[dohtml]

Floods, Cleaning, Layout Updates, and more!

October is here, and with it, we have a lot of updates, so let's get straight to business!

We'd like to congratulate Shadow for being named Member of the Month and we'd like to congratulate @Maksim for being named Wolf of the Month. The top posters are still being calculated, but will update this thread once that has been completed.

Please remember that today is the day of the board clean up. This means that all accounts with 0 posts that were created before September 1st (and not an adoptable) will be completely removed. All PMs older than August 1st will be removed. Finally, IC and OOC threads will be archived accordingly. So if you have information you want saved, please do so ASAP.

Thanks to everybody who commented on our Layout Suggestions thread. We had some really good input and will be working those new suggestions into an upgraded version of our current board theme. If you haven't, please take the time to answer some of our questions - we want to make RoW the best experience possible and we can't do it without member input.

We would also like to encourage people to help us change out RoW's skins! We're looking for autumn or winter related skins that will be added to the list of skins to choose from. You can submit your skins here.

Uh oh! It looks like our latest random event is going to get the inhabitants of Relic Lore into some deep water. Heavy rains have pushed the forests' water sources to their maximum capacity. As a result, there is some heavy flooding in the area, especially in the northern part of the Vale. Secret Falls was hit especially hard, and as a result, the wolves of Darkwater Rapids have been forced to flee their flooded territory!

The Random Event thread has been posted here and is free for anyone to join. Remember, though, that this heavy rain and subsequent flooding will impact all areas located near water. We want to encourage you to take advantage of nature's fury and have some fun-filled threads of trying to stay dry.

For those wolves of Darkwater Rapids who decided to leave as a result of the flood, you've been removed from the pack and placed as Lone Wolves. Those who are staying in Relic Lore remain ranked as Darkwater Rapids wolves, with @Maksim and @Namara as their leaders.

As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please let us know!

[dohtml]

Sitewide Email

The following email was sent out to the entire site this evening. For your reference, I've copied it below. Please take note that all cleaning changes will take place October 1st (so to be safe, save any data you'd like before then).

[/dohtml]
RoW has been up and running for the last three years, so needless to say, our forum has collected quite a bit of data in the form of posts, threads, PMs, and user accounts. On October 1st, we will be giving the board a good cleaning. This means that:

- Any account older than 1 month that is a not an adoptable with 0 posts will be deleted
- All Private Messages (active users' included) older than August 1st, 2013 will be deleted. You can download your PMs from the User CP.
- Old OOC Threads will be archived and pruned. This includes threads from the Artist Corner.
We'd like to take this opportunity to encourage all members to do some updating of your own. When was the last time you added your character's latest adventure to their biography? Has their personality or outlook on life changed since they've met so many new wolves? What about your timeline - have you kept it up to date and accurate? Participate in Update Your Profile Day, Fall 2013!
[dohtml]

Also, I'd love to get more responses on our last announcement. So if you haven't, please take a few minutes to let us know what you think.

[dohtml]

Health Stat, OTM Voting, Member Survey, and Post Prompt

Hey everyone! We've got a few updates for you all that we'd like to bring to your attention. First, we'd like to post a few reminders:

September OTM Voting is now up and live. We've added a thread of the month, so be sure to tell us which thread was your favorite to participate in or read! We'll also be awarding participation ribbons to anybody who votes.

Seven Deadly Sins Post Prompt only has 10 days left before it closes! We'd like to see as many winners as we can, so let's get it going!

Layout Member Survey is still looking for some additional input. If you haven't, take a minute or two to let us know what you think. RoW is for you guys, so help us make it better.

In a similar vein, with the holiday season of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas just around the corner, the staff would like your input. Are there holiday or seasonal themed events you've enjoyed doing in the past that you'd like to see brought back? Do you have a nifty random event idea? Let us know! Trust me, you'll want to have as much fun this autumn as you possibly can because Winter is Coming...

That brings us to the last item on our announcement agenda. It's been suggested to us numerous times since implementing the LP system that there needs to be a way to gauge a character's health. Character's injured in a fight, for example, would not be at their full health immediately after. So we'd like to know what you guys think - what is the best way to go about introducing a health or current condition LP that would fluctuate based on your character's experience? We've got some ideas, but we'd love to hear yours too.

[dohtml]

Post Prompt Contest & OTMs

We'd like to direct your attention over to this thread in the Fun & Games forum for our Post Prompt contest for September. With all the stresses and chaos of fall and a new year for many of us, we wanted to give you some help motivating your muses. If you have an idea for a post prompt or other writing contest, please let the staff know. We'd love your suggestions.

The staff would also like to congratulate Grey/@Mapplethorpe for being named August Member of the Month, @Spectre/Whisper for being named Wolf of the Month, and @Anastasia/Kira, @Nina/Lightning, and @Shade/Namara for being named Top Posters of the Month. Congratulations to everybody and thank you to everyone who participated in the voting.

[dohtml]

Vote for Ruins of Wildwood!

