Weekly Buzz 12/13/2017

Hello Collectors,

Out with the old, in with the new! Not with your sets… We’re referencing the in-game stores, of course! We have removed Taste Sensation and Ghosts & Ghouls from rotation and added Festive Friends for the next two months. As Christmas gets ever closer, and deadlines at the workshop draw near, we’re going to need all the help we can get! If you have been out of the Christmas Crisis loop, here’s how you can help: Get painting!

December Development

Gather up as many wooden toys, cans of paint, and -insert undiscovered item here- as you can! Players will need to mix one of each together to produce a painted toy. Since we’re in a rush to get toys ready for Santa, there’s no time to dally with the details. Paint the toys a solid color of paint and move onto the next one. Time is of the essence.

We read recently in the Morning News that there’s a cold front rolling into WallaVille. It should be here within the next few weeks. It’s sure to bring some snow, man. Get bundled up and ready for some outdoor fun… and that snow joke.

Six more Benson items have hit the map, bringing the total of Bensons to sixteen. While we’re on the topic of location-based play, we would like to address a potential situation that has come to our attention. Late last week, we created a probationary period with new users and their ability to trade lower numbered items. Effective now, new users must wait 7 days in order to send or receive an item under #1000 in a trade. This change was created to encourage our existing collectors to play within the spirit of a location-based game, without shortening a potential experience for someone else. While we encourage the community to recruit friends and family, sometimes this can be taken too far. We want to make sure that new players stick around and aren’t simply used. While no letter of the law has been broken since Benson hit the road, we believe this change will help the spirit of the law moving forward.

Behind the Curtain

Our goal is to create a game that appeals to new players just as much as our seasoned players. When discussing how to best do this, there are some… what we like to call… challenges. New players typically have a different goal from seasoned players, because seasoned players have already completed their sets and are onto their next goal. WallaBee presents players with one simple challenge: complete your sets. The endgame activity after that is completely open to interpretation. Some collectors decide to fill their sets with items with a number that means something to them. Other collectors try to lower their item numbers, in order to decrease their overall average. Both of these goals are great to reach toward, but WallaBee doesn’t have any definitive endgame challenge (outside of Achievements). When looking at how we can expand WallaBee’s gameplay, we consider those who have just begun playing, and those who have been playing for years. There’s something to be said about the dedication our more seasoned players have. They’ve seen the game morph and change over the years, and they’re still here supporting it. As we move forward with developing gameplay, we hope to keep the spirit of WallaBee untouched, as we add in new types of endgame content. However, before we can get to endgame, we have to start at the beginning.

We are beginning research on some UI enhancements for our newer players. We know that jumping into WallaBee can be a slow process (especially with over 2k items in the game). The community helps new collectors in more ways we can say, but there are many things we can do to make the learning curve easier. With the simple addition of visual cues, we can make certain aspects of the game much easier for newer players. This includes, but is not limited to, changing the appearance of Place Items when players don’t have one saved, highlighting possible ingredients, and showing which nearby locations have a Foraging Cooldown active.

There are also some gameplay elements that can be redefined to help both new and seasoned players. Why should Top 100 only refer to the First 100 to complete a set? Why not expand this in-game leaderboard to allow other types of Top 100 gameplay. Want recognition for getting Eggception sub1k? How about for filling Ain’t Nobody Got Time For This Set with all #1955 items? This allows collectors the ability to choose which leaderboard they want to work towards, per set.

Some of these things may happen, none of these things may happen, or all of these things may happen. These are just the types of conversations we’re currently having as a team, regardless of the limitations and timeline. #DreamBig

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

Recent Item Highlights

Invasion is coming to a close very soon. What do you think will happen next? There’s no rhyming hint, since there are two more items left. As you begin thinking about the end of this set, take a look at all of the previous items grouped in pairs. It should begin looking like a children’s book.

We’ve Got Company

A creaking was heard, like a hyena’s bite,
as the hatch popped open with a harsh green light.

Wooden Rocker

A simple unicorn rocker made of wood.

Wooden Duck

A simple duck made of wood.

Yellow Paint

What’s yellow and makes a buzzing sound? An electric lemon.

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 Willie Nelson. You can read more about this unique here.

Willie Nelson

This Week In WallaBee History

December 10th, 2013:  Bad Santa Yote steps onto the scene, thanks to DeCoyote. Word around town is that Bad Santa Yote isn’t giving out any cards this year, but you can get the Legacy version of this item in a WallaStore near you.

