The Next Chapter in the 360voice Story :AKA Site is DEAD not being updated anymore. Thanks for the fish.

Hello all. It's been a great time playing around with you here at 360voice. So, if you haven't heard from Mango's post, Livegamer has decided to stop engaging Ryan and myself to support the site. I do believe they intend to still pay for the hosting, so the site itself will go on probably until the database runs out of space.

I will probably monitor the site for an undetermined amount of time, but I would at least like to see that the year long challenges go through for the generous people that have been supporting those challenges. 360 voice has been a passion of mine since I first build the badge calculator 8 years ago so I could maintain my genre badges. I'm sad to be moving on.

I will probably look around and see if there are any other sites XBOX related that could use my services. I do enjoy creating and coding and use it as an excuse to maintain some level of coding skill and learning and contributing to a community. If I had any certainty that Livegamer would continue hosting the site for any period of time I would even stay here.

Thanks again,

Fish

Top 21 Most Popular for May 2014

A new month, a new list, well, not too new...

Been getting a few fixes in. A few improvements on the custom challenges, with a half year in, the year long challenges were blowing away the charts, now there are some options. Working on a few more fixes and there's always a little behind the scenes work to keep things running.

1. Stallion83 *
2. beastlybeasty *
3. the dren *
4. Geems *
5. Streak Leader *
6. D3ath 4pon u *
7. morgothan *
8. kingrich06 *
9. Buckswana *
10. ohjay08 *
11. futiles *
12. smrnov *
13. QuiCkz Ninja *
14. Desicator12 *
15. Fshguy *
16. FAR QZ *
17. Fragilesound *
18. pTartTX *
19. SG Steelhead *
20. Kaens *
21. Mightymango *

Top 21 Most Popular for April 2014

Here's the top 21... Can't believe April went to quick. Things are settling down after the move, getting back to normal.

Looking into what to do about all of you watching TV, number one "game", will have to filter out the apps so it isn't counted this way.

Let's hope Watch Dogs is worth the wait, going to be a slow Summer.

1. Dancsi27 *
2. Stallion83 *
3. beastlybeasty *
4. the dren *
5. Geems *
6. D3ath 4pon u *
7. kingrich06 *
8. Buckswana *
9. smrnov *
10. Streak Leader *
11. ohjay08 *
12. futiles *
13. QuiCkz Ninja *
14. Desicator12 *
15. FAR QZ *
16. Fragilesound *
17. Fshguy *
18. Kaens *
19. pTartTX *
20. CustomDEMOCRAT *
21. SG Steelhead *

Blogs running behind 4/8

We ran into a blog issue yesterday. Please let me know if you don't see blogs by lunch time(US time of course).

Due to the issue yesterday, blogs are backed up today. I'm guessing roughly around 2pm Eastern things will catch up.

Member of the Moment : QuiCKz Ninja

Time again for a new Member of the Moment. This time featuring a profile of a regular forum poster. If you only get your gaming news from 360voice, then it's likely this is the guy who brought it to your attention.

Gamertag: QuiCkz Ninja

Where are you at?

I am Alessio, I was born near Florence in Italy. I live in Italy, I would like to live in the U.S.

Have you been to the U.S. before? 

No

Where would you like to live in the U.S. and why?

Maybe California, that's where the famous people are. 

What do you do?

I am student, I played soccer throughout high school.

Any special story behind your gamertag? 

No, everybody calls me quickshot, quickz or quicky on COD series; also I love Ninja.

How long have you been gaming? 

I'm 18 and I've been playing video games for about 10 years and I will continue playing video games in the future :) 

What's your gaming setup like?

40" Samsung LED TV

Xbox 360

Xbox One

Turtle Beach headset

Scuf controller

Comfy desk chair

TV and Xbox are set up next to my desk, on a two drawer filing cabinet.

What's the first video game you ever played?

I don't know to be honest... I can't remember if we played Zelda on NES at someone's house first, and that's why my parents decided to get us one, or if we just got an NES and so Mario was my first game.

Favorite game genre? 

Shooting: I just love them. Call of Duty, Battlefield series but also prefer sports games.

Top 3 favorite games? 

COD Modern Warfare 2, Fifa 14, Forza Motorsport 5, 

Proudest Achievement and why?

Veteran gear level 100 from Gears of War 2 This was the biggest pain-in-the-ass achievement, when I finally heard that little popping sound, I was euphoric.

You recently crossed the 200k Gamerscore mark. Did you use any special game or achievement to pass that mark?

Lococycle 

You're also closing in on 10,000 total achievements. Any plans yet on how you'll cross that milestone?

Yes my plan is play and have fun with Xbox One.

