*Update 1/31/05 Congratulations to everyone who made a donation to our Children's Hospital Charity Drive. Our goal was to reach $10,000.00 and we are happy to announce that we have met and passed that goal.

We have officially stopped taking in donations at this time, and have awarded medals to all paypal donations that included account info or could be verified by the email address used to pay. We have about 60 donations that did not include account info. We will be awarding medals to any of those that sent an email with account info to our charity email address, and for those that did not, we will be contacting you shortly.

If you have recently mailed in a donation and did not yet get your medal, do not worry. We will be checking the P.O. Box over the next few days for any late donations.

Thanks again to everyone who donated and helped reach this goal for a very worthy cause.

As soon as everything has been verified and all medals have been awarded, we will post additional updates including a letter from the hospital thanking the Dark Throne players and prize info. Stay tuned.

Here at Lazarus Software, we have really been blown away by the amount of sign-ups we have received. We are very grateful for the amount of dedicated players we have, and the fact that player support will allow us to continue developing this game.

Having such a large and dedicated audience gives us a great chance to give something back to the community. This holiday season we have put together our Dark Throne 2004 Children's Hospital Charity Drive. We are asking players to donate to our charity to not only benefit a great cause, but to get a chance to win some great prizes.

For this year, we have chosen the Children's Hospital of New York for your donations. We will be donating a majority of the proceeds to help with medicine and medical equipment that the Hospital requires. A smaller portion of the money will go to purchase toys for children who are terminal or who cannot leave the hospital this holiday season.

This is a great chance to make a difference in so many people's lives. Most people say that an individual cannot make a difference, but here we are giving you that chance. We have over 100,000 active players. Even if half of our players were to donate just a dollar - that is 50 thousand dollars that we can give to a great cause.

Our Charity Drive will run from November 15th until December 31st, 2004.

Please think about what a difference you can make in a child's life with such a small donation. Ten dollars is less than the price of a movie ticket and popcorn, a music CD, or DVD. Instead of picking up that DVD or CD, you can put the money toward this charity and make a difference in a child and their family's life.

Players who donate any amount will get a Charity Medal, which will appear on their in-game profile. How much you donate is what determines what type of Medal you will get:

$1.00-$9.00 = Bronze Charity Medal
$10.00-$19.00 = Silver Charity Medal
$20.00+ = Gold Charity Medal

In addition, we will donate various prizes for players to win, including PC and console games, DVD's, and a console system. The player who donates the most money will receive the console system and two games of their choice. You can pick between the Nintendo GameCube, DS Handheld System, the new Sony Playstation 2, or the Microsoft Xbox.

Other players will be chosen at random and will be able to pick from a variety of DVD's and games as prizes.

We are also going to be closed testing our adventure system in the beginning of next year. The adventure system will only work with our gold code, so it cannot be beta tested. We will be closed testing it with the staff, and will make 25 open spots for players who donate. Out of all players who donate to our Charity Drive, we will pick people at random and give them a closed testing slot for our adventure system. The player who donates the most money will also receive a closed testing adventure slot.

Again, we ask you to think about what a difference you can make by donating such a small amount. You will really be helping a great cause, and also have a chance at winning some nice prizes, as well as closed testing the adventure system with the game's developers.

As this is our first Charity Drive, we are not sure how much to expect from our players, so will set our goal shortly after the Drive begins. After our Charity Drive is finished, we will also post pictures and letters from Children's Hospital. Thank you for your support.