Weekly Buzz 01/12/18

Hello Collectors,

Another week has come and gone. We’ve just finished A Frosty Afternoon yesterday, which brings our active set count to one. Luckily for you all, we should see two new sets appear very, very soon. This week’s blog post is a little shorter than normal, but don’t worry. We’ll have plenty to cover next week. 😉

Behind the Curtain

We are putting finishing touches on update 2.2.2. We’re really excited to push out this update and hope you are too! More information about the update will be provided upon launch.

The hosts of the London event would like us to mention that signups for the Friday night event will close on Tuesday, January 16th. If you are interested in attending that event, please make sure you let Cceasar or Stulimont know, as space for the Friday night is limited.

Should you have any questions, please let us know by emailing Support@WallaBeeGame.com

Recent Item Highlights

CARROTS! Well, it finally happened. Carrots were found, snowmen were created, and mistakes were made. Hopefully your encounter with carrots was positive!

Dogsled Ride

Ookpik and Arnaq gear up the dogsled to explore the frozen tundra.

Carrot

Wow, I’m hungry! Maybe just a small bite?

Snowman

I did it! The snowman is finished, but it feels like it’s missing something…

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 Yorkshire Rose. You can read more about this unique here.

Yorkshire Rose

This Week In WallaBee History

January 8th, 2015: The Auction House began with Old Lady releasing on this day. Since that release, the Old Lady has been seen in at least one other set. Do you remember which one?

January 10th, 2016: The original WallaBee team was putting together The Men Of WallaBee 2014, and began a poll in the forums to see which character should be featured as February’s calendar item. Of course, we all know who the winner was.

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.
• Random Crashes (especially on older devices) – We have discovered that the ram needed for the app fluctuates way more than it should, sometimes peaking over 1gb, which can cause older devices to crash. We are investigating what is causing this, so that we can enhance app performance.

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.

As a friendly joke from a group of players, I was hand-delivered carrots to the office this week. If players are willing to bring joke gifts by the office to get new items, we should create a set about puppies. P.S. I like corgis. 🙂

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

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

Weekly Buzz 12/21/2017

Hello Collectors,

Christmas Crisis has just picked up the pace by a long shot. We hope that you’re managing your Pouch well during this time. Pro Tip: make sure you’re foraging between drops, to maximize your available honeycomb balance for more supplies. As the sets draw to a close, it’s going to be vital to have enough items around to complete all seven sets. There’s 112 items in total, and the completion bonus is well worth the effort. Stay with it!

Behind the Curtain

From December 22nd through January 1st, Team WallaBee will be out of the office, trying to spend time with family and friends. This means that we’ll be suspending Weekly Buzz posts until the first week of January. We’ll try and make up for the missed time where we can.

Item releases will still happen during this timeframe, with a drop-free guaranteed block of time beginning December 24th – December 26th UTC. This means that drops can happen any time before 23:59 December 23rd UTC, and any time after 00:01 December 27th UTC. This should allow some much-needed recuperation time after Christmas Crisis, am I right? Spend time away from your phone, enjoying the holiday season with those you love, or spend it foraging for some much needed honeycombs… your decision!

We’re really close to releasing update 2.2.2, which will feature some requested new elements, while we work on tackling the beast… erm, forums.

BeeKeeper applications are here! If you’re interested in being a BeeKeeper from January – March, please fill out the BeeKeeper Application before January 1st. All entries will be reviewed, with the first 2018 BK team announced the first or second week of January.

Should you have any questions, please let us know by emailing Support@WallaBeeGame.com

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 Light of Willpower. You can read more about this unique here.

Light of Willpower

This Week In WallaBee History

December 18th, 2014:  North Pole released, kicking off Robbie Smith’s Santa’s Workshop set. This icon was used again in a different way when we visited the workshop a second time in Christmas Crisis.

December 18th, 2015: This week two years ago, we opened up BeeKeeper applications for the first time in a long time. It would only seem fitting that we do the same again. In case you missed it above, here it is again: BeeKeeper Application.

December 19th, 2016: Players started getting nervous as we announced Cracking Under Pressure. This set highlighted the festive Christmas Cracker and all six colo(u)red Party Hats. That was definitely a day that no one participating will soon forget.

December 20th, 2012:  WallaBee’s First Christmas released with the first item: Bauble. Trivia Time: Although this set wasn’t the first to release, it is categorized as set #1. This was because WallaBee was planning to launch in 2011, but missed that date by two months, with the first official set (set #2: A Trip To The Circus) releasing along with the app in February.

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.
• Delayed Mix on Wooden Plane and Wooden Yo-Yo releases. – Although these had the exact same drop time on the backend, there was a caching issue which delayed the process of these items to be spaced out a few seconds. We have adjusted this caching, seen in the Blue Paint and Wooden Train release, to which we haven’t seen that issue arise again.
• Crashing on store. Crashing randomly. – Under Investigation

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.

I’ll probably regret this, but there haven’t been many other options to choose from this week. -sigh- Here’s Mizak, proving that he deserves his top spot on the Naughty List.

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