Archive for November, 2017

Weekly Buzz 11/28/2017

Hello Collectors,

Benson has reached all of his Budget Wonders, and it’s all thanks to players like you! We have enjoyed watching him move around the world and hope that you have as well. Many players have had the opportunity to interact with Benson, taking him to their favorite eateries, theaters, or parks. We have charted out some basic pins to showcase where Benson went around the world, using all locations or just Budget Wonders. Benson met 113 players across the globe during his travels, and after debriefing with us at WHQ, he wants to continue meeting more! Starting in December, Benson will begin showing up at various other ‘budget wonders’ across the globe. Various monuments in WallaBee will be randomly selected for additional Bensons to begin appearing at. If you know of some budget wonders near you that aren’t in the game (Place Guide approved), be sure to add them soon!

EDIT: Benson’s mission is to make it onto your set of Uniques. He will begin showing up at random Monuments/Sculptures within the game, whether they’ve been there for years or just added recently. However, you may want to make sure that sculptures near you are verified, as Benson only travels to these locations. If you have a monument near you that is not verified, please report it and a BeeKeeper will determine the validity.

This type of gameplay allows a rare opportunity to track down a Benson item near you, which helps our players interact with the map in a new way. Benson has been issued through number 5 today, with many more coming within the coming days, weeks, and months.

Gameplay Development – Under The Hood

This week’s development has been filled with various boring backend fixes and tweaks to make the game better. We are working on getting 2.2.2 ready for release, but want to make sure that it’s fully ready. As many of you are well aware, we have a small development team, so getting things happening within a small timeframe doesn’t always work out. We appreciate the feedback that we’ve received from the community about the status of the app. With a development team of two (one backend and one frontend), we do as much as we can. Many of you don’t know that within the past few weeks, our main backend developer, Scott Foster, has moved on to bigger and better things. In his absence, Daniel Fischer (the wizard of Munzee) has stepped into the WallaBee team to help us grow. We wish our best to Scott and thank him for the last 2 years of his service to WallaBee – You will be missed. This doesn’t change the status of the app, but will slow things down a little bit as Daniel learns more of the WallaBee controls. All of the updates we’ve made to speed things up this month have been thanks to Daniel, whom we are very thankful for.

We’ve received many requests in the past few months to join the BeeKeeper team. Well, we have some awesome news for those who are interested. Beginning in December, we will have an application process for a new team of BeeKeepers to be created. These teams will serve for a quarter of the year (3 months), with an evaluation period at the end of the quarter. This will hopefully allow us to make sure that our BeeKeepers are kept up-to-date on information and are passing that information along through the forums. More information will be available soon as to what this overhaul looks like. Wish us luck as we navigate this transition.

We hope that you were able to capitalize on those Cyber Monday deals yesterday! We had many items discounted, including Honeycombs, Locks, and Pouch Upgrades. Since then, we have updated all of our prices for in-game rewards. You can find our new prices by visiting the WallaBee Online Store. Should you have any questions, please let us know by emailing Support@WallaBeeGame.com

Recent Item Highlights

One item from each active set was released this week, giving a bit of much needed variety to recent item releases. Now that Budget Wonders has ended, what will come next? There’s only one more item left in 2017’s calendar set! December is sure to be a chilling experience.

Sonic Assault!

Then, very loud, a long, piercing note!
Flo froze in place with no antidote.

November’s Black Friday

New items! Low prices! Give us your honeycombs!

World’s Largest Killer Bee

Budget Wonder #174: “Keep your honeycombs close when visiting this Hidalgo attraction”

Player Unique History

With more and more Player Uniques coming out, we want to spend a respectable amount of time learning more about them. This week’s Player Unique Spotlight highlighted Jack Frost. You can read more about this unique here.

Jack Frost

This Week In WallaBee History

November 26th, 2015: Who could forget this day? After announcing in the forums that RedCarRobbie was joining the team for ‘special projects,’ Rob announced through a brief live stream on Periscope that there would be a drop-free time on Thanksgiving! The only thing is, a few short hours later, Ms. November released. Rob decided to live stream through Periscope later in the day to give his thanks for the KickStarter support, but the players were too busy spamming “Thanks for Ms. November” in chat to notice. The following April 1st, 2016, Trial and Error was created to poke fun at this moment in WallaBee history.

