Thanks for jumping in! I'm cutting down a bit over the last few days. down to 2-3 matches, instead of my usual 6-8. Need a bit of rest before the story tournament starting on Thursday. And I still have like 3 or so tactical primers on my list that I want to write. Plus maybe a dozen brigade combos I want to test out more ... Quite sure I will ramp up the pace again afterwards.
Bring glory to the Empire, Commander! Random matches only. Thing is, the Arena was created to satisfy people who wanted to play a game in one session. We're already effectively cutting the pool of players between Arena and Async. It's still heavily debated in the office. I'll keep you guys posted as best I can. Not as yet, sorry. But there's gonna be some major changes there! Keep an eye out. =) Well, there's a..eyup. Kev beat me to it. Truth is, we just aren't what gets them readers, so I can understand. We tried to get them involved with prelaunch, but there were bigger fish to fry for them. I'm just glad for the review that just went up. =)
I posted this in the comments on the TA Review for this game, however I love this game so much I should share it here. I am just so overjoyed to see a quality, deep strategy game on iOS that went Free-to-Play in a good way. I totally love the implementation of Free-to-Play and IAP. I am a huge strategy fan and have folders of strategy games on my iPad and iPhone but Ravenmarks was one of the best on the platform. Slitherine is bringing a lot of my old favourite strategy titles but nothing compares to the new stuff built for the platform. Along with Starbase Orion & Autumn Dynasty, I have been very enthusiastic about TBS games built for iOS. Then Ravenmarks Mercenaries hits, makes me nervous because its Free-to-Play, and I am pleasantly surprised. The game is so well balanced that there's no need to pay, no pay wall at all. The premise of setting out as a mercenary commander which gets you into playing through quests or PvP is spectacular. I decide to take a break from battles and check out the various armies I can unlock, then see how many unique brigades there are, the huge level of customization for your banner (I totally dig the banner pride, its a really cool customization), commanders traits and the sheer amount of lore! I mean most of the vast brigades there are have some really cool backstory, brigade commanders with their own backstory and extension lore to flesh out the whole experience. I spent half my time in Elder Scrolls games reading the lore in the books so this really excited me. But of course there would likely be a lot of grinding to get most of these units and there were ads so I had to take a closer look at the IAP, expecting the other foot to drop a ruin such a deep and wonderful experience. Then I find for $4.99, half of what the first game cost, you remove ads, get a few special brigades, sigil packs and all the banner colours to give your army its unique banner, it was mind numbingly awesome. You guys hit it out of the park on this game, you showed a really viable Free-to-Play & IAP approach that doesn't harm game balance, works for core players who don't want to buy endless bags of coin and even an Elite Edition for really dedicated players that want the most out of it but once again do not want to buy a bunch of consumables. This is a fine example that I hope sees a lot of success and other Dev's follow suite. I am getting the $50 Elite Edition because I want more of this. Thank you once again for one of the most immersive games and possibly the best strategy game on iOS to date.
thank you kind sir glad to hear you're enjoying the game! i hope you read all of Maakre's Travels then as well ( http://travels.ravenmark-saga.com/ ) you'll have to start from the bottom and work your way up. we uploaded the book to amazon (but we couldn't for the life of us, figure out how to give it away for free on amazon's kdp program ... but it definitely is available at that url for free!)
Good news everyone! The wiki is up! Thank you for the kind words and it's awesome to know you're enjoying yourself with something we've poured our hearts into. =)
Nice to see RM:M get some front page TA luvin even if I'm not sure the reviewer has exactly grokked all that much about the game. Which is funny, because I feel I'm still playing a lot of catch up with the differences between the multiplayer and habits ingrained from SOE, but I came out of that review feeling like a grizzled veteran of Mercenaries Also might have been better for the review's impact if a certain someone (*cough*tommet*cough*) hadn't seen fit to crap all over the comments section (around 25% of the comments) with purely generic (and generally delusional) anti-IAP whinage (if you aren't *specifically* and *constructively* critiquing why a particular IAP model doesn't work for a particular game, you ought to earn yourself a week vacation from the site; the blanket anti-IAP crowd are like the mobile gaming's John Birch Society). The game needs more exposure. I won 1000 silver in yesterday's Twitter contest and I was 1 of only 3 or 4 entries. Not that I am objecting to easy money, but this is, to my knowledge, the best multiplayer TBS on iOS and deserves to make WHS an iOS household name. Makes previous multiplayer games like Hero Academy and Outwitters into has-beens.
so you're the one! i took part in that competition too sadly, i did not win. although i think ian tried to throw a book at me ... ha ha ha ...
It looks like the midget slums. I kind of wish those had just blown up But I do look forward to the arena.
Btw, Polaris (formerly TheGameStation on YouTube) has named Ravenmark: Mercenaries as one of their top 3 mobile games of the week. Pretty good, considering the channel has over 180k subs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyhiQO10rRc The arena looks amazing too.
