Skully recently posted on the forum that the chinese Turf Battles server (called Kaixuan) has been launched and registration is open to everyone!

You can download the chinese Turf Battles client here: http://www.4shared.com/file/fNJj2N9O/kaixuan2-setup.html

Here are instructions for registering for an account:

1. Go to http://www.kaixuan2.com/account/register

2.

You can download the english patch here: http://peecee.dk/upload/view/362380

Here are instructions for how to install the english patch:

1.

2.

3.

A new forum has been created for discussion regarding kaixuan: http://turfbattles.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=25

Skully’s original forum thread: http://turfbattles.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1802

That’s right! We now have a shop! It has T-shirts, Badges, Hats, Keyrings, Magnets, Mouse Mats, Mugs and Stickers!

See the full shop here

There is quite a lot to choose from, but if there’s something you want that you don’t see, you can request it in the suggestions forum and i’ll see what I can do

Also, once you’ve clicked on an item, you can further customize your order – you can change the colour, move things around etc.

If anyone does buy anything, let me know – and if you’re able, take a photo! I’m going to be buying a few things, so i’ll take photos when I get mine

I emailed Smilegate yesterday with some stats – regarding how many people visit the website etc.

I asked them to give us an official response to whether Turfbattles will be coming back.

Here’s the response:

Dear TB fans

We really appreciate your keen interest about TB.

We are sure that TB will be serviced again in US version.
Unfortunately we cannot tell you when we exactly start to open TB service in US at the moment.
When we are able to give the information or press release to you, I’ll send it to you.

Again we thank you very much for your interests.
Hope to see you soon in TB.

Best regards

Smilegate Team

You can discuss this in this forum thread: http://www.turfbattles.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=313

Interesting bits have been highlighted

A star developer of China-capturing FPS Cross Fire, Smile Gate now breaks into the monopolistic online game publishing market. On September 10, Smile Gate informed that its brand new publishing and sourcing division, led by pre-NHN Investment (NHN’s venture capital subsidiary) director Park, Jung-Pil, will go into hunting online games of any genre, be it casual or MMORPG. Smile Gate had already acquired the publishing rights for e-Magic’s MMORPG Sephiroth and laid the foundation as a service company. Hereupon, whether this medium-sized promising developer will become a successful publisher draws public attention.

Director Park, originally one of Cowell venture capitalists, vertically rose into a star publisher after launching Special Force at Neowiz and Dragonfly, Sudden Attack at CJ Internet, and FPS games at NHN. Such fickle movement among rival companies game him disgrace  – “migrant.” However, such stigma did not matter for Smile Gate’s urgent metamorphosis into a publishing company: All Smile Gate needed was Park’s experiences and intuitions accumulated from publishing FPS masterpieces. That is, Smile Gate had to seize back the torn apart Cross Fire benefit to China-publishing Tencent and Global-publishing Neowiz Games.

Besides a countermovement to the publishers’ oligarchy, transformation into a publisher is a part of Smile Gate’s long-term (namely 4 to 5 years) master plan. In order to diversify its Cross Fire-dependent revenue structure, Smile Gate decided to source the game developing functions. Recently, Smile Gate acquired My New Children, a developer of My New Café serviced at NHN, into its subsidiary. Further acquisition of Go! Fishing’s developing team and renewal of Sephiroth will pile up know-hows for future product development. Smile Gate’s steps resemble the past growth of Dragonfly and Gamehi, now major companies grown on the basis of a single hit (Special Force and Sudden Attack, respectively) – except that both the games were successful in domestic market. Here, popularity in Korea remains a pending question for Smile Gate’s next big leap.

This confirms that Smilegate are well under way with development on their games. Whether we’ll see any specific news relating to Turfbattles soon or not is another thing unfortunately.

Underneath Mother Nature’s ancient tree,
were five children playing wild and free.

The first child with hair snow white,
loyal and brave, wants what’s right.

The second child with hair of raven black,
strong and fast, always on the attack.

The third child with hair of flaming red,
rash and valiant, eager to get ahead.

The forth child with hair of sky blue,
quiet and smart, a friend to turn to.

The fifth child with hair of sun yellow,
patient and shy, a peaceful fellow.

But darkness spread across the peaceful land,
and an ancient evil raised a wicked hand.

The children no longer could remain in play,
as they viewed their lands in dismay.

Heroes now the children must become,
to face the terrible darkness still to come.

-DonnieDarko

Summer has been pretty busy since Turf Battles went down, as some of you know I’m taking some college classes to gain me some learning and I’m still doing GameSage work over at Aeria Games.  I spent a short month being a GS for Caesary before I was given a special position helping Valkyrie and Andosky (along with guys like Nekhra) release new games like Legendary Champions.  I suggest anyone with a higher powered laptop give it a chance because I’ve heard its kinda similar to Turf Battles, including special transformations aspect.  Might give you something to do while wait for more information regarding Turf Battles situation.

On the topic of Turf Battles, I’m glad to see that Vaicine is keeping you all informed of the goings-on and that the news looks positive.  Hopefully some new version can become readily available to the players who recognize its value and legacy. At the moment however, there is not much for me to contribute to the situation as the question of server hosting and business management is outside of my realm of expertise and falls more squarely into Vaicine’s lap.  However if Vai need’s something, he knows where to reach me.

That being said, once Turf Battles is out of the discussion stage and into the actual implementation, I will get more involved with various aspects of the management and publishing.  As it stands, I’m comfortable with Vaicine discussing the situation with SmileGate and relying on his information.  Both SmileGate and Vaicine know where to reach me if a problem or concern does crop up and I’m usually available.

Game on my friends!

My contact has confirmed that Turf Battles will 100% be coming back! They are working on it right now to get it fixed and ready to be played. I haven’t been given confirmation on whether they will be publishing the game themselves, or if they will be looking for external publishing.

There is also no date set for when the game will be coming back, and there’s no news on exactly *what* they are fixing/changing/preparing/updating, but I think it’s going to be fixing all the glitches, bugs etc. And as we all know, there were quite a few problems – so it’s going to take them a bit of time to fix it all up.

The only news is that they are still sorting things out their end, and for us to be patient basically.

I wish I could give you a better update, but that’s all I have.

We’ve added a forum games section to the forum – if you want something to do, go have a browse around there!

Also, a few members are getting the wiki back up at http://wiki.turfbattles.co.uk and i’m sure they’d appreciate your help!