Weekly Buzz 12/05/2017
Hello Collectors,
We have officially spent our first full week in December, which means that preparations are well under way for the holidays! Some of these holiday plans will be explained through this blog post, while others may surprise you later on in the month. We have a few winter sets planned for December, which are sure to keep you -clears throat- occupied…
December Development
With only one artist (Andy “All-Star” Cameron), WallaBee can only get so many items created. This has been ongoing since the beginning, which is why there have only been 139 sets within almost 6 years. In 2014, WallaBee brought on another talented graphic artist, Robbie Smith, to help bear the load. He began with sets like WallaBucks and ended with A Day In Singapore. After WallaBee came under the Munzee Inc umbrella, focus returned to having one artist.
Unique commissions reopened after the acquisition, to many players’ approval, which has been great for the community and game. We have grown the Unique commissioning process, but have not extended our team of artists. Andy still works tirelessly on both Set items and Uniques. The downside with splitting time is that fewer Set items are released, meaning fewer drops or mixes over a longer period of time. As you may have noticed with recent sets, there have not been many mixes. Lacking items in reserve made this difficult (as well as various high-detailed story-driven items).
One way to combat this issue is to clone Andy into a team of artists, allowing us to pick up production time much faster. Unfortunately, our resources do not cover experimental human genetics experiments (and Andy’s wife wouldn’t approve). So as you can see, our team only has a few options available, which we will share with you now.
- Option 1: We continue at the pace we’ve been going, with a few items released every week. Fewer mixes, more store/forage drops, space out as evenly as possible.
- Option 2: Bring on another artist to help with certain sets.
Option 3: Force Andy to undergo cyber-enhancement surgery, making him both man and machine, allowing the mechanical portion of his body to draw while his human portion is sleeping.
With the options above, we believe that Option 2 is the best way to move forward. Many more WallaBee items can be made within a shorter period of time, which allows the community to collect, trade, mix, and sell even more items. We hope that you share our opinions on this, because it’s already been decided. John Rogeles (Graphic Artist for Munzee, and creator of V2 WallaBee Achievements) will join Andy in rotation with creating sets for WallaBee. Christmas Crisis will be the first of many sets from John, that we hope everyone will enjoy.
Begin making more room in your pouch, because we have a few winter sets releasing this month. December is the month of giving, and we’re going to be giving a lot! Festivities begin this weekend with the craziness that is Christmas Crisis. Many of Santa’s elves have gone missing, leaving many unfinished toys at the workshop. It’s up to YOU to help save Christmas! We hope you like mixing, because this month’s content will scratch your mixing itch… maybe even excessively.
Speaking of mixing, Christmas Mixers are coming to town! These special mixers have the same specifications with creating items as WallaBee Mixers, but with an added surprise. Christmas Mixers, when mixed together, have a chance of generating honeycombs or locks in addition to the item created. These bonuses will be found in your Transactions page when earned.
In other news, Benson has begun his mission to permanently visit other players. Since there was some confusion about what some of the specifics were, his goal is to make it onto your set of Uniques. He will show 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 for review. Since most of these locations may not be visible from a street view on Google Maps, please help our BeeKeepers by supplying any necessary details to help determine the validity of the location(s). The next 5 Benson items have been released, so get your hunting hats on!
Special Events
WallaBee’s birthday is just around the corner, which means that the London event is that much closer to a reality. The two main brains behind this event (Cceasar and Stulimont) have been deviously planning some… rather interesting ‘games’ for attendees to partake in, as you can see below. If you’re interested in joining the festivities, you can gather more information in the forums or on Stulimont’s website. With 30 confirmed players for Saturday’s portion of the event, it should be a grand time for everyone participating.
Should you have any questions, please let us know by emailing Support@WallaBeeGame.com
Recent Item Highlights
Invasion has seen some crazy development within the past two weeks. What’s happening with the town’s cows? What is that green substance that Flo has found? Will Ray ever get that dumb look off his face? All we can do is hope we get answers soon.
Concerned Call
Once again mobile, Flo called her friend Ray,
“You’ll never believe what I saw today!”
Investigation
She showed him her findings, however cliché.
“A pile of green goo doesn’t mean it’s doomsday”
Crash Site
When out of thin air, it dove from great height.
They stood perplexed at the spaceship crash site.
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 Cooktown Orchid. You can read more about this unique here.
Cooktown Orchid
This Week In WallaBee History
December 4th, 2013: A Victim was found on this day. There were no clues as to what happened, so we asked the community to help interrogate some potential suspects. What was the victim’s name? We don’t know, but we know she wore some circus clothes…
December 5th, 2012: On this day, one of the first Player Uniques was released – Saint Nicholas. This Unique made a huge impact on the community, causing the WallaBee team to restrict the ability for players to send trades for Player Uniques. Luckily for everyone, this restriction was lifted as of Version 2, which allows players to easily trade any items in the game. Thanks for such a great item with a rich history, nicolasm06!
December 7th, 2015: Ms. December was released on this day, finishing the Women of WallaBee calendar set. Our favorite bearded lady has never looked so festive.
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. We are currently testing an internal build of the app that handles the store differently. We hope that this change will drastically save battery when using the app like normal.
- 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.
- Network Error when commenting – We have fixed a bug that threw an error when commenting on certain types of activity, sometimes resulting in a second iteration of a comment.
- Store Item and Icon don’t match – This is a known issue with how the phone holds store information. At the moment, there is a chance that the previous item image will linger, even though the item has updated to the next one in line (viewable by the honeycomb price and set icon). We’re investigating a fix for this.
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 mention is of a video/project that one of our players created. We present to you an automatic mixing machine! Great idea, Violet. Sometimes mixing all of those mixers and eggs leaves your fingers sore. Such a creative idea!
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