What are your impressions of the Xbox One so far?

I love my Xbox One! Easy to use, multitasking is a breeze, and Forza Motorsport 5 and Dead Rising 3 are fantastic games! Couldn't ask for a better console!

What features/apps would you like to see added in the future for Xbox One?

I think a green, orange and black Xbox One would look cool, and a new dashboard.

What's your biggest pet peeve about games? 

Random errors and crashing.

Any other hobbies or activities?

I like to play soccer.

Ever break out any real life ninja skills playing soccer?

No

How did you hear about 360voice? 

Google search for gamerscore rankings. Although having 360voice in your motto is an excellent way to advertise for the site.

What keeps you coming back? 

That's easy. 360voice's community is the best on the web. I've been to many gaming sites where you just didn't feel welcomed at all and some of the forum mods were downright jerks. The 360voice community is the most friendly.

What kind of events would you like to see at 360voice?

Contest Winner badge, Microsoft Points, free games, free Live subscription, etc. Although our competitive nature drives us to spend countless hours and more money than is reasonable for the chance to win, I'm motivated by free stuff, badges, team building, appreciation of stats, and especially the competitive spirit.

Top 21 for February? Also looks like Stallion83 is almost there...

Here's the top 21... for some time period that includes February. A rough month for me with me moving houses.

Looks like Stallion83 is at 995k as of today... Let's hope that big number doesn't break the site....

1. Dancsi27 *
2. Streak Leader *
3. Stallion83 *
4. beastlybeasty *
5. Kaens *
6. the dren *
7. Geems *
8. Fshguy *
9. D3ath 4pon u *
10. smrnov *
11. LausDomini *
12. ohjay08 *
13. pTartTX *
14. QuiCkz Ninja *
15. kingrich06 *
16. futiles *
17. CustomDEMOCRAT *
18. Elem3ntal80 *
19. FAR QZ *
20. Fragilesound *
21. soxfan13 *

Blogs Delayed 3/6

Our hosting provider rebooted the server for a patch last night right after midnight, which messed up polling. I've restarted, probably ETA for blogs around 2-3pm today.

X1 Thanks... Streaks are in sync now, Viral 2014 is out now, more XBOX One to come

I've been negligent in thanking  Alan aka djekl over at the unofficial xbox api in all of his help in getting 360voice connected to XBOX One data. He taught me a lot about Curl and authentication and helped a lot with collaboration to get me up to speed. So thanks Alan.

After a few bumps on restarting the Streaks, I think everything is running correctly now. Please send an email to support@360voice.com if there is a problem. As a reminder, we can not depend on XBOX One data for play streaks.

The Viral 2014 is now out in the wild. Join a challenge with somebody that has the viral and win and you should be awarded the badge. Everybody that earned the badge from the Mega challenge and everybody that has won a challenge with all of those people and so on and so forth should have the badge now. Enjoy.

Next up, I need to roll out the badge updates for the end of the year(2013 that is).

For XBOX One, I am creating a page that will show your minutes played for your XBOX One games(and or integrate into the games page) and another page to show your individual game stats.

Streaks are really Live now!

Streaks are turned back on. Remember, do not rely on XBOX One play to maintain your play streak.

I've done my best to set the streaks appropriately. If you've been diligent and maintained your streak during the time that I said streaks would be on a couple weeks ago, you should be good.

It will take the blog processing on Thursday to straighten out your max streaks.

Of course, if you feel there's a problem, please email support@360voice.com and we'll fix any stray issues.

Blogs are delayed today

Was working on the streaks and the database, everything is backed up today. Not sure of ETA, I will monitor through the day.

XBOX ONE data is now here in your blogs

After a long trek, the XBOX One data is in your blogs and should be in your game data, etc. now. Depending on when you read this, you may have seen blogs times 3, tracking this down and a a few other hitches along the way.

For today, it will show all of your activity since 11/22. After today, it should show your daily increases as usual. Also, it should be showing your App playing. Also, if you have Xbox ONE and it didn't pick you up, please let me know. I identified who had ONES a week or two ago, I still need to write a process to pick up up new people.

Of course with any new update, there's always a chance for bugs. Please post in the forums or my blog or support@360voice.com and I will try to get to everything. That means a few more days before I start bringing in some more data.

As for Streaks, those might be another day or so, but please keep playing, they will be on shortly...

Enjoy!!!!

Streaks are coming back on Jan 17th!!!!! Please read or you may lose yours...

I will be turning streaks back on January 17th. There are some new rules to consider:

Play Streaks: Do not rely on play on Xbox One to maintain your streak.

