What's that, Furcadia?

In an attempt to get closer to the community, Emerald Flame’s Daughter, (and current Intern at DEP) announced a few months ago that she was working on a DEP Sekrit Projekt that would be announced closer to the end of the summer.
With about 27 days left to go, (see the timer to the right,) Felorin dropped some information today about what that particular project is going to be.
In an attempt to draw the community in a bit more, creating some closer ties amongst people, Pouncer Kitty is currently working on creating a Furcadia Social Networking Ring.
This ‘Ring’ will include popular Social Networking Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, deviantART, and YouTube. There’re rumours flying around that there will be contests involved that will allow you to possibly win prizes if you help them promote the game on these sites, but there’s no final word on that at this point.
What is clear is that DEP is trying desperately to get some more information out to the public in places where it won’t have a direct, negative impact on the community. Bickering and infighting are becoming more and more prevalent on the forums and people are starting to avoid them because of the negative attitudes of a few people who constantly seem interested only in bickering and harassing the DEP camp.
These are the same people who would follow DEP Twitter Accounts, YouTube Accounts, and other media outlets to vent their ‘frustration’ at other players and-or at the company itself.
While this is not a primary focus of these new social media outlets, it is an undeniable consequence of such actions. Whether this will help improve the community by taking away the initial brunt of angry users from the forums, or cast a shadow over their marketing is anyone’s guess at this point.
As a marketing aspect, this is a fantastic move for the company. Facebook, Myspace, deviantART and other Social Networking Sites are great exposure for small companies and it should show huge returns for Furcadia, coupled with the release of the iPhone App, hopefully released before the end of the summer. As of yet, there are no specific release dates given or even information about when the ‘final product’ will ship to Apple.

I’m allowed to giggle deliriously at myself, right?

This is What’s That, Furcadia’s 100th article. (Mredria Lulz in Peace was the 100th post!)

So, I figured I’d pull out all the stops and throw a bunch of crap at all of you, my loyal readers, because hey, that’s what I do. I throw things at you. Don’t like it? Tough. Take some of this. And that. AND THIS!

…

I think My brain is still broke from getting everything ready for this.

To commemorate the situation, I did a podcast. (I know; stop your cryin’. Babies.) It has a lot of neat content in it.

I figured I’d also let you all know that there’s a new website up called Kasuria’s Really Awesome Paper. KRAP is a poor attempt at mimicking The Muskrat and Randomism. It’ll update every Monday so you can start your week off right with a good and healthy amount of KRAP.

If you’d like to help out and support Krap, you can send an e-mail to krap@entwinedstudios.com

For people who have a problem pasting DS Code into the Furcadia window, (I do!) I set up The DSBin for people to share and collaborate on DS Together. Hopefully Masons will find it helpful in getting Furres the help they need whenever they’re working on Tricky DS.

Anyone going to conventions, (at any time) might want to consider printing out several flyers or by perhaps taking a few of the conbadges Talzhemir cooked up. You could make your own based on Badge 5 and Badge 6 if you were wanting to, perhaps, hand out something similar to a business card so that people aren’t as likely to get rid of it. (Not as big or bulky).

Remember, if you’ve got any rumours or anything that you’d like debunked or supported, let me know. (Contact info is on the About Page.) I’ll go ahead and delve into any rumour you give me and let you know if it’s true, false, or similar to something else. If I get enough of them, I’ll turn it into a weekly thing.

FAB seems to be getting some decent use, which makes me happy. Make sure you swing by and take a look at the artwork that Mredria, Kotra, Sync and others have been doing!

Here’s a quick bit of information I picked up from Turquoise (Head Alt-Trading Guru) about Alt-Trading. She gave me valuable information about things like: why it’s done, how it’s done, prices, and other things.

Alt trading seems to be inspired by a general desire to be unique. Some people spend their time trading alts for the money. Others, however, do it for the unique names, and no amount of Dragon Scales, digos, or cold, hard cash would get those people to give up a specific alt name.

Alt trading started in rudimentary forms, (at least, in organized forms) in 2001. It started becoming popular in 2002. Now days, it seems that everyone is trying to get in on the Alt Trading Craze.

If you were looking to sell an alt, the first thing to remember is that it’s a buyer’s world, not a seller’s. Just because you want a certain price for an alt doesn’t mean you can demand it. If it’s not worth it to someone else, like everything else in life, you can’t sell it.

