Back in the Saddle

It never fails: Vacation always takes forever to arrive and ends way too quickly. But it was good to have the time off, even if I did return to almost 1,000 emails. :P

As you can imagine, most of the week's been spent catching up on what happened while I was gone. Even with the Update 46 delay, things seem to have gone reasonably well. We're currently looking at a hotfix for next week to take care of the Death Effect issues, missing Merv 1.1.1 ticket, the disappearing XYZ coordinates for White Hallway missions, and a Sneak bug.

Hey, I did say reasonably well.

I'd like to thank Raijinn for handling website updates and other community-related tasks in my absence. He's right in saying that I have a lot going on around here. Of course, he failed to mention that this isn't the only game he has responsibilities for, either. You da man, Joel.

In-Game Advertising Contest

If you happened to catch my post on the forums, we know there's a lot of disappointment over the restrictions on the advertising contest. The US-only restriction is due to the real-world prizes we're giving away. Also, as I understand it, the 21-days the ads will be displayed is the minimum we'll leave them up. Hopefully, we'll have the opportunity to use them for a longer period of time.

I will be working towards doing more advertising contests without the real-world prizes so we can include everyone. After all, these ads will be available for non-US players.

Also, we've gotten some faction-recruitment advertisements in the mailbox. We don't have that as a category, as faction recruiting essentially breaks the fiction of the world. We included Organization advertisements because it should be possible to create subversive recruitment ads that don't break little bluepill minds. (We've already seen some.)

Buddy Keys

I know you're all waiting anxiously for the next round of buddy key emails. There seems to be an internal delay--probably due to everyone getting ready for and being out at the Austin Games Conference--that is holding things up. I'll keep bugging folks and will put up an announcement when we're ready to email them.

In the meantime, make sure you've opted-in for emails from The Matrix Online!

Upcoming Developments

It's hard to believe it, but we're already working on plans for the Halloween Event. Top priority is making sure we're ready to launch everything we had last year--including turning the old masks back on. But, if what the team thinks is true, there's something new we can add that will make this a year to remember.

We also did a production review today and, as usual, seem to create more work for ourselves whenever we have one. I'm not going into details on what all we discussed, as we're doing some feasibility studies. Things that seem simple have an annoying habit of not turning out to be. As we solidify things, I'll let you know more.

Hopefully, next week will be a bit calmer, being a full week and my having spent this week catching up on things. I'll see you on the other side, then.

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