Yet Another Update!

Hey everybody! v1.3 has been well underway for two or so weeks now, and I hope that you're all enjoying the new content. This has definitely been a pawstep in the right direction for Wolf-Haven's future.

Oh, and before I begin my post, I wanted to dedicate this sentence to my friend, Magnus, who has been stalking my blog for quite some time now. He's pretty awesome. Cheers to you, buddy.

...

ouo b

Aaaaaand, I haven't been able to update my WH profile for almost three weeks now because my PC that had the code on it has broken. Without access to the Word document, if I try to edit anything, the quote boxes will turn into HTML and they won't show up correctly. :c God knows when I'll have the time or money to get the PC fixed, so my profile will probably be the same forever. ._.

Anyways, back to v1.3! Like I said, this is definitely a good thing for the well-being of WH. There are some new features as well as some improved things, and there are still many updates to come. I'll go through a basic rundown of all of the new features:

Idea Box
Something that has been missing since v1.2, the Idea Box! Originally in the form of a Forum category, the Suggestions board was a hellhole of hatred and terrible misconduct. The Idea Box is an anonymous way to submit an idea and instead of having people leave comments, users can vote + or - on the idea. Ideas that get many votes will generally be accepted. Unfortunately, the Idea Box only shows the top 5 and most recent ideas, which means that many ideas are probably being drowned out and lost or repeated due to not being able to see them all. Hopefully that gets changed soon. This is personally one of my favourite additions to the site, primarily because it allows users to submit their ideas without worrying about publicly being shunned for having an opinion. I feel that it will increase the amount of potentially good ideas being laid out on the table, and it will also bring the community together as a whole.

Quests
Another favourite! These have also been gone since v1.2, so I'm pretty thrilled that Quests have been added back. Some of them even have chain-quests, which means that you need to follow a storyline throughout your leveling, which is pretty creative. A particularly well-written chain of quests is by Voltage, so if you haven't started those yet, you definitely should! Some quests are for higher-levelled users only, though, and chains may take a while to complete. Along with Quests, the addition of items and having an Inventory is another key element in making the game have more of a RP feel to it. Runes are also really nice, too; they give amazing bonuses for use on the Map. They're pretty expensive, though, and I haven't tested them on my main account quite yet. I may dedicate an entire blog post to Runes if I get the chance to test them all, unless somebody gets to that before me.

Friends List
With the high amount of username changes flying in and out, I think that this is a great feature to keep up with everything. I mean, I only have one friend, but still... xD Now, if somebody changes their username, they'll still show up in your Friends List with the same ID. Along with being able to friend users, you can now block users, which is also another great feature. It will hopefully prevent some fights and cause less drama for the website as a whole.

Hunting
This new feature was added to allow you to find items (food) that will help you recover during a battle. You can hunt every 10 minutes, which I find reasonable considering that the success rate doesn't seem to be very high. Even if you don't find something, you'll get some XP, which is always nice to get. 8D

Donation Changes
When purchasing customs, you will no longer receive Points; it's either one or the other. I'll be quite honest with you... considering the amount of psychotic Point hoarders that this website seems to have, this definitely wasn't a bad idea. Nothing against people who choose to play wisely with their Points, but seeing a bunch of people with Point amounts in the thousands can get quite annoying. It's completely demolished the value of Points and made it so that less and less Points are in circulation. Less Points = more demand for Points = increased Art Shop prices. Plus, the prices that people expect for their accounts are just insane. Hopefully, the addition of Quests will help some of the users who don't have a lot of Points to be able to get the things that they want. Honestly, if you have all of the Robotic Equipment and don't even bother to play the game anymore, why the absolute fuck do you need 3,000 Points just rotting on your account? At least spend them on artwork or something, or buy an account. Don't just keep them there for a year. /endrant

Well, the emote strips are a good addition at least. The only thing that I don't like about this is that the Online Users page is just going to keep getting more and more clashy. The default emotes are great, but they don't compare to the fully edited emotes that some people have. Not everybody can afford to donate or to have an artist make them completely custom lines. We'll see how that goes. Again, this is just something I've personally never liked, not anything related to v1.3. I never liked the completely edited emotes.

