Hello GW!! I hope everyone had a great New Years. The first of twelve features to be added this year has arrived: Salute management. You can find it under "My Quests" and "My Fleet" on Desktop, or "My Messages" on Mobile. I'll put a quick access button at the end of this post as well.

Salute Management finally enriches this long-questioned feature; you are now restricted to one salute per day (3 if you're a Subscriber) and you can also revoke them; this adds value to the simple blue button you all know and love, and means you can really control who you publicly respect.

On the page, you'll notice small blue stars denoting players who you share a salute with; this means you're friends! ... until they decide to revoke it! Being friends with someone will mean more in the future, but for now it's just a good indicator of mutual respect.

Additionally, you can see the days since someone's last login (absence), and the date that you placed your salute on them.

Subscribers will soon be able to "Track" people they've saluted, for a monthly token fee. More on this soon.

This is actually the first of two updates this week; the second will include the January Bug Fix, expansion on the Salute System, and a bundle of a few other tweaks and small additions. At that point, the game version will increment. I anticipate structuring most monthly features/updates this way.

Enjoy, and Salute wisely!

HB

My Salutes

HB here! I hope everyone had happy holidays. To close out the decade, I've set up a mini New Years' event that will run for about a week from now. It's similar to last year's event, but I won't say any more than that. The rest is up to you to discover, so go get out on the grid!

My own resolution, if you haven't read yet, is to release one UPDATE and one BUG FIX per month in 2020.

Thank you as always to everyone who has supported GW and will continue to do so in the new year.

See ya there!

HB

GW is back, baby.

In case you missed it, on Monday the 28th of October, Firestream announced his retirement. The galaxy was thrown into chaos. There was a wormhole at my base that looked like seaweed, or something. KCN made a record number of Discord -terai emote- reactions to every. single. message. Chairman's avatar turned into a literal man sitting on a chair. Eagles became a Ravens fan (too far?). You get the gist.

On Wednesday, October 30th, the core was cooled pre-meltdown; FS announced that GW would be allowed to live on. He graciously transferred the rights to the game to me, HB, to care for in the foreseeable future. It took me longer than it should have (sorry), but GW is now running on a shiny, brand-new server, ready to rumble.

A lot has changed and will change with this transition. For one, I demand that we start subsidizing space-coffee with the Umir Bank (*Gasp* that exists?!). In all seriousness, here's the bullet points:

Money Stuff
+ ALL PAYPAL-BASED SUBSCRIPTIONS HAVE BEEN TERMINATED ON-SITE.
+ If you're a paying Subscriber with Paypal, please cancel your subscription. It will no longer function.
+ GW now utilizes Patreon to handle  Subscriptions.
+ There is a new subscription tier: Server Supporter. This is still being implemented, but the basic perks are 2k tokens/month and a Silver Star next to your name. Check Patreon for more.
+ Anyone who pledges with Super Subscriber or Server Supporter status through November 30th will gain a special profile award at the end of the month.
+ Please note that the new Subscription service takes slightly longer to process than Paypal, as it is manual. This may change in the future. Your patience is greatly appreciated.
+ Single-donation support is currently disabled. I'm working to bring this back online.

If you previously held a Paypal subscription, please consider supporting through Patreon now. It helps me justify the time I put in around here, as well as paying for the Server resources. All Patreon-based Subscribers who have already pledged in the time GW has been down; thank you from the bottom of my heart. It helped me keep my head above water while purchasing the new Server to host GW. I've doubled your tokens for this month, as you were double-billed while the game was unplayable, and set your status.


Other Stuff
+ GW has been updated to version 5.0.0 with the server transfer
+ 2x EXP through Wednesday in celebration of a new era!
+ Please be patient with any bugs you may encounter around the site, and submit them here: Bug Reporter
+ GW App Store and Android apps have been taken offline indefinitely. I will recode these from scratch if they ever go back up. I'm very sorry about this. Don't delete the apps if you currently have them!


Thanks everyone. GW has an exciting future ahead. I'm really sorry for the 4-day downtime, but I'm also glad we're up and running full-throttle. I'd like to give a huge thank-you to FS for 5 years of GW, and everything he's done across countless websites for hundreds of thousands of loyal players. FS, enjoy retirement, and thank you for the opportunity to keep GW alive.

Go hit the grid!

HB

EDIT: GW WILL NOT SHUT DOWN! STAY POSTED.

