Xin chào các nhà quản lý,

we have even more improvements for goalunited 2011 for you. Parts of them are ideas from our community, parts are our own. As operator of goalunited we clearly feel the necessity for those changes. It is our goal to provide a game that fascinates a large number of players. Until now it is clear that the startup provides too many obstacles for many of our new managers. Because of this we will for one make a few of the early steps easier, and we will also guide new managers through them better. We also see the need to connect new and established managers more to the game; therefore we will soon offer a lot more reasons to log in during a week.

The long-term players that love goalunited just the way it is will see this all a bit critical because of some of the changes (or they have done so already ). We ask especially those players to understand our motives - and also to put some trust in us; that we are trying to create an even better game for more players to share it with. Some of the new feature will lead to a new game feeling.

One of the features that we have been asked for repeatedly by the community is the introduction of a Career and Achievement system. This will finally come. This system will be closely intertwined with the game, so some of the features will only become available when a certain manager level is reached. As examples, this will affect the youth work, credit limit, the maximum available stadium size, …
For goalunited 2011 this system will not be fully completed, a lot more features will follow afterwards, but are already fully calculated into the development plan. Also, nobody has to be afraid that anything will be lost due to this - those that already have the biggest stadium or the highest credit limit will not lose those.
With the career system we also want to make the start-up easier for new players by sending them through the first steps with concrete tasks to perform. But also for all other players the daily routine will get some more excitement from the varying tasks and goals. One main goal of this new feature is to keep the motivation of the players up even after years of managing a team.

In goalunited 2011 it will be possible to react to the course of a match. Managers can trigger actions during half-time, like changing the tactic or engagement. Those actions can already be set up when setting the formation. Or - and this will come as a surprise to many of you, as it changes the game dynamics - those actions can also be triggered while the match is being watched in the live ticker to change the course of the game in the second half.
In the second step it will then finally be possible to substitute players during the match. This is probably one of the most requested features from all of our communities.
We are happy that we are able to implement new features that give a lot of new tactical options to the managers but which at the same time enhance the “live-experience” significantly.

To make the early gaming experience a bit easier, we have decided to merge the skills passing, technique and tackling with the main skills. Field players will have four skills then, “defensive play”, “midfield play”, “wing play” and “offensive play” (the names might still change). These changes should make it a lot easier for all players to see how well a player is suited on each position.
The formulas will be made public before the update to let managers easily understand the changes. Until then there is no need to change anything in the training, all skills will be calculated into the new skills, so nothing will be lost.
This change will be done simply to make things less complicated. However, our main goal in the planning is to keep as much of the game's depth as possible, if possible all of course. Dedicated players will keep lots of optimisation options to keep an edge over other players.

Even with the faster game play we will not change the durations of the player contracts with the update. Changes later on are of course possible, but those would be announced with due notice. Details about the new training will be given in the next announcement.

Enjoy the World Cup,
Your goalunited team

Đã có 95.806 đội đăng ký vào chuyến du đấu Goalunited World Cup (GUWC). Số lượng các đội tham gia giải là gần 100.000 đội - không phải là tất cả những đội hiện có trong goalunited nhưng nó đây giải đấu qui mô nhất với số lượng đội tham gia nhất từ trước tới giờ!

Chúng tôi hi vọng tất cả các đội tham gia ở 3 bảng (bảng C và D đã được gộp vào làm một) có nhiều niềm vui khi tham gia giải!

Và đừng quên: Trận đấu khai mạc sẽ diễn ra lúc 8pm tối nay và 2 đội đứng đầu mỗi bảng sẽ vào vòng đá loại trực tiếp.

Đội ngũ phát triển trò chơi!

World Cup 2010 sắp diễn ra tại Nam Phi và chúng tôi cũng như tất cả các bạn đều đang trông đợi nó. Chúng tôi muốn nhân dịp này tổ chức một giải du đấu quốc tế trong thế giới goalunited. Đáng tiếc là chúng tôi không có đủ nhân lực để thực hiện một kế hoạch hoàn hảo hơn chỉ trong vòng một tuần sắp tới.

Do chúng tôi không thể đầu tư thời gian vào một sự kiện không diễn ra thường xuyên khi đang tập trung phát triển goalunited phiên bản 2011. Tuy nhiên chúng tôi cũng không lãng quên WC, chúng tôi sẽ thử nghiệm tính năng Du đấu tự do. Tất cả các CLB ở bất kỳ quốc gia nào trong goalunited sẽ có cơ hội đăng ký giải đấu này hoàn toàn miễn phí.

Chúng tôi sẽ tạo ra 4 bảng đấu với tối đa 32.768 đội mỗi bảng - Do đó sẽ có tổng cộng tối đa hơn 130.000 đội tham dự!

Du đấu khởi tranh dưới dạng chia bảng với 4 đội một bảng đá vòng tròn một lượt tính điểm. Hai đội đứng đầu mỗi bảng sẽ vào vòng đá loại trực tiếp.

Du đấu sẽ diễn ra dưới dạng giải đấu tự do, không chấp nên các CLB không phải bận tâm tới chấn thương hay thể trạng cầu thủ.

Việc đăng ký vào bảng đấu bắt đầu từ ngày hôm nay - 02/06 và kết thúc vào ngày 11/06 lúc 12:00 giờ CET. Ngày khai mạc và trận chung kết của giải đầu trùng với ngày khởi tranh và trận chung kết World Cup ở Nam Phi!

Đội vô địch sẽ nhận được chiếc Cup đặc biệt trong goalunited!

Chúc may mắn,
Đội ngũ phát triển trò chơi.

Xin chào các nhà quản lý,

Như đã hứa, chúng tôi sẽ tiếp tục đưa thêm thông tin về kế hoạch thay đổi trong goalunited 2011 trong bản tin này và các bản tin sau nữa.

Sau Thông báo thứ 1 đã nẩy ra nhiều cuộc tranh luận về những thay đổi có thể diễn ra. Do đó ở thông báo thứ 2 này chúng tôi sẽ trả lời một số câu hỏi - nếu chưa hết thắc mắc của bạn thì sẽ được tiếp tục giải đáp trong các thông báo sau nữa.

Trong khi thể thức thi đấu hiện nay đang có vẻ hoạt động rất tốt thì việc tăng lên 2 trận đá giải một tuần không làm hài lòng một số nhà quản lý (trong khi số khác lại đang rất trông chờ điều này). Chúng rất lo lắng khi có sự chia tách làm 2 nhóm như vậy. Mặc dù vậy chúng tôi vẫn đang từng bước thực hiện kế hoạch và hi vọng tất cả các nhà quản lý ủng hộ chúng tôi trong thay đổi này (và hi vọng sau khi tìm hiểu bạn sẽ tìm thấy niềm vui trong goalunited 2011 ít nhất là như bạn đã có ở bản 2010).

Sau đây là trả lời cho một số câu hỏi phổ biến - các thông tin chi tiết hơn sẽ được đưa ra trong các thông báo tiếp theo.

• Tất cả các cầu thủ sẽ tăng thêm 1 tuổi vào mỗi mùa. Cầu thủ sẽ tăng tuổi nhanh hơn hiện tại một chút nhưng họ cũng có cơ hội nhận được điểm kinh nghiệm nhiều hơn tương ứng khi có thể chơi nhiều trận hơn hiện tại.
  
• Chế độ huấn luyện sẽ thay đổi cho phù hợp với goalunited 2011. Có thể sẽ tăng thêm một chút hiệu quả tập luyện mỗi tuần nhưng nếu so sánh trong một mùa giải thì sẽ thấp hơn so với hiện tại. Thông tin chi tiết về chế độ huấn luyện sẽ được công bố và giải thích trong một thông báo sau và các ảnh hưởng tới giá trị như thể trạng và kinh nghiệm.
  
