November 2018 Announcements

November 2018 Announcements


News in Brief​

Event Revamp
To help provide some much needed clarity, we've updated the way we do events. We now have two types of events (holidays and active), and you can find them all explained here. The number of events in each month will vary.

We're also introducing our flag system. This system will let you signal to the staff how willing you are to have your characters get messed up over the course of an event. You can read more at the bottom of the complete guide to events.

We're also, at the same time, releasing our giant list of Holiday Events! Holiday events occur at regular times each year, and you can check out the current and upcoming holiday events in this thread. You can also find our active events here.

As a final part of this very large update, we're also changing how we notify people about events. Rather than multiple smaller threads and then multiple calendar posts, you can now check out the calendar for an overview, and the single monthly event post in the event forum for a listing of all planned events and holidays.

Named NPCs
Manta Carlos has a thriving population, but obviously not every person on the island is going to have a full app. We've introduced a new option, Named NPCs, intended to allow players to make small profiles for important people in their character's lives. If you've ever wanted to do a profile for your characters family, roommate, coworkers, etc, but didn't want to actually play them, this is for you!

You can find all the information here, in the sticky at the top of the new forum. We've also put out some Official Named NPCs.

Challenges
Last month's challenges went well, and this month we have a new round for you. This month we're introducing our holiday challenge, which will appear each month. We've got a new 'odds and ends' challenge, we're encouraging regular posting throughout the month, and we're encouraging players to set up their own named NPCs.

You can find this month's challenges here.

Monthly Events
This month we have the Carpe Noctem Bonfire, a new Virtual Reality event, and two holidays: The Food Festival, running on the first weekend of November, and the Pirates Feast, on the second weekend of November.

You can see all the event info here.

Odds and Ends
We've moved the Island Happening threads to a seasonal schedule to avoid things getting bumped off too quickly.​

Outage
We discovered an issue in our database this morning which required us to roll back to our last backup. Thankfully, this backup was only yesterday, so we have a minimal amount of post lost. Posts (and threads) made between noon yesterday and today were lost. They still partially show up, but the posts themselves have no data to pull from the database.

If you have posts saved, you can just repost. If you don't, feel free to just summarize what happened.

Everyone's been granted a voucher to help make up for the extra work tracking down those posts entails. We don't have any reason to believe this will happen again for a long, long while, so please don't worry about this being a repeat thing.​

Mid-Month November 2018 Announcements


News in Brief​

Voucher Update
As I'm sure many people noticed, SA was down several times over the past two weeks, including one brief period of unfortunate 24 hour rollback. Thankfully, that's all done, and we can show off what we installed in the meanwhile: Automatic voucher updates! Previously players were required to claim finished threads that had reached more than 10 posts to gain a voucher, but now the handling is done automatically. No claiming is needed, and players get 0.1 vouchers for every roleplay post they make.

If you notice any forums giving vouchers that they shouldn't (or not giving vouchers they should), please let the staff know. Otherwise, you can see all the info here.

Challenges
We introduced a new batch of challenges, highlighting consistent posting, threading about the holidays, making named NPCs, and a variety of other tasks. If you haven't, check out this month's challenges here.

Virtual Reality Event : Great Train Heist
Sign ups for the next VR began today and will run through November 20th. The VR will run twice, once on Saturday the 24th and once on Sunday the 25th, each from 10am to 8pm site time. Characters will take on the roles of either outlaws robbing a train or marshals trying to stop a train heist. Sign ups and more info can be found here. You will get to note a secondary choice in case your first choice falls through, but you may only play in one event.

Once sign ups are done, we'll announce which event is happening which day and put up the page for mini profiles.

Staff Changes
We'd like to thank @Ballerina for the time she's spent with staff. Ballerina has decided to step down to focus on classwork.

Odds and Ends
We now have a 'dropped thread' tag. Feel free to apply it to old threads you've dropped, but please be careful about sticking it on current stuff. If the thread has a post in the last two months, make sure to talk to your partner before adding the tag.

The Academy Staff Listing thread now also has a section listing characters who are Dorm Parents. Dorm Parents are Academy staff members who live in the dorms and act as the guardians for the students they are assigned to. If you would like your character added to the list please head over to the Claim Update thread.​