

– Project Titan / other Blizzard projects: news, opinion etc

– any other MMO: let us know what you’d like to do!

2. Comics: we’re really open on this. In an ideal world we’d love some regular comic reviews or opinion pieces on the industry. We’d also like to give some love to the local creators in addition to covering the big players.

So if you’d like to express interest, here’s what you do:

1. Use our contact form and provide the following info:

– ideally submit a sample of your writing or at least a pitch on what you’d like to write and why

– tell us a little bit about yourself – similar in vein to the bios on our About page. You do not need to be based in Australia or New Zealand.

– what day and time of the week is best for you to submit a column

2. Wait patiently for us to get back to you – it should only take a day or two.

3. See points 1 and 2.

Please, have a think about getting involved – and again, don’t be too harsh on your writing ability. Leave that to us!

 

[Pic via Cheezburger of course!]

The Oceanic Gamer Needs You!

The time has come again to put out a call for anyone interested in writing for The Oceanic Gamer. As we’ve grown to cover a range of MMOs, we’re as keen as ever to get opinionated gamers involved in getting their thoughts out there.

Before you say “nah, I’m not much of a writer”, please read on. Here’s who we’re looking for:

1. Someone who plays an MMO regularly – you don’t need to be hard-core by any means, but a good familiarity with the game is a must. Which game doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s got an active community. Whether it’s WoW, Rift, TSW, GW2, World of Tanks or CityVille, we’re interested! Ok, we’re not totally serious about CityVille.

2. Someone who writes well – don’t be TOO hard on yourself here. Your work will be edited for the spelling or grammatical errors, which is fine. All we ask is that you can string sentences together in an engaging way and not require extensive re-writing / correction by your friendly editor.

3. Someone who writes regularly – we’d be looking for people that can contribute a minimum of a 400-600 word article each week or fortnight. Monthly gigs will be seriously considered as well, as will guest reviews or opinion pieces if you can’t commit regularly.

4. Someone who has a volunteer sense of spirit: unfortunately TOG is financially a loss-making outfit, albeit a successful one with lots of traffic. If revenue increases, you WILL be sharing in that equally with the other writers on the team. In the meantime, expect the odd bit of swag or attendance at a game-related event representing us, if the opportunity arises. And yes, you do have a byline to tout to much richer publications than our humble selves. Finally, you’re welcome to have a link back to your own blog or related web undertaking in each of your articles.

As far as topics go, we’re looking for people interested in writing on:

1. SWTOR: healing, Operations walk throughs, random opinion pieces (we already have a great guild writer – thanks Jem!)
2. Guild Wars 2: any topic area you like!
3. WoW: class columns, raiding, guild profiles, PvP (we already have a great WoW columnist – thanks Luke!)
4. The Secret World: general news, cabal profiles, dungeon tips, PvP
5. A webcomic (if you’re an artist looking for a writer, drop us a line)
6. A machinima column with some good embeds to YouTube / Vimeo etc
7. Opinion columns on gaming in general
8. General news reporting (we already have a great general news guy – thanks Toby!)
9. Any innovative idea you want to put forward!

If you’d like to express interest, here’s what you do:

1. Use our contact form and provide the following info:
– ideally submit a sample of your writing or at least a pitch on what you’d like to write and why
– tell us a little bit about yourself – similar in vein to the bios on our About page.
– what day and time of the week is best for you to submit a column
2. Wait patiently for us to get back to you – it should only take a day or two.
3. See points 1 and 2.

Please, have a think about getting involved – don’t be too harsh on your writing ability. Leave that to us!

MMOs: Is Innovation Too Hard?

I’ve tackled that topic for an article on the ABC’s Technology and Games portal. It focuses on The Secret World and SWTOR mostly.

Have a read for yourself here and then post your comments!

Oceanic Gamer Forums Get a Revamp

Ok, revamp is probably too strong a word, but we’ve updated the forums to match the wider focus of the site.