• Theo dõi cầu thủ trẻ có thể sẽ vẫn được giữ nguyên như hiện tại - tức là mỗi trận đá giải sẽ tương ứng với một lần chỉ số cầu thủ trẻ được hiện. Số lượng chỉ số được hiện vẫn phụ thuộc vào mức độ đầu tư.
• Thời gian đào tạo của BHL sẽ giảm xuống 10 ngày, do đó trong một mùa bạn sẽ có thể cho tất cả các thành viên đi huấn luyện.
• Các Cup quốc gia từng thi đấu trong khoảng 12 đến 14 vòng sẽ được rút ngắn để phù hợp với thời gian của một mùa giải mới là 12 tuần.
• Trận đá Playoffs sẽ diễn ra vào tuần thứ 12 của mùa giải với 2 trận đấu trong tuần.
• Như ở thông báo trước, các khoản thu như tiền bán vé, tiền tài trợ, tiền thưởng cho trận thắng sẽ đi theo tương ứng với các thay đổi.

Trong goalunited 2011 sân vận động sẽ thay đổi hoàn toàn. Sẽ không chỉ là thay đổi về hình ảnh hiển thị mà bạn sẽ có thêm lựa chọn xây dựng ghế ngồi và mái che, hệ thống đèn chiếu sáng, lợp mái và mặt sân thi đấu. Độ lớn của sân không hiển thị bằng con số chính xác như hiện nay nữa nhưng bạn vẫn tưởng tượng được qui mô của sân thông qua hình ảnh hiển thị!

Như hình ảnh miêu tả bên cạnh, bạn sẽ có thể nâng cấp chỗ ngồi từng bước một, không cần nâng cấp toàn bộ hoặc thay thế như hiện nay. Với thêm nhiều hình ảnh mới bổ sung bạn có thể thiết kế sân với mầu sắc cá nhân của bạn.

Trong tương lai sẽ không còn kiểu sân vận động như cũ nữa (VD như sân vận động cỡ lớn với 50.000 chỗ ngồi chẳng hạn), sẽ có cách khác để xây sân, việc tính tính chuyển sân từ kiểu cũ sang kiểu mới đã hoàn thành và đưa vào cùng bản cập nhập. Hơn nữa với lịch thi đấu mới thì ít nhất tuần nào bạn cũng có trận đấu trên sân nhà. Do đó khoản thu từ tiền vé sẽ được điều chỉnh giảm đi so với hiện nay - nhưng bạn không nên quá lo lắng vì so sánh tổng thể nó vẫn cao hơn hiện tại.

Một số nhà quản lý sẽ có thêm câu hỏi mới, rằng nên nâng cấp sân vận động trước hoặc sau khi cập nhập bản goalunited 2011. Sẽ không có câu trả lời chung cho câu hỏi này. Nếu việc nâng cấp sân đã có trong kế hoạch phát triển đội của bạn thì hãy cứ tiến hành. Nhưng chúng tôi tin rằng sẽ có nhiều điều thú vị hơn khi bạn đợi tới bản goalunited 2011 mới nâng cấp sân!

Hãy đón đọc thông báo tiếp theo!
Đội ngũ phát triển trò chơi

Xin chào các nhà quản lý,

Như các bạn đã biết, chúng tôi không thể thực hiện tất cả các tính năng đã thông báo từ mùa giải trước. Nguyên nhân là do chúng tôi phải dành thời gian để thực hiện những thay đổi cấu trúc cần thiết của goalunited. Những thay đổi này tốn nhiều thời gian hơn dự kiến - và các bạn thậm chí còn chưa thể thấy bất cứ thay đổi nào. Thay đổi duy nhất các bạn nhận ra là hệ thống cửa hàng mới, được xây dựng dựa trên sự hợp tác của chúng tôi với đối tác thanh toán - Travian Games.

Tuy nhiên sự trì hoãn này sẽ không bị bỏ qua! Sắp tới giải “Du đấu tự do” sẽ bắt đầu (một giải đấu bắt đầu với vòng bảng và kết thúc bằng loạt thi đấu đối kháng).

Goalunited 2011

Version tiếp theo của goalunited cuối cùng cũng sẽ mang đến những thay đổi rộng hơn và những tính năng mới. Chúng tôi sẽ mang đến cho các bạn những điều này từng bước một, mặc dù chưa chắc chắn là goalunited 2011 sẽ bắt đầu ngay tháng Chín này, hoặc là vào mùa giải sau đó

• Một bảng thi đấu sẽ tăng từ 10 đội lên 12 đội Vào thời điểm thay đổi, số đội lên hạng sẽ tăng thêm (theo xếp hạng) để có thể lấp vào chỗ trống.
• Giải đấu được mở rộng sẽ dẫn đến sự thay đổi trong hệ thống lên hạng. Kể từ goalunited 2011, tất cả các đội vô địch sẽ lên hạng trực tiếp mà không cần thi đấu play-off!
• Bốn đội của mỗi bảng sẽ xuống hạng trực tiếp.
• Các đội á quân vẫn còn cơ hội để lên hạng, Bốn đội bóng xếp thứ 2 và 2 đội bóng xếp thứ 7 và 8 ở giải đấu cao hơn sẽ thi đấu playoffs để cạnh tranh 2 suất lên hạng.
• Đội bóng xếp từ thứ 3 đến thứ 6 sẽ tru hạng.
• Các giải đầu từ hạng 7 trở xuống vẫn sẽ không thi đấu playoffs, bốn đội sẽ lên hạng trực tiếp và 4 đội sẽ xuống hạng trực tiếp (đội bóng từ thứ 5 đến thứ 8 sẽ trụ hạng).

• Các trận đấu giữa tuần -những trận bị bãi bỏ trong mùa giải này- sẽ lại được áp dụng. Tuy nhiên không chỉ 2 lần mỗi mùa, mà là hàng tuần sẽ có một trận thi đầu vào cuối tuần và một trận vào giữa tuần!
• Thêm nữa mỗi tuần sẽ có một trận đấu thuộc khuôn khổ cup quốc gia
• Như vậy chúng ta sẽ có ba trận thi đấu chính thức mỗi tuần khi áp dụng goalunited 2011. Việc này sẽ dẫn đến những thay đổi khác (ví dụ việc mất thể trạng, tăng kinh nghiệm của cầu thủ, thu nhập từ giá vé, nhà tài trợ…)
• Mỗi mùa giải sẽ kéo dài 12 tuần, vì vậy trong tương lai trong một năm sẽ có 4 mùa giải goalunited.

Còn trong mùa giải này, mong ước có một phần thưởng lớn hơn cho ngôi vô địch và suất lên hạng đã thành sự thật. Chi tiết các bạn có thể thấy trong bảng sau → Wiki.

Chúng tôi chắc chắn những thay đổi được thực hiện từ những lời gợi ý và mong ước không ngừng của cộng đồng quốc tể. Trong những tuần tiếp theo chúng tôi sẽ thông báo những cải tiến xa hơn.

Hãy đón chờ,
Đội ngũ phát triển goalunited

Chúng tôi xin đính chính một sai sót nhỏ trong lịch thi đấu: thứ 5 tuần này sẽ không diễn ra 'vòng 1 cup Quốc gia mùa giải mới' - thay vào đó sẽ là 'Lễ bốc thăm vòng 1 cúp Quốc gia mùa giải mới'. Như vậy vòng 1 cup Quốc gia sẽ diễn ra vào tuần tới, sau trận khai mạc Giải đấu.

