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Breeding Season '15 Registration

Believe it or not, March is just around the corner and for RoW, that means it is breeding season! If you're planning on having your character have pups this year, please read through the guidelines below. It is mandatory for couples to fill out the form found below if they are to have a litter this season. This is to help staff keep tabs on how many cubs we should be expecting.

Breeding season in RoW runs from March 1st to March 31st. Female wolves are pregnant for about 63 gestation days before giving birth. Breeding can not happen after the month of March — hence why sign-up's will end March 28. Breeding threads that are not complete by April 1 will not meet the qualifications for cubs to be born.

As breeding season continues to develop, we ask that all couples that do complete their thread and have signed up send their litter information to the Spirit of Wildwood account, including cub names, appearances, and any other information that is preferred we share. Once everyone has submitted their information, the cubs of 2015 will be posted in a special thread for adoption all at once.

Please, before filling the form out below, we ask that you review the following guidelines for breeding this year:

The Form

Parents' Names:
Parents' Ranks & Pack at the time of the breeding thread:
Number of Cubs: (surviving only -- stillborns not counted)
Link to breeding thread:

Please remember that RoW has a wide age range of players and we are asking that you keep this in mind when RPing out these threads. Overly graphic threads will be closed and removed. Fades are acceptable endings to these threads.

As always, if you have any questions, you are free to ask here or PM a staff member.

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Site Survey

It has been a busy, busy couple of weeks. February is almost over, and the staff team has been working hard behind the scenes to get the site prepped for Spring. We'll be making another announcement about the upcoming breeding season next week, but until then, we want to get some feedback from you on our recent changes and some of the proposed changes that we've been talking about.

Please take a few minutes and give us your feedback with this Site Survey. The survey is completely anonymous unless you choose to identify yourself, so please feel free to let us know what areas we can improve in. We'll begin compiling answers over the upcoming weekend, but the survey will remain up for the next week for you to participate.

BWP: Adventure is Out There! Part 2

Right before the holiday season arrived, a series of blizzards hit Relic Lore. In the snowy chaos, a dozen wolves have gone missing and as of yet, have been unable to make their way back home. With the weather starting to clear up, now is a good time to start looking for your lost friends.

If you're having trouble finding them, then we would encourage you to look to the north. Our Site Map has expanded, revealing two new territories. Right now, only Nightingale's Palisade is accessible to our non-lost wolves; but maybe some of them are still around there to be found?

In order to move into the next territory and to follow the trail of our lost wolves, we collectively need to complete five search threads looking for them. We encourage you to team up with your allies to not only find your missing pack mates, but to explore what Relic Lore's newest region, Snowmarch Expanse, has to offer.

Please respond to this announcement thread with your search threads so the staff can easily keep track of your progress. Search threads can be either small or large group threads, but should be focused on trying to find a missing wolf. If you've got questions, please feel free to ask!

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Silent Moon Plateau, a lynx has crossed over your pack borders!

We've got a Random Event, guys! Anyone who wants to participate can do so here!

Whewwwww.


Everybody take a deep breath. You deserve it.

Welcome to myBB 1.8. Along with an updated version of our forum software, we've got a new skin called Mountain Air. We've got other skins in the works, but our priority was to get the board up and open again so people can get back to posting.

Please be aware that there are a few remaining bugs that need to be fixed. They are:

Current Bugs:
- Word counter on posts is missing
- The postbox doesn't list the account you're currently logged into
- Memberlist isn't organized by OOC name (also missing users)
- Fun & Games page needs some love with design (including larger avatar section for WotM, since profile images changed?)
- Account switch takes you to the bottom of the page; gets caught up with the post author switch link
- Double check fight stats
- Check daily post counter
- Alerts for new LP for staff members
- Affiliate Manager
- Add pagination to LP in MCP
- Stop non accepted members from submitting LP (guests are able to do it right now which is bad!)

The mobile version of our site is functional, but there are a few things that still need to be done to make it 100%.
Mobile:
- Make width of actual content bigger
- Remove background image
- Remove custom profile CSS
- Modal width & height needs to be updated


Please, if you find more bugs or things look weird, reply to this news message and let us know! I appreciate your guys' patience so much! I would love to hear feedback as to what you guys think.