Score Streaks: As long as you score, you will be okay, it doesn't matter.

For Play Streaks I will adjust the streak to match what it would be as if you had played during the whole time. If you didn't have a streak during this time, I will give you a play streak equal to starting from 11/22. I expect a lot of people to lose streaks on January 18th...

For Score Streaks, it should still be counting. If you didn't have a streak during this time, I will give you a a Score streak equal to starting from 11/22.

I will try to set it up to your max streak(if affected) does not lock in until the next day.

As for the rule about Xbox One. I've been working against the Xbox One data activity feed and it does not reliably pull for everybody. I will continue to look at this, but the services from Microsoft are very inconsistent for this particular information.

XBOX One game data otherwise is going well, I am getting closer to making this live. This means your XBOX One game play data will be in your blogs soon.

Challenge Update X1 Challenge and 2014 challenges

X1 challenge is going well, top score is up to almost 15k scored by Supernova x360a so far, 15 days to go. smrnov isn't that far behind at 11.5k and a a good pack of people sitting around 9k.

The Xbox One individual Stats and Minutes Play have been there since the beginning of December. I want to thank swaggers for helping me out with some CSS/HTML to make these leader boards look pretty awesome.

Also, there are a couple more prizes for the challenge. The sponsors approached me some time ago, so I apologize for the delay. They gave me free reign to pick the criteria for the prize, so blame me. 

For 42nd place, there will be a $20 code sponsored by Joshnorm. And a 3 month Live code for 96th place sponsored by Hotdogmcgee. Thank these guys for stepping up. 

2014 Challenges

I've created the 2014 year long challenges. I've repeated the challenges from last year and added one new challenge for the Xbox One. If you were in last year challenges, I've rebuilt the groups and put you in the 2014 challenges. Check out more information in the forums. These challenges will be open until February if you want to join.

Also, looking for sponsors if you're interested in leading the challenge or let me know if you have a new idea. Thanks to Mephisto4thewin for offering a full Retail game to the winner of the Iron man Challenge.

Here are the challenges:

Ironman 2014 - total GS for the year(X1 games will calculate for this no problem)

Sponsor: Mephisto4thewin

Prizes: Retail Game to winner

XBOX One 2014 - GS scored in X1 games released in 2014. (Tracking isn't here yet, must less games for this one, but it will catch up when things start running. 

Sponsor: ?

Prizes: ?

XBLA 2014 - Probably a dying challenge, but how much can you score on games released for 360 arcade

Sponsor: ?

Prizes: ?

Win 8 2014 - Win 8 games released in 2014

Sponsor: ?

Prizes: ?

Win Phone 2014 - Win Phone released in 2014

Sponsor: ?

Prizes: ?

Top 21 Most Popular for December 2013

Looks I completely missed November numbers. Been a little tied up with the X1 data stuff. Here's the list:


1. Dancsi27 *
2. Stallion83 *
3. Streak Leader *
4. Kaens *
5. beastlybeasty *
6. Geems *
7. the dren *
8. smrnov *
9. Buckswana *
10. pTartTX *
11. ohjay08 *
12. Fshguy *
13. LausDomini *
14. futiles *
15. kingrich06 *
16. QuiCkz Ninja *
17. Cloud XTUK *
18. Boerke *
19. Wendig1630 *
20. MysticWeirdo *
21. Elem3ntal80 *

XBOX One and Stats Update - Now with game stats and minutes played

Check out the XBOX One Challenge: http://360voice.gamerdna.com/ccs/BeginXBOXOne.

If you scroll down, you can now see how many minutes everybody has played in each XBOX One game. Also, scroll further down, and now I have all of the stats for all of the XBOX One games in a leader board. Soon, everybody will be able to see where you stand in such stats as how many poops you've scooped in Zoo Tycoon!!!

Streaks and integrating games played back into the Blogs is a work in progress. Streaks are still on hold, I will adjust when they are live again.

Significant progress is being made and some new and fun stuff is coming.

XBOX ONE has arrived, kind of

XBOX One has arrived, but right now as most of you know, XBOX.COM is not showing the game data yet. As this goes, the feed is not containing the X1 game data as well. It does look like your gamer score is updating with this. My expectation is that they ran into issues updating XBOX.COM and will have it updated soon. Anybody with inside info, please let me know if you see/hear of anything.

Until this gets resolved, I'm freezing streaks. I will adjust the STREAKS accordingly when things come back online. All of the other platform data appears to be the same today as it was yesterday.

For the "Beginning of the Era Challenge", this will go on for now, once we start picking up data, then any scores you have already achieved will count, so keep playing.

Enjoy your new toys!