Hey all-

If you've not yet heard, FS has decided to shut down all of his games so he can prioritize his family and real-life things. I, as I hope you all do, completely respect his decision. This being said, I am desperately fighting to give GW a second (or third) chance. Here's the post if you've not yet read it: https://www.patreon.com/posts/im-retiring-its-31105741

SIGN UP FOR GW MAILING LIST HERE: https://forms.gle/KJQxsuwBH3tewx5M7

JOIN GW DISCORD HERE: https://discord.gg/AxmSDWn

STAY POSTED. CHECK BACK HERE FREQUENTLY.

Hello GW! It's been a great start to Q4 here around the site, with a new Admin (congrats Chairman!) and many other updates. For a quick overview of what I bundled into 4.2.0, check out the Update here. In addition, extensive Spring Autumn Cleaning and reprioritizing of submitted bug reports has been conducted.

Congrats again to Chairman on becoming an Admin. The Staff list will evolve for Q4 within the next week, and there's a chance we may be looking to bring on new guards. Remember, we come to you- not the other way around.

Please take this Poll about a PWR Cap; would you want to see any form of one implemented? Strike up some discussion in the forums if so.

Thanks everyone, and I look forward to what the rest of this year has to bring. As always, enjoy an EXP boost for the next few days in celebration of the update.

HB

Hey all-

The game crashed last night due to something that misfired while it was under scheduled (automated) maintenance. Took me a while to track down the issue, but I was able to repair the Items data table that appeared to be the source of the problem.

Everything should be back to working order now, with items restored from midnight-ish EST this morning. If anything appears to still be broken, please PM me.

Sorry for the inconvenience! 2x EXP for 48 hours. :razz:

It's been a year! In celebration, I've hidden 4 groupings of the following 4 items on 4 planets, one in each of the 4 grid quadrants. And, the planets are each using a permanent "4" image file in the site's logo font to commemorate the launch. They are also now unclaimable. Enjoy the hunt!

Multiplexic Technology
Tularian Gate
System Plugin
100 Tokens

Also, this week I will be attempting to fix 4 bugs and release 4 small updates or additions to the game. More on this.

Enjoy the 4-related EXP, too :)

GALACTIC EGG HUNT 2019

HBunny here, and I'm eggcited as anything to unveil this year's Egg Hunt. Similar to previous years, this open-community contest is based on the concept of players searching aggressively for Easter Eggs hidden in the Galaxy with the goal of finding the Golden Egg, with Prize incentives. However, this year I've switched things up a little bit. So, let's dive into the mechanics of the event.

There are 6 eggs hidden in the FIRST QUADRANT. By condensing the playing field, competition will be much more intense. Each Egg contains an "Eggshell Fragment" clue to the next, as well as some Egg Whites. An additional Golden Egg is hidden somewhere off-grid. The clue to find this Egg is hidden within the clues found in the 6 initial Eggs. Combine all Eggshell Fragments with other items and the items found in the Golden Egg to make your own EGG SUPREME, which will grant some nice Credits and EXP.

THE TWIST
This year, an additional BONUS EGG is hidden in an undisclosed location. NO hints will be provided as to this area, at least to start. If you find the BONUS EGG you can combine its items with an EGG SUPREME as well as other undisclosed items to create an EGG SUPREMEST. This "upgraded egg" can be deconstructed for some really, really nice items.

THE COMPETITION
ONE: The first person to find the Golden Egg is entitled to three nice items stored within the egg.
TWO: The first person to send me a screenshot of a completed EGG SUPREME will receive a System Plugin
THREE: The first person to send me a screenshot of a completed EGG SUPREMEST will receive a System Refurbishment
FOUR: Anyone who collects all 6 Eggshell Fragments and sends me a screenshot of them will receive an Egg Hunter award, unless you have it from previous years.

Be on the watch for other Event happenings! HAL has turned into RABBIT 9000. Ugh. Also, expect a huge EXP buff on Easter Sunday!

THE FIRST EGG IS LOCATED NEAR ORIGIN

Happy hunting! HBunny out.

Oh, and one thing to keep in mind: If you're certain you're near the location of a clue, don't give up. Eggs are near, but not EXACTLY, at the locations of their listing. This is especially applicable for the Golden and Bonus eggs.

A lot has happened around here recently.
Paralleling the game, my own life has been hectic. But you've all already heard my tales of chaos (a day in the life of an HB)

Anyway... I've been encouraged by the rapidly increasing activity levels (and somewhat player retention as well) possibly due to the re-launch of the GW Android app. I have decided to hold a competition, of sorts. The competitors are the collective Players of GW versus its Activity count and Cohort Analysis (indicative of player retention).

