What a year 2020 was! As we look towards the future and kickstarting 2021, we wanted to lay out some plans for you so we can all be excited together about what's to come! 

After evaluating Eqcetera¢s status compared to other games, we¢ve decided that it is classified as Early Beta. This means that existing features are still quite volatile in that they could change without notice. Please know that all changes are in line with our vision of the game. We take months to plan a single feature and a great deal of thought goes into every change. While changes may seem disruptive individually, we¢re building towards a greater and more complete experience of gameplay, and we¢ve valued your patience and enthusiasm up to this point. Thank you so much!

Looking into 2021, we see Eqcetera coming out of Beta in August. For context, most games are in Beta for several years with a team as small as ours! This gives us about 8 months to finish up game features, work out all the kinks, and generally deliver a more rounded product for you to play and enjoy. During V2, we made a lot of changes in the heart of the gameplay that expanded what we could plan. The move to V3 has expanded our possibilities even further by providing a stable codebase, more cutting edge technology used in the code, and streamlined code design. These changes mean we can add some really cool new features that would¢ve been impossible on V2¢s codebase ¢ more on these in a sec.

As a reminder, while we are in Beta, we will not be accepting any new suggestions or feature requests. This isn¢t actually a change; we¢ve been doing this since we moved to V3! Instead, we will be reviewing suggested tweaks to current features that could help improve gameplay but anything outside of this will be planned for after we move out of Beta. 

What does moving out of Beta mean? It means that we will not make any more drastic changes to existing features, other than QoL updates. We will be opening up player suggestions again and only adding new features. It also means that we¢ll start advertising on social media and other channels to increase our reach and grow our playerbase. 

Want to see how we will progress out of Beta? Check out our 2021 Roadmap to see details for each month! This is definitely worth a look ¢ some of the new features are super-popular requests we¢ve been getting for a long time and are thrilled to be able to implement in the coming year!

[ Link to the Roadmap page ]

For 2021, we will continue our goal of making horses more unique as individuals while also adding features to improve gameplay and help the economy. Since we¢re moving to a once per month dev update schedule (more on that below), we will have a monthly focus. You can view each month¢s focus on the 2021 Roadmap page! We decided to create a separate page so that it can be referenced throughout the year. Note that it¢s difficult to plan a full year ahead and when we dive into 2021, we could see changes to this roadmap. If this happens, we will keep you updated!

Some highlights include:

• Quests

• Exploration

• Player and Horse Careers

• Updates and additions to Associations & Clubs

• Eggs & Straws (woo!)

• A few features that haven¢t been revealed yet!

The roadmap does not include art updates or new breeds ¢ though we have the next year planned for those, too. °

Looking at 2021, most of the changes left to be added to Eqcetera are quite large. This means it will take more development and testing time than our previous schedule accounts for. Thus, we will be moving our development updates to once per month. This does not mean that smaller updates can¢t happen in between such as bug fixes, updates, and smaller tweaks. However, for the large game-changing updates, we need more time.

Development updates will not be scheduled on the calendar since large features require lots of testing, fixes, and code time. However, we do aim to keep on the once a month update schedule. 

At this point in time, we will also be moving our art updates to once per month. This allows us to better budget for art and potentially get a stockpile of art going so if Solo ever needs a break, it will be possible in the future. If revenue for the game picks up this year, we will likely move back to a more frequent art schedule.

As a reminder, to ring in the new year together, we are bringing back a player favorite, BINGO! We will be hosting a few rounds of BINGO on our Discord on January 2nd at 7 pm EST/Gametime. A round of BINGO will also be held in the forum for those without Discord on January 2nd at 5 pm EST/Gametime. Our BINGO theme revolves around everything we completed in 2020. :)

Random Knowledge Post your ID with your entry or it will not count. Reply to this post with a piece of random / useless knowledge you have. It can be about anything, owls, trucks, astronomy, your choice! Keep it pg-13. Ends: 6:50 AM (you get 45 mins) Prize: 10 or more winners will be randomly selected to receive a winter doodlecorn of choice. When times up, I will staff only this so that I can quickly nab winners without needing to sort through valid time entries.

Hello, hello! Sadi here to toss out a quick update on the FoF stuff. I JUST tossed the FoF links to staff to get their votes in for winners. There's 15+ contests to judge, many of which will take time to go through. So, I am giving them two weeks to get their votes in. Please allow for that amount of time to pass before PMing me to get any information regarding winners. I'll be rolling out winners and credits together, so please keep an eye out for that. Thank you everyone who partook! Many of the contests reached the boosted prizes stage, y'all did great. :) Have a fantastic night! Sadi.