Account Activation
Staff can manually activate accounts now. Get those dead deactivated side accounts of yours up and running now that you can!

Gah, I'm already exhausted from being up since 5 AM. I'll leave you with this. As always, feel free to leave your opinion in a comment! I hope to keep updating as frequently as I can.

Adios for now~ <3

Pre-v1.3, The Rise of Ambrose, and Etcetera

In case you missed it, Karlos updated the 1.3 poll with this:

Update
Alright guys, I'm now closing the poll.

The results show that 88% of those who answered to the poll are in favor of releasing 1.3 early. That is what we'll be doing.

That said, those opposing the early release have given some very valid points and have expressed concerns that I share with them. By no means does an early release imply that I devalue the points made.

I'll be working to get the current 1.3 version stable and as bug free as humanly possible. I'll keep you all informed.

----------

Yaaaay! Do you know what that means? Wolf-Haven will hopefully be picking up a lot of activity over the first week of the v1.3 release. I can't tell you anything in detail until it's actually released, but I guess I can explain some of the things that Karlos already mentioned. Taken straight from the "Pros" list of the v1.3 poll thread, located here! I'll also post my opinions in regards to the idea's cons.

Pros

- New features that are much needed will be available.

This one is pretty much self-explanatory. There will be many nice features that have been awaited for a long time!

- Quest system.

That's right, Quests are back and better than ever! They'll make a lot more sense and be more interactive. You'll like 'em a lot!

- More power for the darling staff.

You know this one always makes me happy. 8D Some things that will make our jobs easier are going to be added. Those annoying accounts that won't activate? There's an app for that. If only my paws would work on an iPhone...

- Faster speeds on certain sections of the site.

Another much-needed update. Hopefully, hunting will be easier due to the reduced lag.

- You will have the power to mold the progress of Wolf-Haven 1.3 (With the suggestion system)

Since v1.3 is being released more gradually, you'll be able to input ideas and give your opinion on them. That way, everyone can be generally happy.

- More life to the website and hopefully the user base

Yaaaay!

- More pack controls (Ownership transferal and Pack Mass Messages) 

C'mon, you've wanted these back for a year... well, you're finally getting them back! Pack Massmails supply the life of a pack.

- New stoof

You'll see, wolfies. You'll see.

Sounds great, right? I agree! v1.3 is going to be absolutely amazing, I can tell you that.

Cons
- A lot of things will be Works In Progress.

Some areas of the site may be blank, useless, or unattractive, so hopefully nobody gets impatient.

- A lot of the art will not be done thus placeholder images will be used. 

This goes along with the first con. Our ideas work faster than our artists and we need a lot of diverse artwork that takes a long time to make. Until we get those images, you may see text boxes.

- Frequent Maintenance
With new content, there will be more downtime to work on different things.

- Bugs, bugs and more bugs!
Of course, with new code comes new bugs. Although a bug check is done generally before anything is added officially, things will slip and it will be up to everybody to report them and to deal with the inconvenience.

- Reverts may happen. 

Though I can't see this being a big possibility for any reason, it's possible. For example, if 200 users exploited something on the Map and it was impossible to correct, everyone may have to lose their v1.3 progress in order to remove the disadvantage that those other users gave themselves. That may not be the case with v1.3 but, of course, it could happen.

- Temporary strict enforcement of rules.

I believe that this is referencing to the v1.2 incident of over a year ago. If you weren't here during that time, be glad. It wasn't that v1.2 was bad or anything, but the main problem was that a lot of popular and well-respected players hated it and their opinions reflected on the site. Not only did many of them choose to express their opinions in a rude manner, they didn't even give the update a chance and many feelings were hurt over it. Some users did apologize and they are still happy and active members of our community, but as for the ones who didn't... well, they were banned, and not everybody was happy with that. I've bogged about it many times so if you're a newer member of WH or never really read my blog actively, you can search through some of my posts from May and June of 2011 to read more about the drama. I don't like to bring up past events in current blog posts because it only causes problems, and one of the main reasons that I blog is to keep WH problem-free. I write with the intentions that people will consider my opinions, which are for the most part sensible.