If GW can reach BOTH 180 active players and 30% retention, I will add one semi-major feature to the game of the community's choosing, and as such, increment it to 4.1.1.

As a reference point, we currently have 134 active players and 20.54% retention.

The good thing is, you all can't lose! This contest will run indefinitely, or at least until we hit that milestone. A forum post made by myself will be made following the victory to discuss what should be added. Good luck, get out there and tell your friends!

This is not an endorsement of alter accounts. Same-IP / email / device / location accounts are being monitored more closely than ever.

HB

Christmas is over! Sorry it took me this long to get the totals & post up.

Here are the Ornaments rankings:



Congrats to Angamaite for taking the cake on this one!

The redemption rate for Ornaments will be 1000 per fragment, unless the requested Fragment(s) are of your own faction, in which case they'll be exchanged at 2,500 per. If you're listed above, please message me with your desired Fragments within a week. All leftover Ornaments will be converted to Credits deposited into your account at a rate of 4,000 per.

Edit: If you have less than 1000 Ornaments, you can redeem 500 for a Photon Sphere and Credit Megasphere combo.


Moving on to Claims / Revives...



Once again, let's give Angamaite a hearty congrats. Since they won both categories, as stated in the original post, the Ornaments category prize falls to the second place winner; Garadexx! I will give out the Multiplexic Techs with the Fragment redemption upon PM.

Remember to send me those messages! Ornaments will be gone in ONE WEEK. That's Saturday, the 19th.
Oh, and Happy New Year!

HB

SANTA 9000 has targeted the Galaxy! Every minute, his reindeer are spreading a trans-mutative virus that’s turning players’ planets into Christmas trees! You can acquire Ornaments from these Infected planets, or Revive them to claim them and turn them back to normal. At the conclusion of the event, in less than a week, two winners will be selected as follows: the person with the most Ornaments, and the person who has Revived the most Planets. Winners will receive a Multiplexic Technology for each category won. Only one winner per category can be chosen; if there are two winners, the Most Revived winner will be selected with precedence. Also, you'll be able to exchange Ornaments for Fragments of your choice at the conclusion of the event. (the exchange rate will be decided based on Ornament circulation. Fragments from your own faction will cost more)

Note that the virus targets the Faction and players with the most planets the hardest! It will also strike proportionally to the amount of players online at any given time, but will only spread if 6 or more people are online. Also, you will take damage from landing on viral Christmas Tree-planets, so be careful! Ornaments give 1 Credit and 1 Fuel, but drains 1 Health on use. Use it in bulk, or save it for the end of the event for trade-ins!

Other stuff:
+ HAL is Santa again. Uh oh.
+ We put up some decorations. Enjoy them while they last! You may need to do a full (cache) refresh on Desktop to see everything.
+ 1.25 EXP running until the event's conclusion. 2.5 EXP on Christmas day!
+ Watch out for Santa and/or his Reindeer!
+ January Voting is live!
+ Stick around after Christmas for some New Years' Bonuses

Good luck, and Merry Christmas!

At long last, I have totaled the Halloween event and decided a path moving forward.

Beginning with Candy Corn, here's how everyone stacked up:



I think Zaspie has a little too much time on-hand.

Since things didn't work out as planned, I've had to retroactively adjust what would be considered appropriate prizes. Candy Corn will be redeemable at 2000 per Fragment, HOWEVER: if the Fragment(s) of choosing is/are that of your own faction, it will be a deductible of 5000, rather than 2000. Zaspie will also be the lucky recipient of the promised Multiplexic technology. If you're listed above, please message me with your desired Fragments within a week. All leftover Candy Corn will be converted to Credits deposited into your account at a rate of 5,000 per.


Moving on to Claims / Revives...
Obviously, this is the more difficult scoring to handle. For some, it worked half the time. For others, key binds were the solution. Mobile players were entirely unable to revive planets. I apologize sincerely for this. It caused many days of consternation on my part, and I was only able to find the root of the problem thanks to some insight from Skitzo. As a result of all the mediocrity and disparity on the playing field, I cannot award any prizes for scores in this regard. Sorry! However, here's the totals for lolz.



Once again, let's give Zaspie a round of applause. Goodness gracious!


