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Greetings from Wytheria! Lots of exciting news to share. We have been spending a lot of time shifting through the site by clearing up a lot of reported bugs. We have also been taking care of behind the scenes maintenance, as always. It's unfortunate that you guys don't get to see that aspect of our work. It consumes the majority of our time.



In an effort to lighten the database, we've cleared out abandoned accounts. Any accounts that were left unattended for over a year were deleted. Thankfully, we were able to find all of their companions new homes.



Another upcoming change to the site is going to be a format change to make game play simpler. In the process of all this, we will also be expanded the storyline, making it more involved.



Scurvy Simon approves this blog!!

Everything's Appreciated

NEW PET PENGUIN!

Brook officially announced today that you may now adopt Pengus from her Rekkits Point seaside laboratory. The footprints belonged to a particularly sneaky baby Pengu so that is one mystery solved. In honor of the new companion, Pmart is releasing a cool treat called the Penguin pop (As their name implies, Pengu are basically Wytherian Penguins).

New Enemy In Desert!

The legendary Phoenix bird has been sighted in the desert region of Wytheria. Beware! This is one fierce creature, but the rewards can be great for defeating one of these beasts! If you find baby phoenix birds in the wild or at Kaji's stall they are being accepted as minions.

[IMG]http://wytheria.com/images/items/Baby%20Phoenix.gif[/IMG]

Face Lift

Well we are done with Wytheria's new home page. The look of it is just right, I think, for a site targeting the typical petsite audience (that would be kids, and kids@heart).

The page is very colorful, contains some fun new imagery and information as well as some flash animations that we've had for a few years and never had a place for on the site. This should attract some more attention to us and reflect the new image we're trying to project more accurately.

Watch Wytheria for more fun updates. We have quite a few things planned.

Wytherian Times

Progress is being made on the new front page design. Hopefully it will not only look more fun, but be more intuitive as well. We're going to keep the random item, random pet, and most current news post features that were on the previous design. We're going to ad some flash animations to spice things up and easy to find links to things like the TOS, lost password, and more information.

A new pet has been designed and is being added. It will be adoptable from Rekkit's Point and of course it will come in all colors including Light and Shadow looks.What species it is... well who am I kidding? We're not going to spoil the secret on our blog. You'll have to play the game to find out.

We've tweaked the message board system, gotten rid of the flash navigation altogether, and we're working on organizing staff for the future. There is a big pile of player suggestions in our database that we're going to go through and impliment for your saticefaction and an increase in fun value.

We've also been busy supporting ourselves and wytheria financially by doing commissions (for a variety of clients) so we haven't had the development time I sinceerly wish we did.

I, well "we", hope to see you there!
-Cameo
Wytherian Developer

Work begins!

Today we officially began real work on the revamp of the "original" wytheria. We're updating a new layout that is much simpler since our number one complaint was navigation. It will have links to all of the things pet site players expect.

We're also working on a new front page.

In order to simplify some of the game play (also per player request) we have made traveling via train free.

The news post reads as follows:

"Profits are up! Thanks to the booming Quintessence business and a government subsidization approved by mayor Cameo, the Wytherian Transit Authority announces free fares! That's right, get to Rekkits at no cost. Happy commuting."

Also along these lines we are adding a small feature that shows you the most popular/most important quests to earn money that's just a click away (see "help") as well as a briefing about some of the main characters and storyline. We are removing the right-side flash navigation system as it seemed to "over complicate" things. All the links you need quick access to will be on the top or left hand navigation bar. Happy traveling! Look forward to more changes soon!

Wytheria: A new beginning

Wytheria has had many evolutions in it's years servicing the gaming community. It started out as a rather humble pet-site hosted on a shared server and using pre-made scripts. But it got popular quickly in spite of these deficiencies. This was owing mostly to the tight, friendly community, unusual storyline and appealing art. Over the years the storyline, and the game play, continued to develop and become extremely complex. This is when we started having problems:

Because Wytheria started out as a pet site and our original player base and staff were drawn there because of their interest in these pet sites, Wytheria has always tried to keep to the standards of this platform (classic system of forums, create, player shops, arcade games and quests) while trying to incorporate the developers' love of more complicated and involved role playing games. This lead to a serious problem. Players who wanted a pet site were turned off by our complicated interface, plot, and excessive amounts of reading required to immerse yourself in the world, while role players were turned off by some of the childish elements involved such as pets that could change color as they thought "this wasn't one of those games." Therefore we lost touch with both of our target audiences.

The Past:

We did actually make enough money to pay for the site but it was mostly staff buying upgrades and obviously that's not going to work for long term success. But we do have a very nice and original upgrades shop offering some things unique to wytheria. We also won VPL's "Most Original Petsite of 2008" award (we were in close competition with Exhibited Sim, a dinosaur sim game). We had over 2,000 real humans register to play and were praised for our extremely original plot and features.
The Future:

In light of what we have learned from our past experiences we are now going to split Wytheria in two. On one side we will simplify the original Wytheria: Mystic Island game into strictly a pet site. It will have the same features, pets, and art, but the layout and plot will be simplified and made easy to follow for the kiddies. We'll keep color changing pets that grow with male and female images as we have always had but we will really strip it down.

The other side of the coin will be a new site, which may include companions, but most of the other standard pet-site features are going to be done away with in favor of a more RPG style play. The story line will be "matured" to appeal to the older audiences and the art will be improved and matured as well. This new site will basically be a "second chapter" of the children's site, and original, Wytheria. Many of your old favorite characters and animals will return, but, it will be in an entirely new situation and style of play.

Work on this project has already begun but we will not do any major advertising for it for a long time to come. We're going to make sure all the features work flawlessly before opening to the public. The game will spend a long time in development and in beta before we advertise it so that we won't have a huge members base until we are ready for it.

Previews of the new art and storyline will be coming soon! We are currently in search of a working-title. More info coming your way soon!
-Cameo

Wytherian Chronicles

Good afternoon Wytherians and visitors!

While we have not been adding a lot of features to the site, we have been working on a few behind the scenes projects.

Also, we've noticed very few of you, if any, have discovered all of the features and worlds that Wytheria has. So we are giving you some time to catch up, and actually play the game.

There has been some issues with ftp as of late, and ruining the front page of the site. We apologize for that and the kinks are being worked out.

Stay tuned for some news about an upcoming split!