Đây không phải là điều ngạc nhiên, bởi vì nó đã từng xảy ra. Tuy nhiên một thay đổi khác sẽ khiến bạn phải nhạc nhiên: mùa giải này sẽ không còn nhiều trận thuộc Giải đấu trong một tuần. Điều đó có nghĩa đây là lần đầu tiên hai trận thuộc Giải đấu diễn ra vào thứ năm sẽ không còn. Bởi vậy mùa giải này sẽ dài hơn hai tuần so với các mùa giải trước đó.

Những đề nghị của nhà tài trợ đã được thay đổi trong mùa này, bạn sẽ nhận được những đề nghị cao hơn của nhà tài trợ trong thứ năm này.

Tại thời điểm bạn đọc thông báo này, những thay đổi cho mùa giải mới đã được áp dụng. Tất cả các đội bóng được cộng thêm điểm về thể trạng, điểm tinh thần đội bóng quay về 50 và BHL đã sẵn sàng cho việc tập huấn.

Chúc các bạn vui vẻ,
Đội phát triển goalunited

Mùa giải thứ 11 của Goalunited đang bước đến những ngày cuối cùng. Đội bóng vô địch cũng như xuống hạng đã được xác định. Trước mắt chỉ còn lại những trận play-offs để xác định những đội lên hạng. Phần thưởng dành cho đội vô địch, vua phá lưới và vô địch đội trẻ đã được trao. Phần thưởng dành cho đội lên hạng sẽ được trao vào tuần tới.

Sau đây là lịch thi đấu trong tuần tới:

• Thứ sáu, 30 Tháng 4: Trận play-off đầu tiên
• Thứ bảy, 1 Tháng 5: Giao hữu tự do (trận đấu tự do cho tất cả mọi người - thể trạng cầu thủ sẽ không bị giảm)
• Chủ nhật, 2 Tháng 5: Trận play-off thứ 2
• Thứ hai, 3 Tháng 5: tính toán cho giải đấu mới, bắt đầu mùa giải thứ 12
• Thứ năm, 6 Tháng 5: Vòng 1 cúp quốc gia mùa giải mới
• Chủ nhật, 9 Tháng 5: Trận đấu đầu tiên của mùa giải thứ 12

Sẽ không có nhiều tính năng mới trong mùa giải tới, vì chúng tôi đang thực hiện một phiên bản mới lớn hơn cho goalunited, nó sẽ được công bố vào cuối năm (hoặc có thể vào ngay tháng 9). Dù vậy mùa giải sắp tới cuối cùng cũng sẽ mang tới giải “Du đấu tự do” và chế độ điều chỉnh Sức mạnh trong các trận đấu 1vs1.

Một số điều chỉnh cũng sẽ được thực hiện, như đã thông báo. Đội gồm nhiều cá tính của cầu thủ sẽ được hưởng lợi từ mùa giải tiếp theo. Một quy định mới sẽ được thực hiện là các đội với 5 hoặc ít hơn các cá tính khác nhau trên sân sẽ phải chịu một điểm trừ về sức mạnh thi đấu. Chúng tôi sẽ cho bạn thêm thời gian để cơ cấu lại đội bóng trước khi thực hiện quy định này, do đó không ai sẽ gặp vấn đề với nó. Quy định này sẽ có hiệu lực từ trận đấu đầu tiên của mùa giải thứ 12.

Phần thưởng dành cho đội bóng vô địch và lên hạng sẽ tăng đáng kể, các phần thưởng khác cũng tăng lên. Số tiền của nhà tài trợ cũng sẽ tăng, để đảm bảo cho việc lương cầu thủ tăng như đã thông báo.

Chúc may mắn,
Đội ngũ phát triển goalunited

Như bạn đã biết, trong ngày 12/04 vừa qua goalunited và ballerunited không thể truy cập được. Để cảm ơn các bạn đã ủng hộ trong những ngày qua, chúng tôi sẽ gia hạn thêm thời gian cho các tài khoản VIP. Theo đó tất cả các tài khoản VIP còn giá trị tới ít nhất ngày 12/04 sẽ được cộng thêm 02 ngày vào thời gian sử dụng tài khoản nữa. Thay đổi sẽ được cập nhập vào cuối ngày hôm ngay.

Đội ngũ phát triển trò chơi.

Như đã thông báo trong bản tin ngày 03 tháng 03 năm 2010 chúng tôi sẽ giới thiệu hệ thống cửa hàng mới vào ngày 12 tháng 04 cùng rất nhiều cách thức thanh toán khác nhau, đổi tên GICs và tách số GICs trong tài khoản dành cho Goalunited và Ballerunited.

Tất cả mức phí trong trò chơi được giữ nguyên, điều đó có nghĩa tỷ lệ chuyển đổi GICs sang GU Stars và BU Stars là 1:1.

Tất cả những người chơi tham gia cả Goalunited và Balleunited sẽ phải quyết định chuyển số GICs hiện có sang Stars cho Ballerunited và Goalunited là bao nhiêu. Sẽ có hộp thoại hướng dẫn (chỉ những người chơi tham gia cả 2 trò) họ thực hiện chuyển đổi. Nếu chưa hoàn thành việc tách ra thì họ chưa thể sử dụng Stars.

Việc tách chỉ phải tiến hành một lần, trong những lần sau số Stars nạp vào sẽ tính riêng cho từng tài khoản.

Không chỉ thay đổi giao diện trong cửa hàng mà cả việc vận hành bên trong nhằm mục đích trợ giúp người chơi tốt hơn. Người chơi sẽ phải quyết định duy nhất một lần ngôn ngữ sử dụng trong trò chơi cũng như khu vực sinh sống (nếu nó không có trong bảng lựa chọn, bạn cần chọn nơi có ngôn ngữ bạn thông thạo).

Việc lựa chọn ngôn ngữ và khu vực sinh sống này chỉ được chọn 1 lần và không thể thay đổi! Vui lòng lựa chọn chính xác.

Đối với CLB, việc lựa chọn này không ảnh hưởng gì so với trước đây (trừ khi bạn chọn ngôn ngữ hiển thị khác đi).

Từ thứ 2 - ngày 12 tháng 04, hệ thống cửa hàng mới sẽ đi vào hoạt động và chỉ bán Star (tài khoản VIP có thể được kích hoạt hoặc gia hạn trong trò chơi bằng Stars, đồng thời Mã xác nhận cũng không còn nữa cho tới khi có sự thay đổi thêm).

Thân mến,
Đội ngũ phát triển trò chơi.

Bắt đầu từ tháng 04, hệ thống cửa hàng hiện tại sẽ được thay thế bằng hệ thống mới. Các cách thức thanh toán cũng sẽ được thay thế, bổ sung - ở một số quốc gia sẽ có thêm việc thanh toán mới (như thanh toán qua SMS). Một số cách thức thanh toán cũ sẽ không còn nữa bù lại sẽ có nhiều cách thanh toán đa dạng hơn.

Khi bạn vào cửa hàng mới trong trò chơi thì một cửa sổ mới hiện ra, rất đơn giản và dễ sử dụng.

Một số thay đổi chính:

• Trong cửa hàng chỉ còn bán GICs
• Tài khoản VIP có thể được đổi bằng GICs trong trò chơi
• Ở thời điểm hiện tại sẽ không bán mã xác nhận
• Các mã xác nhận đã mua trước đây vẫn có thể được đổi trong trò chơi

Điều này có nghĩa nếu bạn muốn tặng mã xác nhận cho ai đó, bạn vẫn có thể mua chúng cho tới cuối tháng 03.

