Hey, all!
As you probably already know, I like to make a big thing out of arbitrary milestones, so this post is here for me to celebrate my 20,000th forum post with the community that has become my second home (some might say first home!). In a similar fashion to my 10,000th post, I’ve put a bundle of things into here for maximum impact! Let’s go!
GONDOR IAN
Firstly, I want to properly introduce myself. My name is Ian. It’s not a great name, I know, but that’s what my parents called me and I aborted my plan to legally change it to Jack about 7 years ago. Feel free to call me Ian (or Jack) from now on if you want to.
Many thanks to those people who already knew I was called Ian yet continued to call me Gondorian, GDC, GondorianDotCom, Dorian Gon, Gondalf, G-man, G-dog, G-spot, G, The Big G, Masterbuilder, Ace, Captain Awesome, etc. I didn’t openly reveal my name all this time just because there wasn’t a need for it. But I have always felt that being behind a persona was limiting how much I could connect with people, so I’ve decided to finally announce it. (If you’re someone who has battled with this dilemma, share in a post below. I’m interested!)
In the spirit of better connecting with you all, here's a reminder of some previous posts I made that share a bit more real life stuff:
* From Zero to New Heroes
* Gamer. Designer. Coder.
* Two Months in the Life of Gondorian
OFFICIAL SHADOW ERA API
I'm pleased to announce something very special that we're implementing as part of this celebration. It will be an API (Application Programming Interface) that 3rd party tools, like the deckbuilders on ShadowEra.net (here and here), will be able to use to access your account and offer features beyond those in the official client.
Potential features include:
* export decks to backup all your saved slots or share them with others
* import decks that you've built outside the client or others have shared with you
* export your collection, to build from a limited pool or just see what you're missing
* export various stats about your account (e.g. play history)
* enquire about card prices and merchant stock
* get a gold price list for building a deck (from scratch and also from your existing collection).
* and much more!
When you add all this together, it leads to some fantastic possibilities! Now's the time to request the features you want built on top of the API, so the external tools folks can work on them for you and we can prioritise which API features to add first. I hereby confirm I will be updating ShadowEra.net to take advantage of all of this!
BREWING CONTEST
You may or may not know that I’m a big fan of deck building, which makes me much more of a Johnny than a Spike or Rainbow Dash.But since I spend most of my Shadow Era time designing and implementing cards these days, I don't actually get to do that much brewing of my own. But I love to see it in action.
Consider this a heads-up that I will be launching a huge brewing contest in the near future with the top prize of 20,000 Shadow Crystals, and 20 additional prizes of 1000 Shadow Crystals.
More specifically, the contest will involve crafting a deck of your own from scratch and writing an accompanying article about it, talking about the brewing process and then how the deck works. Something like this, in other words:
Brewing Time with Unicorn Johnny #1
All entries will need to be submitted via ShadowEra.net and will be evaluated on various criteria, including originality, quality of writing and how the deck actually performs (they will all be easy to netdeck and test via the aforementioned API!). The decks won't necessarily have to be tier 1 competitive, if you prefer to go for some theme (e.g. allies on horses) or pure fun factor or building from a budget. Feel free to start brewing now, or asking questions on this thread, before the contest officially begins.
RANDOM GIVEAWAY FOR NEW PLAYERS
If you signed up for the game in 2015 and are currently below level 20, I've made a thread where you can reply with your IGN and some info about how you found the game to receive some digital booster packs. I have some in my account from the SF Kickstarter and I don't need them, so I'd love to help some new players grow their accounts a bit.
OK, that's it! I'm going back to working on Lost Lands now.
p.s. If you haven't guessed already, I am also the Unicorn Johnny that wrote that article.![]()
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