We’re back! We had our initial mistakes and learning experience with the initial try at opening registration on the 21st of March. As we outlined in our retrospective, we simply jumped the gun too early and needed to regroup. We’ve been working at a crazy pace right now to make it up, and have made huge milestones in combing the application so that we do not make the same mistake twice.
Which leaves us with the big thing everyone is here for …!
PawBorough will reopen on Saturday April 11th, at 6pm ET!
For other timezones, this converts to:
3pm PT / 4pm MT / 5pm CT
10pm GMT
If you want to see what timezone this is for you, check out this tool!
We have weighed the pros and cons of waiting longer to ensure that we’ve really squashed all glaring exploits or problem areas in the application, and have come to the conclusion that the three weeks of improvement-grinding and structure enforcing should give us a healthy Beta application! The team did want to roll out a re-open as fast as possible, but on the other paw, this timeframe is necessary to ensure no more hiccups!
Minor bugs, exploits, or blips in the system will still be expected for the Beta build, but we’ve spent the last several weeks slamming the application with stress testing, load testing, and internal bug hunting.
In the event anything game-breaking occurs again, we will not hesitate to take the server offline so as to not waste users’ time.
BELOW CONSISTS OF IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR RELAUNCH:
As promised, all Open Beta accounts will be allowed a 10-15 minute early entry, which we may extend or modify as the server experiences lag. This is hereon referred to as “Gated Entry.”
To those worried about significant lag, devs and admins will be closely monitoring the opening, and will modify the timeframe of Gated Entry as needed. Our goal is to replicate the implicit advantage our backers previously possessed during registration opening, and which is most fair and faithful for ALL users!
If you were a Closed Beta tester, this information concerns you.
All Closed Beta accounts will receive an email which contains special access information, which will allow access to the website. Once you access the website, you will be able to register your account.
It is a similar process to our Alpha test.
Emails will be sent to the email used to register your PawBorough account.
We will be sending out these emails in batches over the next 4 days. We will post to our socials when all the emails have been sent. It is vitally important that you check your spam folder.
If you are experiencing any issues with the email after we announce the last batch has been sent, please send a support ticket via zendesk.
All the support information will be repeated once emails are sent out!
This process provides the smoothest and tightest experience for our users. If you are found posting or sharing the access information contained in these emails, you will be swiftly banned from all PawBorough spaces. Doing so would be considered an egregious show of bad faith, and we will not tolerate such exploitation.
So what have we done so far to ensure the new opening date will be secure and smooth?
Here is a list of everything we have pushed since the 21st of March:
Integrated a new server provider that is beefier and more robust. This was an increase in expense, but necessary to really insure we can handle the load.
Increased power and resources towards queries and generation.
Re-architectured the structure of cat IDs and the generation process. We tooled how and in what manner the application pulls resources, which has fixed the previous bottleneck and should prevent future bottleneck issues.
Performed a host of load tests in tandem with internal testers, in which we saw the resource queue moving swiftly. In our most recent load test, we simulated over 3.5k accounts registering and generating in the span of 5 minutes, and witnessed the server tank it well. At peak load, cats took about 8 seconds to generate within the wardrobe, and about 14 seconds to generate within onboarding. At the end of the load, the server was not backed up. These numbers are very promising.
During the entirety of our testing, we have simulated over 170000 user accounts and 21000 cats.
Pushed a giant fix to the follower and founder generation process, which should ensure that illegal traits cannot generate.
Fixed a few exploits which cropped up.
Fixed tutorial-bricking, which should block the ability to create ghost cats through breaking the tutorial.
We pushed a slew of small bug fixes which are common when pushing new developments. These also include small functionality tweaks, mobile optimizations, and general spring cleaning of the application.
We’re feeling good! As stated, we know that Beta may still have bugs or issues, but things are on the up and up!
This month, we also hosted and completed our Coloring Contest! Thank you all who participated!
We received exactly 1200 entries. Wow! Amazing! We’re very excited to dig into the entries, and we know it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to pick the winners!
Now, we would like to share what users will be receiving if they win!
First, any user which submitted a winning color via a single Tiger recolor will receive the Artist’s Crest!
Illustrated by Asp and Hydde
NOTE: This illustration is a WIP currently receiving finishing touches.
And any user which submitted a winning color with 2 or more recolored poses (Tiger, Moontail wings, and Butterfly) will receive a Northern Pixiebell in addition!
OG Pixiebell by Remmie, Northern variant illustrated by Hydde
The Northern Pixiebell is a “Special Fauna,” meaning it is not required to own to complete the Faunapedia. The Northern Pixiebell will remain a staple reward for PawBorough’s visually creative contests in the future! So, if you missed it this time, fret not! We may also add this fauna to flea-market silver cycling during future contests, but are considering the viability of exclusive specialty Fauna rewards.
We had so much fun, and we cannot wait to host more in the future!
Please allow up to between 3-5 months for us to sift through, choose, and integrate entries. Each entry will need a varying amount of internal design efforts to make it compatible with all our gene designs, and this will take time! We will do our best to be swift, but want to ensure all new colors are appropriately screened for quality assurance!
We had so many amazing entries, we may even decide to expand the current list of additions…
We have been working on Faunapedia sketches, which are unlocked when you reach the final Mastered level of Fauna study.
Here is a peak at the Lunasagi!
And more new things…! Mystic genes! Right now, our focus is on the Fyret, which has about 80% of its genes completed!
Lots of things in the works! Thank you for sticking by us, and we cannot wait for the future!
To summarize: We shared the new registration date, our method for gated entry, our updates to the application, color contest information, faunapedia sketches, and Fyret gene progress!
What’s next? Next month we will post an evaluation of Open Beta’s state at the time, further asset renderings, and continuing developments.
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