Mặt khác, trong tương lai thì GICs không còn là đơn vị tiền chung của Ballersunited và Goalunited nữa, chúng tôi sẽ thay đổi. Thông tin chi tiết về vấn đề này sẽ được công bố vào bản tin khác.

Hôm nay là ngày khuyến mãi cuối cùng - ngày mai, gói GICs XL sẽ trở lại mức giá bình thường (20€)!

Hãy vào cửa hàng và tận hưởng mức giá rẻ hơn ngày thường!

Due to many wishes out of the community, the United Lounge already received a little extension. Since a few days it is possible to display the exact requirements of an event. You have to switch the function “Highlight filter” on, to mark all events that use filter settings your team complies to in green and all events that use filter setting that your team does not match in red.
On the page of the event's details a click on the “red X” or the “green checkmark” besides “Filter” will display the set requirements.

Just some days after that, a new information was added to the formation view: the overall strength of the starting players.
It should be easier now to adept to weaker opponents, or to estimate the effect of a rotation. As this is so comfortable, it is a Premium Feature.

Another little helper will display, which deductions are effecting the sales value (SV) of a player. Besides a graphical eye-catcher (red warning triangle) the full calculation can be displayed.

In march some more small feature will follow to polish our favorite game even more! Your goalunited team

We celebrate the introduction of the United Lounge with a special offer:
all February long the GICs XL package will wait for enthusiastic goalunited managers to buy it. Instead of 20 € the package with 8600 GICs will cost 15 € only - Premium Pro User will receive 9460 GICs for the same money!

The United Lounge arranges many existing functions much more clearly and adds several additional options. You will be able to set the long awaited restrictions for participation. If you create an event and would like only teams in it with a maximum strength, you can choose a filter to force that! Observing events you are not participating in, will be easily possible for Premium Pro User.

As with the introduction of the United Lounge the restriction to two simultaneous United Events with one match each week does fall away completely - in theory an unlimited number of matches would be possible - a solution for existing Premium Classic User had to be found. They will receive a generous one-time GIC-credit (1200 GICs for each full month of maturity), their accounts will be converted to Premium Pro Accounts (so they will be able to use all the new Premium Features), but therefore have to pay for United Event like all other players (but we credit them more GICs for the maturity, than thay could have spend in the old system).

More details about the United Lounge can be found in the manual!

So that all managers are able to head into the new United Events, we will credit every club 150 GICs. Have fun!
Your goalunited Team

PS: soon Tournaments will be available besides Cups an Leagues. And the strength filter for 1-on-1 matches is on the way as well.

Season 11 is about to begin and there will be some small changes, as always. There won't be any surprises, as all changes were announced last year already.

Today the first sponsor offer of the new season came in and as you may have noticed, it is a bit higher then last year's offers. 'Normal' negotiations will lead to success more often - in particular in combination with a skilled PR-Manager - though the maximum potential rise was cut down in exchange.
'Aggressive' negotiations were adjusted also - but have a look yourself (if you love to gamble)!
Please note that existing sponsor offers will be negotiated under the new conditions as well.

Dilligent players will regenerate their freshness better than in the last season.

Other announced changes will be implemented and highlighted in short news also.

Good luck for the new season! Your goalunited development team

PS: in the last days you still could feel the aftermath of the hardware failure. The game did run a bit slower at times and some services were temporary not available. We would like to apologize for this again. Over the weekend the new hardware will be put into operation and set up.

Tomorrow (Friday) at 8 pm (german time) the drawing of the winner of the Playstation 3 Slim will be shown in the monitor. All champions of season 10 are in the drawing.

Good luck!

Due to the hardware issues we experience right now, we don't work with full performance, so the process of the season finish (including promotions and relegations and payout of bonuses) and the start of the new season (including the new fixtures) might take longer than usually. We expect this to be done in the course of Tuesday.

The first league match will be held on the 9th and the first round of the national cup will be held on the 13th of January.

There might be some more delays in the upcoming days. Today the daily update took much longer than usually (we had to switch off the statistics to speed the process up, so some statistics like “difference to previous week” are not up-to-date - which we try to fix later this week if possible).
Bought players of the transfer market might need some hours to arrive at their clubs - but they will arrive, so don't panic
Some United updates were late (like United-League standings) but all will be processed and nothing will be lost. All United-Cup matches of tonight were moved to tuesday 15:00 (german time).

Please excuse if some updates arrive late and some dates get moved - by the end of the week everything should be back to normal.

We wish all of you a merry Christmas (or at least some relaxed holidays)!

For some diversion, each account was credited with 200 GICs (as promised last week already). With this little Christmas present you can play two 1-on-1 games.

Have fun with them and at new year's eve! Your goalunited development team

A new year and a new goalunited season are about to begin soon. As usual, the season transition brings a few smaller changes - the bigger features will be released some time after the start of the new season, but for more info regarding this, read on!

First of all, we are happy to inform you that our new setup of the server configuration is complete. This task caused occasional delays, but we are glad that we could resolve them without a downtime, keeping goalunited online the whole time …until this thursday Most of you probably did not notice that we had to operate with about 20% of the available servers for some time, while some of you experienced delays with daily updates or the live ticker - we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience it caused. With the integration of some new hardware, this should be a thing of the past.

The extensive visual overhaul we were aiming for had to be postponed, but we can present to you an extensive revision of the popular United-Features! In the new 'United-Lounge' it will be much easier to search, create, edit and watch (*new*) Leagues, Cups or Tournaments (*new*)!
Tournaments will be alike to the Championsleague or a World-Cup, with a preliminary round and knockout-system afterwards. The knockout-rounds will, just like in the normal cups, be visualized with an advanced cup tree (*new*). This will make it possible to display more than 16 teams at the same time.
Additionally, it will be possible for managers to follow United-Events without participating in them, making it possible to cross your fingers for fellow managers in the event!
Due to the greater number of United-Events, you will be able to choose the playing schedule more flexible. Each weekday it will be possible to play several United-Events - a whole Tournament could be completed within a few days!
When creating an United-Event, from the coming season on you will be able to set up terms and conditions for participation (*new*) - for example, you may only allow teams not exceeding a determined maximum strength.
The 'United-Lounge' will not be completed by season's start, but will be integrated in goalunited as soon as it is finished - now that you know of it, you can already look forward to it!

As announced, starting with the upcoming season, teams that are set up very balanced will be rewarded compared to one-sided teams. Every team needs those special guys, but you also need balancing personalities. Strengths could complement each other this way, weaknesses be made up. Teams playing a match with only five or less different personalities on the pitch, will experience a malus during those games (which will range between small and decisive depending on the number of different personalities).
The restrictions concerning leadership ability and introvert characters will then be dropped.

As also announced, we observed the freshness-development of dilligent players and came to the conculsion, that they are a fair bit too far behind with their colleagues when they are part of your starting eleven. Instead of regenerating 70%-80% of regular players, they will reach 85%-90% from the coming season on. This can still mean to keep them out of the line up or trainnig from time to time, but you should be able to compensate this with a bit of planning.

We also recognized your feedback regarding sponsor negotiations and adressed it accordingly. Successful negotiations will be more likely from the coming season on - while the maximum achievable gain will be reduced. The incoming offers will be raised a bit, while the PR manager will have a more recognizable influence on negotiations. This should be of benefit to most managers.
'Agressive' negotiations will still be most thrilling, allowing more gain with a risk of high dropoffs when failing.
The division-dependant differences in starting offers will be slightly adjusted. From division 7 upwards, sponsor offers will rise by about 20% from division to division. This will especially be noticeable for the divisions 7 and lower, who will then get lesser offers than teams of division 6.