Thanks to everyone for your understanding in the event's flop. I'm sorely disappointed in how it turned out, which is my own fault. If you like this style of event, I'd be happy to recycle it for another season and/or holiday, as I'm now confident things run as they should. This month was very hectic for me IRL, so I also appreciate your leniency and empathy as I got things straightened out. I'm putting my best foot forward to maintain a presence here from this point on, and potentially into a GW2, should we see one in the next 6 months...

Remember to send me those messages! Candy Corn will be gone in ONE WEEK. That's Thursday, the 6th.

HB

The Planetary Plague has hit the Galaxy! Every minute, planets everywhere are being targeted seemingly at random by an Infection that turns them into giant Jack-o-Lanterns! You can acquire loads of Candy Corn from these Infected planets, or Revive them to claim them and turn them back to normal. At the conclusion of the event, in a week or so, two winners will be selected as follows: the person with the most Candy Corn, and the person who has Reanimated/Revived the most Planets. Winners will receive a Multiplexic Technology for each category won. Also, you'll be able to exchange 2000 Candy Corn for a Fragment of your choice at the conclusion of the event.

Note that the Infection targets the Faction and players with the most planets the hardest! It will also strike proportionally to the amount of players online at any given time, but will only spread if 6 or more people are online. Also, you will take damage from landing on Infected Planets / Jack-o-Lanters, so be careful! Candy Corn gives 1 Credit and 1 Fuel, but drains 1 Health on use. Use it in bulk, or save it for the end of the event for trade-ins!

Good luck, and Happy Halloween!

Remember Training?

Well, thankfully, we're not going back to that.

However, I will be steadily introducing a few more bots to the grid. The main goal here is to provide more combat opportunities, especially for newcomers.

The amount of bots and the quality of their loot will be a bit of a work in progress. They will initially be stocked with items but those loot pools may be adjusted as we go. Please feel free to provide constructive feedback on them—as the process rolls along, I'm happy to adjust things as needed. A thread titled "New Bots" has been created in the Feedback forum. Please post any feedback there.

Enjoy!

Good to see you back, and if you're new, Welcome!

A lot has been added, removed, and drastically changed in this update. Everything from quests, to missions, to bots, to items, to the grid itself has been remade, all by hand. While a lot of work went into this update, it was also done under a time constraint- because of the nature of its release, I did not have time to properly evaluate how all of the new data will influence the game. As a result, you all will be the lucky few who get to witness first hand GW in its second coming, and participate in molding it into what it'll become in the following years, as GW2 is developed in the shadows behind the scenes (potentially releasing in Alpha as early as the first quarter of 2019). In your role as stewards of a reborn game, you're endowed with much responsibility. I need your support in providing feedback that will suit not your own needs, but the needs of the game as a whole. I also need your patience as we release balances, updates, patches, and other things from this release. Right off the bat, I need you to be aware of a few large changes we have made. Whether some of these will be permanent or not remains to be seen.

+ EVERYONE has been reset to square one. Only your Awards remain.
+ 5,600 users below level 15 have been terminated for inactivity
+ The Tularian Faction is no longer playable
+ Training is no longer in the game
+ Umir Gate / Queen / Technology has been removed. Umir Tech is now Multiplexic Tech. Swarm still exists.
+ There is a new "Help Ticket" system for submitting Reports. Find it in the Nav Bar or at Bug Reporter ([*bugs])
(please, please, please use the system above instead of PMing me directly)
+ We have an almost entirely brand new Staff team
+ You can no longer build / move objects on-grid, per decree by the Galactic Trash Committee. Traps are an exception
+ Revamped Quest Lineup and changed some Missions
+ Almost EVERY Crafting recipe has been changed, because we added a ton of new items...
+ Nerfed 99% of the Bot population, due to the smaller Game populous
+ Brand new Galaxy Grid to explore
+ Balanced, improved, ate, changed a couple Configurations. Tokens cost more now, Battles are quicker, Etc...
+ Subscription Status has been removed for everyone until I get a list of who is still actually paying. Thank you for your patience!

I'm sure I missed something here, and even if I listed everything I could remember, it would take me a few days to write and equally as long for you to read. Seriously, a LOT changed. I'll try to add any major things that I remember.

There's also a few things I had wanted to do in this release, but haven't gotten to quite yet. I WILL accomplish these, but not until 4.1.0, whenever that will be.