Anyways, that's all I can tell you about v1.3. It will be released in segments, so there will be plenty to blog about and many new things to keep you entertained!

Part 2: Ambrose.

Though I do give credit to Seagleam for originally creating the pack, CheshireAlley has done most of the leading from what I've heard. Ambrose was always a friendly pack with good intentions, and it still is. However, with the somewhat-recent closing of Shimmer, Ambrose has seemed to sweep up many of the old Shimmer members, making it (to my knowledge) the top pack on-site. It's got Sheri, Alizarin, and Aeralie in it; though the last two seem to be dead on WH, they've got a lot of XP. Other than the Retirement Home (which I am somewhat against, only because the theme suggests that the users no longer have an interest in being members of an active pack), I would have to say that Ambrose has done a good job at scooping up a bunch of XP. If they're not the #1 pack onsite, I don't know what pack is. Plus, Karlos joined, which says something, considering that the site owner wouldn't join a bad pack.

Congratulations to you, Ambrose!

In the last part of this post, I just wanted to rant about something that has been causing me an annoyance since it first became trendy: account sales. I wish they were banned, to be honest. They're great, but the negatives outweigh the positives for me.

Firstly, there are too many people who overpay for accounts with half-assed customs, then complain that they can't sell the account for as much as they paid. Just because you paid 2 donations for your level 2 Pup with a custom that would be rejected if it were sent in now, doesn't mean that somebody else is willing to do the same. Have a sense of value if you want to buy an account to resell.

And on the topic of reselling, that is absolute bullshit. People are making profit on accounts that were never theirs until they bought them. It's not against the rules, but it's still pretty offensive to the custom artist and whoever sold the account to you. Of course, those are the wicked ways of the market, and if Points weren't so easy to get, I may actually support the act of reselling. If you don't plan on keeping an account, why buy it?

As you can tell, I'm not a fan (and never was a fan) of account sales. It's not that it shouldn't be allowed, but users are so terrible with that Sales Board. I have only bought two accounts, and they were accounts that I really wanted. I overpaid on them both because I didn't want to go through with the hassle of participating in an auction, and if I were ever going to resell them, I certainly wouldn't be asking to get as much back. If you're curious, I offered 600 Points to autobuy Charley, and I paid 200 Points for Khoda (now Bleddyn). I only go on that board to delete the sales that are done with; other than that, it makes me want to vomit. Perhaps you feel differently, but that is my sole opinion on account sales.

Well, that's all for today. Hopefully I'll be back soon! I've been very busy with real life now that classes have started up, so I haven't had much time for WH. I've wanted to write something about Ambrose and the account sales for a while, but I never had the chance to. I'm glad that I was able to fit so much into one blog post.

Thanks for reading!

The Great Halt

Unfortunately, Wolf-Haven has come to the point in its life where everything you could think of is going on behind-the-scenes whereas the actual game is quiet in comparison. With v1.3 well under way, everyone has been pretty busy. I can't say much about it, but I CAN say that you all are going to love what's coming! Waiting will certainly pay off.

I'd like to welcome Sheri to the moderating team! Sheri has been around longer than I have and, quite frankly, I would have been upset if she never got this promotion. She's dealt with a persistent rainbow mate for over a year and she's one of the most active and friendly people that I know. If you catch her in the Chatbox, give her a kind word. Getting used to the position can be tricky at first, but I have faith in this fluffy winged wolf. Good luck, Sheri!

Speaking of Sheri, I'm sure you've seen her blog before. It seems that another blog has sprung up as well! This one's by Loopy, and it's called A Mongrel's Den. You can visit it by clicking [here]! Loopy's a great writer and the website also has some helpful information about WH on it. And while we're on the subject of helpful WH sites, Phlox's guide is active again. You can check it out by clicking [here]. I made a guide, but then I realized that I am far too lazy to maintain one. xD Let's hope that Phlox doesn't follow my pawsteps. This guide already has a lot of helpful information, and I can see that it will grow very quickly.

