It was the Giant Bombcast and it probably would be more likely to show up there if more people sent in emails... Unfortunately only one person would get credit.  I suspect the devs may not like my question though.  I asked how they felt about crowd-sourcing the marketing of Elemental given that Giant Bomb itself is built upon crowd-sourcing.

Later,
LAR

Sorry I didn't mean to be like hostile towards you specifically. I didn't mean accuse you of cheating, I accused you of gaming the system. What I meant by that is people are going to kind of exploit the rules of the game by doing the things that get them the most points with the least effort, whether or not they're in the real spirit of the promotion. 

One of the things that makes me upset about this promotion is only using Digg specifically, Digg is like the cesspool of aggregate sites, and the only way to get an actual post there noticed is to game THEIR system or have a power user account. It'd be nice if other sites like Reddit were included. At the time I made the post I did, there were several threads I'd consider spam as a moderator on the front page, which were obviously only made to get points for the promotion.

I'm more of a lurker, but I've posted a few Elemental things over at the Reddit gaming community before this promotion started, and it's fine that I won't get credit for that, but it's entirely BS that I'd need to deal with Digg to even have a chance since that is by far the most points. Even if I didn't mind dealing with the Digg crap this promotion would be about who can spam the most crap and get away with it.

Look up "Gaming the system" which is what I accused people of. If you still don't get it, then let me just be clear: I didn't accuse anyone of cheating. Gaming the system specifically means exploiting the rules of the game, not breaking them.

Related to where this thread is at, I'd add my general frustration to the "anti-gaming the system" camp.

I arrived at the point, though, where I realized that "to win the game I have to play the game". If Stardock is ok with their fanbase making mostly new accounts on various websites to make wishlists/email alerts just so that they can then have higher "fanbuzz", then those are the rules they set and I can choose to play by them or not play by them.

Usually I'd exercise my choice and choose to not play the game, but in this instance I'm biting and contributing my part by the rules set by Stardock, and gunning for a top 10 slot that way I can get a free game (for my wife; I already pre-ordered for myself).

A side note, because it's sort of related (not meaning to in a round about way make this sound like a jab at anyone), there are some entries that I have just told myself that I will not submit. In my respectful opinion, some of the point receiving entries are borderline spam. Case in point: for personal contributions to the contest, I will try to make them not seem like spammed, quickly done, or redundant entries (only real exception so far might be the quickie blog I did on one site and then copy/pasted to another site. They're my words but they were brief, borderline-spam, and I was given minimal pointage for them, so that's a far call on the moderator's side).

Stemming from that, I do think that the zero-day entries will generally be of lower quality than what we see over the next couple of months; I've got some ideas in the oven, but they are the caliber that is best not rushed.

Bottom line: To win the game you have to play the game; the choice to play is, of course, yours.

I personally have stopped bothering with the army game since there is no way I'll ever be top 10, I just can't do all the stuff the others are doing.  So I've got some points and frankly that's all you need to be entered in for the random draws.  So just one forum post is good enough for that. 

Thanks for the reply Kestral2040.  Since you guys are making changes, I'd rather not push the subject over a few points.  I'm satisfied with what I put in so far.  To be honest they were just automatic reposts of the Diggs, but I assumed that since it was broadcast to my friendfeed friends (yes its like twitter) that it would be worth points.  I think the Army contest is complex enough, so I don't want to make it even more complex by adding FF posts.

Good luck to eveyone else in the army.  It will be interesting to see how many points will be in the top 10.

yes this is fine so long as your friend is ok with it.

that sounds awesome to me, I listen to the Bombcast every week and would be very interested to hear what they think.  

For the idea of starting a podcast, any sort of effort you put in will be rewarded, people could even get together and make an un-official Elemental fan podcast if they wanted.  Could be fun.

This is just an oversight of our knowledge of aggregators.  You can always submit things you have bumped on other sites and get credit for them.  Put it in the Digg category if you would like.  I know some people have gotten points from Reddit forum posts.

How about some retroactive point love for all my surveys? I will gladly switch from being a karma whore to an elemental warriwhore.

It was a (bad) phonetic joke. I will take your suggestion under advisement.

I don't know, I thought "Warriwhore" had a nice ring to it

Do not let Winter "freeze you", battle on!!! The Warriwhore's of Elemental must band together. The Evil Wintersong wants only to blanket all lands in ice and snow and bring about a never ending snowy paradise where he can ski and sing show tunes to his cold heart's content. We must unite under the banner of the Warriwhore to stave off the dreaded menace of ice and snow!!!

@Winter: lol j/k Winter

Seriously though, from a phonetic spelling, the word "Warrior" sounds like this: War-i-your , with the "i" sounding like the "i" in the word "it" and not like the "i" in "pie".

LoL nice one, Winter. I was just thinking of using the "Scotty Don't" on Boogiebac again, just because it's been a while..hehe.