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Upcoming Board Upgrade & Maintenance

Hey everyone! I'm excited to let you know that our board upgrade is almost here. This upgrade will include both an overhaul of the board's software and the introduction of the new design as discussed in in this thread. During the course of the upgrade, the board will be taken completely offline, but I will post a link to a temporary chat room so people can still talk. The estimated time frame for this upgrade is Sunday - Monday for a few hours, depending on my schedule this weekend.

Preparing for the Upgrade

For the most part, this process is completely out of your guys' control. But, there are a handful of things that you can do to help prepare!

• Make backups of everything: your profile information, your threads, your graphics. All of this will be transferred, but it never hurts for you to have your own backups.
• All alerts will be deleted. In order to upgrade the alert system, all of our alerts will need to be deleted. So check in at least once over the weekend and keep note of what you've been tagged in so when the board reopens, you know.
• Custom Profile Skins. Since the design of the board changed, custom profile skins will no longer work. They will be temporarily removed, but will still be accessible from your user control panel. Once I have written up a guide to skin for the new design, we will allow you to use your custom profile skins again.
• Skin Drive! We are accepting new skins for the new board. The new format for skin images is as follows: at least 1500px wide with faded left and right sides and should be between 300-600px high. You do not need to include "ruins of Wildwood" on the image.
• We already have a lot of nice skins, but many of them will need to be cropped and edited to work with the new design. If you don't mind us reusing, and necessarily editing, a skin we currently have now, please let us know.
• Board Cleanup: I will take the time during the upgrade to prune old user accounts with no posts (excluding adoptables) and will be pruning all PMs older than 6 months. You can backup your PMs here.

I think that's about it. I want to say thank you for all of your patience up until this point and all of your patience as we move ahead over the upcoming weekend and the next week. Myself, Grey, Rachel, and Namara have done our best to bug test, but we appreciate your understanding as inevitably new ones will popup once we've made the upgrade.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to ask!

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BWP: Adventure is Out There! Part 1

Thank you to everybody who signed up to participate in the first stage of our new BWP. You have received a tag for an important thread that you need to read with instructions. For everybody else, the Spirit of Wildwood wanted to inform you about a treacherous turn in the weather that Relic Lore is going to be experiencing.

The forecast is predicting blizzards and heavy snowstorms. Visibility is going to be very poor, so unless you want to risk getting lost in the snows, it's recommended that you stay close to home. We don't want anybody getting lost! Pack leaders, we recommend that you keep an eye on your members and make sure that everybody is accounted for.

Keep your eyes on the skies, my friends! You never know when a storm will be heading your way. ;)

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BWP & Holiday Contest

Thank you to everybody who volunteered their characters for the first round of the upcoming BWP! You will be contacted within the next week with instructions on what to do next. ;) Until then, we've got a Holiday Contest that every one will be able to participate in.

Tit for Tat, This or That

All around Relic Lore, treasures and trinkets are bound to be found. Whether it is pretty to look at, practical, or simply fun to play with, your wolf will want to hang onto their trinket because this game is something you might not want to miss!

Whether your character starts out waiting for the Spirit of Wildwood to grant them a 'gift' or they initially start out with something is totally up to you, but here's the catch: Each item discovered or given in-game must be accounted for as it will be assigned a mystery value (by Staff Members); and, it is your mission to find and trade with another character in hopes of that item having a higher value! Trade as many times as you'd like, but once you think you've found something good, be prepared to defend it by any means possible!

Rook attempts to persuade Angier into giving up his deer antler. It looks somewhat decent, but nevertheless, impressive... Angier declines (when his player thinks that he has the item with the higher value) and suggests to Rook that his feather is beautiful and blah blah blah...

Rook, still unhappy with his feather, meets Octavius who owns a smooth, blue-toned pebble. Octavius, who has always liked birds, cries for Rook to trade. Rook, having a soft spot for cubs, obliges. Octavius obtains Rook's black raven feather; Rook obtains Octavius' pebble.

Skoll, who is rather proud of the rabbit foot he has acquired, is determined to keep his trinket; but when Angier comes around, boasting about his item, Skoll becomes irritated and blinded by greed. In a fight for the deer antler, Angier, Skoll's superior, loses. Angier is now the owner of the rabbit foot; Skoll is now the owner of the deer antler.

At 25 points, the winner is Angier, whose rabbit foot had been randomly assigned the highest value in the game.

How do I get an item? It's pretty simple! When you have received an item, whether its through receiving it from the SoW account or through trade with another wolf, all you have to do is post in the Maintenance Thread with the name of the item and the relevant thread. Staff will then add the item to your profile. A new field on your character profile has been added for this purpose, but to prevent cheating, it is only editable by staff members.