So, what's up with WH? It seems that the gameplay is dead right now. That doesn't mean that WH is dead, it just means that there's nothing new to do at the moment. Account selling and roleplaying has taken over, and account trading is all the rage right now. I really don't like this fad. For one, it's nearly impossible to keep track of everybody, and secondly, I hate changing the same account's username, email, and password 3 times a week. It's not that I don't love what I do, I just don't like to do it for the same account because someone wants to resell it right after they bought it. I would take advantage of these high level account sales while you still can; once v1.3 is released, I doubt that you're going to want a level 20 account with a pretty custom over a level 60 account. Even so, like many others have stated, where's the personal feel of accomplishment when you buy an account? You don't have any accomplishment because you didn't work for what you bought. I have earned all of my XP by myself, and I am very proud of what I have done. I wouldn't feel the same if I had bought my XP.

And honestly, these completely edited customs annoy me as well. They're beautiful, but they look terrible on the Users Online page. The whole page is a mess with these completely edited emotes next to the regular ones. Remember when shading wasn't allowed on emotes? I miss the uniformity of WH. The edited customs are great, but they're not the Wolf-Haven that I was obsessed with two years ago. Hopefully this custom craze is just something to compensate for the boredom, and I really hope that it all ends with v1.3. There will be many better things to do!

On a higher note, I've been leveling lately and I think that some other users have been as well. I recently got into an XP race with Azure, which has really motivated me to hunt on the Map. Plus, I still have a PvA Honor to get; I'm not even at 50k yet! I also... err... bought an account. xD Im going to keep this one secret, though. I only have 3 active accounts now, which I feel is a good limit for me. I don't really have an interest in roleplaying anymore, so there's no point in having a bunch of accounts.

I think that I'll bring this blog post to an end now. Keep an eye out for updates on Wolf-Haven!

Getting Down to Business

Hey everyone!

It's certainly been a while. Before I begin this entry, I wanted to point out that Sheri has an absolutely lovely WH blog that you can find by clicking [here]. Although we'll probably be blogging about the same things, it's wonderful to hear different opinions from two different people. Now, don't get any ideas on creating your own blog... we already had a blog craze thanks to Stormgaze. I admit that I was part of that craze and Stormgaze is probably the sole reason that I actually started a blog in the first place, but still. Just because I do bad things doesn't mean that you should too. :c I mean, I'm not going to stop you from creating a blog, but it is not easy at all. Blogs are very hard to keep up with when  they're only on one topic (i.e. Wolf-Haven) and you really have to watch what you say. When you put your opinion on the table in a formal manner like a blog, you have many people reading what you have to say and therefore more people are going to consider your opinion. If you say something completely negative without support and logic, you're going to scare everybody away. So, again, I really don't suggest adding to the list of blogs unless blogging is your passion and you didn't realize it until now.

Without further ado, I'd like to congratulate CheshireAlley on his promotion to Administrator! I'm glad that he was picked, honestly; I couldn't imagine anyone better for the position, and we really needed another admin to help out with the customs and such. I can't believe I'm inferior to a hen now though, for God's sake! D: (Chatbox joke, my apologies.) Anyways, I'm the middle mod now since I've been a mod longer than Seagleam and -Fang- but have been a mod less than Corina and Kovaro. I heard that the middle child is always neglected. Well, I'm screwed then. :D I'd go on and on about how epic Chesh is and all, but I think you can already see that for yourself.

There have been many other staff changes as well! We now have an official News Team, consisting of Coyotito, -Eclipse-, and Phlox. They're all brilliant writers (we all know how much Sea hates illiterate beings ;3) and I have hope for them. The best of luck to you all! If you ever need to know who's who on the Staff Team, I created a topic in the WH board on the Forums a few weeks ago; you may find it helpful sometime.