There are now sub-forums for Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World in addition to SWTOR. We haven’t created a WoW forum because of there being so many out there, though if you think it’s worth doing, we’re more than happy to do so.

So why would you use these forums?

– to advertise a guild event
– to let people know if your guild is recruiting
– start a discussion on something you love or hate about the game
– throw a brickbat or bouquet at us for a story we’ve run on the site
– just have a chat

Forums are pretty old-school but they still have their place, so do consider jumping in. Any forum relies on a critical mass of contributors – we’d love one of them to be you!

As always – let us know if you have any suggestions for the forums and if we can we’ll make the changes.

Call for Writers: We Want You at TOG!

With our expansion into games beyond SWTOR, we’re looking for anyone with a writing bent that’d like to create some posts on the game they love.

So, here’s who we’re looking for:

1. Someone who plays an MMO regularly – you don’t need to be hard-core by any means, but a good familiarity with the game is a must. Which game doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s got an active community. Whether it’s WoW, Rift, TSW, GW2, World of Tanks or Farmville, we’re interested! Ok, we’re not totally serious about Farmville.

2. Someone who writes well – don’t be TOO hard on yourself here. Your work will be edited for the odd typo or grammatical error, which is fine. All we ask is that you can string sentences together in an engaging way and not require extensive re-writing / correction by your friendly editor.

3. Someone who writes regularly – we’d be looking for people that can contribute a minimum of a 400-600 word article each week. Fortnightly gigs will be seriously considered as well, as will guest reviews or opinion pieces if you can’t commit regularly.

4. Someone who has a volunteer sense of spirit: unfortunately TOG is financially a loss-making outfit, albeit a successful one with lots of traffic. If revenue increases, you WILL be sharing in that equally with the other writers on the team. In the meantime, expect the odd bit of swag or attendance at a game-related event representing TOG, if the opportunity arises. And yes, you do have a byline to tout to much richer publications than our humble selves. Finally, you’re welcome to have a link back to your own blog or related web undertaking in each of your articles.

As far as topics go, we’re looking for people interested in writing on:

1. SWTOR: healing, Operations walk throughs, random opinion pieces

2. Guild Wars 2: any topic area you like

3. WoW: any topic area including Mists of Pandaria news / speculation

4. A New Zealand focused column

5. A webcomic (if you’re an artist looking for a writer, drop us a line)

6. A machinima column with some good embeds to YouTube / Vimeo etc

7. Any other MMO: any topic you like

8. Any innovative idea you want to put forward!

So if you’d like to express interest, here’s what you do:

1. Use our contact form and provide the following info:

– ideally submit a sample of your writing or at least a pitch on what you’d like to write and why

– tell us a little bit about yourself – similar in vein to the bios on our About page.

– what day and time of the week is best for you to submit a column

2. Wait patiently for us to get back to you – it should only take a day or two.

3. See points 1 and 2.

Please, have a think about getting involved – don’t be too harsh on your writing ability. Leave that to us!

Announcing: The Oceanic Gamer

This announcement is probably not that big a one for most of you, but it’s a fairly big one for us. TOROZ has been running since early 2009, and over that time it’s consistently reported on everything SWTOR. Since the launch of the game proper in December 2011, a team of great writers have brought all the big news and a lot of great other stuff on a daily basis. All that said, it’s actually difficult to post about SWTOR only given that there’s so much more going on out there in MMO-land.

Which is why we’ve decided to expand our focus to cover new and current MMOs, with a focus on Oceanic gamers (i.e. anyone from Australia, New Zealand or surrounding islands). We’re not big or ugly enough to be covering everything out there, but you can expect regular coverage on the big items, whether it’s veterans like World of Warcraft, through to Guild Wars / Rift / Secret World and so on. What won’t be doing is changing our level of coverage of SWTOR. We’ll still be playing it all the time, the Flash Point Podcast will stay centred on SWTOR, and you can be certain that we’ll still be providing all the latest news, patch notes and opinion on the game.

