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
