Overview

I’ve kept the phpRaider community in the dark long enough so I decided to release a little information on my upcoming project. The new project is called Blitzaroo and it will be an online game event management system. My goal with Blitzaroo is to provide a free community service that the gaming community can benefit from. Gaming is a large part of my life and I’m hoping to do my small part to making that experience as pleasurable and easy as possible for everyone.

The Name

I struggled with a name for quite some time and finally stumbled upon the word blitz. By definition, a blitz is “an overwhelming all-out attack” which is what I picture when a crowd of 25 or more angry players go on to defeat a raid boss. The aroo portion just popped out of my mouth and Blitzaroo was created. You know, now that I think about it – “aroo” shares a striking resemblance to “Scooby roo!” which we all know is the most loved dog of all time (sorry Lassie).

The System

Blitzaroo provides much of the same functionality as phpRaider but will be hosted on my server and will not require user installation. This implementation has many benefits:

• The user requires no technical knowledge to get an event management system up and running.
• Provides more interactivity between the community with features such as joint raiding, open recruitment, etc.
• Eliminates the hassle of updates, bug fixes, and security patches. Everything will be done with no user interaction.
• Several other perks that I will discuss once the initial phase is complete

The First Phase

The initial phase of the Blitzaroo project will be to get a the event management system online. The system will be in alpha/beta stages to the charter members of phpRaider for quite some time to fix any outstanding bugs and implement any “must have” features. My phase one release goals are to provide the following:

• Support for any ANY mmorpg initially. I am considering adding support for other genre’s and am looking for community input
• Unlimited number of guilds per user.
• Unlimited number of characters.
• Support for subclasses.
• Support for multi-classes.
• Support for “tags” rather than distinct roles which provides enhanced functionality.
• Calendar view as well as a list view
• System wide mailing system for users.
• External mail notification of all guild activities (configurable?).
• A Spiffy (see what I did there?) user overview page which provides a history. Similar to Facebook.com.
• The list goes on…

The Cost

Blitzaroo will always provide a basic level of service that will be completely free to use. I am considering advanced features for later phases that may have a subscription associated but I have not set anything in stone.