So here’s what will be changing:

1. The site will now be called The Oceanic Gamer – hence the new logo you see at the top of the page

2. We will be keeping the TOROZ domain so all old links will work in full

3. For every SWTOR story there’ll be another story covering another MMO

4. Our forums will remain as they are now

5. Our TOROZ iPhone / iPad app will not change at this stage

6. For our RSS subscribers, you can now choose to receive all posts or just SWTOR posts

7. We’ll change over the logos for our Twitter and Facebook pages but leave the URLs the same

That’s it! Bear with us as we change everything over.

Please give us your feedback – because none of this matters without you!

And the winners of the Tauntaun Fawn are……

It’s time to announce the winners of the ten Tauntaun Fawn codes.

We asked everyone to tell us what they’d name their Fawn if they won, and there’s some superb answers. Read the website ones here or the Facebook ones here.

The winners were selected using a random number generator, after weeding out those that posted both a comment and on Facebook, with the following results:

5 winners who liked our Facebook Page

1. Abraham Barry: “I’d name my tauntaun “fodder”, in memory of the many tauntauns that died outside EV to pass the time :'( ”

2. Matt Noble: “I would call him Killer! It makes me laugh”

3. Thomas Midena: “I would name my Tauntaun ‘Yawn-taun’, ‘cos he’s so powerful that nothing in The Old Republic interests him much.”

4. Theresa Kassler: “I would name mine Khaleesi because she would be a little queen in her own because she is so cute! Plus thats my legacy on the game!”

5. Shava Nerad: “I’d name my tauntaun “cozy” since they’re warm inside…;)”

Winners who posted a comment

1. Fearlesskitty: “I would name it Tawny! cause its a Tauntaun Fawn and whats better than combining the names? xD”

2. Chem_toy00: “Willie Wompa, Because he is from the taun-taun factory. (seeing how there are 10 of em.)”

3. tele2musica: “I would name it the moaningduckling. It’s constantly moans for no apparent reason and it looks like an ugly duckling. random shot!”

4. Illiaster: “I would name it Pavlova because it looks crunch yet soft in the inside and full of yummies. That and I’d probably eat it when starving in the Tattooine.”

5. Annette Smith: “I’d call mine Anchovies, since I have characters named Pizza, Cheese and Danger with the Legacy name Supreme.”

We’ll be contacting each person individually to provide their codes, which are redeemed under your account details at SWTOR.com. Thanks to everyone who posted a comment or liked our Facebook Page. Also thanks to David Bass at BioWare for providing the codes!

Tauntaun Fawn Pet: 10 on offer

For those unaware, BioWare were offering a nice little freebie: a Tauntan Faun Pet (as pictured).

Thanks to David Bass at BioWare we have ten codes to redeem said Faun, and all you have to do is this:

OPTION A – POST A COMMENT (5 CODES)

1. Post a comment below – you’ll need to have provided a valid email address (it won’t show) for us to be able to contact you.

2. The comment you need to post is: what would you name your Tauntaun Fawn and why?

OPTION B – LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE (5 CODES)

1. Go to our Facebook Page

2. Post a comment on our Wall on what would you name your Tauntaun Fawn and why

We’ll use a random number generator to draw out the 10 comments that get the code.

Entries close midnight Friday 20th April at midnight AEST, so get cracking!

SWTOR news iPhone / iPad app gets an update

Just a quick heads-up that our TOROZ Reader App has had a significant update as far as the number of SWTOR news feeds it contains.

It’s essentially an RSS reader with two sections. The first is our own RSS feed . The second is titled ‘Other SWTOR News’, and it features a range of SWTOR-related feeds from around the world. It will run on either an iPhone / iPod Touch or iPad.

There’s a free version: TOROZ Reader and an AU$1.19 TOROZ Pro version which has a more polished look but otherwise is pretty similar. We’d obviously love if you bought the Pro version as it helps keep the site running, but if not grab the basic reader and get more than your fill of SWTOR news!

Android lovers: we’d very much like to have a version for you but unfortunately we don’t have the funds to develop one.