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While taking a relaxing sleigh ride through the fresh fallen snow, admiring winters wonderland, we came to a sudden halt!
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The site had a DNS issue earlier coming from the servers on the west coast. Our server in particular is West coast based so we were down for a bit. Things look ok now and back to normal.
Any time the site is down you can find information about what is happening on the DISCORD SERVER. Please feel free to go there to check or ask questions or look for help as someone is usually there

Discord info: Discord Server
Please go here and make your acct so when you need it, it will be there.

Thanks!

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This weeks raffle was won by Exemplary.

They received 1,926,900 IP!

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Scratchcards

First Place, winning 585,869 IcePoints:WoozinessSecond Place, winning 457,270 IcePoints:irissaThird Place, winning 110,670 IcePoints:Thor

Game Trophies

The latest trophies have been awarded, and the leaders are as follows:

First Place, with a score of 335:

reggie
Second Place, with a score of 315:

Wooziness
Third Place, with a score of 314:

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Second Place, with a score of 60010:

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Wooziness

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Third Place, with a score of 351:

Elliesaur

First Place, with a score of 260:

reggie
Second Place, with a score of 250:

Wooziness
Third Place, with a score of 180:

RedSloth

First Place, with a score of 1151:

IcePrincess
Second Place, with a score of 308:

reggie
Third Place, with a score of 307:

Mimoso

First Place, with a score of 77:

Thor
Second Place, with a score of 69:

Wooziness
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JaniceRuth

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reggie
Second Place, with a score of 17850:

Wooziness
Third Place, with a score of 10150:

Elliesaur

First Place, with a score of 209:

Thor
Second Place, with a score of 197:

Wooziness
Third Place, with a score of 178:

Elliesaur

Bethany won last week's Battle Royale with a time of 85 seconds! All who completed the Battle Royale have been awarded their cP prize and first, second, and third place have also won trophies for their profiles.

Sign up your Ichumon in this week's Battle Royale Contest!

You will need to kill 19 Ice Dolf in the Battle Royale Map as fast as you can. The quickest user to complete the battles will receive the top prize of 25,000 cP!

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Dicey Mice Badges

Dicey Mice Diamond Badge: Jake_

Dicey Mice Titanium Badge: ARB408

Dicey Mice Leather Badge: WindHallow

Mini Match Badges

Mini Match Diamond Badge: goodwitchev64

Mini Match Titanium Badge: misty-dreamer

Mini Match Leather Badge: PameLily-Gracy

Crash Extreme Badges

Crash Extreme Diamond Badge: steenbokker

Crash Extreme Titanium Badge: SweetFire

Crash Extreme Leather Badge: chiquitabonita8

Sugar Rush Badges

Sugar Rush Diamond Badge: SummerMaple

Sugar Rush Titanium Badge: PameLily-Gracy

Sugar Rush Leather Badge: May

Mini Bubbles Badges

Mini Bubbles Diamond Badge: steenbokker

Mini Bubbles Titanium Badge: PameLily-Gracy

Mini Bubbles Leather Badge: -tiger-tiger-

Bubbas Blocks Badges

Bubbas Blocks Diamond Badge: Selene33

Bubbas Blocks Titanium Badge: SC

Bubbas Blocks Leather Badge: Austria

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As we move into January, new Items can be found in the I.C.E Shop for the duration of the month! Head on over to pick up the new Rock Candy Necklace and Rainbow Snowda Pack Ice Cube, along with the returning Hamburger Cupcake. Each of these is priced at 500 IceCash (or 450 IceCash for Gold Members)!



Additionally, a few of our resident shopkeepers have added some new Items to their stock to help ring in the new year! The sweet Sticky Pawprint Stamp can be found over at the United Terrafrost Post Office while you can find the unfortunate Tragic Chocolate Figurine over at the Toy Trunk. The Tragic Chocolate Figurine will also be rewarded by the Plushie Quest, while the Space Quest will start requesting it in a week's time.



Finally, if you didn't manage to get all the monthly Items that you wanted from last year's I.C.E. stock, you can now pick up the new Mystifying ICE Box for 1,000 IceCash (or 900 IceCash for Gold Members)!

1st: Tim won a Magical Black Ichu Mirror Shard.
2nd: MothMan won a Cyclopic.
3rd: chewygranola18
They have each also won 1,595 iP and trophies for their profile!


A new Restock Race has begun!
You will need to purchase 13 Orange Zirafa Plushie from the Mushroom Shops before next Saturday. The Ichuan with the fastest time wins. Remember your timer starts with your first purchase of the item, Good luck!