+ Automatic Nightly Backups
+ Content recovery for players pre-January 22nd 2018
+ New Profile UI (this is basically done, but I couldn't fit it in this release)

I have created a Forum for discussing V4.0.0 changes and such. Please stay civil and provide constructive criticism only. Thank you.

Also... We will not have any Weekly or Monthly missions until Sunday and Next Wednesday, respectively. On that same note, August Governors will be volunteer Staff members. Voting will resume as normal in mid-August.

I would like to give a massive Thank-You not only to the playerbase for your overwhelming support and patience, but to a few select people who I couldn't have done this without. SlightlySkitzo, SomerandomStickboy, Benanater15, Mahvl, Thermo, and the rest of Staff- you have all been more helpful and supportive than I could have ever wished for. Thank you. I really can't thank you enough. I'd also like to give a shoutout to an IRL friend who I'll simply call "Classycoder" for staying up with me until 3 AM one night entering item values. Without these people, you wouldn't be able to play for at least another week.

Here's to a game reborn, and its awesome future! Now go get claimin'!

~HB, FS, and GW Staff

PS, now that you've checked out this post, pretend that you've just landed on the Home page. Like the post first though thx

+ The Mobile UI now has a home button on the top and better reflects the organized Desktop UI.
+ The Mobile 'Stats' page now has more options.
+ Global Chat has been renamed to Galaxy Chat!
+ Worm Holes now do damage proportional to your level when you travel through.
+ Worm Holes now have a 16% higher chance of dropping Photon Spheres.
+ Worm Holes now display correctly in the Scanner.
+ Nebula Traps' console alerts now include their location... and it's clickable!
+ Construction Arm Rarity has been fixed, so its auction time and sell prices work properly.
+ The "Seek and Destroy" random quests will no longer assign OP opponents. If this needs more tuning, LMK.

Hey all! It's been a day of development here on GW. I've been working all day to pack some awesome stuff in this one, since it's been a while. I think this Update is long overdue, but here it is anyhow. We're also working on some other stuff behind the scenes, so stay tuned. You'll also want to be part of the GW Discord server.


> Faction of the Week! Every week, a Faction will be chosen by the game as the Faction of the Week based on a super-secret calculation of three generic scores representing how the Faction performed that week compared to the others. Currently, FotW is shown on the Home page under Daily Stats, along with a breakdown of their performance. FotW will have benefits in the future, but for now I want to see how the system works. FotW is chosen every Monday at 12:05 AM CST.

> Verifications! If you've been registered for over a year, you may be eligible for Verification. Verification adds a badge next to your Username around the site. See the Account Verification page under How to Play for more info.

> Quick Action Margin! There is a new "Theme" option in My Options to add extra margin to the left side of your Quick Actions, to prevent accidental clicks or just for a clean grid aesthetic. You do you. Thanks to cypress86 for this idea.

> The 'FS' Menu in the upper right of the Desktop edition has been updated to add Titan Conquest and remove Questwriter. Also, Icons! FS is also soon re-adding us to DestinyRPG's partner sites list, so expect a player bump then.

> The "Pay for Fleet Commander Change" button is gone. I killed him. If that broke anything, let me know, because it was an on-the-spot change while I was poking around for other stuff.

> Version incremented!


Enjoy!

~HB and GW Staff

P.S. Did I mention you should join the GW Discord? Please?

Hey folks. Been a while! I think most- if not all of you- are aware that I've been AWOL largely due to moving in the last month, but also some crazy IRL stuff that's gotten me strung up to a tree, with a big 'ol target painted on my chest for whatever squirrel dictates my daily schedule. Don't judge my analogies, I'm running on 3 hours of sleep and have to mow the lawn, clean the house, and pack for a trip all within the next 2 hours. Nice :)

That's right, I just turned the Game Updates panel into an "HB's Personal Life Updates" panel.

For those of you who are patient enough to keep reading, though, check it out! I actually touched the game code. Version incremented to 4.0.3...


+ Neutral Zone Float Fixed! I think! Also, it takes 2 days of inactivity before floating anywhere, now, instead of 12 hours.
+ Fixed the "become a Tularian" alert :(
+ Whacked the gearbox with a mallet. My mechanic friend told me this would work. Seriously though, while I was poking around I made a few small optimizations. Tell me if you notice a difference.


Also, enjoy 1.2x EXP for a day or two. Why, you ask? I do not know.

Peace!

+ Fixed Station repair issue
+ Genesis Bomb-generated Asteroids can no longer be claimed

Version incremented: 4.0.1 released