November 28th, 2013: The First Thanksgiving set released with all items available for Thanksgiving. Talk about something to be thankful for!

November 29th, 2013: There were issues with the Black Friday sale, so the Black Knight appeared on the scene with store purchases (check the item description)! This was also the first day that the Black Mystery Box variant was gifted.

Room For Growth

We have compiled a list of issues that we are currently working on. If you find something that doesn’t fit into this list, please reach out to us and let us know.

• Battery drains like crazy – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this.
• Forum Notifications/Count are missing – Coming in a future update.
• Performing an action that triggers a pop up sometimes ‘freezes,’ which needs a hard close to fix – There is a new version of React Native available which should have this fixed. We will be updating to the newer version of React in the near future to test whether the fix works. More information to come.
• Market Items sometimes not available – This deals with a very rare situation where an item is removed from the market, but the listing is not updated. We are researching what’s causing this.
• General slowness – Because the app runs completely off of an API, connection to WiFi or data is extremely important. If your coverage dips, your connection will also dip. This doesn’t explain every situation, but needs to be addressed. We are currently working on speeding the app up in various areas. You will notice that the forums perform MUCH faster than before. Our goal is to cut the slow, and speed it up, bro.
• Multiple Item Alerts and Forum Posts upon new item – This should be fixed now!

Community Content

This is a section of the blog where we will highlight any funny images or videos from the community. These may appear through links in the forums, on Facebook, guides on YouTube, or other sites.

This week’s image comes from Benson’s last stop in the Budget Wonders set – the World’s Largest Killer Bee – compliments of ChucksGhost for sharing this photo in WallaBee Nation. Chuck is a longtime player from Austin, Tx. Within the hour of this item’s release, Chuck was out the door, in his car, and on a 300+ mile drive to get Benson to the last Budget Wonder. Now THAT’S what we call dedication! Hidalgo was hosting a Star Wars themed festival this past weekend, which explains why Yoda is riding this giant killer bee.

If you think someone’s content (or your own) is worthy of being highlighted, you can suggest by emailing support or tagging it with #WallaCommunity.

Any additional questions, comments, concerns? Email: support@wallabeegame.com

Weekly Buzz 11/22/2017

Hello Collectors,

We’re here with another Weekly Buzz update. Are y’all excited for Turkey Day? We are! The season of Thanksgiving encourages us to spend time with friends and family and allows us to reflect on what we’re thankful for. As part of the WallaBee Community, we’re definitely thankful for what every player has to offer. Our community is creative, kind, helpful, giving, loyal, hard-working, and unique. We are so thankful for each and every one of you! Thank you for helping make WallaBee great. What are you thankful for?

Gameplay Development

This week’s development has been a continuation of speeding up the app with various adjustments to the backend. We’ve sped up the processing time for creating items and awarding achievements, as well as fixing an annoying notification glitch.

We are continuing to update the app so that we can better track analytics. Along with the helpful feedback from the community, this will help our team make educated decisions when implementing updates and gameplay changes.

What about Mystery Boxes? We know you’re eagerly awaiting to crack some of these gifts open and claim your sweet reward. Black Mystery Boxes will be available through the online store on Cyber Monday. Our store-wide sale is beginning at 10am WHQ time (16:00 UTC) on Monday through 10am on Tuesday. Be sure to check it out!

Recent Item Highlights

Strange things continue to happen in WallaVille. Eerie green lights are seen from Flo’s barn late at night. Upon investigation, she realizes there are cows floating near the ceiling, as if they were in space. What is causing the cows to levitate like this? What will Flo do next? All of these answers and more will come to life soon.

