News

May Day Coloring Contest and Events!

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Created: Monday, 01 May 2017 16:53

Written by James

Happy May Day! Across the Northern hemisphere, the first of May is a celebration of Spring. A festival of all the colors of the season, the gifting of flowers and dancing around a Maypole strung with multi-colored ribbons are traditional activities. We celebrate here in Furcadia too!

The beautifully updated 32-bit Jujinka’s Spring Festival boasts 4 colorful Maypoles to dance around, and the Eventers will be teaching and demonstrating those skills tonight at 6:30pm FST, as well as handing out flowers of all hues to the crowd. Come play with us!

Read more: May Day Coloring Contest and Events!

New Blog!

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Created: Monday, 01 May 2017 16:40

Written by James

Welcome to our shiny new Community Blog!

This is your central resource for everything community related, including annual Festivals, in-game events, official contests, new map activities, player-created special content, and more!

Stay tuned for more news! :)

Help Furcadia Move!

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Created: Tuesday, 21 February 2017 20:25

Written by Cironir

Furcadia is moving to bigger and better servers! It's been many years since we upgraded, and after outages that caused downtimes and technical problems, it's become more pressing to replace both our servers and our hosting service. We've started moving everything over to its new home on spacious and powerful machines. For a smooth transition, we are paying twice for hosting this month, plus a hefty set-up fee, increasing our expenses substantially.

We need your help to cover these extra costs!

To help off-set the additional costs we have created the cutest Server Fox desctag (FOR LIFE)! Exclusively for players who help us move the server, there's also a Pounce Package FOR LIFE (includes Server Fox desctag)! This type of group package FOR LIFE has not been offered before, and is available only for the server move sale! The proceeds from these special offers are only used for covering the server moving expenses. It's a win-win: a great way to help Furcadia (and make it faster and more stable!) and get something very nice for yourself that lasts forever! Extra revenue will be used for wages.

Thank you for helping us!

For the hardware geeks, here are the specs:

• Web server: Xeon E3-1270V5 (Quad Core), 32GB DDR3 SDRAM, 250GB SSD RAID, 2TB SATA drive, Linux (Ubuntu)
• Database server: Xeon E5-1650V4 (Hexa Core), 32GB DDR3 SDRAM, 250GB SSD RAID, 2TB SATA drive, Linux (Ubuntu)
• Game server: Xeon E5-2620v4 (Octo Core), 32GB DDR3 SDRAM, 250GB SSD RAID, 2TB SATA drive, Linux (Ubuntu)

Help the Giraffe! fundraiser news!

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Created: Tuesday, 21 February 2017 18:48

Written by James

Thank you, ALL OF YOU!, who helped our fundraiser for giraffes this past month! Together we raised $630 and today we donated all proceeds to the African Wildlife Foundation!

Why the giraffe? While working on the new Raffen avatar, the Giraffe was added to the list of endangered species! So we offered a beautiful African Wildlife Foundation Charity Desctag FOR LIFE. 100% of the funds raised by the sale of this desctag were donated to the African Wildlife Foundation.

This limited edition Desctag FOR LIFE was not available to be purchased with Golden DragonScales. No copies of this desctag were or are given away as prizes or for promotional purposes. Everyone you see with the African Wildlife Foundation Charity Desctag FOR LIFE has helped the Real Life Raffens.

We were excited to have provided an opportunity to reward Furcadians with an in game item and at the same time do something to help a species that relies on our support for long-term survival! Each of you who contributed to this cause may hold your head high - like a Raffen! - knowing you've made a difference for these amazing animals.

Web Client Early Access

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Created: Thursday, 02 February 2017 12:16

Written by Cironir

Furcadia's new Web Client is ready for serious testers!

Want to be one of the first to go where few have gone before? Eager to explore a new frontier, and willing to report back your findings? Unafraid of bugs that may make your fur stand up?

You may just be the hero we are looking for!

The Furcadia Web Client is a brand new, completely written from scratch HTML5/WebGL client, does not require Flash at all, and runs in all standard web browsers. It is aimed at desktop/laptop computers, but will also work in browsers on many tablets and phones. You'll be able to play Furcadia like normal, but now on all these devices! No installation required!

The Web Client is heavily in development, so there will usually be updates several times a day. It's not finished, but it is ready for brave souls like you!

Who can request access?

For this first round of closed testing, you must:

• Have a Furcadia Account with characters on it (INI files won't work).
• Be at least an Angelcat / Direhound Playtester level or higher supporter. (We promised you would get to test it first!)
• Be able to give constructive feedback and not expect a finished product.

Do you meet these requirements and want to embark on a webful journey?

Great! We want you! Send us a support ticket and let us know you want to help test! You can pick any category, just mention "testing" or "web client" in the subject.

We'll send you back a letter with further information and access details within 24 hours! Please do not whisper staff or ask Beekins if your request was received. You'll get a response within a day!

New Wrapping Paper!