Most of the time it is unique, (or very special names) that go for the big money. Things such as IRL names, the names of Friends/Significant Others, Anime Characters, Colours and the like are where money tends to be.

Some of those names, (especially the really rare ones) come with a certain amount of prestige. They could also come with a certain amount of infamy, too.

There are lists of known scammers out there to avoid so that you don’t lose your money. In general, it’s a trust issue; after a while, you learn to pick out the ones you can trust and the ones you can’t . Much like police officers learn to do, I imagine.

A note of caution: Alt trading is still not supported by DEP. You cannot transfer ownership of characters at this time. Failure to use the system DEP is implementing at a later date will result in permanent loss of the character for both parties involved, plus whatever digos or scales were used in the purchase. Until then, it is a Buyer and Seller beware situation. Trade at your own risk.

And just for fun, I thought I’d let you all know that I can beat up a bunch of five year olds A bunch. Shayde En’Kiar can beat up more than me, though. Damn her.

22

Quick Edit: The Podcast is the purple and yellow thing just below this, alright? Click on it (the right side) and it’ll start to auto-play. You can also download the podcast to your computer using one of the links below. Thanks for listening/reading! Hope you’re here for article number 200!

Been scrounging around for news on the latest update? Here’s a rundown of the newest features.

While you’re reading them, you could load this image to look at; it’s coming in the update too.

New avatars are including a Unicorn with wings. It was done by Tiggerbaby; (you’ll remember her work from the bears and the kitterwing.) It might have sparkles using the particle engine that DEP was talking about implementing a while back for certain kinds of animations, which would be cool.

There’s a Fox Ferian coming, which is where the update will get part of it’s name, probably. It’s going to be called the ‘foxen’, and it was done by Kaelin’yFiae.

Got some furlings coming out, (done by Talzhemir) in the form of a male and female kit. These won’t be allowed in FurN, and there’s a possibility that they won’t be allowed in Hawthorn either.

The valentine’s day sale avatar will be a chinchilla. If you’ve hung out with Talzhemir, you’ve seen these avatars before. They’re pretty cute.

Portrait art was done mostly by Talzhemir.

Penguin for Life and Kiwi for Life desctags should be out with this update as well.

For those of you, (like me,) hoping to have a ‘test’ feature for dreams… it might be coming soon. (Might be.) DEP says it is a legitimate concern and they’d like to help out.

New DS is probably going to be relegated to the Group Packages only, (Which might be as low as $3 or $5 a month for the cheapest non-free package.) PhoenixSpeak probably won’t be getting an upgrade immediately either. Strings are being looked at for additions in the future, however, for both DS and PS.

Most developers shouldn’t have to worry about this update; aside from the new FOX format, (Furcadia Object Extended) and the new dreamweaving options, everything should work fine as is, according to DEP. Proxies like Furnarchy, (or other very complex proxies) might have issues with the new way objects and floors are being done, but it should be an easy fix.

The move looks like it’s slated for the end of January; hopefully within the next week or so.

Sneak peak at the chinchilla avatar; this won’t be how they look final-draft, I’m sure.

So, that completes the update info, except for those of you who are registered. If you log in, you’ll be able to see the one last bit of really cool information that might be going in on this update. (There’s no guarantee, though.)

[Are_PayPal_LoginPlease]Keep it on the Down low, but there might just be live dream editing coming in with the update. Might. There’s no real confirmation of it yet, and as last I heard it was only very, very roughly done, but it might manage to sneak into this update![/Are_PayPal_LoginPlease]

Well, I’ve made it half a year without being shut down, blown up, or reduced to copying Randomism and The Muskrat. (Okay, I copy a little, but not much!)

I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’ve managed to stick to posting regularly on this; I had initially feared that after a lukewarm reception by people that I’d become disheartened and kick the project to the curb.

I haven’t, though, which makes me feel pretty good about the entire thing.

I’m going to reflect on a little history, starting with our first post:

Issue/Version/Post/whatever #1

This article was about the Hero Series; at the time being touted quite heavily. The release of this series sparked quite a debate amongst Furcadia’s players, and left a lot of DEP staff scrambling to put out fires all over the place.

This article started one of those fires; it wasn’t well received by DEP’s supporters. Or DEP themselves, I’m sure. It was pretty rash and more of a jab than an article.

However, I do still stand by what I wrote, even though I would write it differently now. I hold the same view that I did then, and I feel there’s nothing wrong with expressing my view on the subject.