Some smaller features are also in development, but we will present them at the start of the new season respectively when they are ready for implementation.

We wish all managers a season finish full of tension and excitement! Your goalunited development team

Announcement of upcoming changes:

The weekly wage of player contracts, which are signed or renegotiated after February 1st, 2010, will be based on the formula MV/250 (instead of MV/300). Because this will lead to slowly rising player wages, sponsor offers will be increased from May on. It is also planned to double championship bonuses and quadruple the promotion bonuses.

Sự hồi phục thể lực của cầu thủ chuyên cần sự hồi phục thể trạng của cầu thủ chăm chỉ sẽ chỉ khoảng 70%-80% so với cầu thủ khác. Chúng tôi sẽ theo dõi sự thay đổi này và có điều chỉnh nếu cần. vì thế đôi khi bạn sẽ cần phải cho cầu thủ chăm chỉ nghỉ ngơi nhất là nếu 1 tuần đá 2 trận

hơn thế sẽ có 1 vài thay đổi ảnh hưởng đến cả đội. Nếu một đội bóng có ít hơn 6 tính cách khác nhau trong mỗi trận thì sẽ bị trừ strength. Việc này là để ngăn chặn 1 đội bóng chỉ có 1 tính cách(vd full chăm chỉ) trở nên quá mạnh. vì thế nếu có 3 cầu thủ introvert hay 3 cầu thủ lãnh đạo trên sân thì cũng sẽ không bị trừ như trước kia.

Phong độ và cầu thủ tham vọng

Như đã thông báo trước, phong độ của cầu thủ giờ sẽ phụ thuộc nhiều vào kinh nghiệm của anh ta. Sẽ không có gì thay đổi nếu kinh nghiệm đạt max, nếu thấp hơn phong độ sẽ thay đổi nhiều hơn và trung bình cũng thấp hơn.

phong độ của cầu thủ tham vọng sẽ tăng mạnh khi kết thúc mùa giải. Chúng tôi sẽ cải tiến thêm phần này, cầu thủ tham vọng nhưng ít kinh nghiệm cũng sẽ ít bị ảnh hưởng, và nếu 1 cầu thủ tham vọng được đưa ra sân thì phong độ sẽ tăng trong vài tuần tiếp theo.

Thị trường chuyển nhượng: Hiện tại khi tìm chỉ đc 1 vị trí cầu thủ(vị trí tốt nhất). Điều này để giúp rút ngắn thời gian tìm kiếm.

tất cả các cầu thủ chơi đc nhiều vị trí, giờ có thể được tìm thấy ở tối đa 3 vị trí đó(3 vị trí tốt nhất). Điều này đúng cho cả tìm kiếm đơn giản và nâng cao, nhưng chỉ áp dụng cho premium member mà thôi. Apart from the youth system, some more things where changed in the last week.

Chúc vui vẻ

The youth system of goalunited got improved with the update to version 2009.III and it got refined again this week. We are aiming to improve the avarage success of the youth system.

All clubs (in partcular the 'smaller') are adviced to observe at least one or two players per week. This became even more affordable this week and should pay off in long-term always! Moreover it is advisable not to draw the players in the moment all their values are uncovered, but to enhance some of their values through selective hiding and observing. The youth players will benefit from training during that time - from now on it is as effective as the training of the pro team!

Details regarding the youth system can be found in the manual!

All changes to the youth system:

• the youth coach does not influence the detection of the potential any more
• on the first disclosure the skills will reveal about 60% of their potential on average (variations to the upper and lower end are lesser than before)
• each disclosure of a skill that was actively hidden before, now has a much better chance to reveal a higher value than before

• changes through hiding and disclosing values will in generall be more significant than before
• the training got more effective than before (now as effective as for the pro squad)
• the nominated players will gain experience with every match (about 1/3 per macht)

• now there is the chance to observe up to 10 values - values of max. 5 players and max. 2 values per player will be disclosed
• there is no chance anymore to accidentially observe players that already have all values disclosed
• players of your own youth team will now ask for significantly less salary in their first contracts as other players

Starting next week, friendly-suggestions will be able to be filtered by country.

Suggestions will then display teams who do not yet have a friendly appointment for the upcoming friendly matchday (and also have no cup match), are from the selected country, and whose strength is about on level with your own. League Level will not be taken into account any more.

It may be possible (especially at the beginning of each season, when most teams are still in the cup) that you won't get suitable suggestions in a desired country. Then you have to settle for another country and maybe try again another time.

Premium Pro accounts will get the additional option 'automatically arrange friendly match'.

When this option is enabled, an automatic friendly will be arranged with another club who is also looking for one. The club can originate from any country, and similar league levels will be favoured over others. The games will be arranged either in the night from sunday to monday, from monday to tuesday, or from tuesday to wednesday. This means, you can still arrange a match in manual fashion until sunday, even if the automatic feature is enabled.

With this feature, the time-consuming search for a friendly match opponent should be simplified, while it will still be possible to challenge a specific manager via his contact page, the way you are used to.

Let the games begin,
Your goalunited development team

P.S.: If you are receiving too many friendly invitations, you may deactivate it by unselecting the option Home - Settings - Messages - 'private messages upon challenges'.
Challenges will then only be displayed in the Team - Challenges screen, where you can then accept them as well.

Hello fellow managers!

We'd like to announce that we decided to offer all managers a second chance in sponsor negotiations. Do you like the new system? Please be aware that the former league victory bonus has been changed. From now on, you'll get the amount per point. This means you'll get eighter the given amount once (draw = 1 point) or you get it tripled (victory = 3 points). The basis per week offer, however, remains as accustomed. Please keep in mind that the PR-Manager has got an reasonable impact of the negotiations.

Today you are going to find two new sponsor offers. On monday you'll find a further offer. If you got 4 offers in your sponsor overview already, please delete the one you find most poorly. After deleting the new offer will be added to the overview. We like to offer those further sponsor negotiation in order to give you the change to try out the new and find a reasonable sponsor.

We also adjusted the bonus amounts. You may feel your last offers past the sponsor system change were to low. We now did some changes within the formula. These changes should be prove advantageous for all managers. However, especially managers below league 5 shall recognize the improvement for there sponsor income. All managers descending league 6 have the same level of possible income, due to the fact that their weekly spendings are comparatively balanced.

We hope you have fun and great success with your extra negotiations.

goalunited's 10th season is about to start - and the sum of all the tweaking, tuning and balancing promises to make goalunited better than ever before. Negotiations with sponsors and applicants shine in a new bright light and bring an exciting element of tension to the game. Helpful indicators make the formations more transparent and accessible than ever - without giving away too much of the secret knowledge experienced managers gathered over the seasons.

Please note that some of the new features and values will come into full effect over the next ten days. The “Reputation” will be zero for every day before today, already existing Sponsor Offers won't be negotiable, existing applicants will stay in the list until they leave onto one of the usual ways, the effects of the re-balanced personalities will come into effect with the new season's first league match.

As usual, the Team Spirit will rise and fall with the team's victories and defeats. But from this season on, the strength of the Top 15 of both teams is set into relation with the outcome of the match. That does mean that a defeat against a stronger opponent has not such an impact, as a defeat against a weaker opponent - and vice-versa for victories. The chart will be updated on a daily basis.

The value Reputation will be visualized and daily updated in the chart Training Data. In fact this is not a new value, but it used to be hidden. The calculation got rebalanced, to put more importance on home matches. Factors influencing this value are the PR-Manager (has the same impact the Mental Coach has on team spirit) and won/lost matches (league: relation of league points to opponent's points).