Eerie Lights

Later that night, there was quite a scare,
as eerie green lights filled the night air

Floating Cows

Up in the rafters, the cows were afloat.
As their moo’s for help were caught in their throats

Our trip around the world in search of Budget Wonders is quickly coming to an end. Upside Down Charles Trobe and the Fremont Troll are the 10th and 11th stops for Benson, taking him from South Africa to Australia and the United States within just a few short days. As Benson makes his way to Seattle, players can only guess where we’ll end up…

Upside Down Charlie

Budget Wonder #124: “Visiting Melbourne’s La Trobe University will give you a head rush”

Fremont Troll

Budget Wonder #152: “Troll Ave holds a dark secret, but this guy isn’t talking”

Player Unique History

With more and more Player Uniques coming out, we want to spend a respectable amount of time learning more about them. This week’s Player Unique Spotlight highlighted Mabry Mill. You can read more about this unique here.

Mabry Mill

This Week In WallaBee History

November 20th – 22nd, 2015: The entire Stache Check set released, but the special mix wasn’t discovered until the 24th.

November 23rd, 2015: Golden Spurs released as the first item in the Midas Touch set.

Honorable Mention: The first Black Mystery Box variant was #237, found on 2013-11-29 00:20:18 UTC.

Room For Growth

We have compiled a list of issues that we are currently working on. If you find something that doesn’t fit into this list, please reach out to us and let us know.

• Battery drains like crazy – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this.
• Forum Notifications/Count are missing – Coming in a future update.
• Some notifications (like comments) show as read when they haven’t been read – We are working on this fix.
• Performing an action that triggers a pop up sometimes ‘freezes,’ which needs a hard close to fix – This is a React Native issue that we’re trying to work around. You can follow the dev gossip here.
• Market Items sometimes not available – This deals with a very rare situation where an item is removed from the market, but the listing is not updated. We are researching what’s causing this.
• General slowness – Because the app runs completely off of an API, connection to WiFi or data is extremely important. If your coverage dips, your connection will also dip. This doesn’t explain every situation, but needs to be addressed. We are currently working on speeding the app up in various areas. You will notice that the forums perform MUCH faster than before. Our goal is to cut the slow, and speed it up, bro.

Community Content

This is a section of the blog where we will highlight any funny images or videos from the community. These may appear through links in the forums, on Facebook, guides on YouTube, or other sites.

Our third image comes from Benson’s stop in South Africa – the Big Pineapple – compliments of Rhodychick for sharing this photo for Abe. Abe is a new player from South Africa, who used to geocache. He downloaded WallaBee in order to help the community get Benson to this great Budget Wonder! Be sure to send Abe a friend request and thank him for helping Benson.

If you think someone’s content (or your own) is worthy of being highlighted, you can suggest by emailing support or tagging it with #WallaCommunity.

Any additional questions, comments, concerns? Email: support@wallabeegame.com

Weekly Buzz – 11/15/2017

Hello Collectors,

It’s time for another Weekly Buzz update. We hope that you are enjoying this new content, as we dive a little behind the scenes with many areas of the app. If you have a suggestion of a topic you would like covered, be sure to let us know.

Gameplay Development

As we mentioned last week, we added some much needed improvements to the app in update 2.2.1. We are updating some code in the app so that we can better track analytics. Along with feedback from the community, this will help our team make more educated decisions when implementing updates and gameplay changes.

Questions have arisen about Mystery Boxes being available soon. The answer to that is… yes! We have some fun things planned for you guys. Stay tuned for next week’s blog post(s).

We’ve updated some code to better help our collectors experiment with Aftershave and Perfume.

There was a minor oversight with the Legacy Achievement, which was awarding players that began playing after May 1st. We have corrected this oversight and set better parameters so that only Version 1 players should have this achievement.

Our dev team is also looking into Forum Notification updates. We appreciate your patience as we dive into this, as the format of the forums has changed since V1. We’re doing this for you guys… and our sanity.

Recent Item Highlights

While we’ve been making sure that purchasing items from the store works to the best of its current abilities, we haven’t seen too many items this week. Now that we’ve begun getting the gears turning in the right direction, hold onto your seats! New items should be releasing more regularly very soon.