December 11th, 2014:  The WallaBee team began the holiday season by opening their email inboxes for player nominations. Players could nominate 3 players they believed should get special recognition. The 5 players with the most votes were announced the following week, with their usernames written on the Nice List for all to see. We’d like to point out there was also a Naughty List, that elf video makers can never get off of, no matter how hard they try.

December 12th, 2013: Ebenezer Dodson released, kicking off A WallaBee Carol with a most ‘bah humbug’ item. Outside of the founder’s name being hidden in the name, this item also makes reference to Evil Creation, which even to this day costs 9999hc when available in the store.

December 12th, 2016: On this day, the Twelve Days Of Wallamas began. Partridge In A Pear Tree was the first of twelve items, recreating the festive song we all know and love.

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.

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 mention comes to us from within WHQ. Andy has been getting into the holiday spirit, which starts with enjoying some delicious gingerbread men. It would seem that Goldie was innocent this whole time, as the real culprit has now been caught red-hatted.

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 12/05/2017

Hello Collectors,

We have officially spent our first full week in December, which means that preparations are well under way for the holidays! Some of these holiday plans will be explained through this blog post, while others may surprise you later on in the month. We have a few winter sets planned for December, which are sure to keep you -clears throat- occupied…

December Development

With only one artist (Andy “All-Star” Cameron), WallaBee can only get so many items created. This has been ongoing since the beginning, which is why there have only been 139 sets within almost 6 years. In 2014, WallaBee brought on another talented graphic artist, Robbie Smith, to help bear the load. He began with sets like WallaBucks and ended with A Day In Singapore. After WallaBee came under the Munzee Inc umbrella, focus returned to having one artist.

Unique commissions reopened after the acquisition, to many players’ approval, which has been great for the community and game. We have grown the Unique commissioning process, but have not extended our team of artists. Andy still works tirelessly on both Set items and Uniques. The downside with splitting time is that fewer Set items are released, meaning fewer drops or mixes over a longer period of time. As you may have noticed with recent sets, there have not been many mixes. Lacking items in reserve made this difficult (as well as various high-detailed story-driven items).

One way to combat this issue is to clone Andy into a team of artists, allowing us to pick up production time much faster. Unfortunately, our resources do not cover experimental human genetics experiments (and Andy’s wife wouldn’t approve). So as you can see, our team only has a few options available, which we will share with you now.

• Option 1: We continue at the pace we’ve been going, with a few items released every week. Fewer mixes, more store/forage drops, space out as evenly as possible.
• Option 2: Bring on another artist to help with certain sets.
• Option 3: Force Andy to undergo cyber-enhancement surgery, making him both man and machine, allowing the mechanical portion of his body to draw while his human portion is sleeping.

With the options above, we believe that Option 2 is the best way to move forward. Many more WallaBee items can be made within a shorter period of time, which allows the community to collect, trade, mix, and sell even more items. We hope that you share our opinions on this, because it’s already been decided. John Rogeles (Graphic Artist for Munzee, and creator of V2 WallaBee Achievements) will join Andy in rotation with creating sets for WallaBee. Christmas Crisis will be the first of many sets from John, that we hope everyone will enjoy.

Begin making more room in your pouch, because we have a few winter sets releasing this month. December is the month of giving, and we’re going to be giving a lot! Festivities begin this weekend with the craziness that is Christmas Crisis. Many of Santa’s elves have gone missing, leaving many unfinished toys at the workshop. It’s up to YOU to help save Christmas! We hope you like mixing, because this month’s content will scratch your mixing itch… maybe even excessively.

Speaking of mixing, Christmas Mixers are coming to town! These special mixers have the same specifications with creating items as WallaBee Mixers, but with an added surprise. Christmas Mixers, when mixed together, have a chance of generating honeycombs or locks in addition to the item created. These bonuses will be found in your Transactions page when earned.

In other news, Benson has begun his mission to permanently visit other players. Since there was some confusion about what some of the specifics were, his goal is to make it onto your set of Uniques. He will show up at random Monuments/Sculptures within the game, whether they’ve been there for years or just added recently. However, you may want to make sure that sculptures near you are verified, as Benson only travels to these locations. If you have a monument near you that is not verified, please report it for review. Since most of these locations may not be visible from a street view on Google Maps, please help our BeeKeepers by supplying any necessary details to help determine the validity of the location(s). The next 5 Benson items have been released, so get your hunting hats on!

Special Events

WallaBee’s birthday is just around the corner, which means that the London event is that much closer to a reality. The two main brains behind this event (Cceasar and Stulimont) have been deviously planning some… rather interesting ‘games’ for attendees to partake in, as you can see below. If you’re interested in joining the festivities, you can gather more information in the forums or on Stulimont’s website. With 30 confirmed players for Saturday’s portion of the event, it should be a grand time for everyone participating.