Consult the wiki for more details!

In a former news it was announced that the strength malus of players playing on a position without experience on it, would be lessened. The now implemented change works with four levels of position experience.
Have a look in the wiki to read about the details!

Players with many skills will now perform better on (suitable) Sub-Positions (that are the positions close to the next quadrant). Have an eye on the absolute valuations in the newspaper (the new stars), to get a feeling for the changes done in the match engine.
In the same way the importance of the skills was re-balanced for the field positions, the training was (slightly) adjusted. That will be noticable soonest for defensive and offensive wing players.

It is worth to note that the volatility of the form of the players now is dependent on their amount of experience. That means, nothing changes for players with an experience of 100, but younger player might come out as less steady.

As of the 10% sales commission, the sales values won't reach the full market values any more. So, don't wait for that day to sell your players ;)

To get the updated information, just use the search box of the wiki and type in:

  goalunited2009.III @manual

That will give you a list of all updated articles. Some are not finished yet, but will be delivered in the upcoming days!

The changes done to the youth system will be explained in detail in an upcoming news in conjunction with a quick How-To for all the managers that have not realized how important and valuable investments in the youth system are for their club's prosperity.

• Newspaper: absolute rating
• Formation: new helpful indicators (Premium Pro Feature)
• Personalities: decrease in number, rebalancing of the remaining, no 'max. three introverts'-rule for this season
• Sponsors: new negotiaton system with chances for greater success, bonus for points instead as for victories
• Salary: players demand more money with new contract
• Bookings: chances increased, two bookings in the cup will lead to a ban, banned players have a decreased sales value (SV -15%)
• Injuries: chances and max. duration (to 6 weeks) increased, injured players have a decreased sales value (SV -10% per week), Doctor less effective
• Bruised: now up to 10 days (instead 7), malus increased slightly, risk for new injury increased considerably, Doctor much less effective
• Staff: one application a day, two if placing an advertisement, applicants withdraw after ten days, 90+ advertisements possible, new negotiation system, Physiotherapists demand higher wage
• Stadiums: builing costs and max. seats slightly altered, deconstruction now possible (1/2 of construction costs will be paid back), income increased for the two large stadium types, home advantage increased (more for large stadion types)
• Live Ticker: matches of own league will be taken for the conference if no other matches were chosen (Premium Pro Feature)
• Transfers: sales commission re-introduced (10% directly calculated into the SV), sold players will populate the watchlist (Premium Pro Feature)
• Offspring: note that all players that originate in your own youth team, or were in your team when you started playing goalunited, will be marked with a cute little symbol

Hello,

as you may have noticed the update to goalunited2009.III will change many parts of the game to some extend. The information provided here will explain some of the new or changed features in a more detailed way. Other changes will be explained in upcoming news. All changes will get into effect on update day (Wednesday 09th of September 2009).

Newspaper

The newspaper's relative rating of the players will be substituted by an absolute rating. The absolute rating will use it's own scale and will be displayed by stars. The performance of players in different matches will be comparable - which leads to experienced managers using that data to improve their formations. The newspaper of youth matches does not change.

Formation

When making a formation, managers will be indicated how good their players will perfom on the chosen position. This indication is intended to help new managers in particular. But taken into account that the weighting of the skills got re-balanced, experienced players also might learn from that indication. Anyway, it won't be too explicit to not give away too much of the knowledge that usually builds up with experience.

On the screenshot below you can see how the new feature will look like. The arrow can take 5 different positions and will indicate the positions that suits your player best and the ones on which he will underperform (Position-Ability). Position experience is taken into account (though the penalty for players appointed to a position they usually don't play will be half as high as it is now).

The second indicator is a bar capable of displaying five levels. It looks like the bar that used to be in the newspaper, but it works differently. It will indicate the strength of your player compared to all (up to 25) players of your team (Position-Strength). Again, this is not an exact display, but a mapping to visualize if the strongest players are put to suitable positions on the field. To use this feature, just pay attention to the length of the bars - the less you see of the black background, the better.

Both indicators can be switched on and off like the visualization of the tactics and coach influence and will be for Premium Pro Members only.

Personalities

The player's personalities will be re-balanced as well. The effects of personalities will have more and generally a more positive impact than before. Therefore it got neccessary to reduce the numbers of different personalities. Players having one of the following five personalities will be switched (on update day) to a corresponding personality:

• calm –> fair
• neurasthenic –> introvert
• scandalous –> spirited
• unfair –> aggressive
• unreliable –> inflexible

Please have a look in the wiki, to learn which effects different personalities have (it will be updated next week). Please do also note that some of the re-balanced personalities will interact more heavily with formation and tactic settings.

Sponsors

There will be quite a revolution in the negotiation system. As soon as new sponsor offers come in on friday after update day, you will be able to use the new system. It will allow considerable improvement of the offers (with a risk of steep decline). And it will visualize the chances you have in each round of negotiations.

As the new system will allow for considerable improvement of the starting offers, the starting offers have to be re-balanced. Therefore it won't be able to negotiate offers you received before update day. The bonus for league victories will be substituted by a bonus for each point won - in case of existing sponsor offers, the corresponding bonus will be divided by three.

Conclusion

Enough information for today :) Details on other topics will follow in the next days. Just one last thing, as we have the feeling that many people did not notice it yet: the in-game help system was enhanced some months ago. It now offers a mini browser with links to other topics! The information it displays is extracted right form the wiki. Just have a look!

We wish you some exciting play-off matches, Your goalunited development team

Hello fellow managers!

As the last matches in the season are being played, the time comes to inform you all about the changes the new season will bring. The sum of all the changes makes up to be the largest balancing update goalunited ever had. They become effective on the 9th of September 2009 (9.9.9 ;))

The youth system will undergo a deep re-balancing to make it more attractive to all clubs (smaller clubs in particular) while slowing down the process of generating millions with youth players in short-term.
The costs for observing youth players will be altered in a way that observing 1 or 2 players only will become even less expensive, while observing 4 or more players will become more expensive. Furthermore it will be possible to uncover more than 5 values at once (but be prepared to pay a hefty price).
The influence of the youth coach will be dimished for the first observation of a value - at the same time, the disclosed values won't be on the lowest end of the range anymore. Disclosing a value for a second time will be more predictable (the better the youth coach the higher the chances for a rise). With this change, smaller clubs shoud be able to uncover higher values on average as before (they still need to be a bit patient).
Experience will always be visible (only 9 values left to discover) and start with 1. For every youth match a player participates in, his experience will raise (a bit less than in a regular league match). After promotion, youth players will ask for a significantly(!) lower salary as other players. They will do so until they turn 22 or change the club.
Selling a youth player before he reaches an experience level of 15 will result in a lower revenue (his Sales Value will equal his Market Value once experience 15 is reached). (This won't apply for youth players promoted before the update.)

As many of you may have realized in the last weeks, the market values for good (and young in particular) players went up. To counter this development, the wages for new contracts will rise moderately as well. The new formula for the wage will be MV/300. Some managers might whine that they cannot afford to pay for all their players and all other expenses - but it is their job as a manager to find ways to handle their finances.
Aging players will not degenerate as vigorous as before. And old players will have a less volatile form as young players.
The characters of the players will be re-balanced - in general they will become more positive. Some characters will disappear fully. Details will follow in the upcoming weeks. Just one hint: dilligent players will not regenerate as much freshness as the do right now.

