• Just remember, $5.00 gets your name (or character name) in the book forever as a supporter and one section in PDF form!
• $7.00 gets you all of the $5.00 rewards plus a shout out or plug of anything you’d like on the Multiverse Podcast!
• $10.00 is all of the above plus a beautiful print of Amanda’s cover artwork!
• $20.00 is still all of the above plus your own, signed copy of the Raider’s Companion!

The project at Kickstarter is going great so far! We’re at 86% with $545 left to reach the goal. There is still time for you to pledge your support and earn some of the neat rewards we are offering, but that time is running short (less than a week left!). So if you were thinking about it and haven’t, maybe you should consider doing so soon!

Time is running out for you to join in on the Raider’s Companion Kickstart Project? Don’t miss your opportunity to help a community project and earn some really neat rewards! Pledge your support today!

I would also like to note that the Multiverse is officially on Stitcher Radio now. If you don’t use iTunes and prefer not to listen directly from our site you can use Stitcher. It is platform agnostic.

Show Link

For topics we discussed a lot of Blizzard and a little Rift patch 1.6. We looked at the freemium game Dragonvale and Chris’ new love, Battlefield 3 (accompanied by sound effects). Over and beyond that we hit some news items (FF14 charging) and our usual shenanigans ensued.

Next week we will welcome back one of our favorite guests, Green Armadillo. GA writes over at Player Versus Developer and is someone I consider a “must read.” I am also stoked to say that it will be a milestone show for the Multiverse. Would you believe that we’ve done 50 shows? I bet you wouldn’t but we have! So stay tuned for a special Green 50th show anniversary show-straviganza!

Have you seen our Kickstart Project? Ferrel is currently raising funds for his second book, The Raider’s Companion! Check it out and please consider supporting, sharing, or both!

Editors Marching

The big part of doing a self-published book is ensuring that you don’t have spelling, grammar, and sentence flow errors. It is extremely expensive to pay someone to do this kind of work! To offset this cost the idea is to have the manuscript proofread as many times as possible by slave labor (friends, loved ones, etc). The less simple errors your editor has to correct the more time they can spend looking at flow and organization. Currently we’re still in friends-and-family proofreading. Thus far that has gone well and the reviews are pretty great. Yes, I know they’re my friends and family but they’re also a bunch of honest people! I’m not sure we’ll be ready for Christmas but we should hit at least shortly after.

Revision Two

Part of my writing style involves doing a draft, setting it down for a week or two, and then reading it a second time. When I do that I normally expand, clarify, and correct. This usually grows the piece of writing I’m working on. With work covering me up and Iniquity being in a really successful swing I haven’t done this start to finish yet. I’ve spot checked but I just don’t feel like I’m where I should be! The manuscript is great as it is. I just feel it could be greater!

Art!

Amanda has been working overtime to finish the cover up so we can get it out on Kickstarter and show the world exactly what they’re getting for their money. Today she sent me an extremely polished draft that is probably 95% complete. I’m going to share that with you guys! This is the print that you’ll receive for your support and what the cover will eventually be created from.

Kickstarter

One of the things I feel like I did a poor job on is explaining how Kickstarter works. I realize the majority of the crowd that is going to support this project probably aren’t familiar with it. If the Massively.com comments were any indication most people have a very skewed image of how this works! Kickstarter is an “all or nothing” type of program. I set a goal and a timeline ($4000, 32 days). If I do not reach or exceed my goal by the end of the time line my project fails and I receive zero money. That is why it can be a really stressful thing as there is a psychology to it. People tend not to donate early on because they assume the project will fail. Once you cross 50% support goes up. When you hit 75% people assume you’ll succeed and start to push even harder. This can often mean projects go well beyond their goal.