Beginning of an Era XBOX One Challenge

Join here:
http://360voice.gamerdna.com/ccs/BeginXBOXOne

I would like to make this as big as it can be with who can play(you will need an XBOX One to score). So, please cross post to other sites.

The time is upon us, the Xbox One/Xbone/XB1 will be the new kid on the block. As a celebration for for the Xbox One release. Nov 22nd - Jan 15th+. Over 200 dollars in prizes !! You may join now through December 1st, any score gained before joining will still count.

Any game that is on XBOX One counts, all score from X1 games will count. Please report to me or Mightymango if we miss a game.

Overtime/Tie Breakers: The person with the most Gamerscore scored on XBOX one will win. If there is a tie after Jan 15th, the competition will go into overtime. I will add 3 days to the competition and it repeat as necessary. Everybody in the contest will be eligible to still win in the overtime period.

1st Place - Xbox One Game and Controller
2nd Place - Xbox One Game
3rd Place - Marketplace Credit/Points/Etc

All the prizes are provided by...me.

This is a new style challenge so you can be in this with a "normal" challenge. (This includes Autochallenges/userchallenges/etc

Cheaters will be removed by me, this includes taking advantage of any exploits that might become available through the new platform. Offline play is discouraged.

Any calling out of cheaters will be removed by me, please let me know through Live/forum PM and I will handle it

No limit on Gamerscore, since this is a new Platform, there is no advantage/disadvantage since everybody starts out at zero Gamerscore achieved on XBOX One.

Also check the forums:
http://360voice.gamerdna.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26819

New Blog Engine is Live!!!!!

Quick summary: Super fast blogs, easier to add new content, better streak handling = Happy Fish.

Tomorrow the new Blog Engine will be turned on. It was taking anywhere from 5.5 to 7 hours, depending on the day, to run the blogs. With the rewrite, it will now take about 5 minutes. A note, the Group blogs are still using an old process, so these are still taking 1-1.5 hours, so the daily "blog" status will still take a little longer.

Easier to update/add new content. The new process is table driven, so I can now insert new entries into a database. This also opens up the option to create an admin interface so I can turn over the maintenance to somebody else. Frankly, with the old process written in old ASP, I was scared to change anything but  minimal items because a mistake could break blogs. With C# .NET I can debug and make a full run in a couple minutes now which will make changes a more common occurrence.

Speaking of which, please submit your suggestions for new blog content in the forums or you may submit them to me directly.

Another important item is streak saving. The new process should pick up offline activity(there are games that just don't register right) and handle issues with playing near the cutoff. Please let me know if you see an issue by posting in the forums, sending an email to support@360voice.com or posting on my blog.

This, in combination with the polling rewrite, has been a much longer effort than I wanted it to be, but now that it is in place it will free me up to work on other pressing matters for the site.

BTW, I've made a couple improvements to the blogs already by separating the games played by platform. And expect to see some messaging in relation rolling up to the X1 launch.

XBOX One Coming and Top 21 Most Popular for October 2013

Only a few more days until XBOX One launch! Just to let everybody know, everything should keep going  as it has been and we expect XBOX One games to feed through the same way Win Phone, Win 8, etc. have been working so far.

Looking at a couple more challenges coming up with the launch, how many points can you get in X1 games by the end of January? And time for another Megachallenge...

Check your blogs in the coming days for some more improvements.

OK, where did all of these people come from?

1. Dancsi27 *
2. Streak Leader *
3. Kaens *
4. D3ath 4pon u *
5. Stallion83 *
6. beastlybeasty *
7. the dren *
8. pTartTX *
9. morgothan *
10. Buckswana *
11. Geems *
12. smrnov *
13. kingrich06 *
14. MysticWeirdo *
15. QuiCkz Ninja *
16. toddycst *
17. Fshguy *
18. flyingmario5404 *
19. Capn Doug x360a *
20. Boerke *
21. Elem3ntal80 *

New Blog Engine Beta

One other note. I've revived my work on the blog rewrite. Currently it takes roughly 5-6 hours to run the blogs(and it used to be longer before some DB work earlier this year). The new process is running in roughly 5-10 minutes and a couple more to load all of them into the database.

Please check out the Beta tab on your blog page, also there is a Top tab as well that has the Top blogs across the top blogs for the Beta if you want to see some more.

As of this writing, I've aimed for making the blog to be equal to the current text. My first improvement will be to make the games played list more platform and Regional aware. Maybe some special messages for those that play multiple platforms a day.

Speaking of which, this is a good time to ask for some more blog content, talented, dynamic writer, I am not. Please post your suggestions in the forums here. Planning to get some new content ready for the X1 release.