Hurrah! Yes, she's fine with it, and thank you for the confirmation. I didn't want to submit something that obviously was not my work and get disqualified.

*rubs face*

Ok, seriously? I've been drawing fan art for E:WoM for the contest. I don't draw often, but I'm putting my all into this, including carefully inking the drawings to the best of my ability. This is what's taking up my free time--what there is of it anymore since we're pretty busy here in the summer. I also don't want to complain or seem whiny.

I got 20 points for this: http://maximilia.deviantart.com/#/d2s09vc

Weez (and absolutely no offense to you dude, if you can get it, get it. GJ. ) got 30 points for two memes. Granted, they are posted in a public sharing site for memes and will help spread the word, but here they are:

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/54830
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/54829

I'm not going to stop trying to win, but I'm a bit... disappointed. 

Hey Madmelodie, I hear your perspective on it. I too put a lot of effort into writing a story, and showcased it on my own blog, (because it had been mentioned here in the forums that 100 would be the upper end to something here for that type of item), so crazy me, thinking that it would make sense to put it on my blog, where I've got a built in audience, that is also viewed by considerably diverse. And the first part I put up.. yeah over 2000 words. Yet, and no disrespect to Unacomn he got a 100 points for a story with about 1600 words in two parts. And I got only 30 points for my work.

Needless to say I too was disappointed, because I tried to follow their suggestions, and put in a LOT of work on that, and refined it, so that it had references to Elemental specific, but in a narrative traditional fantasy novel style, and got 70% less then someone else. In a sense it's just a bit not fair, but that's life. Sure, I even promoted the story here, as well so it had additional eyes, on it. And according to my referral numbers, many people here visited the site, off of my link.

So all that said, were going to be disappointed at times, for putting in perceived greater work. But because someone subjectively is reviewing it. And decides it's not worth the same value of something here. So let me say I feel your pain, and we should remember to keep our chins up. Reviews are subjective, and the reviewer who finally get's to your quest, has looked a ton of other things, and just rates it to that level. Not appreciating the hours, and days you've put into trying to come up with original and unique works of art. Beyond that, I'm going to keep putting my head down and continue to try to participate, even if the reviewers don't appreciate that amount of work put in, in some cases. Or who in some cases, considerably under rate some works that earlier reviews generated points.

Oh, I agree, Gor. It makes me dig in my heels a bit, to be honest. And I wasn't looking for ZOMG 150 points! I actually think the troll pic I submitted is over-rated. Just, you know, making fan art of something actually IN the game as opposed to a meme. Yeah. Not like upset or angry. Just disappointed.

EDIT: Also, Gor, I like yer tshirt, hehe.

I've been withholding 99% of my frustration (frustration that only stems from my desire to win a top 10 spot) at how "if I was the judge" the points would have been dished out differently. I decided to think about it before just crapping on some of the things I disagree with; I arrived at the conclusion that (for the most part) when the rulemakers dish out the points, that's it.

By seeing which submissions are most rewarded (vs. time/effort/creativity invested), that is the rulemakers communicating to us so that we know what it is that they are looking for.

There are a couple types of submissions that I would be super hesitant to submit myself. Due however to the fact that some of those have appeared to be more rewarding that what I thought they deserved, I too will probably submit that type of activity soon as well.

For me, it's really just "if you can't beat them, join them"; if it helps promote the game, then my guess is SD is also super keen for it.

also keep in mind that there are multiple people awarding points, not everyone sees every submission so they are not always judged based on each other.  Plus the scoring rubric is subjective and will change from person to person.  We are trying to make it fair but it can be tough

The scoring was changed on the pic--which I wasn't asking for. You can change it back, lawl, I'm really not that good of an artist. I know there are multiple people looking at the submissions which accounts for different ideas of what is a good submission and what is not. I know the "Stop Elemental" pic was at first 185 pts. and then modified down to 125 pts., the one that Drac submitted. (Yes, I do pay attention to these things--my first "Real Life" pics were taken with the 'picture of you and your Elemental stuff' rule in mind so I tried to make sure that (no matter how horrible it looked) I was in them. With Drac's submissions, I've learned that it's less about being in the picture and more about the artistic look of the pic... and with THAT in mind, my next round will be more artsy accordingly, but I digress)

Uhm, point. I had one. Oh, yeah, from that, I know the judges go through and review submissions and sometimes change them. I've also figured out that rejected submissions only show up to the person and not to the list as a whole. For each submission that I've looked at (and I've looked at a lot to get ideas), I'm trying to think of what makes that item interesting or unique (obviously not talking about the wish lists here), and how it promotes the game to learn. In other words, I'm trying to get an idea of what Stardock is looking for for positive promotion of this awesome game.

At any rate, it's totally fine to change it back to what it was before. I didn't want to come on here and STOMP MY FEET and THROW A HISSY and get it changed. That was not my intent at all, and I heartily apologize if it comes off that way.