There have been some great site changes lately. For one, the Account Standing feature that was recently added seems to be going great. Basically, when you misbehave and receive a mute or a ban, your Account Standing will become Bad. If you receive multiple mutes and bans, it will change to Very Bad. I feel that this will be helpful to the staff when deciding how to handle things, and this will also assure that nobody is selling accounts that may have punishments held against them (since you cannot sell an account with a Bad or Very Bad standing). If you're an active member of WH and are very helpful and friendly, you may receive a Good or Very Good standing. This just lets the other staff members know how awesome you are, and may give you an advantage when new staff are picked or if a problem arises. To read the official post by Karlos, click [here]!


I don't really have more to say, other than I'm glad I've been coming on WH more often. I have hope for the future; things seem to be taking a good turn. I'd like to blog more often because I really do enjoy it. Stay out of trouble and have a pawsome day!

Apologies and Sorrows

Hello everybody!

Firstly, I wanted to say that I am terribly sorry for the lack of updates. Quite frankly, I've had nothing to write about. Although I do enjoy blogging about Wolf-Haven, I've simply run out of content to cover. I mean, I could tell you all about the importance of the Penguins on the Map or why HP is better than Attack if I wanted to, but nobody comes here for that. People come here for news, and with no updates, there is no news to cover.

I also wanted to apologize for the removal of my March 5th post. I strive to be a people-pleaser, and it made someone upset, so I just removed it entirely. It wasn't a very important post, anyways.

That being said, I promise I'll find some things to scrape together and blog about. I love sharing my opinions with others and it makes me happy to know that people are reading my posts and that they actually do care about what I have to say. Even if you don't agree with what I have to say, taking the time to read and consider my opinion is heartwarming. I'm not very confident in my entries as of recently. The problem is, being a Moderator, I do have to second-guess a lot of the things that I say and I suppose my opinion may be more influential than, say, the Rival that joined last month, but I feel that not sharing my opinion would be a way of trying to act like I'm better than other members. I'm no different; I'm still a member of the community and I don't expect any special treatment. The only difference between me and you is the fact that I have a sexy rainbow banhammer bigger than my ass, and you do not. Oh, and you'll never love rainbows as much as me... I suppose that's two differences, then. The more I ramble on, the more confident I feel. I'll try my best to convey my opinions in a good way.

Thanks for sticking faithful to me, everybody. It means so much to me to see that people read my posts. I love you all, and let's hope that WH gets rolling soon!

The Point Shop: Win or Fail?

Removed, sorry.

Leapity Leap

Just wanted to say Happy Leap Day to everyone! It's the first February 29th for Wolf-Haven. Cool, huh? ^_^

The Resurrection of Karlos

So, this incredibly weird thing happened to me the other day...

I had a dream about Wolf-Haven for some reason. I found this a bit odd, since I haven't been as active as I could be and Wolf-Haven isn't exactly the last thing on my mind at nighttime. The dream was kind of short and vague, but I remember that in the dream, Karlos had come back to Wolf-Haven and surprised us all with v1.4. Not v1.3, but v1.4. Now, the significance in this is that Karlos has hinted in the past that Wolf-Haven is 'still in beta' and won't be 'released' until v1.4. Oh, the irony!

And then, the next day... would you look at that, Karlos comes online and then gives a new feature to the pack alphas. Now that's what I call coincidental (if only all of my good dreams came true :c). If you aren't a pack alpha, you may not have noticed the new feature because it isn't available to you. Basically, when you defeat a creature on the Map, you gain the XP from it, and then an additional 1/4 of that XP is sent to the pack's XP pool. When a certain amount of pack XP is reached, pack alphas can use this nonexistent XP to buy Attack stat upgrades, Defence stat upgrades, or overall XP gain upgrades. The upgrades work in percentages, and every time you buy an upgrade, the percentage of that upgrade's effectiveness is increased by 1. For example, if Shimmer were to purchase the XP upgrade 10 times, we would receive an additional 10% XP for anything that we defeat on the Map. Eventually, if we bought the upgrade 100 times (which would cost 1,500,000 XP, meaning that Shimmer's members would have to earn a combined amount of 7,000,000 XP!) it would double our XP gains. On the downside, the upgrades reset monthly or weekly (Karl hasn't decided yet). This will also work for PvP in the near future; currently, the pack can only gain XP from PvA kills. Pretty cool, huh?