What items are available? Have an idea that isn't listed here? Let us know!

You're in luck! The Spirit of Wildwood has many holiday surprises for the wolves of Relic Lore, conveniently wrapped in the presents below! Some are Tit for Tat items, some are Random Events, and some are a few other mysterious gifts. You will have until December 20th to claim a present from below.

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5
#6	#7	#8	#9	#10
#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

Once your request has been completed, the number of bag you requested will be removed to keep the secrecy up for as long as possible.

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RoWriMo Winners and BWP Announcement

Congratulations to all of our RoWriMo winners! We had 10 members break the 10,000 word mark and 3 members broke the 20,000 word mark! That's absolutely incredible! As a site, we surpassed our goal of 250,000 words and have successfully written over 284,850 words! Give yourselves a hand, everybody! For our top 10 writers of the month, you will be receiving a ribbon to show off in your profiles.

We would also like to announce our upcoming Board Wide Plot!

We are happy to announce RoW's latest and greatest Board Wide Plot: Adventure is Out There!. Relic Lore is large and vast, and even after four years of discovery and exploration, not every nook and cranny in Relic Lore has been discovered. With winter on the horizon, who knows what kind of discoveries could be made?

This BWP requires a handful of fortunate volunteers to get started. As with our other BWPs, this one will be rolled out in stages, but if you're considering volunteering one of your characters, here's what you need to know:

• Your character will be relocated away from their normal den area and will not be able to return for an unknown amount of time.
• Your character will not be injured as a result of the BWP, unless they're a clutz or something. :)
• Keep in mind any responsibilities that your character might have before volunteering them for this plot.
• Characters who do not sign up will still be able to participate in the plot in one of the later stages.

So if you're interested in participating in kickstarting the upcoming BWP, please respond here with your character's name. Sign ups will end on December 11th.

Changes to Life Points and Other Things

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RoWriMo! And Other News!

So many of you are probably familiar with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which is an annual event that takes place during the month of November. Participants are encouraged to write 50,000 words (approximately the size of a small novel) throughout the month. A few years back, we introduced RoWriMo and are pleased to announce that this November, RoWriMo is returning!

So how does it work? It's really simple. All you have to do is post! See that word counter at the bottom of the posting screen? That information is now stored and displayed on a sitewide rankings list in the Fun & Games page and on your profiles. That's it! All you have to do to participate in this contest is write!

The staff has set benchmarks at every 10,000 words as a new "achievement". For every 10,000 words you write, you'll get a ribbon to display in your profile and your name will go into our RoWriMo hall of fame listing. Additionally, we have set a site goal of 250,000 words for the month of November! So for every post you make, you're helping the whole community achieve that goal.

Extra Guidelines/Comments:

• Only IC posts are counted.
• Word counts are grouped by user and by character, so if you're user count is off (or your name appears more than once in the list), double check your account linking set up.
• Words enclosed in the [*ooc][/*ooc] tags are not counted in the word count, so please enclose any and all OOC remarks in IC posts in those tags. We're going by the honor system and we can't catch everything, so help us out!
• This contest will run from November 1st to November 30th.

Check Here for the RoWriMo rankings!

And Other News

Halloween is almost here, which means our Halloween contests are drawing to a close. Tomorrow is your last chance to submit entries to the pumpkin hunt contest and create threads for the Trick or Treat contest. Winners for those and the other events will be announced over the next week.

Reminders!

Pups Relic Lore's youngest members are now 6 months old! Most cubs now weigh in at 30-80 lbs. (13.6 kg-36.3 kg.); they have also grown into their oversized feet, ears, and head, are capable of articulate adult speech and vocabulary, and are almost indistinguishable from an adult wolf. They begin to accompany adults and participate in pack hunts. This period also marks their first ventures in establishing independence, brandishing rebellious measures, and exploring the desire to establish their own truly unique identity. Mentally, they are approximately 10 human years old.

RP Etiquette Please keep RP etiquette in mind when posting on RoW. This includes powerplaying, godmodding, using posting order, etc. If you're having trouble, please contact a staff member and we will be happy to help you out! Also, if you accidentally make a post on the wrong account, please post it in maintenance so staff can take care of it for you.

Halloweend! Please be safe and responsible when you're having fun this Halloween weekend. :) Have a Happy Halloween from the RoW staff team!