Kestrel was an amazing person to talk to. She gave massive insights into some of the policies at DEP, (in regards to avatar purchases from Players,) as well as some interesting insights to how some artists do artwork for Furcadia.

This article too had a little drama associated with it, but that was quickly resolved. I hadn’t yet found my groove insofar as writing was concerned.

Amfortas is a friend of mine who has been on Furcadia for years and years. When I came to him with the idea of an article about Furcadia’s past, present, and future, he gave me in-depth detailed answers on his views about Furcadia. He spoke freely, without fear of backlash or hatred being poured at him, because he was speaking from his heart about a game he likes.

Another drama-inducing article, I was off to a fine start insofar as Furcadia websites go. Actually, Amf’s reply to this pretty much set the record straight, (insofar as I am concerned) on how that article should have been viewed.

Three articles in 15 days; that was the beginning of What’s That, Furcadia? and the trip to where we are now.

September saw five articles in the span of 30 days. I was hitting just over one a week, (statistically) and I wasn’t too happy about that.

By October I had fallen into a rut; another month with just five posts. This was why I was afraid I was going to fail miserably; I didn’t think I’d make it to six months if I had to fight to come up with new and interesting things to talk about!

However, that month was a large difference from September and August; I’d toned down my writing style a bit and focused less on DEP and more about what readers might be interested in. It seemed like a winning combination.

Disgusted with my lack of performance in the previous months, I kicked it up a notch in November with 10 articles; statistically over 2 a week! I’d finally started to crank out a steady amount of articles; feedback was up, and more people were viewing What’s That, Furcadia? each day. I was pleased, to say the least, going into December.

In December I did 14 articles. Since there were almost 5 weeks in December, that’s almost three, (again, statistically) a week! I’m happy to say that my imagination, (for coming up with new ideas,) and DEP’s help, (they were pretty influential on some articles. 😉 ) had started making What’s That, Furcadia? into an even better success than I’d thought. And here I was, thinkin’ it was goin’ to fail. Silly Damadar!

And then we find this month is upon us and I’m writing like a fiend as often as I can. Not only that, but I’m singing and talking more, too. This article marks article #9 for January, and I’m only on day 16! If you have any stories or ideas you’d like talked about, let me know!

Right now I’d like to thank several people for helping me make it this far:

Anyone who has let me interview them for the site; you’ve been a grand help.

Emerald Flame, for the useful bits of information you’ve slipped me over the past few weeks.

SnowyThing, for buying me a bunch of Dew.

All you pesky little informants out there who’ve not been named to keep the ban-hammer off your back. 😉

Any reader reading this; without your feedback, (and this guy’s bitching!) I don’t think I could have made it quite this far.

Did I get enough shameless self-promotion in here? I’m not too sure that I did but I’ll let you all decide!

Keep watch; later today I’m offering up something for people who help sponsor What’s That, Furcadia?.

Happy New Year.

There wasn’t a New Year’s Day post because I was being lazy and not particularly interested in writing something out that day. If you were hoping for something, I’m sorry.

To make up for it, I have some interesting news.

Sometime later this month, (hopefully,) Furcadia will be moving to a new server.

The current server has the following specifications:

4 x AMD Opteron 842+ processor
8 GB RAM
3 x 73 GB U320 SCSI RAID-5 Hard Drives

New server specifications will be released soon; presumably, though, the processor(s) are reportedly supposed to become ‘quad-core’ processors for the new server.

Expect to see some sales to go along with that to help offset the cost of a server upgrade.

Back in 2005 Furcadia switched from Burst.Net to a new server at Layered Technologies. Some of the people who were around remember how sudden that switch was. Hopefully, since DEP is moving in-house, (Sticking with Layered Technologies) there shouldn’t be as much of a problem.

The server machine that was being used back in 2005 had the following specifications:

2 x Intel XEON 2.4 GHz processor (with Hyperthreading)
3 GB RAM
2 x 73.4 GB 10k SCSI RAID mirrored Hard Drives
1 x 40 GB IDE Boot Drive

In addition to a server upgrade, Furcadia has taken to implementing a new support system. Created by Kayako Infotech LTD., this system will help automate support issues for Furcadia. The particular software is called ‘Support Suite’. Simply put, it is a bit of Help Desk software that Furcadia is going to switch to soon (after it has been implemented and tested fully,) for all of Furcadia’s support needs.

This system will help ensure that all queries are answered without having to deal with the hassles of E-Mail and the perils therein. The monthly cost for this software package is $40, the Yearly cost is $300, and the full-out purchase price is $500.