Weekly Buzz 01/05/2018
Hello Collectors,
We made it to 2018! Since no one died from Christmas Crisis, we’re pushing forward into the new year with new sets, new types of items, and new updates. This is going to be a very exciting year!
Behind the Curtain
It’s January 5th, and everyone wants to know about two things: Carrots and Calendars. Where are they? While we’re not quite ready for either to come out, we can give you a head’s up about one of them. This year’s calendar set is going to focus on This Day In History. Dust off those AP History books, because we’re taking a look at some notable events throughout the year. Who said WallaBee couldn’t be educational…
Twenty more Benson items have gone out to monuments around the world, bringing the total of Bensons to thirty-five. We apologize for Benson’s delay, he seems to have a mind of his own. He will be traveling much more this year, so keep an eye out for him at a monument or sculpture near you!
WallaBee HQ enjoyed a relaxing holiday week out of the office, but we’re ready to get going on the new year! We released information about this year’s theme, Breaking Barriers, on the 1st of the year. If you didn’t catch that blog post, you can find it here. The Weekly Buzz was our first step toward breaking one of our barriers, which deals with how we update y’all with what’s going on in the app and behind the scenes. As we continue into 2018, we want to add more content to the blog, as well as our social media pages. We know it’s important for the community to stay engaged, and reaching out to new players through these mediums is part of the solution.
We are just about ready to release update 2.2.2 to the public. This update brings some exciting new features, like a visual timeout indicator on the places tab, checkmarks on location items if you have them saved, and the ability to save a new type of item. Stay tuned through the week as we give more frequent updates about these shiny new features.
Forums. Oh, forums… how you have been such a great (and terrible) aspect of WallaBee. We know you miss how players once flocked to you. We do as well. We’re working on a way to alert them to unread message, so don’t worry – they will return to you once again. We promise.
Another pool fill-up is coming soon! Keep an eye on the mixerpool browser on ItemBrowser.com for the next wave of items.
Should you have any questions, please let us know by emailing Support@WallaBeeGame.com
Recent Item Highlights
As everyone’s fingers recover from December’s many items, we’ve had two new items in 2018 to highlight. Both of these items come from the third BeeKeeper co-directed set: Arctic Antics. If you enjoy the playful design of this set, drop a line to QueenofDNile and tell her what you think!
Meeting
Ookpik and Arnaq get together to have a day of fun.
Blanket Toss
They begin their day at the festival in the village. Celebrating the Nalukataq is always great fun.
Player Unique Spotlight
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 Kiwi Chocolate Fish. You can read more about this unique here.
The Kiwi Chocolate Fish
This Week In WallaBee History
January 1st, 2015: Midnight Kiss and Happy New Year 2015 both released on the 1st of the year, ending the New Year’s Eve Party with a bang!
January 1st, 2016: The January Beast item was released to kick off The Beasts of WallaBee 2016. This item has yet to get a name upgrade to something better than the month it released in, and we ain’t lion. -rim shot-
January 7th, 2014: Mr. January released, beginning the very first WallaBee Calendar set: The Men Of WallaBee 2014.
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 – 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. This internal build has reduced battery consumption when not using the store, as it halts animations from processing until the store is brought back into focus. However, this is causing some strange loading with items, which sometimes appears as the wrong item in the store. This can be confusing during a drop, and we are looking into it.
- 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.
- 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.
- Store purchases hang up for a long time – we are investigating this. We’re so sorry for those effected by this issue… which should be everyone. Whoops.
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 highlight is the shocking rediscovery of Blue Egg #11. It sat in the mixerpool for a while before coming out yesterday, and we couldn’t be more thrilled! Congratulations on pulling it out of the mixerpool, Julie! Hold onto that one for a long time. It’s quite valuable, as you’re well aware.
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