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

Recent Item Highlights

Invasion has seen some crazy development within the past two weeks. What’s happening with the town’s cows? What is that green substance that Flo has found? Will Ray ever get that dumb look off his face? All we can do is hope we get answers soon.

Concerned Call

Once again mobile, Flo called her friend Ray,
“You’ll never believe what I saw today!”

Investigation

She showed him her findings, however cliché.
“A pile of green goo doesn’t mean it’s doomsday”

Crash Site

When out of thin air, it dove from great height.
They stood perplexed at the spaceship crash site.

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 Cooktown Orchid. You can read more about this unique here.

Cooktown Orchid

This Week In WallaBee History

December 4th, 2013: A Victim was found on this day. There were no clues as to what happened, so we asked the community to help interrogate some potential suspects. What was the victim’s name? We don’t know, but we know she wore some circus clothes…

December 5th, 2012: On this day, one of the first Player Uniques was released – Saint Nicholas. This Unique made a huge impact on the community, causing the WallaBee team to restrict the ability for players to send trades for Player Uniques. Luckily for everyone, this restriction was lifted as of Version 2, which allows players to easily trade any items in the game. Thanks for such a great item with a rich history, nicolasm06!

December 7th, 2015: Ms. December was released on this day, finishing the Women of WallaBee calendar set. Our favorite bearded lady has never looked so festive.

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 – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this. 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.
• 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.
• Network Error when commenting – We have fixed a bug that threw an error when commenting on certain types of activity, sometimes resulting in a second iteration of a comment.
• 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.

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 mention is of a video/project that one of our players created. We present to you an automatic mixing machine! Great idea, Violet. Sometimes mixing all of those mixers and eggs leaves your fingers sore. Such a creative idea!

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 11/28/2017

Hello Collectors,

Benson has reached all of his Budget Wonders, and it’s all thanks to players like you! We have enjoyed watching him move around the world and hope that you have as well. Many players have had the opportunity to interact with Benson, taking him to their favorite eateries, theaters, or parks. We have charted out some basic pins to showcase where Benson went around the world, using all locations or just Budget Wonders. Benson met 113 players across the globe during his travels, and after debriefing with us at WHQ, he wants to continue meeting more! Starting in December, Benson will begin showing up at various other ‘budget wonders’ across the globe. Various monuments in WallaBee will be randomly selected for additional Bensons to begin appearing at. If you know of some budget wonders near you that aren’t in the game (Place Guide approved), be sure to add them soon!

EDIT: Benson’s mission is to make it onto your set of Uniques. He will begin showing up at random Monuments/Sculptures within the game, whether they’ve been there for years or just added recently. However, you may want to make sure that sculptures near you are verified, as Benson only travels to these locations. If you have a monument near you that is not verified, please report it and a BeeKeeper will determine the validity.

This type of gameplay allows a rare opportunity to track down a Benson item near you, which helps our players interact with the map in a new way. Benson has been issued through number 5 today, with many more coming within the coming days, weeks, and months.

Gameplay Development – Under The Hood

This week’s development has been filled with various boring backend fixes and tweaks to make the game better. We are working on getting 2.2.2 ready for release, but want to make sure that it’s fully ready. As many of you are well aware, we have a small development team, so getting things happening within a small timeframe doesn’t always work out. We appreciate the feedback that we’ve received from the community about the status of the app. With a development team of two (one backend and one frontend), we do as much as we can. Many of you don’t know that within the past few weeks, our main backend developer, Scott Foster, has moved on to bigger and better things. In his absence, Daniel Fischer (the wizard of Munzee) has stepped into the WallaBee team to help us grow. We wish our best to Scott and thank him for the last 2 years of his service to WallaBee – You will be missed. This doesn’t change the status of the app, but will slow things down a little bit as Daniel learns more of the WallaBee controls. All of the updates we’ve made to speed things up this month have been thanks to Daniel, whom we are very thankful for.

We’ve received many requests in the past few months to join the BeeKeeper team. Well, we have some awesome news for those who are interested. Beginning in December, we will have an application process for a new team of BeeKeepers to be created. These teams will serve for a quarter of the year (3 months), with an evaluation period at the end of the quarter. This will hopefully allow us to make sure that our BeeKeepers are kept up-to-date on information and are passing that information along through the forums. More information will be available soon as to what this overhaul looks like. Wish us luck as we navigate this transition.

