Andrew, at  www.completesoccercoach.com gave GONG a review. Head on over and check it out.

http://completesoccercoach.com/_bpost_1377/GONG!!!_A_Youth_Soccer_Game!

Hello, Olá, Hálo, and Bonjour.

My name is Chris Applegate; I'm the new Online Community Manager for GONG! Some of you might know me as Zauce or Voxx, in game.

First, I want you all to know how excited I’ am to be your online community manager. If you don’t already know what a community manager does. I build, grow and manage communities around GONG; Giving the team insight and direction on the game experience. Most importantly, I strive to have a closer connection with each user. I look forward to countless influential conversations each one of you.

You can reach me at chris@gongonline.com

We are running a "Find the GM" Halloween event this upcoming weekend. 

How to Participate

Beginning at 12:00PM PST (-08:00GMT) (5PM Sao Paulo, 8PM Paris), the GMs will be giving out pumpkin backback items to players throughout the weekend.  The GMs will be busy playing, so look for them online and let them know you want a pumpkin.  Each GM will have a limited number of pumpkins to give out.   If you cannot find a GM, send them a PM or post a comment here.  The event will run until Sunday 12:00PM PST (-08:00GMT) (5PM Sao Paulo, 8PM Paris)

Prizes and Badges

All players that login to the game over the weekend will receive a special Halloween Event  Community Badge on their player profile.   The GMs will also choose a "Scariest Player". 

Check out your profile and you will notice that ingame emblems now appear on your profile!  In addition, we are introducing community badges that will can be earned by participating in the overall GONG! web community.   The first community badges to be awarded will be "beta player" and "all-star beta player" badges.  Anyone that participated in the beta will get a "beta player" badge.  For those players that played in over 100 games during the beta we will issue a special "all-star beta player" badge. 

Look for more community badges overt the coming days to be announced.  If you have any ideas for badges, please let us know!

There is a new patch today...here are the notes!

Patch Notes for v1.6.5.262

Pumpkins!  There is a new load screen featuring some nice artwork by our team. 

Flashing Mailboxes.  Now when you have mail, your mailbox should flash.

New Items!  We have added two new items for purchase in the item shop: a pumpkin backpack and magic broom backpack.

Watch Your Language!  We have updated the swear word filter. 

Items Removed/Replaced.  We had a few more items deemed "bad" by our ESRB review team.  We took these items out of the game.  If you had a removed item, we have replaced it with a similar item.  

Halloween is just around the corner.  While we don't have a Blizzard budget, we were able to put together some new fun items and activities for the holiday. 

We have a couple of new wallpapers we put together in celebration.  We are also making two new Halloween items available in the item shop: a big pumpkin and magic broom.  Both are backpack items and will be required for some of the events we have planned for the Halloween weekend. 

Don't worry, SteakSamich will not be running any tournaments!

What a finish to the week...

It's been a crazy week here at the Team GONG! clubhouse.  We had a couple of our teammates out of town and the fire department stopped by to inspect our building to make sure it's up to code.  Luckily everyone will be back next week and we get to stay in our offices. 

We made some good progress on the development front and we hope to be able to announce some timelines for new features and content soon.  I can tell you that we have some good stuff coming for Halloween, which should be fun.  We picked up some coverage on out partner's sites too.

We ended the week with a tournament, Sliver's Challenge.  Unfortunately, Sliver was not around to help organize it and so it was left to rank amateurs like me to try fill in.  Luckily, Bobstir came to the rescue and made sure we finished the tournament without injuries .  Once again, the Brazilians made their claim as the best.

Thanks again to everyone for playing.

We have some new GONG! links on all 3 THQ partner sites:

www.playthq.com

www.valusoft.com

www.elephant-entertainment.com

Woo-Hoo!!

We will hopefully see some new players over the weekend from the THQ sites.  Be nice to them and help them learn the game! 

Use TrialPay to Get Stars for FREE!

Looking for an easy way to buy some stars? We are excited to tell you about a new payment option, TrialPay. With TrialPay, you can get Stars for free just by trying or buying something you already wanted.

For example: want 60 stars to outfit your character but don't want to pay for them? Get them free by sending flowers from FTD. FTD pays GONG! Online for your free Stars.

OF course you can always use your credit card or paypal to purchase. This is just another option that we hope makes it easier for you to support GONG! Online. Again, we really appreciate your support and hope to see more players choosing to contribute.

It's a new way to pay...and get paid. With TrialPay, you can try or buy an offer from your favorite brands and get your original product for free. TrialPay is a new advertising method that pays customers with free products out of advertising revenue.

If you aren't willing to pay for a merchant's product directly, the merchant would rather have you transact with another brand rather than abandon your purchase entirely.

TrialPay connects shoppers with ideal offers and pays the merchant out of advertising revenue. Everyone benefits from this arrangement. Merchants make sales from lost or unlikely customers, advertisers acquire new customers and shoppers get a free product. So while this offer sounds too good to be true, it's actually in everyone's best interest...and just as good as it sounds. TrialPay makes it happen.

Is it really free? What’s the catch?

 

Yes, it's really free. TrialPay is simply a new method of advertising that pays customers with free or discounted products out of advertising revenue. You get your chosen product for free by trying or buying something you already wanted anyway.

The terms of each advertiser offer vary from totally free (try Stamps.com, set up an eBay account) to paid or subscription services (send flowers from FTD.com or join Blockbuster Total Access). Regardless of the advertising terms, your initial product and the TrialPay transaction are always totally free. And TrialPay customer service is free, too.

New map, new design, and some international scuffles.  

It's been a fun week here at GONG! Online.  The new map, "Baja Beach" seems to be getting a fair amount of use.  We also are thankful to get our players making purchases to support the game.  So keep buying some stars!

The real highlight of the week has been the budding rivalry between several regions. It will be interesting to watch who takes the leaderbaords over the weekend.  So far the scuffle has been without incident and we certainly hope it stays that way.  It gave us a good idea though to start a country focused leaderboard.  More details to come next week.