A key element to understand is that until the project succeeds and passes the deadline a supporter will not be charged anything. Why do I bring that up? It is because as a guild leader I know people. I would say a good portion of us (me included) will say, “Oh yeah I’d like to do that. I’ll do it later though.” This is the reason why I have 1000+ collectors tokens from each Rift world event. I think “I’ll buy that later. I don’t want to spend now and find out it changed or something new was added.” The events end, the items move to a different merchant, and I never get around to it. I watch my guild members do similar things! What I’m getting at is this:  if you said “Oh yeah, I’ll do that,” please do it now! Whether you support on day one or day 30 you still won’t be charged until day 32. The difference is, if you support earlier it gives me a greater chance of success!

The final element of this is that you’re not really donating so much as supporting. A supporter is not like a stock holder. You don’t get a stake in the success of the book. What you get instead is unique and special items from the project. You get a signed copy of the book, bits of art, the chance to be immortal (in the pages of the book), and other things of that nature! I know I shouldn’t let forum-like posts get to me but I just didn’t feel great about being accused of taking money and giving nothing back. I just wanted to be sure everyone was aware of how this all works!

Have you seen our Kickstart Project? Ferrel is currently raising funds for his second book, The Raider’s Companion! Check it out and please consider supporting, sharing, or both!

Multiverse MMORPG Podcast Episode 13 – Brian Green

The Multiverse Episode 10 will be recorded live Friday, August 5th, at 7 pm EST. You can join us at Livestream to participate in our shenanigans. We might also be using a different program that allows call ins! Speaking of call ins, please continue to do so at our voice mail! We’d love to have your questions and comments. You can reach us at 336-505-9501!

In this week’s episode, we’re pleased to be joined by our friend and soon to be college hotshot, Riknas Sarn! We have a great time getting re-acquainted over MMO talk including such topics as:

• Lots of SW:ToR talk!
  • The $150 Collector’s Edition — which is a FAR worse value than what we’re offering you, by the way.
  • Bioware choosing servers for pre-launch guilds
  • And we respond to Gordon’s statement, “I guarantee SWTOR will pass a million subscribers.” Gordon, we formally invite you on the show. We’ll talk about Japan and stuff.
• Selling your kids for gold — Will Riknas sell his first born for Station Cash? Only if it comes out as green loot.
• A listener asks, should he play F2P EQ2 or pony up for a sub?
• Introducing the Multiverse: Guildcast!
• And much, much more!

-Multiverse Voicemail: You can now call or text us your question, comment, or jeer. Our number is 336.505.9501. We’ll be playing them on the air (unless you ask us not to) and answering them directly! Join us on Wednesday, 27 July 8 PM EST for our next recording!
-Live recording: We’ll also be offering our chat channel during our recordings. Come participate directly while we record. Hear what gets cut out and have your say!
-A new URL: You can always reach us at Vagary.tv/multiverse but you’ll soon be able to just go directly to http://multiversepodcast.com !
-Contests: We did our Five Star Review contest and that went okay (only Pickledwarf never got back to us)!
-Half Shows: We might start up half shows shortly so you get more Multiverse with a slight twist!

Check out Season Two Episode Eight today!

The Crew

In general I’m not a super funny guy when I write. Sometimes I’ll hit comedy gold but we all know the score! I’m also aware that there is strength in numbers. For those very reasons I went out and grabbed some of the best talent available and tricked them into writing for CWP. This means you’ll get fresh content more often from a lot of different perspectives.

The Mission

CWP isn’t all fun and games though! Through our humor we have to solve one of the greatest MMORPG injustices that exists: clerics don’t always wear plate. We’ve set up a certification system to protect players from MMORPGs where clerics don’t wear plate! Help us with our certification process!

A Safe Place

There are simply too many MMORPG forums where an innocent question will be met with the response L2P noob. Sources of solid information and positive discussion are just starting to evaporate. We’d like to change that. Shortly after the beta we’ll be opening the Clerics Wear Plate Forum. This will be a heavily moderated, safe, and fun place to discuss MMORPGs.

Participate

We’d love to see your comments. We’d also like to see your funny! If you have a great screen shot let us know. It just might make it into the screen shot of the week!