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Annual Pumpkin Hunt

It looks like the Spirit of Wildwood has once more hid some pumpkins around RoW — just in time for our annual pumpkin hunt! Think you can find them all?

This year, there are 13 (lucky number) pumpkins hidden throughout the entire site. The only places you will not find pumpkins are in IC threads, unofficial OOC threads, and actual player profiles. Everywhere else is fair game! When you find a pumpkin, make sure to write down it's location and hover over it to receive a letter. Once you find all 13 pumpkins, unscramble the letters for a spooky phrase!

Once you have your pumpkins and word, submit the information to the 'Spirit of Wildwood' account — everyone has until end of day on the 31st to submit! Winners will receive a ribbon for their profile.. and remember, don't give out the answers in the chat box and spoil the hunt for others!


Happy hunting!

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Halloween Events & Community Discussion

The Halloween Skin, created by Kydnt, is just the beginning of our Halloween celebrations! We've got even more spooky fun and games for you to partake in during the month of October. Our normal random events have all been replaced with Halloween themed events. These will be revealed on October 15th. We also have a Ghost Stories Post Prompt. Don't miss out on your chance to scare your friends with your best eerie tale.

We are also bringing back our Trick or Treat contest. Please see the next post for details on how to participate.

Community Discussion

We're upgrading the site and want your opinion. Please check out our Community Discussion thread and let us know what you think.

Be on the lookout for more festive events!

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Halloween Skin

Things are starting to get a lil' spooky here around RoW.. Huge thanks to Kydnt for making us our Halloween skin this year! We have lots of fun activities planned to celebrate Halloween overt the next month so be sure to keep an eye open.. ;)

Ghost Stories

The first halloween contest has officially begun, click here to see how you can participate!

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Fall Skin Drive

Once more our seasons have changed and to put everyone in the autumn mood, we're doing another skin drive! It's late notice, but Rachel will be putting up new skins tomorrow, so if you have a submission, make sure to submit yours here! Keep in mind we're looking for autumn themed -- but the more unique the better!

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Post Prompts & OOC Contest

To kickstart fall, the staff is introducing two contests to RoW. They are the Go Wild! Post Prompt and the Design Your Pack Territory Contest. With Go Wild! we hope to get your creative juices flowing as you get in touch with your character's wild side. "Design Your Pack Territory" hopes to get you thinking about the land in which your character lives. RoW already has a rich lore and setting, but we want to add your input by further developing the individual pack territories and their significant locations within them. Check out the linked contest threads for more information.

An Advisory Message

The staff would like to announce an official new policy regarding mature/adult content on the site. RoW has a wide age range of members, and out of consideration for that, we have made the decision to remove plots involving mature themes like rape, sexual assault, etc. from the game. These scenarios have only very rarely come up previously, but we wanted to make an official policy on the matter. We are also asking that if your thread, or an individual post, includes mention of these sorts of things or could otherwise be considered matured for excessive violence, to please put a {M} warning in your thread title or at the beginning of the post. This simply allows users who would rather not read that sort of stuff to be aware that it is there.

We haven't had a lot of mature content on the board previously, so we hope that the use of the {M} is kept to a minimum, but wanted to make it an official site policy should it come up.

Thanks everyone, and good luck to all of you who have started back up at school or will be soon! We're all rooting for you!

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New Staff Members & Pack Disbanding

Thank you to everybody who applied to join the RoW Staff team! We had a lot of applications and we really appreciate all the enthusiasm we got from our membership. In selecting our choices, we were specifically looking for members who were familiar with the ins and outs of the game, active participants in the OOC community of the game, and an eagerness to learn and participate in the work that goes on behind the scenes. So without further ado, please welcome: Namara, Mimi, and Ghost to the RoW staff team!

Congratulations to our new staffers! There's a lot to learn about staffing the game, so please have some patience with our new staffers as they learn the ropes. :) Welcome to the team!

We would also like to inform the community that Fenrir has stepped down from staff. Real life responsibilities and obligations have taken our beloved Fenbird from us for the time being, but we wish her well and are looking forward to her return.

Pack Disbanding

Hollowheart Keep is currently in the process of disbanding. Naira has taken her children east and Mapplethorpe made his last stand defending his home. All HHK wolves will be reranked as lone wolves on August 20th and from this point forward, no new characters will be able to join the pack. The HHK pack territory will be converted into a playable subterritory.

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Birthday Wrap Up!

It has been a long week and we would like to thank everybody for celebrating with us! RoW has now entered it's 5th year and after looking back on what an incredible four years it has been already, we couldn't be more excited to see what it's in store for the game in the future! A lot happened this week, so read on for a recap.

Raffle Winners

This year, we are offering three $10 giftcards as prizes for participating in our birthday activities. I am pleased to announce that our winners and the receivers of these gift cards are: Vami (@Elettra), Quinn (@Bayliss), and Sarah (@Datura). Congratulations! We had a lot of people participate in our various activities and if you're curious to see who participated in what, you can check out the spreadsheet here. The winners were generated using an Excel function, which can be seen by clicking on the first winner's cell. Winners, you will be receiving a PM shortly with further information on how to claim your prize.

Edit: Whoops. It was brought to my attention that (duh) the random name generator gives different winners every time you refresh the spreadsheet. The winners listed in this announcement were the 3 who came up the first time I ran the generator, so if you view the spreadsheet, they might not be the same for you. Sorry for any confusion!

Ribbons

A new ribbon specifically for RoW's 4th birthday has been added. If you want to see a quick list of who won what contest, you can check out the list here. PS. The issues with formatting will be fixed shortly. If you won a superlative contest, you can claim your ribbon in the Maintenance thread.