The importance of the skills on the field positions will be altered. Thus players with more secondary skills will perform better. They will also perform better on subpositions, as they do right now (if they have the right skills). With those changes the base strenght of some players may vary a bit (up or down) and so their MV might shift. Details to this subject will follow.

When making a formation, managers will be indicated, how good their players will perfom on the chosen position. This indication is intended to help new managers in particular. The penalty for players appointed to a position they usually don't play will be divided by half.

Injuries will happen a bit more often - and they will last longer. A doctor will become more important, but less effective. Details will follow.

The chance for a booking will rise a bit. Furthermore, bookings of a national cup match will be counted for the next round. And two yellow cards in the national cup will result in a ban for the player.

The newspaper's relative rating of the players will be substituted by an absolut rating. The performance of players in different matches will be comparable. Experienced managers will be able to learn from that data.

If no live-ticker matches were booked, the matches of your own league will be booked automatically.

Sold players will be listed in the watchlist of the selling club. The profits on the transfer market will be reduced a bit with the re-introduction of a sales commission.

Sponsors will also pay a bonus for each tie (more accurate: for each won point) in future - not only for victories. Furthermore they should pay out a little bit more and the negotiating system will be more attractive as well (better chances for a real rise).

The stadiums income will rise a bit as well. The smaller types will get the chance to expand to more seats, which might be more interesting than before, as the home advantage will have a deeper impact as now. - The larger stadium types will rise somewhat in price. Though managers will get the chance to re-build parts of their stadium to save money in future.

Finding new staff will be more clearly arranged. Every day your club will receive one application which will last for 10 days. A maximum of 12 applications can be collected - more applications will only be accepted when placing a job advertisment (which will run for 7 days and result in one application every day).
The impact of the staff itself will be checked and balanced.

The update to goalunited 2010 was moved to 2010.

With the start of the upcoming season we will inform you in detail about some of the more complex changes.

Yours, goalunited development team

p.s.: good luck to all the teams that are fighting to achieve this season's goals!

With today's update of goalunited the new version will help starters to get into the game much faster and easier. New managers now have the help of a tutorial system that explains the most important functionality in a playful way.

Right from the first login the club owner gets help from a assistant to complete his starting tasks. The assistant will be shown permanently at the bottom right corner and will assist you till all starting tasks are done.

Every new manager (that registers from now on) will start with the tutorial with its 5 tasks and 50,000 EUR ingame cash. For every task the manager successfully finishes he gets 50,000 EUR more. If someone finishes the task without using the help of his assistant he will get his money as well.

The starting money for your team will be, after completition of the 5 tasks, 300,000 EUR. This is the same starting money as all manager received, before we implemented the tutorial.

Good luck and a fair start to all the new managers.

Your goalunited development team

The homepage of goalunited got a crisper look and became more vivid! Furthermore additional information around the game became accessible directly from the starting page.

The registration of a new account is an easy two-step process now. In a first step only an email address, a managername and a password will be asked for. Within minutes a club will be generated! Not before log-in into the game, the new manager has to decide about the country he wants to play in. As soon as his club got assigned, it can be customised individually.

Beginners will be guided to a successful start through the enhanced In-Game-Help. It does take it's information directly from the new wiki and is designed to be a simple browser. Even experienced managers should be able to find some interesting information in the new In-Game-Help!

The actual enhancements are supposed to speed up and simplify the introduction of new managers.

All managers that play goalunited to play Uniteds, will be happy to hear that there are some extensions and improvements in the making!

Have fun! Yours goalunited development team

As I now work more than one year for northworks as a global community manager I have the desire to give you an overview about what was changed in and about the game.

In this time period 4 seasons were played and about 14 million league matches played. In the last year there were 4.5 million transfers made on the transfer market. The version of the game changed from goalunited 2007 to goalunited 2009.II and with it 4 major updates were done as well as many small ones.

The communication about changed in and around the game is for sure very important. Therefore we always try to give you feedback about our work. Some facts about the quantity of published news. Last year 75 News were published (in german language, other languages might differ in number) as well as 148 dev-log entries. This sums up to 223 news in one year.

The bug and community idea behavior was changed from scratch on and the whole workflow did change. We did create and integrated additional tools which enable us to get informed much faster than before. Not every reported error is always a real “bug”, and most of them are only small bugs and visual problems. Now some numbers what was reported and done in this one year: 954 requests were made, 856 were bug reports and 98 community ideas. Were were able to successfully resolved (implemented or fixed) 787 issues (33 ideas and 754 bug reports). Additionally to those documented bugs and ideas there are much more bugs/ideas that were resolved right ahead without finding their way to the changelog of our tool.

The goalunited shop was established as an own project and cut loose from the game. It is now used for all northworks games, like it was done with Ballersunited. Cutting the shop loose and creating an own application makes it much more easy to integrate more payment methods. We are constantly searching for new partners to offer all our players worldwide the best service and support.

We created a new project and for all administrative tools for the game to combine them all into one big tool. Those tools were also changed and extended a lot. This should assure a faster and better support and improve the overall support of the community. But there is still lot of work in this area, but we are on it. Those tools are currently our translation tool, payment support tool, game administration, ticketing system, as well as team management for all language teams And again some values: In one year only in german and english speaking countries 2130 tickets for support- and payment requests were made and resolved.

The game is in constant growth. Some numbers about this: The amount of registered users was nearly doubled to the number of more than 1.2 million players. The average of players that log in to the game is 100.000 user and the amount of logins is close to 50 million.

A mobile version of the game was published into beta mode and currently is usable to view the liveticker live via iPhone and similar devices.

Besides the software enhancements and improvements there also is a constant growth in our hardware. This year we integrated 4 more servers in our cluster which now consists of 20 high performance servers. The forum was also moved to more powerful server as it got huge in size. Again some numbers to let you get an overview. In one year 37,307 threads as well as 1,002,030 posts were made. Additionally in one year 81,548 were active in the forum.

For the version „goalunited 2008“ the game was completely reviewed and renewed after the 2 years it was already running and therefore the performance did improved drastically. Because of these changes that were based in the very base of the game the game was taken back again into beta phase for one season.

The database currently has an average of 3000 requests per second and can easily do even more to assure the still ongoing growth of goalunited. Every day a backup with 100 GB of game data is saved. The data transfer of our game in the internet is about 15TB per month.

A huge knowledge base about the game in form of a wiki was created and went live 2 weeks ago. This will replace the manual and will be the place for tips tricks and gues for and from the community. Additionally to this new changes news and changelogs etc. are also published in there. This way all commmunity members get informed simultaneously if something changes in game and can translate the news themself if needed.

And last but not least all language versions of goalunited are now published and supported by northworks itself. This brings all user and developer closer together as one link in between now is gone. This will lead to much fast support for all of you.

Your Global Community Manager

op_fedaykin

From that moment on, the goalunited wiki is online and open to everybody. The by now most important and most extensive part is the all new manual. But that is not everything the wiki will contain: there will be many more parts, so that the wiki will become the first place when looking for any information regarding goalunited!

Parts of the wiki:

• the goalunited manual
• the goalunited beginners guide
• the goalunited news section
• the goalunited FAQ
• the goalunited roadmap, changelog and planned feature list
• many more…

There will be places for complementary topics, covering everything from records, hints and guides, exact formulas, links to tools and and and …

You can go ahead and explore the wiki following this link:

http://wiki.goalunited.org/

To change the language you can use the language bar on top of the page - just click on the fitting code (e.g. 'IT' for Italian or 'PT' for Portuguese) and you will be forwared to the same page but in the language you chose.
Please notice that currently large parts of the wiki are only available in English (the reference language) and German (the mother-tongue of the developers). The translators work hard to make every part accessible in your language as well.

