Silberfuchs and Kerensky are truly devious.

During a stroll through the forums, they have hidden two images in some random postings somewhere on the boards.

You can now go through all of the boards and when you've found the images and figured out to which place in the game they refer, you can win your spot in the closed beta.

All you have to do is: be quick! The first 10 to send in the right answer are in.

Send your correct answer with the name of your forum account by the 25th November 2008 to: events@runesofmagic.com

Have fun and good hunting!

Link: RoM-Forum

Two interesting updates arrived in the news room today.

#1: MMORPG.com Chat Log available

MMORPG.com has kindly posted the chat log of Saturday's live chat with the community.

Head over to their site and have a look at the numerous questions and answers.

Link: MMORPG.com chat log

#2: Community Design contest

As our forum resident Dasadorah pointed out, the RoM community recently held its first Photoshop contest (initiated by EstebanPR) and the results are in!

Out of the many amazing art pieces submitted by our community, SimonSaysBaka is our winner!
 
Photoshop 1st Edition was held on November 8th -November 11th. The Photoshop 2nd Edition is on the way. Make sure you stop by and get your entries in.
 
Link: Photoshop *1st Edition* of RoM
Link: Photoshop *2nd Edition* of RoM
 

This week in the limelight of our attention are two major news:

MMORPG RoM Forums

MMORPG.com now has their own Runes of Magic forum category! The General Discussion is already seeing a fair amount of postings.

After the successful dev-chat on Saturday, 15 November, MMORPG's Community Manager Kunou has opened a thread where players can ask questions on Runes of Magic which we will then answer.

Link: MMORPG.com
Link: MMORPG.com RoM-Forum

ESL Key Giveaway - Closed Beta

The Electronic Sports League is giving away keys to the Runes of Magic Closed Beta test! Simply go to their site, register with them and get your chance to receive one of the sought-after Closed Beta keys.

Link: ESL
Link: ESL Closed Beta Key giveaway

As a reminder to our community: There are still two art and design contests running: The Design a Cape contest, where you can design a cape that will be put in the game. We already have over 150 entries, but the competition is still open. Send us your design by the 25th of November 2008 and have your design in the game.

And there is the small contest on our boards where Silberfuchs and I are asking you to create a forum signature which we will then use to sign our postings with. Check out the thread on the forums and take part. This contest ends on the 21st November 2008.

Link: Design a Cape contest
Link: Create a signature for Kerensky

The German community beat us to it - they started designing a forum signature for my highly esteemed colleague Silberfuchs.

I ask you to create a signature for me as well. We can't let him have a user-created forum signature and not me!

Not only will you be able to permanently showcase your artistic talent but the "winner" will also secure yourself a spot in the closed beta.

Check the forum-thread for more information and to present us your creation.

Link: "Create a signature for Kerensky" - Thread
Link: DE Signature contest
Link: RoM-Forum

Tonight will see the end of this year's Halloween event.

If you missed the event, don't worry - there are more to come in the future. Next time we celebrate will be in mid-December, when we present you our Winter Event.

And if that's not enough, we will be running many more ingame Events written, organised and run by our Eventmasters. We will release more on Events and Eventmasters later.

We would like to thank all our beta testers for their participation and hope veryone enjoyd the show.

Link: RoM-Forum
 

This week we have a few interesting news items for you:

Tentonhammer reports on RoM

Tentonhammer's editor Danny "Ralsu" Gourley took the opportunity to have a go at Runes of Magic and has good things to say:

"Only after it was satisfied that the foundation for Runes of Magic was polished and solid did Frogster admit a large number of new testers to perform stress tests and fill the servers....Free-to-play does not have to mean low budget and poor quality, and the careful approach Frogster used with beta will ensure the release product is one worth playing."

Head over to the TTH to read the full story!

New screenshots available

As regular visitors to our website might have already noticed, the people and creatures of Taborea celebrate popular holidays like Halloween as well.

To commemorate this year's event, we added a couple of screenshots to our gallery.

Fan Art update

Did you already check out our excellent Fan Art section where we exhibit great artwork made by our players?

If you haven't done so yet, now would be a good time! Simon has sent us his newest creation and I bet, if you like pumpkins, you will love this one!

Link: Tentonhammer.com
Link: Screenshot Gallery
Link: Fan Art section
 

Director of Product Management Daniel "Danatros" Ullrich got good news about the latest development of Runes Of Magic and our plans for the 3rd phase of the Closed Beta.

The most important details in a nutshell:

• The Stresstest was a success
• Opening of PvP server for CB 3
• No wipe after open Beta

Read all the details here.

Link: 2nd Letter to the Community
Link: RoM Forum

Ladies and Gentlemen,

we are proud to announce that the Runes of Magic servers will be online again in a few minutes for the start of Phase 3 of the Closed Beta

You will then see two servers:

• Server 1 is running on the same ruleset as before (PvE with optional PvP)
• Server 2 is running the Open PvP ruleset.

The data of server 1 have been copied to server 2.
This basically means that you can play with your old characters on either server.

Remember: We're still planning to start the Open Beta early December, so if you haven't applied yet, you can still register. Additionally we will most certainly invite more people to the closed beta over time.

Have fun!

Link: RoM-Forum
Link: RoM-Beta Forum

Good news for all beta-testers: We have just turned the Runes of Magic server on again. The servers will be available for normal beta testing throughout the night.

Just before tomorrow's stress test we will take the server offline for a short maintanance (at about 10:30am GMT / 11:30 CET) and will commence the stress test as planned.

The server will be back on at 11:00am GMT / noon CET.

Link: Stresstest Thread

Since the birth of the english forums, we always wanted to make sure you get the attention you need.
While CM Bilanx was doing a good job and will never be very far, we needed some extra support due to the strong activity of the international community.
CM Silberfuchs therefore introduces you to Jörg "Kerensky" Koonen, who will from now on be at your side.

Now, before you ask why a person with an Umlaut in his name can be the English CM, let us have a look at Jörg's career so far:

In 1990 Jörg started studying English and German language and literature at the University of Aachen with the goal of becoming a language teacher. During this time he worked in several businesses ranging from retail to marketing. After being introduced to his first MMORPG, he joined the possibly largest DAoC fansite as moderator in 2002 and after only one year became head administrator and webmaster.

Beginning of 2005 he joined NCsoft Europe in Brighton, UK, and worked as Community Coordinator on several projects, presenting the games on shows in the Germany and the UK, working with the German and English speaking communities and writing news for the websites in both languages.

So you can see, even a guy with an Umlaut in his name can be a proper English Community Manager. ;)

Do not hesitate to welcome him on our official forums!

Link: to the RoM forums