We hope that you were able to capitalize on those Cyber Monday deals yesterday! We had many items discounted, including Honeycombs, Locks, and Pouch Upgrades. Since then, we have updated all of our prices for in-game rewards. You can find our new prices by visiting the WallaBee Online Store. Should you have any questions, please let us know by emailing Support@WallaBeeGame.com

Recent Item Highlights

One item from each active set was released this week, giving a bit of much needed variety to recent item releases. Now that Budget Wonders has ended, what will come next? There’s only one more item left in 2017’s calendar set! December is sure to be a chilling experience.

Sonic Assault!

Then, very loud, a long, piercing note!
Flo froze in place with no antidote.

November’s Black Friday

New items! Low prices! Give us your honeycombs!

World’s Largest Killer Bee

Budget Wonder #174: “Keep your honeycombs close when visiting this Hidalgo attraction”

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 Jack Frost. You can read more about this unique here.

Jack Frost

This Week In WallaBee History

November 26th, 2015: Who could forget this day? After announcing in the forums that RedCarRobbie was joining the team for ‘special projects,’ Rob announced through a brief live stream on Periscope that there would be a drop-free time on Thanksgiving! The only thing is, a few short hours later, Ms. November released. Rob decided to live stream through Periscope later in the day to give his thanks for the KickStarter support, but the players were too busy spamming “Thanks for Ms. November” in chat to notice. The following April 1st, 2016, Trial and Error was created to poke fun at this moment in WallaBee history.

November 28th, 2013: The First Thanksgiving set released with all items available for Thanksgiving. Talk about something to be thankful for!

November 29th, 2013: There were issues with the Black Friday sale, so the Black Knight appeared on the scene with store purchases (check the item description)! This was also the first day that the Black Mystery Box variant was gifted.

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 – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this.
• 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.
• Multiple Item Alerts and Forum Posts upon new item – This should be fixed now!

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 image comes from Benson’s last stop in the Budget Wonders set – the World’s Largest Killer Bee – compliments of ChucksGhost for sharing this photo in WallaBee Nation. Chuck is a longtime player from Austin, Tx. Within the hour of this item’s release, Chuck was out the door, in his car, and on a 300+ mile drive to get Benson to the last Budget Wonder. Now THAT’S what we call dedication! Hidalgo was hosting a Star Wars themed festival this past weekend, which explains why Yoda is riding this giant killer bee.

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 11/22/2017

Hello Collectors,

We’re here with another Weekly Buzz update. Are y’all excited for Turkey Day? We are! The season of Thanksgiving encourages us to spend time with friends and family and allows us to reflect on what we’re thankful for. As part of the WallaBee Community, we’re definitely thankful for what every player has to offer. Our community is creative, kind, helpful, giving, loyal, hard-working, and unique. We are so thankful for each and every one of you! Thank you for helping make WallaBee great. What are you thankful for?

Gameplay Development

This week’s development has been a continuation of speeding up the app with various adjustments to the backend. We’ve sped up the processing time for creating items and awarding achievements, as well as fixing an annoying notification glitch.

We are continuing to update the app so that we can better track analytics. Along with the helpful feedback from the community, this will help our team make educated decisions when implementing updates and gameplay changes.

What about Mystery Boxes? We know you’re eagerly awaiting to crack some of these gifts open and claim your sweet reward. Black Mystery Boxes will be available through the online store on Cyber Monday. Our store-wide sale is beginning at 10am WHQ time (16:00 UTC) on Monday through 10am on Tuesday. Be sure to check it out!

Recent Item Highlights

Strange things continue to happen in WallaVille. Eerie green lights are seen from Flo’s barn late at night. Upon investigation, she realizes there are cows floating near the ceiling, as if they were in space. What is causing the cows to levitate like this? What will Flo do next? All of these answers and more will come to life soon.

Eerie Lights

Later that night, there was quite a scare,
as eerie green lights filled the night air

Floating Cows

Up in the rafters, the cows were afloat.
As their moo’s for help were caught in their throats

Our trip around the world in search of Budget Wonders is quickly coming to an end. Upside Down Charles Trobe and the Fremont Troll are the 10th and 11th stops for Benson, taking him from South Africa to Australia and the United States within just a few short days. As Benson makes his way to Seattle, players can only guess where we’ll end up…

Upside Down Charlie

Budget Wonder #124: “Visiting Melbourne’s La Trobe University will give you a head rush”

Fremont Troll

Budget Wonder #152: “Troll Ave holds a dark secret, but this guy isn’t talking”

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 Mabry Mill. You can read more about this unique here.

Mabry Mill

This Week In WallaBee History

November 20th – 22nd, 2015: The entire Stache Check set released, but the special mix wasn’t discovered until the 24th.