All parts of the wiki will be extended and enhanced bit by bit. We cannot guarantee that everything will be available in your language at one point in time. But if you would like to help the translators, please write a message to a 'mod_' in game.

It is planned to open most parts of the wiki for editors out of the community. So everybody can help to extend and enhance the wiki. Nevertheless, some parts will have a more restricted access, so the quality of the information can be assured.

And now have fun reading,

Your goalunited development team

The new version of goalunited will have the following changes:

• invitations to 1on1 are sent as private messages. (Invitations are sent via contact page like normal United invitations)
• new United invitation dialog with specific details for the given event (Displays when clicked on the invitation link in the invitation mail)
• new game infos when selecting a game in the “all games” screen. Included for example is a button to display the above metioned united-details (without the join-function of course).
• while 1on1 is running, clicking a new 'info'-button can display above mentioned game info
• gameforge Users can now visit and use the northworks shop
• SMS payment for english- and german-speaking countries available

Your goalunited development team

The season is over, the play-offs completed, the teams for promotion are determinded - congratulations to all successful teams!

Following the present mode, all promoted teams would end up in a higher league in their branch. This arrangement got criticised often by the community, as it happened that some teams always had to play against the same, stronger sides - while in other branches (supposedly) weaker opponents were playing.

That arrangement was planned for next season but we were forced to use it already. From now on all teams qualifying for promotion are sorted by ranking and distributed stochastical to the free spaces of all leagues. The described phenomenon above can be avoided through this new arrangement. In detail, the best in ranking of one layer takes all free 7th places of a higher layer - stochastically distributed, so that not all the strong teams do end up in league X.1. Afterwards the same schema is applied to fill up the other free (8th, 9th and 10th) places.

The order of the terminal ranking will be lead by the play-off winners, followed by the teams with the best league ranking and finished by the relegates of the higher layer. Last mentioned can only get promoted again (respectively sustain their layer) if there are lots on inactive clubs - and thus free places - in the higher layer. In the past (the old script) this behaviour was not implemented perfectly and thus leading to smaller flaws.

While testing the old script, there were found some more flaws, so we had to decide to switch to the new script at short term - and calculate the current season change with the new arrangement. We want to excuse explicitly to all teams that already planned their arrival in a certain league and now get taken by surprise - but there are many advantages coming into effect with the new arrangement. On our side there are the the advantages that the new system is leaner, therefore easier to maintain, fail-safer and the calculation will be much faster.

The new arrangement concerns the relegates as well. The present system of the fixed branches hence got disestablished - at short notice.

Good luck for the upcoming season!

Dear community,

if you do not hear anything for some time from the developers that is overall a good sign or at least shows that we are working hard. The goalunited team proudly announces that a huge step is being made to clear an old obstacle out of the way.

One thing the community did criticise for quite some time was the old manual that did not explain the game in detail.

With the start of the new season we launch our new wiki and will open a bulging knowledgebase for all users. Currently this wiki consists of 146 articles. We hope that more articles will follow from the community. Overall the game is already explained in detail which should be a help for new but also experienced players. It's the nature of a wiki that it can be actively evolved and maintained. The manual and terms around goalunited can be fluidly completed and thus the quality and actuality can be raised a lot. The aim of this knowledgebase is to present the users all necessary informations about the game at one central point.

Beneath the manual and the explanation of terms the wiki will also consist of all news, faqs, known bugs and a roadmap of future versions and modifications. Overall this will make the wiki a comprehensive knowledgebase of goalunited.

We are still working on some parts and it can also take some time till all parts are ready. However we hope that you help us to evolve this project as you all are able to improve the quality of the wiki. After an introduction phase of a few weeks where only users with special rights are able to edit, the wiki will continously be more opened till every user can create and edit articles.

Your goalunited development team

Here is the schedule for the end of current and the upcoming season:

• 05/02/09: Last matchday of 8th season
• 05/08/09: First playoff-round and youth friendly match
• 05/09/09: United-Friendly
• 05/10/09: Second playoff-round
• 05/11/09: End of 8th season and calculation of promoting and relegating teams
• 05/12/09: Start of season 9
• 05/16/09: First matchday in 9th season

Informations to the upcoming version and to changes will follow with the next news.

The Update with the United Part containing the United-1on1 feature will start its testing today at 15:00 GMT+1. The new United-1on1 feature will be in test mode for today, this means you can test it the full day for free. The only thing for being able to test it is, that you are a Premium Account and do have at least 100 GICs but you won't have to pay with the GICs they are only used to check if GICs are there. Changing the feature so that there is no check for enough GICs is not possible. You will be able to test till tomorrow 12:00 GMT+1:00.

As we already announced there are some changes in the United system:

The new version features many changes to the United matches on top of introducing the United 1-on-1 matches. After every United match - no matter if it is a United-Cup or United-League match - all participating clubs will get „United-Points“. Those vary depending on the strength of the opponent and result of the match. The points received will build the United-Ranking and the new created „United-Trophy“ will grow with received points and will lighten up your contact page.

Additionally, you can play every United match in ladder mode (also called „battle“) with specific rules. If ladder matches are played as a 1on1-match there are no draws. So at 90 minutes there will be overtime and if that isn't enough a penalty shoot-out. While playing ladder matches, you can win or lose ladder points (also called „battle points“). The amount of ladder points are defined by your opponents ladder points and the result of the match. Against a higher ranked opponent, this means you still can win points when losing a close game by one goal.

All ladder points are taken into account for the ranking (ladder) and build a global goalunited ladder. As opposed to the above stated United points, you can win and also lose ladder points, and they will also reduce over time if you do not play any ladder matches.

The goalunited ladder is meant for experienced managers that want to compete in an active ranking (ladder) in addition to the normal league.

On top of the already existing United leagues and United cups we will implement United-1on1 with version 2009.1. Those will enable you to play additional matches (if there aren't any other matches simultaneously). There are three different kinds of United-1on1 matches: “Quick match”, “Manual match” and “Tell-a-friend” match. Quick and manual matches can be played in ladder or normal mode. This way you can use them as normal friendly matches, or to spice it up a bit, you can play for ladder points. 1on1 matches (excluding Tell-a-friend) have to be paid with GICs.

Additionally to this we would like to get more detailed about the changes.

This is the easiest and fastest United-1on1 match type, bacause they are ready to start within 15 minutes. It can be played in public or in private mode. A public match searches automatically for an opponent that would fit and creates a match as soon as someone is found (within 5 minutes). A private match is used with a generated 6-digit code you can send to the opponent of your choice. The countdown for the match will start as soon as your opponent enters the given code. An Instant United-1on1 match enables you to play whenever you want against whoever you want and gives you the joy of watching your team more often.

The manual match is a fixed match where you can pick the date by yourself. You can create and manage up to 10 manual matches at a time. While creating a match you can choose the time the match starts from up to 90 minutes from creation till one week.

Manual matches are great to organize the matches you want to play yourself.

You will receive United-Points for every United match your are playing and you can't loose them. The more United-Points you have the bigger the United-Trophy will be that was created for that purpose on the contact page. United-Points may also be traded for some special gimmicks within the game at a later time.

The goalunited-Ladder is a ranking for ladder matches. All United-matches can be played in ladder mode (except for United-1on1 Tell-a-Friend and United Friendly). The ladder mode enables you to win ladder points but you can also loose them. Only the best can stay on top for some time, because the higher your ranking the harder it is to keep it.

The goalunited-Ladder is meant for ambitious managers that want to compete with the best besides the normal league. The earning and loosing of points will be explained in a seperate news.

Your goalunited development team