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Almost there!
We’re getting close to the start of Leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race Game. In just three days we’ll leave Cape Town and head for Cochin India. So far almost 10000 yachts have finished so there are still a lot of boats on the water!
To give you sailors some rest and time to fix your sails we will cut off the leg race two days prior to the start of the second leg. This will be on November 13th 2008 at 22:00 CET. We will magically teleport all the remaining ships to the harbour and your score will be calculated on the rank you have at that moment. This is a change we had to make because of the sheer size of the number of players.
It’s a race against the clock now to get the closest to the finish as you can!
The winners
You've probably all read the interview with our winner of the first leg Aldabra. If not you can read it here. An outstanding performance and soon enough he'll be telling time from his brand new TNG Watch. The others in the top ten will not go home empty handed either. They'll receive a nice extreme40 apparel package. To put all of them in the spotlights here is the final list:
The top10 is controlled by 3 countries! What can you do about that?
Stealth Mode on the Virtual Oceans
Last Sunday the game went in stealth mode. Unplanned stealth mode that is. We think we got a bit too much ocean spray in our hardware and the game was offline for a number of hours. Although we are fortunate that this was after the ending of a LEG, we understand that this may still have been a huge problem for people with their own internal competitions.
We're very sorry it happened and we're doing the best we can to prevent this in the future. We hate this just as much as you do. We want this game to be the best virtual sailing experience in the world.
Preparing for Leg 2
Although the leg race isn't done yet but we want you all to be ultimately prepared for the trip to Cochin.
- The start is November 15th 2008: Start Time: 13:00 hrs local time. (GMT +2).
- Your overall ranking is the ranking you had when we closed leg race one. Yopur leg rank will off course be the position you have during leg 2!
- You don't have to set your heading upfront because you will start automatically. The yachts will take of with the most optimal heading.
- You cannot change the colours or name of your yacht anymore. Unless you build a new one of course!
Keep in mind that everyone can still win the race at this point, even people who start new this LEG, because you are all allowed to drop your 3 worst LEG's.
New Features
Yes we're still adding more stuff for you to enjoy.
User/Group photos:
The coolest new feature we have is that you can now upload your own photo in the My Account section and you can even upload a group photo in your group. You can see some pictures users uploaded on the right. So far only 5.000 pictures are uploaded and we're eager to see more of them!
» Upload your own photo now!
Home page:
We've changed the homepage into your personal page, consisting of your personal score and current boat statistics, your online friends and the overall best players in the different area's of the game.
» View your personal homepage now.
North Sails:
You've all been equipped with state of the art North Sails. By popular demand we have stitched big logo's to your main sail!
Flags:
Throughout the game we're showing the flag of your country. It is programmed by using your ip location, but if it is somehow wrong you can change it in the My Account section.
Groups:
We've expanded the group limit to 1000 members! Let's see if sailing anarchy, our biggest group so far can make it this big.
Clock:
The Racing clock will be changed today to a countdown clock. This means it will show how much time is left to the "teleport" moment on the 13th of November 2008. After this it will change into a countdown clock until the start of leg 2.
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Some user photos:
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Some Race Stats
As always we love to share some statistics with you!
- Average playing time is 2.8 hours per day per player.
- Over 11.000 people are reading our RSS feed
 daily.
- 5.000 pictures are uploaded so far.
- More than 8500 players have downloaded the widget.
- With two days left almost 9800 boats have finished leg one.
- 638 players picked Ericsson 2 as winner. Their boats will be equipped with a free repair kit for leg 2. This was only 6.5% of the votees.
Pick the Winner
We'll open up a new "pick the winner" contest November 14th. To make sure everybody gets a chance to vote we'll keep the contest open until Monday the 16th of November. Based on the results of leg one we expect a higher winner ratio!
We're looking forward to see you on the water on Saturday. It will be an impressive sight over 60.000 yachts leaving Cape Town!
Stand by on channel 16 for further updates!
Cheers,
The Volvo Ocean Race Game Team
UnitedGames & Many Players.
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