Big Pineapple

Budget Wonder #116: “Bathurst’s main attraction is quite delicious”

Marked as the top attraction in Bathurst, South Africa, this giant pineapple sits at almost 56 feet tall. Honeycomb-like shapes can be seen from the walls of the giant structure, which fits well into a WallaBee item. The set icon for Budget Wonders was created with this location in mind, as we knew it would be the hardest location for Benson to reach – definitely a feat worth recognizing.

Electrical Repair

“Holy cow! How’d she get up there?” All Ray could do was stand and stare.

We continue to follow the storyline of a small town on the outskirts of WallaVille; a place that has been having strange occurrences. So far in the story, we know is that there have been missing livestock, power outages, and some strange, glowing goo… but something lurks just beyond the horizon. The townsfolk better keep one eye open tonight.

Player Unique History

With more and more Player Uniques coming out, we want to spend a respectable amount of time learning more about them. This week’s Player Unique Spotlight highlighted The Municher. You can read more about this unique here.

The Municher

This Week In WallaBee History

November 13th, 2013: Snake Charmer was released to lead off the beginning to Journey To The Pyramids.

November 17th, 2014 and November 18th, 2016: WallaBee released updates to better handle push notifications. V1.4.3 launched to help players who were not receiving push notifications, while V1.6 reinstated them back into the game from almost a year hiatus.

November 18th, 2014: Andrew Cameron’s Red Riding Hood released with, you guessed it, Red Hood.

Room For Growth

We have compiled a list of issues that we are currently working on. If you find something that doesn’t fit into this list, please reach out to us and let us know.

• Spinning Wheel of Death! Crashes! Ugggh! – This should be mostly fixed by now. Please let us know if you experience bad item releases.
• Battery drains like crazy – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this.
• Forum Notifications/Count are missing – Coming in a future update.
• Lingering spinning wheels on item purchase -This should be mostly fixed by now. Please let us know if you experience bad item releases.
• Some notifications (like comments) show as read when they haven’t been read – We are working on this fix.
• Items showing as duplicated in pouch/place – This should be fixed now!
• Performing an action that triggers a pop up sometimes ‘freezes,’ which needs a hard close to fix – This is a React Native issue that we’re trying to work around. You can follow the dev gossip here.
• Market Items sometimes not available – This deals with a very rare situation where an item is removed from the market, but the listing is not updated. We are researching what’s causing this.
• General slowness – Because the app runs completely off of an API, connection to WiFi or data is extremely important. If your coverage dips, your connection will also dip. This doesn’t explain every situation, but needs to be addressed. We are currently working on speeding the app up in various areas. You will notice that the forums perform MUCH faster than before. Our goal is to cut the slow, and speed it up, bro.

Community Content

This is a section of the blog where we will highlight any funny images or videos from the community. These may appear through links in the forums, on Facebook, guides on YouTube, or other sites.

Our second image comes from Benson’s first stop – the Traffic Light Tree – compliments of Colin. Way to add that extra step and take a selfie like Benson! Major kudos!

If you think someone’s content (or your own) is worthy of being highlighted, you can suggest by emailing support or tagging it with #WallaCommunity.

Any additional questions, comments, concerns? Email: support@wallabeegame.com

Weekly Buzz – 11/09/2017

Hello Collectors,

We have recently heard from the community that you feel disconnected. You want updates in one place and one place only. Well, the fact of the matter is, we agree with you. We are excited to bring a new segment to the blog that should help with this. Our goal for this new blog series is to give you a week’s worth of information in one shot. This will help consolidate some of the confusion regarding new gameplay development, which items have come out recently, which issues are known (and being worked on), and more.

So, without further ado, we present to you our first edition of the Weekly Buzz.

Gameplay Development

You’re about to give a ‘hip hip hooray’ with today’s information. The WallaBee team has been hard at work creating new gameplay elements, while working out fixed for current issues. We’ll discuss these issues in just a bit, but we want to focus on the positives. New players and Legacy players alike will be happy to hear that navigation within the app is getting an overhaul.

