Furcadia - Spring 2004 Newsletter

Furcadia Spring 2004 Newsletter

Greetings! This is our Furcadia Spring Newsletter. We send these out a maximum of four times a year. (If you want to be removed from our mailing list, see the instructions at the bottom.)

Table of Contents

1) Crashes and Lag problems all fixed!
2) Town Meeting with Felorin coming May 1st -- see transcript!
3) New shopping cart activates orders instantly!
4) Our Spring and Summer Festivals
5) Spring Sale starting this weekend!
6) Batwings and Squirrel/Skunk coming soon!
7) Beekin Applications reopening soon
8) Visit our friends at Otakuworld
9) Furcadia Fantasy Festival in Austin next March!

1) Crashes and Lag fixed

With help from our newest member of ourprogramming team, Kunnis, we've finally fixed the last of the major server bugs that caused server crashes, kept whispers from working, and caused other major problems. And our hosting provider, Burstnet, has gotten a second fiber optic cable, greatly increasing their reliability and reducing netlag problems. So if you got fed up with our stability problems (and who could blame you), come check it out - we only go down for 1 minute maintenance restarts now, usually less than once a week!

2) Town Meeting
(See a transcript)

It's been way too long since our last one, so we're having another! Silver Sponsors will be able to attend live at the stage in the special dream we've made for it, and everybody else will be able to listen in through the Events Channel. We'll be taking questions from everyone, sponsors and non-sponsors alike, as well as announcing some of our latest plans for what we intend to add to Furcadia in the future. (We probably won't get to everyone, but we'll get through as many people's questions as we can. To help us cover as many new topics as possible, you may wish to check our Forums at http://forums.furcadia.com/ to see if your question has already been answered there.) The meeting will be May 1st at 6PM Furcadia Standard Time. For those that can't make it, a log will be posted to our website (see here) afterwards as well. Our Silver Sponsors who attend the event live will also get a chance to try out our new squirrel/skunk avatar in advance!

3) Shopping Cart

After a lot of hard work by sanctimonious, Cameo, Marah~Fae Fireheart, Gar, Emerald Flame, and others, our new web shopping cart is ready to go! All orders placed through PayPal (our default payment option) are now automatically turned on within minutes -- sometimes even less than a minute! It reminds me of something Talzhemir often says: "I want my instant gratification NOW." Well now you can have it! Mail order customers can use it too, to enter a record of their order into our system to help us track it. They can also print out the order form to enclose with orders. (But we still accept hand-written notes too!) CCNow users should see somewhat faster order activation too. And PayPal customers can now order multiple items at once, for added convenience! Check out our cart, and the new portrait of M'rill, Prime of Felines, at: http://www.furcadia.com/digomarket/.

4) Festivals

Our Spring Festival was a great success. Both our dream contest and our Ecard contest got the largest number of entries ever! Check out all the entries, and the list of winners, at http://www.furcadia.com/spring/. And if you're eagerly awaiting our next festival -- our Egyptian themed M'rill Sun Festival will be sometime in late June. Watch for it to be announced on the Furcadia opening screen, and on our website in the News section.

5) Spring Sale

Starting this weekend, we'll be offering 3 portrait spaces for the price of 2, special deals on butterfly wings to celebrate the arrival of spring, and more deals that offer you big savings on Digo Market items. Watch our site for more details!

6) Batwings and Squirrels and Skunks, oh my!

Our next alpha update is in the works, and it's going to feature a new premium item. People have been asking us for batwings for years, and now we're finally going to introduce them! These will be similar to the ones previewed at our Wolf Howl last Halloween, but with a little minor improvement since then. And we're also adding a new race you can play, absolutely free -- squirrels/skunks! Set your markings and fur color identical for a squirrel -- or pick two different colors to get a big stripe going down the middle of your big floofy tail! The alpha will also be including some new DragonSpeak commands, many bug fixes, and few other new features. No, we don't know exactly when it'll be out, but we're trying to get it done soon. Stay tuned!

7) Beekin Applications

We know many of you have been waiting for a chance to apply to your favorite Beekin group. We've had applications shut down while we've been moving to a new database system that'll let us administer the whole volunteer program a lot better. Well, that system is pretty much complete now, so as soon as the dust settles a bit, we'll be taking applications again! Watch for them at http://www.furcadia.com/beekins/.

8) Otakuworld

When Furcadia was a new game and just starting out, a lot of our early players found us because of the link and recommendation over at http://www.otakuworld.com -- one of the most popular anime sites on the web. Now that we've grown so much, we thought we'd return the favor, and recommend their site to you! If you like anime, they have a little of everything -- reviews, games, anime theme guide, screensavers, wallpapers, forums, links, Kiss dolls, their own unique "Kamishibai" stories, desktop mascots, desktop themes, even tips on how to get Japanese computer games to run on the US version of Windows. Some of their stuff is free, some requires a subscription. The site's maintained by Dov, who created some of the first Furcadia portrait patches and add-on utilities, and Jennifer, who's been making fine computer games and online comics since the 1980s. We really enjoy their site, and perhaps you will too. (This isn't a paid advertisement - we're doing ths as a surprise to them! Both to repay their old favor, and to tell all of you, our players, about a high quality site we think you might enjoy.)

9) Furcadia Fantasy Festival

We've wanted to have a gathering people could come to for years, an annual event where everyone that wished could meet in person and have a nice time. Now we've finally started the planning for it! Our tentative dates are March 18-20th, 2005. (That still might change.) Sort of a cross between a renaissance festival, a science fiction convention, and Furcadia itself, it should definitely be unique! We'll be showing anime there, running gaming events (including Live Action Role Playing), having an art show, and plenty more. It'll be held in sunny Austin, Texas (or in neighboring Round Rock). More details will be coming soon, including special deals and free Digo items for people who pre-register far enough in advance!

Well that's it for this time. Hope you enjoyed our newsletter, and that we'll see you at our Town Meeting!