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Weekly Store Update: 28 April
There are three amazing titles that just hit our preorder page - Tainted Grail: the Fall of Avalon, Etherfields, and The Great Wall. These are immensely popular games from Awaken Realms that you really should check out and we have all sorts of options to choose from! Other news includes checking how green our website is and showing off our new items and restocks. Check it out!
INTRO
Welcome to our weekly newsletter! For our new readers I'm Eric, and Wendy and I run Stone Valley Games. This newsletter is our way to share both local and world-wide gaming news of interest that popped up last week. It also provides our subscribers, both local and remote, some information on the going's on around here so everyone feels like part of the action. At the bottom of this newsletter we show you the restocks, new items, and preorders added to the store last week. It's not too difficult to navigate, so let's get to it!
GREENER ON THE WEB
Here's your fun fact of the week. Our website produces less CO2 than 50% of tested URLs across the globe. That puts us in the top half!
Sounds a bit ridiculous, right? How can a website be green? Well, you may not know but if the internet was a country, it would be the 4th largest overall polluter. That's your second fun fact! And... it's crazy to think about!
Along with our choices in packaging, shipping, storage, display and... well, in almost all of our operations, we also do our best to be green on the web too. We consciously made several choices, and the following are the biggest contributors to our solutions.
Our hosting provider uses renewable energy and actually match 100% of their consumption with renewable sources. The physical servers we use are housed in the USA where the majority of our traffic comes from. Another factor in keeping the web green is reducing loading time. Servers closer to the users helps there. Along those lines is improving media files (through things like lazy loading), keeping fonts simple, and optimizing the front end. Those are all steps we had taken and help us move up those lists. The last bit of tech help is server-side caching. It allows our website to store and access data more quickly. Again, all of that assists with keeping load times shorter.
Now that we've made it to the top half, we want to do even better. I can say that we've completed the 'easy' part of going greener. Moving further up the list will take time and dedicated effort. Honestly, one of our biggest hurdles is hosting on WordPress. While a good solution for all of the things we're trying to do, they are not even close to the most efficient or cleanest solution. While I can chip away at the edges, only a move to a completely different host will really push us up those lists. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
However, we will continue to chip away at it. We will continue to refine all of our business operations in the same manner. While we cannot fix everything, I'm confident our efforts are helping. If enough people do what they can to help the environment, then real change happens. Personally, now that I'm bouncing grandchildren on my knee, trying to leave this planet better than I found it has become even more important.
AWAKEN REALMS - REAWAKENS
Awaken Realms is a publisher based in Poland that has released some absolutely amazing games, to include The War of Mine, Lords of Hellas, Nemesis, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. Since they started as a miniatures painting studio, they have a really good understanding of creating excellent models. Combine that with their ability to produce exciting games with some of the best campaigns in the business, it's no wonder they are pulling in millions of dollars with their Kickstarters.
Now some of their older titles are reemerging again. We don't know how long they will remain available, but for now at least we have a slew of options in three of their titles: Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, Etherfields, and The Great Wall.
So, if you want to grab anything from the base game or an expansion, all the way up to the entire package we have you covered. Even better, these prices are as low as you'll find. Lower than during the Kickstarter even, and most orders over $100 will get you free shipping. If you missed these the first time around, this is a wonderful opportunity.
NUDGE ME
Just a quick public service announcement. If you sent us an email or left us a phone message and we haven't responded in 48 hours - please send us a nudge. Naturally when we're on travel that's different - but during those times we'll have an Out of Office response at least.
During the normal week though, we route though quite a bit of email on a daily basis, and there is a myriad of tasks we have to take care of 'outside' of watching customers smile with their new games heading out the door.
You may notice I do most of the email correspondence, while Wendy focuses on logistics, and it's possible I might have missed something. Know that we are not ignoring you! We value your notes, and questions, and suggestions. If time has passed and you haven't heard back from me, please just give me a nudge and I'll take care of you!
THE WRAP UP
Okay, enough news for this week! Below are the Restocks, New Items, and Preorders added to the shop last week. You can click on the item to learn more, and many of the products have review and gameplay videos so you can see the game in action. If you're visiting our page and you'd like to keep up with our giveaways, sales, new products, and articles like this one just create an account here. Once created you will be subscribed to our newsletter and become enrolled in our loyalty system, instantly earning 50 Stones that you can use on your very first order. A Stone? One Stone is equivalent to One Cent. That doesn't sound like much, but you earn 2 Stones for every dollar spent and 5 for each product review, so though it may seem small, those savings add up fast! Redeem your Stones upon checkout, and they can save you up to 10% off your cart total. Loyalty Matters!