V1 of WallaBee had a handy ‘super close’ ability when tapping any of the bottom navigation tabs. This was something that we couldn’t originally carry over to V2 with React Native, but have been able to now with their recent update. When looking a few pages deep in the app, simply tap the current tab to return to the default view. Note: This does not work with the Place tab, as it extends outside of a tabbed environment.

Ever heard of Mystery Boxes? We’ve added a nice way to open these bad boys back up. Simply interact with the item and select the new gold highlighted option. Think we’re going to stop here? No way… We have new items coming soon that will take advantage of this new extended context menu.

These are just some of the awesome things WallaBee 2.2.1 has to offer. Look for additional Forum updates in the near future. Get that notification? Not yet? We’re working on it. 😉

Recent Item Highlights

Benson has been really busy getting around the world. Here are some items that you may have missed within the last week.

Flying Pins

Budget Wonder #108: “If you’re striking Eindhoven off your list, don’t split before you’ve visited this park”

Gävlebocken

Budget Wonder #100: “A visit to Gävle during Christmas time will surely brighten your night”

Burning Gävlebocken

The arsonist strikes again!

Various players have been asking what the history is with this item. The short story, Stanley (featured in items like Obstacle Course, Ghosts, Relaxed Parents) was dropped at the Texas Fairgrounds the year that Big Tex burned down. WallaBee players blamed this tragic event on Stanley, which gave life to AC’s Burning Tex Player Unique. The real Gävlebocken in Sweden is burned down (almost) every Christmas by arsonists. Sometimes the perpetrator is caught, where other years they get away. Benson believes he saw Stanley lighting the Gävlebocken on fire… but it could have just been a ghost.

Player Unique History

With more and more Player Uniques coming out, we want to spend a respectable amount of time learning more about them. This week’s Player Unique Spotlight highlighted Tree Of Life. You can read more about this unique here.

Tree Of Life

This Week In WallaBee History

On November 5th, 2014 the entire Guy Fawkes Night was released. Six items dropped within six hours and six minutes. It seems that the founding WallaBee team had a sense of humor.

Room For Growth

We have compiled a list of issues that we are currently working on. If you find something that doesn’t fit into this list, please reach out to us and let us know.

• Spinning Wheel of Death! Crashes! Ugggh! – We totally agree. We are working on this as a top priority. Although it is a main priority, it is solely dependent on backend development. As we also have to create frontend content, we will continue to create and fix things through app updates. We hope that this isn’t confusing anyone. We’re not trying to bury our trouble by adding more content. We are working on making WallaBee the great app we all know it is.
• Battery drains like crazy – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this.
• Forum Notifications/Count are missing – Coming in a future update.
• Lingering spinning wheels on item purchase – We are researching how to create items better, so that this issue goes away.
• Some notifications (like comments) show as read when they haven’t been read – We are working on this fix.
• Items showing as duplicated in pouch/place – This should be a simple fix on our end. We’ve made some changes already to combat this, but it may have not been completely fixed.
• Performing an action that triggers a pop up sometimes ‘freezes,’ which needs a hard close to fix – This is a React Native issue that we’re trying to work around. You can follow the dev gossip here.
• Market Items sometimes not available – This deals with a very rare situation where an item is removed from the market, but the listing is not updated. We are researching what’s causing this.
• General slowness – Because the app runs completely off of an API, connection to WiFi or data is extremely important. If your coverage dips, your connection will also dip. This doesn’t explain every situation, but needs to be addressed. We are currently working on speeding the app up in various areas. You will notice that the forums perform MUCH faster than before. Our goal is to cut the slow, and speed it up, bro.

Community Content

This is a section of the blog where we will highlight any funny images or videos from the community. These may appear through links in the forums, on Facebook, guides on YouTube, or other sites.

Our first image comes from one of Benson’s recent stops – the Magic Tap – compliments of WiMPiE. Wim made a cut out of Benson so that he could actually be there in person. This was not a photoshop. Great job!

If you think someone’s content (or your own) is worthy of being highlighted, you can suggest by emailing support or tagging it with #WallaCommunity.

Any additional questions, comments, concerns? Email: support@wallabeegame.com