Cake Hunt Locations

For those who are curious, the cake hunt locations have now been posted in the Cake Hunt Contest Thread. Congratulations to everybody who managed to find them all!

Spirit of Wildwood Random Event Threads

This is just a reminder that the random event threads with the Spirt of Wildwood account and our mysterious Raven will be wrapping up on August 10th. A big thank you to Grey who has been RPing our feathery friend in all of these threads. If you participated in one of these friends prior to July 29th, you were added to the drawing and were given a ribbon. If you participate in a thread before they close on August 10th, you are still eligible to receive a ribbon.

July Of the Month Winners

Not birthday related, but we want to extend a congratulations to Kydnt (@Albireo) and @Naia for being voted July's of the month winners for Player and Wolf, respectively. Nicely done, you guys! Keep up the great work! Congratulations to TABs, Grey, and Namara who were our top posters for the month.

Staff Applications

Since Rachel is currently away on vacation, we are extending our staff application deadline to August 10th. If you are interested in applying, please PM your application to the Spirit of Wildwood account by the 10th. The application can be found here. Our new staff members will be announced towards the end of August.

New Forums

We have two new OOC forums! Our Lifestyle Board has been added due to member request. This forum is specifically for all things related to lifestyles, such as food/recipes, working out, music, movies, etc. This board is member's only. We also added Relic Lore V, our latest IC archive. From here on out, all completed IC threads will be moved to that forum.

Thanks for a wonderful Birthday Week and a wonderful year! Here's to many more!

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Birthday Week!

It's almost time! RoW's fourth birthday is just two days away (July 29th!). But with so much to celebrate, we can't limit our festivities to just one day. This whole week is going to be a celebration of RoW's 4th Birthday! So read on to see how you can participate!

Yearbook

You voted and you submitted, and now your 2013-2014 Yearbook is here! A huge thank you to everybody who participated in this year's yearbook, either by submitting their information or voting in our annual superlatives. If you were one of this year's superlative winners, you can claim a special Birthday ribbon in the Maintenance thread!

Activities

We have a lot of activities planned for this week, fun and simple games for you to enjoy. This year, our yearbook has an entire games section with crosswords and word searches. For every one of these puzzles that you complete, we will enter your name into the upcoming birthday drawing. Just take a screenshot of your finished game and PM it to the Spirit of Wildwood account! All members who successfully complete the puzzles will also receive a Birthday Ribbon.

In addition to these games, we also have an onsite Cake walk Hunt! Check out the Fun & Games forum for special instructions for this year's Cake Hunt! Winners who find all of the cakes will receive a Birthday Ribbon and have their name entered into the drawing. You can see the Cake Hunt information here.

Raffle/Drawing

This year, we're giving out cash prizes to our members! Three $10 Gift Cards will be given away. The winners of the drawing will be announced on Saturday, August 2nd. If you want to have your name entered into the drawing, you will need to have all of your submissions (participating in a SoW birthday thread, games, cake activity, etc.) submitted by August 1st. Remember, if you participated in our yearbook, your name has already been added to the drawing, so give yourself a better chance and participate in our other birthday activities!

Birthday Skin

Four years is a long time for any role play, and this year, we wanted to celebrate the group of people who have made these 4 years possible - the community of members. Our birthday skin this year, created by Shadow, is called Many Faces. This skin will be our new default for the next couple of weeks and we encourage you to check it out by changing your skin. You just might recognize some of the faces. ;)

...and finally!

Happy 4th Birthday, RoW!
Cake for everyone!

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Staff Applications, REs, & More

July has been busy, busy, busy! There has been a lot of behind the scenes discussions, and we're happy to have a few updates for the site.

Staff Applications

After much consideration and discussion, Rachel and I have decided to retire the RoW council. It was a great idea, but ultimately the council wasn't able to function in the way we had originally envisioned. We would like to thank all of the members who have served on the RoW council in the last year, and a special thank you to Namara and Arya, who's council term has ended this month. We greatly appreciate all the time you guys gave to help the site run smoothly.

We would also like to take the time to say thank you to Switch (@Triell). Switch has been a moderator on RoW for over 3 years, and has played a major part in keeping this game up and running. However, Switch has decided to step down from staff so she can focus on her leadership duties with Triell. With her new baby boy, her time is limited. So we are sad to see you go, Switch, but we're glad you'll still be in the community and in the game. :D

So we are looking for help! If you are interested in joining RoW's Staff team as a moderator, please PM the your application to the Spirit of Wildwood account no later than August 1st. Typical staff duties include: answering member questions/concerns, maintenance requests, accepting character applications, managing fight requests, and helping to clean up the board. Staff also play a major role behind the scenes in discussion, so we're looking for people who have the time to check in and respond frequently and quickly to those kind of threads. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask either in this thread or via PM. :)

REs

The REs have finally been updated for summer. Sorry about that. As always, if you have any suggestions for REs, please let us know and we'll add them to our list! My apologies if you accidentally received a winter themed RE during the summer.

More

There have been lots of birthday events going on. We want everybody to celebrate, so be sure to check out some of the other announcements and other fun threads that are going on to celebrate RoW's 4th Birthday.

Also, the staff is currently working on freshening RoW's layout. Are there any aspects to the layout or other board features that could use some improvement? Let us know so we can implement your suggestions.

By the way, we've gone through our Suggestions & Questions forums and done some cleaning up and implementation. For example, we now have some spiffy new ribbons for you to claim!

Party Guest...

Birthday Bash Avatars!