As of 1400 PDT, 6 Jan 2009, we are working on resolving some issues regarding security and Mines.  PMOG will be up and down for the next hour or so.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

-Joe

Update: We located a rogue process and things appear to back to normal, as of 10:30 PST.

As of 9:45 PST, 5 Jan 2008, we are experiencing some server troubles.  At this time, we are attempting to locate the problem and correct it.

PMOG is still running, albeit extremely slow.  We have no ETA on a resolution, but will keep you updated in this post.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.

-Joe

PMOGery of the Week (PoW, for short) is a weekly installment of the most popular PMOG Community content from the week prior.  Too busy to keep up with everything happening in PMOGia?  No worries.  We have you covered.  Make the jump below!

This week: Discovering PMOG, New Year’s Resolutions, the Iron Consignment Corp and more!

PMOG enjoys a good Prince song

Call in the birth of 2009 with your fellow PMOGeons! Watchdogs, PMOG’s newest tool, along with Mines, are on sale today for 9 datapoints each (a 55% savings).  So head over to The Shoppe now. This sale is for New Years Day only!

With the extra-long year ahead of us, protect a future ally with a Watchdog or two, or create new rivals by leaving a Mine or nine on their profile pages.

Afterward, head over to the forums and share your New Year’s resolutions with everyone!

Happy New Year, PMOG!

As of 1300 PST, 31 Dec 2008, we are currently experiencing some server issues.  All services should be back up and running by 1345 PST.  This post will be updated with any additional information as it becomes available.

We apologize for any inconvenience. 

-Joe

As part of our renewed focus on you, the PMOG Community, each week we’ll publish a feature on PMOG and its community. This week’s feature is a meta-experience; I’ll be explaining the motivation for the blog’s redesign after meeting with the good people at Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). I’ll also look at some of the useful functions of the site, and provide a glimpse at future of our efforts to highlight the community you all have created around PMOG.

Alan Crosby (L) and Joe Wagner (R) at the SOE Block Party earlier this year.

Early last week, I met with Alan Crosby, SOE’s Global Director of Communication, along with a number of his Community Team members to learn from their experiences in creating communities built around an MMO. First off, I’d like to extend my sincerest appreciation to everyone at Sony who took hours out of their day to meet with me and help me to understand what we could be doing better at GameLayers. I learned more than I could ever fit into the contents of this blog post in the 6 hours I spent with them that day.

My day started off by visiting the SOE Corporate Headquarters in San Diego, CA. Sitting down with Alan and two of his Community Mangers, Craig Dalrymple and Gordon Dapkus, I asked and they answered some basic questions for me about Community Management. They each stressed key responsibilities: keeping you informed, educated, entertained and encouraged in all things PMOG. I asked questions focused on the goal of taking the wonderful community that has sprung up within our game and figuring out the best course of action to spread the content to all PMOG Players.

Thanks to their mentoring, the first and most drastic change enacted is right here on this very blog. I set out with the intention of making the PMOG Community News blog a landing page for PMOG players, instead of just a place to read up on releases and occasional server issue notes. The sidebar of the blog contains ways to keep up with the most recent PMOG action, such as recent forum posts, maintenance snapshots of when I plan to hit the servers with a wrench, and a calendar of events that will become increasingly more populated over the coming weeks.

We have also refocused the content of the blog. We intend to have more frequent updates with more relevant information regarding the dynamic, exciting experience that is PMOG. Expect to see updates two or three times a week, in addition to release information and maintenance notifications. Want to know what has happened in PMOGia the week before? Early each week the PoW (PMOGery of the Week) will catch you up on a handful of great forum posts, events and maybe even a few amazing missions you might have missed. Then, check back mid-week for a Feature, such as this one, which will highlight a PMOGeon or a happening that is changing the face PMOG for the better. And, once again, check back later in the week for something special from the PMOG Development Team.

GameLayers thanks everyone at SOE for their hospitality!

While I was at SOE, I also met with Robyn Vallee, Community Manager for the Volunteer Guide Program, and also Christie Renzetti, Community Manager for EverQuest II. SOE has a volunteer program of moderators and in-game “Guides” in the thousands. In the coming weeks, expect to see an expanded Steward program and opportunities for you too to apply to join the ranks of our great all-volunteer army of helpers.