Hey everyone! I would love to steal a moment of your time and ask you to vote for RoW on the top sites we are members of.. they are listed beside the affiliates of our game. We are #5 on the Top 50 Wolf RPG's, and this was a hard spott o earn.. and our competition is coming up behind us fast as we barely log any votes per day now. Everyone can vote once a day, we would LOVE if you could do that.. The top sites are what seem to give us our most members, and the more we slip down the charts, the less exposure we get.

So let's roll up our sleeves and either try to keep our spot, OR aim for gold and try to get higher!

[dohtml]

Leadership Poll Results & PP

We'd like to thank everybody who took the time to participate in our site-wide discussion regarding the number of leaders each individual is allowed to have. The votes came out pretty much 50/50, with a lot of good points made on both sides. Rachel and I discussed it privately and we've decided the following:

All players may play up to two lead characters at any given time. In the event an individual player has a third character that is up for promotion to leadership through an activity check or otherwise, they will need to decide which two characters will remain leaders and which will step down.

We had a lot of good points to consider in making this decision, but ultimately it came down to neither one of us wanting to micromanage. We don't feel comfortable dictating character personalities and why or why not a character should be a leader, so setting a definitive limit was the best option for us.

We also would like to say farewell to one of our long-standing packs, Poison Path. After falling beneath the required number of members for a pack this previous activity check and given time to recruit additional members, it's been decided that Poison Path will be disbanded. All PP wolves have been set as lone wolves and will begin incurring the lone wolf dock as normal. PP has been added as a subterritory to be explored.

Finally, we'd like to remind everybody to please vote for your August OTMs so we can announce winners on the 1st of September.

[dohtml]

New Profile Shortcodes & Tagging

Another update!? This might be one of the most updated weeks on RoW, but it's all good things. So let's get to it.

The first thing I wanted to mention is the member voting results regarding the 2 leaders per user. The outcome was more or less a 50/50 split, so Rachel and I will be putting the decision on hold so we can talk about it ourselves. If people have additional comments or thoughts about it, they're welcome to add on to the thread, though at this point, voting is closed.

Now for the main purpose of this announcement: the profile shortcodes and how to tag somebody in a post have been changed. You can see all of the new shortcodes here. To summarize, the new shortcodes are based off of each user account's ID number rather than the username. Doing it this way is more database efficient, and my goal is to help RoW run better, faster, and smoother.

I know a lot of people have very in depth extra user pages, and I'm sorry that they now don't work. But I promise that in the long run, it'll be worth it. To help you out in transitioning to the new shortcodes, here's a couple of shortcuts you can use to help minimize the amount of work you need to do.

1. Copy and paste just the HTML Code of your extra profile page or any field where you'd like to replace the shortcodes into Notepad. Do not include CSS!!!
2. Search for { and replace it with [. Search for } and replace it with ]. This should take care of all instances where you linked to the first name of a character. For example: {Corinna} would become [*Corinna] (minus the *).
3. Replace the rest of the shortcodes section by section to ensure that it is correct. If your entered your shortcode incorrectly or there's no data available for that field, the result should look something like {player=#}.
4. Pack Leaders: If you used shortcodes in your pack library pages, you are responsible for switching them to the new system. The same system of search and replace applies to minimize the work.

Tagging People

Tagging people can now be done using the following code: @Username. No more brackets.

If you have questions or are having trouble adjusting to the new shortcodes, please let me know by replying to this thread. I will taking care of the library and the Life Points, and will be updating the shortcodes in the profile editor help pop-up guide over the next day or two.

[dohtml]

Congratulations, RACHEL!!!!

Today, Miss Rachel becomes a Mrs. =D I'm so happy for you love! Have a fantastic day with all of your friends and family and remember to instruct them to take lots of pictures to show off later. We love you!

[dohtml]

Voting & Member Input

Just a quick update that there's a couple of polls and requests for member input going on over in Two Cents. For your convenience, here's a list of what's going on:

Leadership Voting Poll — Let us know what you think about each individual being able to play two active leaders. Not sure what that means? Read the first post in the poll before voting.

Hunting Difficulty Poll — Our Librarian is sprucing up the Flora and Fauna guide and needs your input!

Fun & Games Member Input — The Fun & Games page has been broken forever. Help me fix it!

August of the Month Voting — It's still early, but for your convenience, a link to the OTM voting has been added next to the chat and the previous month's winners.

Also, just a friendly reminder that when putting yourself on absence, there is a limit of three weeks. If you're going to be long longer than that, please PM the staff account so we can discuss with you what you'd like to do with your characters so other people can continue their plot lines. Absences longer than 3 weeks that were not discussed or brought to staff attention will be removed. All of this is in the blurb right next to the "I'm Away" checkbox in your profile, but we wanted to give a reminder as we transition into the fall.

[dohtml]

Birthday Contest Winners

Our lovely birthday week for RoW is at it's end, but we hope everybody enjoyed it as much as we did. It was a great start to what looks to be a promising year for RoW and all the residents of Relic Lore. As a part of the birthday week, we had several contests running for members to participate in. We'd like to announce the winners of those contests now.

All winners will receive a limited edition rainbow ribbon to display in their profiles. Ribbons will be added in the next 3-5 business days. =p

Thank you to everybody who participated in the birthday festivities!