• anaconda [del]
• 2007-07-28

We would like to invite every sokker user to support their country in the World Cup that starts this Saturday!

Hellsangel has written a guide to all 32 teams featuring in the World Cup in the forums - here. It remains to be seen whether Polska will retain the World Cup for a third consecutive time, or one of the other nations will finally take away their crown.

The World Cup kicks off today with Australia - Norge. Be sure to check on the progress of all the teams in the World Cup section!

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-07-23

We would like to take this time to remind everyone to use a password for their sokker account that would not be easy to guess for any potential hacker. The below are points worth bearing in mind for your password:

1) Change your password every now and again, and NEVER have the same username and password.

2) If possible, use a password that contains both numbers and letters - but make sure you are able to remember them.

3) First name, last name, birthday date, phone number and user names are not secure passwords, try and have something as your password that is not easy to directly link to yourself.

Finally, a reminder that no one from Sokker will EVER ask you for your account password. Never give your account password out via email or SK mail to anyone.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-07-09

This weekend, Sokker passed the 50,000 user mark, a significant milestone for any online game.

Thanks to all of our users for helping us reach this point. We will continue to work to improve the functionality and interface of the site to support future growth. Please continue to spread the word about this game to help us incresase our community size and level of competition!

-- Sokker Staff

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-06-26

It is election time again! You have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach of any nation, and vote for your preferred manager of your own nation!

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open a maximum of one thread in the forums, prefixed with [NT] , e.g. [NT] forestman. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spammy activities will result in forum banning and/or financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

The election deadline is July 8th, so get preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-04-24

We are happy to announce that we have installed Sokker on a new, better, internet connection. Sokker servers are now hosted in professional server room, with redundant internet connection, power, conditioning, extinguishing systems, monitoring etc. etc. It's much more than we were able to supply in our previous 'home' server room.

The move was originally planned to take place in two weeks, but because our internet connection had some serious problems, we were forced to make the move ahead of schedule with little time to prepare.

With the changes already made to the servers in the past few weeks, Sokker is working on 6 servers in total (web servers, database, proxy, match generators etc.). In the next season or two, there are plans to increase capacity further, so that more users can be logged in during match days.

During the week we will be adjusting the configuration of the servers, so please be understanding if any problems happen. Major server works are planned for this friday (we hope that this will be unnoticable, with Sokker working as normal).

Because of all the server work, all plusses will be extended by 2 days.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-04-09

On Wednesday April 11th, a new engine version will be released. This release contains only bug fixes, without any changes to game play. For this reason, we are not waiting until the end of season for the release.

Changes made in this version:
- After goal kicks, attackers will more likely allow midfielders to get the ball, instead of going back to get the ball themselves (putting them out of position).
- Decreased likelihood of immediate ("nervous") passes.
- Decreased likelihood of shooting from a bad angle angle when a player is not attacked by opponent. (This bug is fairly visible in the Estonia - Poland match, when Eesti played weird tactic without wing defense).
- On free kicks, players will sometimes attempt short passes instead of lobs, especially if partner is close and there isn't need for a high pass to them.
- Decreased likelihood that players with MID order in own defensive zone will either run out of bounds or into own goal.
- In league games, if both side gives walkover, score is 0:0 from now (1:0 in cup as it is in rules).

These are the only changes that have been made in this release.

Bugs reporting: please report all engine bugs in the Bugs / Ideas (en) forum. Please include only one topic for each type of bug. Please always include the match and minute of the bug – otherwise we will not be able to find or fix that bug.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-03-26

For the last 3 weeks, we have been working on major changes to the Sokker server configuration. Until lately, this had been mostly transparent to users. This work with the configuration should be continuing for approximately 3 weeks, so please understand this and expect a few issues may arise.

The next configuration change is planned for March 27th in the morning (Sokker time), and we will delay any transfers during the affected time. Input on what has been changed will be provided after the changes are made.

Meanwhile, because Sokker has been growing rapidly, and the number of requests to the server on Match days is so high, we experienced some problems over the last two weeks. We tried to resolve this last Sunday, but because of an issue with the proxy module the change was not successful. We expect problem to be fixed before this Wednesday cup games. Please note that the expansion (new and expanded countries) were in no way responsible for the issue.

Also, during the period of slow responses, transfers were monitored and reviewed and were actually on the whole somewhat HIGHER than most days of the same weeks. Therefore, extending transfer deadlines would not have been appropriate as players fared on the whole better.

In the meantime, thank you for your patience and please know that the developers are doing their best to resolve the issue.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-03-12

Sokker is pleased to announce that the following new countries have been added to our community, as well as expansion to several countries based on their growth.

New countries:
+----+-----------------------+
| 73 | Panamá
| 50 | Ghana
| 75 | Crna Gora
| 76 | Kenya
| 77 | Guatemala
| 78 | Daehan Minguk
| 80 | Cameroun
| 64 | Ukraina
| 45 | Latvija
| 81 | Sénégal
| 79 | Azərbaycan
| 82 | Zhōngguó

Extended countries:
+----+-----------------------+
| 31 | Sverige
| 25 | Suomi
| 20 | Portugal
| 41 | Türkiye
| 15 | Deutschland
| 29 | Danmark
| 54 | Bulgaria
| 13 | Česká republika
| 21 | Brasil
| 10 | Italia
| 59 | Malaysia


Many thanks to all of the translation participants for their help, and to JD for his great work on checking and inserting country data.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-03-05

It is election time again! You have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach of any nation, and to give your vote to your preferred manager of your own nation!

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open a maximum of one thread in the forums, prefixed with [NT] , e.g. [NT] forestman. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spammy activities will result in forum banning and/or financial fine. Also, if you are running for election do NOT post questions or arguments in other candidates' threads. Their threads are for them to present their candidacy (and for users from that nation to question them), not for you to debate them.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

The election deadline is 18th March so get preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-02-03

During the NT games today and the next friendly NT and club games (once all of the cups are finished), we will be testing some modifications to the match engine. This is mostly due to the repetition in the current engine - many goals were as a result of long passes from the wings or running passes. The changes will be as follows:

- it will be easier to score from long distance, although harder to score a "one on one" with the goalkeeper
- passes will become more varied (before passes were either almost exact, or no where near exact - with very few passes in between the two)
- defenders and other players from team currently defending will be able to "predict" the area where the ball will drop after long passes (so not only attaker or player which the pass is addressed to will know where it is going as it has been before)

Along with these changes, it is intended that some minor bugs in the current match engine will be fixed, a full list of any fixed bugs will be available at the end of the current season..

Anything not listed above, will remain unchanged.