Meanwhile, you can help out our newest PMOG Players and get them inculcated in all the ins and outs of things by keeping an eye on our newest forum, the “Shoat Sanctuary”. This forum will evolve, with your help, into a place where “newbies” can solicit your help, and you too can feature all the things you wish you knew about PMOG when you first started playing. Additionally, the forum descriptions have been cleaned up to be a little more explicit regarding what kind of posts they should house.

Lastly, we have an e-mail address that is ready to receive your PMOG-related artwork, fan fictions, blog posts, PoW content and just about anything else you’d like us to feature here.

So please, check our our community’s new home and start sending in content to your hearts’ content.

-Joe

Please discuss or leave comments on this Feature in this thread.

PMOGery of the Week (PoW, for short) is a weekly installment of the most popular forum threads, Community events, and sometimes even a few opportunities for you to help out a fellow PMOG Player. Many of us are too busy to keep up with all the action on the forums. So check back here at the beginning of each week for a snapshot of the creative, and sometime demented minds of your cohorts and adversaries.

This week: PMOG Secret Santas, an upcoming Storybook Game, Destroyers on Strike, win 10,000dp and more!

Check back in at the beginning of next week for another installment of PoW. If you have seen a thread or great Mission you’d like featured, please e-mail it to us at “Community at PMOG dot com”.

Please comment on this Feature in this thread on the PMOG Forums!

St. Nicks on sale on Christmas Day!

Today, Christmas Day 2008, St. Nicks are on sale in a fitting display of Holiday spirit by the PMOG Development Team!

After Santa puts presents under the tree and you’ve opened all your crate gifts, head on over to the Shoppe and stock up on everyone’s favorite tool of mischief and Chaos — St. Nicks!

This is a one day sale, don’t miss out!

Greetings, PMOGers,

This is just a brief note to let you know that in the next few days we’ll be moving PMOG into our new and improved cluster with our hosts Engine Yard (see GameLayers on Engine Yard for more information).  This will take an extended period of downtime where PMOG will be completely unavailable.  We hope to be able to do this during less populated hours; however, we must work with our hosting provider’s schedule, so it may impact your usual playing time.

Movin' on up!

This thread will be updated when we have a better grasp of the exact time table this will happen during.  As it stands now, we’re aiming for Saturday into Sunday.

Thanks for patience and understanding during this move.  PMOG will hopefully be faster and more reliable for it.

Yours,
Joe Wagner
PMOG Player Support Liaison
@burdenday

We are pleased to release another significant upgrade to PMOG, the best game of the web!

PMOG version 0.5.25:

Integrated Chat

A few weeks ago we began experimenting with a chat client for PMOG (based on Peekko, see our PMOG chat GPL code release here). Well, it’s been a fantastic success - people gathering and gaming and communing all the live long day, from a button in their PMOG toolbar. Now, you can install both chat and PMOG gaming from one link PMOG on addons.mozilla.org.

If you were part of our chat test, thank you! PLEASE REMOVE THE SEPARATE CHAT EXTENSION now! As you install the new version.

Browse Contacts

Rivals and Allies are now making an appearance in your browser! You can open your window to browse people. Find them, then you can Summon them to the web page you’re on. You can St. Nick them. You can send them a PMail message. You can open a mini-profile of them and gaze upon their stats.

Maybe you need some Rivals and Allies! You can find new folks by searching in the browser. Nothing says “let’s be friends” like attaching a St. Nick! And there will be more stuff you can do to other players through the browser anon.

Sleek Tooltips

Now, if you let your cursor hover over one of the buttons in the toolbar, you’ll see a lovely, svelte black bubble pop up above that button, telling you what it’s for.

Between tooltips, and burdenday, PMOG aims to provide help where you need it. If you’re looking for a good overview of help options within PMOG, be sure to check Joe’s How to Get Help on PMOG Fast Mission.

And check the Patch Notes for .5.25 in the forums with links to provide your praise, report bugs, or offer your feedback on this release.

Thank you for playing with the web, with us!