Along with this nice pack feature, Wolf-Haven now has an official Facebook page. Well, we've had a Facebook page for ages, but it's going to be updated more frequently now by Jekyll. If you'd like to check it out, click here. If you don't feel secure sharing your personal information, have no worries; you don't need to state your Wolf-Haven username anywhere. You could even create a Facebook for your character, like I did.

Last but not least, the staff got a special new feature for the Moderator CP. I can't tell you what it is, but we've been hoping to have this for ages and it will definitely prevent many issues with account trades and stolen/missing accounts.

Also, if you're wondering where I've been hiding... I'm learning PHP. I want to make my own website eventually, about tigers... rawr.

A Blog Entry... whaa?

Oh, hi there. Long time no see! We haven't talked in ages. Let's jump into a giant pool of things, shall we?

Where to start, where to start...? Firstly, I guess I'll admit that my blog has become an utter failure. Stormgaze was right; I actually don't have anything to write about. I could blame this mostly on the fact that I became staff. I mean, I suppose I do hold some sort of 'authority' if I can tell you not to break the rules, so my blog and opinion in its entirety would be somewhat more powerful and therefore I have to watch what I say. I can't give you any secrets, I can't tell you about what's next for Wolf-Haven since I didn't go scavenging for those deep secrets like I used to, and Wolf-Haven has had the same message on the News since May 2011.

But where are Wolf-Haven's updates? I probably know less than you do on that question; I heard about new features from Karlos (that I can't reveal, of course... dur), but then I heard nothing else and then I received word that Karl was ill...? Not sure how valid that one is. It is such a shame to see this miraculous website begin to crumble to ruins; Wolf-Haven had (and still has) so much potential, and I don't think that Karl realizes this. People LIKE Wolf-Haven, and that's why he's made thousands upon thousands of dollars from it. Don't believe me? As of the time I'm writing this, there are almost exactly 450 customs on Wolf-Haven (453 to be exact, but I'm using rounded numbers due to the fact that my math skills are absolutely horrid. Plus, I'm sure that a few customs have been handed out for free). Now, assuming that EACH member with a custom has ONLY donated 7.50 GBP, we're already at a whopping 3,375 GBP of profit for Wolf-Haven. You also have to keep in mind that many members have donated more than that; I've donated some 100 GBP myself, as have Mooneye and his side accounts, Salias, Teanna, Innocenzia, and so on. If you do the math... well, we can safely assume that Karl has earned over $5,000 in profit off of Wolf-Haven. I'm sure that the number is probably higher, but I don't want to give you a number that's overly high and absurd.

We have over 19,000 registered accounts; that's a lot of people that take interest in this website. I don't know what's not being seen, but Wolf-Haven could make it big. We still have 45 users online at any given time, and the website hasn't been updated in ages. People are still hanging around for the community and if the game had some bug fixes and actual content, it would be a complete success. I understand that Wolf-Haven isn't a top priority at all, but come on...

Aside from the community, there really is no purpose in playing Wolf-Haven for me. I have a wonderful mate for my character, I (try to) help run the #1 pack onsite, and I can beat everything on the Map that is possible to beat (I lied, Salias can beat the Roadrunner and the Camel because she's a badass). Other than one PvA honor and 9 levels, I have nothing to do in the game itself. The website has been lagging for me for months and hunting is a pain; it's not fun anymore. I'm here to do my job as a Moderator and to talk to my friends because I've mostly completed the game.

So, what's next for Wolf-Haven? I honestly have no clue. If Karlos is sick, I wish him the best in recovering and getting back to college as soon as possible, and I hope that he is enjoying his life. However, I don't think that Wolf-Haven is going to stay at its peak in popularity for much longer and if things aren't set straight soon... then I really don't know.