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Created: Wednesday, 14 December 2016 22:58

Written by James

Have you ever wished you could nicely wrap up gifts for your friends and loved ones before sending them? Now you can!

In time for the holidays, we have a brand new feature: Wrapping Paper!

Starting now, you can buy Wrapping Paper in 4 colors: Red, Pink, Purple, and Black. Unused Wrapping Paper is stored on your Character similarly to Roses and Snugs. If you have Wrapping Paper, you can package any Digo avatar, DragonScales (at least 10 GD), or a Portrait space and give a nicely wrapped box to another Character -- with a personal message!

The gift box will show up in the recipient's description. Then the recipient can open the box either any time, or a date the sender specifies. Until the recipient opens the gift box, they can also be a brand new Present avatar!

Read more about how to use Wrapping paper.

Buy Wrapping Paper on Digo Market!

Legends of Gaming Livestream

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Created: Friday, 09 December 2016 16:19

Written by James

It's the Furcadia 20th Anniversary with Legends of Gaming Live Stream, on Saturday December 17th!

Can you believe it? Furcadia's turning twenty! Two decades of pioneering, World Record awarded social online gaming, user created content, and lots of tails! In celebration of this meowvelous milestone in online history, Felorin (Doctor Cat) will be hosting an all day Twitch stream full of the people who created the video game industry & even early pen & paper and board games!

He will spend the day chatting live with such illustrious guests as:

• Tim Brengle (EA, Accolade, GDC)
• Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies)
• Brad McQuaid (Everquest)
• Graeme Devine (7th Guest, Quake 3, Magic Leap)
• John Taylor (Islands of Kesmai, Air Warrior)
• David Fox (Maniac Mansion)
• Jeff Dee (D&D, Villains & Vigilantes, Sims Castaway Stories)
• Bob Bates (Unreal 2, Spellcasting 101, Spiderman 3)
• Scott Miller (Max Payne, Duke Nukem 3D, 3D Realms)
• Richard Bartle (MUD, MUD 2)
• Talzhemir (Furcadia co-creator, Cavemaster, Bethorm, Quicksilver)
• Randy Farmer (Habitat)
• Chip Morningstar (Habitat)
• Robert Clardy (Synergistic Software)
• Scott Adams (Adventure International)
• The Fat Man (The 7th Guest, 11th Hour)
• Dave Rohrl (Plants vs. Zombies)
• Dewi Morgan (Doom Editing Utilities, Furcadia)
• James Ernest (Cheapass Games, Kill Dr. Lucky)
• Ken Peczkowski (Griffon Bookstore, 40 year old public gameroom!

Maybe list (need to check their schedule, will move to above list when confirmed):

• Jason Kopalka (Popcap Games, Storm Crow Gamer's Tavern)
• Lord British (Ultima, Shroud of the Avatar)
• John Romero (Doom, Quake)
• Brenda Romero (Wizardry, Train)
• Tim Schafer (Brutal Legend, Psychonauts)
• Eric Goldberg (Paranoia, MadMaze, Tales of the Arabian Nights)

Check the full list at furcadia.com/legends & get all the event info. Come watch at twitch.tv/doctor_cat as we discuss the history of gaming from the earliest days to the present, with these Veterans of Game Design!

Optional Update and New Features!

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Created: Saturday, 12 November 2016 20:19

Written by Cironir

We heard you wanted an update for your update, so we rolled out an update for the update!

It's available now! The optional update 31b ("Dreaming of Bugfixes") delivers a large number of fixes, improvements, and features!

Highlights:

• Improved performance and speed in both the game client and the editors! Up to 50% lower CPU usage!
• Last position and size of the game window are now recalled!
• More gendered Avatars! The Harten got two new sets of antlers for male/unspecified, the male Woolie got horns, and the Leonen now has a female form and a half mane option!
• Improvements for DreamED and FurED!
• More verbose error messages!
• Portrait download and login errors fixed!
• Numerous bug fixes, behind-the-scenes improvements, and fine-tuning!

Read the README file (included in the update, you can choose to view it after installing) for a list of all changes and improvements!

Update 31b is optional, but we highly recommend that you install it! You'll get prompted for the update when you log into the game.

Problems? Post to the Technical Support section on the forum or submit a support ticket!

Furcadia in the press!

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Created: Wednesday, 28 September 2016 20:43

Written by Cironir

Our successful 32-bit update (part 1, much more is coming!) has attracted the attention of journalists! ASUS, a leading gaming hardware manufacturer, named Furcadia as one of the 8 Games That Changed How We Play! One of the biggest gaming web sites on the internet, Kotaku, featured Furcadia on their front page and talks about the challenges of keeping a social MMO up and running for soon 20 years! Check out these articles and let us know if you find other press reports about Furcadia!

P.S. If you missed our Town Meeting, we have posted the announcements section over on the forum. Learn about all the new things that are coming your way! There's also full video coverage of the meeting.