2024 Quarter Three Update

Hi all,

Time never slows down, here is our Quarter Three update.

We continue to have a range of news and updates over the previous three months.

If you haven’t read our prior 2024 Quarterly reviews, you can see Quarter One here and Quarter Two here.

We released our new title Panzer Campaigns – Smolensk ‘43 in mid-September, our first 4.05 version. Both the game and the new play features added have been universally welcomed. More on that later in this post.

Our ‘Game of the Week’ promotion has gone from strength to strength. We have seen very solid interest and traffic when each title is highlighted on Monday, with people calling out the book recommendations as especially useful. Game of the Week resumed on July 8^th after a hiatus during the summer sale.

To make certain that all can check all the linked information, here are the Quarter Three blog posts and titles chronologically.

We have continued with the update cycle across multiple series. As mentioned in our Quarter One Update, we have focused on moving series across to new WDS installers. This was completed for the planned titles during Quarter Two (Yay!), other than the Naval Campaigns series.

Naval Campaigns was updated to version 4.04 during the quarter. Gary McLellan went through the changes here, with the major areas of focus being various database fixes, additional campaigns and additional content for Tsushima. Subsequently, all the Naval Campaigns titles were upgraded to version 4.04.

Colonel Bill Gray published a blog post comparing our newly released Thirty Years War title and Matrix’s Pike and Shot Campaigns. It’s a fascinating comparison, and a worthy read.

Alexey, of Introduction to the WDS Napoleonic Battles Series fame, wrote a detailed Quatre Bras After Action Report after playing a PBEM game using the latest Version 4.08.1.

Rich Hamilton shared what is involved in creating a basic scenario in the Musket & Pike engine, using the Thirty Years War title as a basis.

Our latest News Shorts post highlighted a range of topics related to WDS, primarily community created content.

We talked a LOT about upcoming content with the 4.05 patches for First World War Campaigns / Panzer Campaigns / Modern Campaigns.

Mark ‘Midge’ Middleton provided the back history for Certain Strike ’87, a new campaign to be included in Modern Campaigns: Danube Front ’85.

Jison, of Mapmod fame, has updated all the graphics –including a new high-resolution set– in the First World War Campaigns series, and you can see examples of all here.

The deep dive into exactly what was included in version 4.05 definitely spurred some comments from our readers. We expanded on version 4.05 inclusions with our preview of Panzer Campaigns: Smolensk ’43.

We continued to enhance the Store experience. This change actually went in right at the tail end of Q2, but we thought it was worth mentioning again.

Towards the top right hand corner of our site there are three icons, with the left most being the one to access your Store Account - we suggest that you log in each time you visit the Store, for a variety of reasons. The most applicable to this post is the warning that is in place if you go to purchase a game that you already have in your records. The warning will display in two locations.

On the Product Page:

And then in the Shopping Cart if the game was already added. You then have an opportunity to remove it here before check out.

This will apply to Demos as well, not just full games. Once you have added a title to your library, be it a full game or demo, you do not need to purchase it again to get the most recent version - if an update doesn't exist on the series specific Support page then a new full installer can be downloaded from your Store Account page. The version downloaded here is always the most up-to-date, so no further patching is needed.

As always, if you have problems or questions about this, or anything related to our company, contact us at the Help Desk and we will get you going.

For a final time, before Tiller's Troopers compete on November 3rd, we want to remind you all of the news we highlighted in the Quarter One update from John Tiller’s daughter, Julia. In her words:

Hi all. I hope you are having a great 2024! Fundraising is underway for the National Brain Tumor Society for this year's New York City marathon. I'll be running the 26.2 mile course in November 2024 in honor of my dad, John Tiller. He was an inspiring figure in my life and continues to be. For this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I'm asking for donations to meet my fundraising goal. The National Brain Tumor Society is very dear to me for their unrelenting support of people who have experienced brain cancer. Please follow the links, watch the video on my dad's story, and share. Thank you so much!!

https://nbtsevents.braintumor.org/tillers-troopers

There is also merchandise you can buy to support Julia, click the image below to see Tees, Hoodies and Sweatshirts.

Julia has also created a short YouTube video highlighting John and the fund raiser: My Dad: Why I Run with the NBTS

If you can afford to help, please do - cancer is such an insidious disease that could impact any of us.

Looking Forward

We continue to have several titles nearing the end of internal testing. With that in mind, we would like to remind you of the recently announced title in the Musket & Pike series, War of the Austrian Succession. Rich’s writeup gave a great overview of this oft ignored period as well as the current state of the game. Never say WDS doesn’t cover the more obscure corners of history!

Beyond this upcoming release, we continue to have very full schedules. It will likely be into the new year before we share the next preview of a new title.

With the planned 4.05 updates for the First World War Campaigns, Panzer Campaigns and Modern Campaigns series imminent, we expect to pause on rolling out patches across most series. We have a lot of catchup work to do in other series, whether it is continuing the conversion to the latest version for unpatched Squad Battles titles, or finalising patches for series like Strategic War.

This work must be done side by side with all the demands of new projects, and engine enhancements.

For that reason, we are probably more uncertain of exactly what will be ready for ‘prime time’ in quarter four, than we have been in the past. Our focus is definitely on new work, and as you can imagine we can’t announce anything until we are confident on release dates. What we can commit to is keeping you up to date as we get close to completing each body of work - we just don’t have a mountain of announcements right now.

Some final housekeeping. We are still seeing some international customers placing orders in USD when we support their local currencies. You can change the currency the store displays, and your order is billed in at the very bottom of each web page. We would prefer you not to make the banks rich by paying fees for currency conversion.

Thank you again for the ongoing support, we will continue to try and keep communicating and interacting via our forum, Facebook and other platforms.

Here’s to Quarter Four!