November 23rd, 2015: Golden Spurs released as the first item in the Midas Touch set.

Honorable Mention: The first Black Mystery Box variant was #237, found on 2013-11-29 00:20:18 UTC.

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 – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this.
• Forum Notifications/Count are missing – Coming in a future update.
• Some notifications (like comments) show as read when they haven’t been read – We are working on this fix.
• Performing an action that triggers a pop up sometimes ‘freezes,’ which needs a hard close to fix – This is a React Native issue that we’re trying to work around. You can follow the dev gossip here.
• 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.

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.

Our third image comes from Benson’s stop in South Africa – the Big Pineapple – compliments of Rhodychick for sharing this photo for Abe. Abe is a new player from South Africa, who used to geocache. He downloaded WallaBee in order to help the community get Benson to this great Budget Wonder! Be sure to send Abe a friend request and thank him for helping Benson.

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 – 11/15/2017

Hello Collectors,

It’s time for another Weekly Buzz update. We hope that you are enjoying this new content, as we dive a little behind the scenes with many areas of the app. If you have a suggestion of a topic you would like covered, be sure to let us know.

Gameplay Development

As we mentioned last week, we added some much needed improvements to the app in update 2.2.1. We are updating some code in the app so that we can better track analytics. Along with feedback from the community, this will help our team make more educated decisions when implementing updates and gameplay changes.

Questions have arisen about Mystery Boxes being available soon. The answer to that is… yes! We have some fun things planned for you guys. Stay tuned for next week’s blog post(s).

We’ve updated some code to better help our collectors experiment with Aftershave and Perfume.

There was a minor oversight with the Legacy Achievement, which was awarding players that began playing after May 1st. We have corrected this oversight and set better parameters so that only Version 1 players should have this achievement.

Our dev team is also looking into Forum Notification updates. We appreciate your patience as we dive into this, as the format of the forums has changed since V1. We’re doing this for you guys… and our sanity.

Recent Item Highlights

While we’ve been making sure that purchasing items from the store works to the best of its current abilities, we haven’t seen too many items this week. Now that we’ve begun getting the gears turning in the right direction, hold onto your seats! New items should be releasing more regularly very soon.

Big Pineapple

Budget Wonder #116: “Bathurst’s main attraction is quite delicious”

Marked as the top attraction in Bathurst, South Africa, this giant pineapple sits at almost 56 feet tall. Honeycomb-like shapes can be seen from the walls of the giant structure, which fits well into a WallaBee item. The set icon for Budget Wonders was created with this location in mind, as we knew it would be the hardest location for Benson to reach – definitely a feat worth recognizing.

Electrical Repair

“Holy cow! How’d she get up there?” All Ray could do was stand and stare.

We continue to follow the storyline of a small town on the outskirts of WallaVille; a place that has been having strange occurrences. So far in the story, we know is that there have been missing livestock, power outages, and some strange, glowing goo… but something lurks just beyond the horizon. The townsfolk better keep one eye open tonight.

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 The Municher. You can read more about this unique here.

The Municher

This Week In WallaBee History

November 13th, 2013: Snake Charmer was released to lead off the beginning to Journey To The Pyramids.

November 17th, 2014 and November 18th, 2016: WallaBee released updates to better handle push notifications. V1.4.3 launched to help players who were not receiving push notifications, while V1.6 reinstated them back into the game from almost a year hiatus.

November 18th, 2014: Andrew Cameron’s Red Riding Hood released with, you guessed it, Red Hood.

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.

• Spinning Wheel of Death! Crashes! Ugggh! – This should be mostly fixed by now. Please let us know if you experience bad item releases.
• Battery drains like crazy – This is something I have personally been testing, and the cause is not the GPS like one might think. Yes, it’s a contributing factor, but it’s actually the store. Testing a version of the app without the store allowed me to keep my battery for MUCH longer than normal. We’re working out a proper fix for this.
• Forum Notifications/Count are missing – Coming in a future update.
• Lingering spinning wheels on item purchase -This should be mostly fixed by now. Please let us know if you experience bad item releases.
• Some notifications (like comments) show as read when they haven’t been read – We are working on this fix.
• Items showing as duplicated in pouch/place – This should be fixed now!
• Performing an action that triggers a pop up sometimes ‘freezes,’ which needs a hard close to fix – This is a React Native issue that we’re trying to work around. You can follow the dev gossip here.
• 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.

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.

Our second image comes from Benson’s first stop – the Traffic Light Tree – compliments of Colin. Way to add that extra step and take a selfie like Benson! Major kudos!

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