EDIT: Also, totally remove that second Jackalope picture pointwise. I just thought it was neat that Wall Drug decided to post it on their website. I think I said that in the comment section--I just wanted to share and not be all like bragging on that. I don't think it's fair to get double points for one picture.

Would it make any sense for us to possibly include the points of similar items listed elsewhere? So that there is a reference point to go off? So that way, the many reviewers can in an essence coordinate, and try to keep it fair, and less subjective. Cause really, 30 points for a 2000 word story, compared to one that had less wordage for 100 can leave a sting.

Either case, Melodie, great to hear they re-reviewed yours. I was impressed to see you had actually used an ingame persona to draw by hand. As that can take quite a bit of time. So good for you! And that elemental shirt idea of mine was just a quick throw out!

* diggs and similar stuff not included in this comment

I respect your side of it. I disagree with your comment about it being ridiculous. Quantity of words, and the content contained within, are different and not by themselves qualitative. If the content of the work is at hand and thus the issue, that's fine, state that as a reason, and move on. Word count in this case was a metric by which one can parse volume. That's my perspective on it, for ascertaining a metric. Now that said, did you read my story? Did you find it wasn't a filling form of content, that also dropped in Elemental nuggets. While also introducing characters, and giving them a fleshing outwards, so the reader can feel actually apart of it. 

(Which I did by the way for many obvious reasons, but also from the perspective of showing the different lives of people who could live in Elemental. The adventurer, the King, the Prince/Soldier.)

While I agree as a form of content, the metric of words and their inherent value may be different, when placed within a certain structure, for eliciting different responses from the reader. Another easy metric is also to count words, to give an impression of the overall product. And what each part would entail. I will simply say I provided a form of metric. And also I thought in the last part, about the suggestion for mentioning the comparative works of others, I was keeping the subject on topic, and asking about a reasonable method of guessing a similar value, of other works. While there may be 5-6 reviewers or more working on these submissions, who then don't always cross reference each other's work.

That's where I was coming from Wintersong. Unique presentations are that, and if there is some kind of functioning uniformity to that, with gradations off of it, and it's followed in that sense. Then others will avoid misgivings or feelings like someone didn't take the time to read the submission. Which is vaguely possible, due to the volume. And I accept that. So please understand that I was also trying to find out via suggestion for a functioning threshold. Though I was more submitting my reference perspective for the mods to indicate their feeling on it, and if my suggestion made any sense.

Apparently none of my forum posts "have enough content". =( NONE OF THEM.

Hi Autarkhos. Do NOT let it get you down. If your getting rejected, look at how much your post contained? What was it talking about, was it germane to the thread. Did it look like you were getting passionate in it, describing your interests on whatever subject it is?

Keep your chin up. Post longer comments, or post/respond a few times (On topic/Not spamming), before submitting it to the Reviewers for quest points.

I say this out of personal experience, I've had quite a few rejected ones myself. Including ones that were actually on topic, but because the reviewer didn't feel it was enough so, or that the information somehow didn't apply... and I've linked them here for you to see.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/384522
This one, I got no explanation for why it was rejected. Just that it was, and that's their choice.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/384486
This one got rejected, with some limited explanation that only had 3 words but I couldn't see whatever else they had responded. Other than it was some explanation about customization. And so for whatever reason, they decided it wasn't "Forum Participation". 

I've had others as well. So I do know what you mean. But remember...

It's going to happen. As Kestral, and the other Reviewers have said. It's subjective, and a variable. And there are newer reviewers who have joined their ranks, and those folks have been judging it from what I've seen much more harshly. Dismissing what would of gotten you even 10 points in the past for "Forum Participation". 

So don't let it get you down. Just keep plugging along. And realize that they are human too. They have a job, and now they've got this job as well to do. So things are going to be missed, and slip through, some days folks will not have had their morning coffee yet. And they could be coming to your "Quest" and it was like someone else, who submitted the same thing sixteen times, and then they get to yours, and it reminded them of it. It's going to happen. Just keep it up. And continue working on adding to the forum participation be it here, or abroad.

Don't let it get you down to much. Your value is worth more than just the points from the quest.

Keep your chin up.

Re: forum posts, there are a variety of factors involved. Content, subject, frequency, etc. Personally I'd give most anything on our own forums a lower amount at most--stuff elsewhere on the web will be rewarded more generously. Also, if you report every post you make just to see what sticks, you're going to see a lot of denials. For example, I've posted more than a hundred replies in the past week. If I tried submitting those, I'd probably deny all of them.

We're not going to be giving points for every bug report, one liner, etc. (and general ideas/feedback will be very subjective about how useful or possible they are), and if it looks like you're trying to farm points off local forum posts you might find the grading getting more strict as time goes on to encourage you to try other types of submissions.

You tried getting points for answering a question...except you were wrong (customization will be enabled more as the beta progresses and full-on modding will be tested at the end before release) :p