May 22, 2009 More Ways To Show Off

05:57am by Lijen (Site)

Hey vDreamers, we’ve added a few new ways for you to show off your stuff!

Trophies
We know that all you put a lot of work into earning those trophies. Well, now you can show off your trophies by clicking on the little trophy icons that appear in the pitstop and in your profile.

User Level
What level are you? Club racer? Rally Champion? Formula 1 Pilot? Leveling up isn’t easy, but we’ve made showing off your vDream status a little easier. Click on your level icon anywhere you see it throughout the site to show it off!

Also, expect a little somethin’ somethin’ very soon. Yes, that was a teaser…

May 21, 2009 vDream Racing is a Facebook Verified App!

07:21am by Lijen (Site)

It’s been a long time coming, but Facebook has finally announced its first round of Verified Apps and guess who’s included? Yours truly!

What this means for current users is that you can be assured that vDream Racing is a trustworthy app that strives to be transparent about how we work and respect social expectations between friends.

Plus we get a cool little badge logo on our app page =).

If you’re curious about the Verified Apps program, you can read more here.

Cheers!

May 20, 2009 New Poster: Fall Into The GAP

03:21am by Lijen (Site)

Sometimes the best style is simplicity. That was the philosophy for our newest 2 car poster that we call “Fall Into The GAP”. It reminds me of a GAP commercial. Thanks to Andy Clark for the concept.

May 15, 2009 "Offer" Talk, and Car of the Week

10:37pm by Cheechoo (Site)

Because of some recent issues from the new “Offers” page (buried underneath the donate page), we felt that we needed to talk about them a little bit. 1) to offer advice to users thinking about using it, and 2) to talk to you about why we chose this route.

Offers advice

1. Most Important: only do an offer if you are actually interested in it. ie: “Hey, there’s a Netflix offer here. I’ve been meaning to get an account. Might as well do it here and get some vDollars for it.” If you are uninterested in what they are offering, don’t do it. Or if you’re really bored and want to try a free offer (like a survey or something)

2. Do not ever give out your social security number to ANY WEBSITE aside from your bank, and perhaps if you are ACTUALLY applying for a yearly free credit report. Your sensitive information needs to be coveted, and you need to be careful with it.

3. If you are actually buying something through an offer, make sure the website looks legit, and there is that little lock icon on the bottom right of your browser, before you submit a credit card number, an address, or a phone number. Again – your sensitive information needs to be kept unless you are really purchasing something that you want.

4. There is a thread stickied on the “General vDream” portion of the vForum where people are posting up successful offers. Visit that thread, and if you were successful, post about it!

5. The offers are NOT run by vDream! If you do not receive your vDollars right away, wait 48 hours. After the 48 hours is up and you still don’t see it, go to the offers page and click on the “Offer Status” tab to see the status of your offer, then click on the link that says “Problem?” and submit a ticket to the 3rd party company from there. They are prioritizing support tickets that come from vDream. If you gave sensitive information or money, wait another two days and if there is no reply, then contact Cheechoo or Lijen through the vDream Support forum and we will personally contact the company. WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE.

Now, to talk about why we chose the route of using “offers”. vDream is a free site that costs a lot of money to run. Currently we are still burning money and we need revenue if we want to keep vDream running. If offers do well for us, we can continue releasing cars and parts and features, and if they do REALLY well for us, we might even be able to hire some help to increase the speed of our releases.

On a lighter note – the Freia garage is open! Go get one!

Car of the week: “Maxed out Saloon” with a sweet Takata Dome NSX look-alike, using one of the new sets of wheels!

May 12, 2009 Posters + Dashboard 2.0 + Donate + Offers!

08:44am by Lijen (Site)

Bam! Here’s the latest release from the vDream Team.

Posters
Throw your vDream car collections into a poster masterpiece and share them with your friends! As you level up, you will be able to create more posters, and as you purchase more cars you will unlock more poster options. Follow the link on the top right to get started with your first poster!

Dashboard 2.0
The vDream dashboard has received a little upgrade! It now displays much more relevant information such as VDI and user class information.

Donate
First of all, we’d like to extend a warm thanks to any user that has donated to vDream in the past. It’s a lot of work maintaining the site, and all of your donations really help us keep the site moving forward. That being said, we created a new, tiered donation system that adds increased incentives for different donation amounts. With this new tiered donation system, we’d also like to introduce the concept of car and part tickets. A car or part ticket is a free pass to purchase a car or part that is locked because a user is not at a high enough class. The user must still pay for the car or part, the ticket only gives them access to it. Car and part tickets are available at the higher donation tiers.

Offers
If you go to the donate page you’ll see a link at the bottom to a new offers page. Many other apps already offer this, so we though we’d give it a try. Basically, you can accept any one of the many offers as a quick way to earn more vDollars.

Phew, that was a load off. Let us know what you think!

May 02, 2009 May 2009! Car of the Week!

12:02am by Cheechoo (Cars)

Hello vDreamers! It’s May 1st, therefore a new monthly collectible is out! This month, it’s the Cinco de Mayo Sombrero for the top of your car!

Get out there and support vDream with a donation and get your Sombrero today!

Car of the Week award just had to go to a user with the new brakes and roll cage. This week it goes to James on Myspace with a sweet looking clean Mustang GT! He posted on the vForum that he thought it was one of the better looking Mustangs out there, and a whole bunch of users agreed, including us! Great job, James!

April 30, 2009 New part-types: Brakes and Roll Cages!

08:55am by Cheechoo (Site)

Hello vDreamers!

We have been arduously working on expanding the part types offered in vDream, and have finally finished a small set of new part types: Brake Calipers, Brake Rotors, and Full Roll Cages – which are all visual! In addition to being visual, calipers and rotors are certain to reduce stopping distance and decrease track times, and roll cages are certain to look cool, while also stiffening the car’s chassis resulting in better traction.

This will likely result in some new world records for track times! Have fun!

April 29, 2009 A New Feature For New Users

06:28am by Lijen (Site)

We’ve noticed that for many who are new to vDream it’s hard to get off to a good start in terms of VDI, vDollars, and getting a handle on general game play. In order to address this, we’ve add a new feature called Training Races that are available to Noobs and Licensed Users.

Unlike sending a challenge, a training race happens instantaneously so you can see the results of the race right away. In addition, because this is a training race and not a real challenge, both user’s records will not be affected. You will still be rewarded with vDollars and VDI for training races.

Hope you enjoy the update, stay tuned for another big content release in the next couple days.

Happy vDreaming!

April 23, 2009 Honda S2000! Car of the Week! Europa!

08:57pm by Cheechoo (Site)

Hello vDreamers! The winner of the poll a few weeks ago, the Honda S2000, has been released onto vDream! This little pocket rocket is sure to be quick on the track, and is a beauty with the top off! Have fun!

On to the Car of the Week!

I stumbled upon Myspace’s “Braddy’s Handsomeness” and his 350Z stuck out for me. Congrats on the sweet looking 350, Braddy! That car truly is “the handsomeness.”

Next week we will be releasing a light content release (no car).

The latest parking spot has been released! Europa! Check it out in your Garage section!