CSTM is supporting Child’s Play

posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as charity, General.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/Ehi3YF8S-uc/

I’m proud to announce that CSTM is now officially supporting its first cause: Child’s Play. Seeing how this organization brings together two of our great love, namely Hobbit Babies and Gaming, nothing was more natural to us then helping them out and permanently add their banner to our website.

Child’s Play is a group helping out sick children in hospitals. They rely specifically on the gaming community to raise money and buy movies, games and books for hospital’s playroom. You can either contribute with a cash donation via paypal on their website, or you can select a specific hospital in need and buy toys for them from their Amazon wish list.

From their website, Child’s Play explains:

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Poll: The Next LOTRO Class

posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as Classes, poll, Weekly Poll.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/MkwGgML9Z4M/

In an interview with Mordor or Bust, Executive Producer Kate Piaz stated:

While we have a lot of ideas for new classes, nothing has entered production yet, so I really can’t give a timeline right now for them.

So lets speculate a bit. What role do you think the next LOTRO class should be?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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Kinship Websites – Choices and Challenges

posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as General, kinship.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/FFX9mp26lpI/

Now before we get started on this article I’d like to lay down a few basic statements to help you understand where I’m coming from, as well as my experiences with this topic.

For the past 5 years I worked extensively with online gaming communities to better their appeal, organization and overall cohesive interaction.  This means doing everything from event coordination to designing and maintaining heavily used, community driven websites. In this time I have discovered a number of effective ways to reduce overhead for the community leaders, increase user activity and provide efficient communication between members.

In this article (and hopefully additional articles if feedback is positive) I plan to highlight ways for Kinships leaders to design and maintain a community website driven by its members with minimal cost and coding. All of the options and ideas listed bellow are do-able with a basic budget of around $50 or less!

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The all new "Misadventures in LOTRO" caption competition.

posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as lotro caption contest.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://www.misadventuresinlotro.com/2010/07/all-new-misadventures-in-lotro-caption.html


I've been doing some statistical analysis on the traffic to this blog and there appears to be a respectable amount of regular visitors (for which I am very grateful). Bearing this in mind, I thought it may be fun to run some sort of audience participation activity. So I came up with the idea of a caption contest. Simply come up with an amusing caption for the above picture and post it in the comments section. That's not exactly difficult is it? I then get to pick the winner as it's my blog. I have an extremely broad sense of humour, but keep in mind the usual legal disclaimers about what is and isn't suitable.

Hopefully, the response will be as good as that for my previous poll, which received over a dozen votes (Yes I was somewhat overwhelmed by the degree of interest shown!). Unfortunately, at present I cannot offer any sort of prize due to atmospheric conditions and the recession. The winner will simply have to content themselves with "15 minutes of fame" etc. However, if this competition proves successful, then there may be scope for a "Misadventures in LOTRO" T-shirt, as a prize in the future. The competition is open till 19:30 GMT Wednesday 4th August, which is a purely arbitrary time I just plucked out of thin air. Read the rest of this entry »