Popmundo Community News & Change Log / Faun Fangorn


1	Date	Change
2	18.11.2019	Removing somebody's right to have a relationship with you (under your Character Permissions settings) no longer terminates an existing relationship. You will need to manually end it as well for that to happen. The wish for an ability to end multiple relationships at once, requested in this year's Wishing Well, will take care of most of the "problems" caused by this change.
3	15.11.2019	All pets and animals (except for 7 of them) has had their individual sizes updated to be more realistic. Changes will go live within the hour.
4	06.11.2019	The Bag Lady's Shady Friend has expanded his business, and can now retrieve items of yours that were on a person when they died. He still won't touch stolen items though, and we're not disclosing exactly how he performs this new service...
5	19.09.2019	You are now able to deposit and withdraw from your bank accounts using decimals, as in "500.5" or "0.1".
6	19.08.2019	The travel security system has been removed completely, for several reasons.
7	12.07.2019	We've altered the items sold in the Point Break 2019 package and refunded the credits spent on it to the buyers. A revised version of the package has been made available for purchase for those interested.
8	09.07.2019	We removed the Point Break 2019 package from the list of credit products possible to purchase. The content of the package was inappropriate and in violation of our Rules of Conduct. The package may return sometime in the future with altered content, but for now it's no longer for sale. Sorry if we offended someone, it was not our intention!
9	03.07.2019	You no longer become sterile after a sex change. Please note that this only affects sex changes made from today and forward.
10	03.06.2019	As of today, you won't be able to use personal vehicles to get around town while they are being towed.
11	06.05.2019	We (hopefully) found a way to let you block the travel arrival notification, while still making sure that your client refreshes your whereabouts properly.
12	25.04.2019	We've removed the possibility to block the "You arrived in a new city" notification, and removed all existing blocks. This notification is needed by the system to update itself about your current whereabouts when you arrive in a new city. Sorry for any inconvenience! We're not sure why we even allowed it to be blocked in the first place. Blame the tequila!
13	14.03.2019	To prevent permanent loss of items, we've made it impossible to throw away gift wrapped items (presents). In order to do so, you must first unwrap them.
14	26.02.2019	The Bag Lady's shady friend has expanded his business a bit, and will now be able to retrieve all of your items that are stored in a home where the owner is dead and you lack an access code to get in. The function itself is located on the Items & Equipment page of the home where your items are, and you must be in the same city as the home to be able to see it.
15	13.02.2019	A tiny bug in the Paparazzi Chart has been removed. Your current position in the chart may have changed.
16	05.02.2019	The Items & Equipment page in all Lost & Founds will now only display any items that belong to you, to prevent a problem with the page timing out.
17	25.01.2019	Today we redid the way we calculate the progress bars in the game used to present stuff like market segment popularities etc. Apparently there's no end to how tricky it can be for Microsoft .net to round off numbers in a sensible fashion sometimes. So if you noticed a progress bar shift 1% on something you're keeping track of suddenly, this is the reason.
18	25.01.2019	As of today unconscious or sedated characters are no longer able to initiate or accept item transactions. Nor will they be able to use items on other people while unconscious or sedated.
19	16.01.2019	Zombie hunters are no longer kicked out of the underground when they are severely hurt. Instead they become unconscious and will remain so until the player chooses to end the hunt. Should the player not end the hunt manually, the game will eventually return the player to civilization after a day or two. We primarily made this change so we can better help players who are unable to reach the game temporarily due to technical difficulties. But in the future, this change will also allow for the possibility of players rescuing their fallen comrades during normal stable play sessions. Stay tuned!
20	07.01.2019	For those of you who are VIP we've redone the math which produces the stars on your Artist Ranking Details page. Previously, the only way you could get five stars on something was to be the absolute best in the game in one of the areas listed on that page. We've now lowered the threshold for these stars a little to so they give you a better idea of how you stack up against the overall competition out there instead of the extreme elite.
21	26.11.2018	Anyone dissatisfied or embarrassed over an achievement they've earned, may forget it ever existed with the new function available on the achievements page.
22	23.11.2018	13 down, a lot more to go. We're pausing the Wishing Well work for the weekend, and promise to pick it up again on Monday morning. We've added comments on some of the completed items on the Wishing Well page. Go have a look at what's new!
23	20.11.2018	Due to unexpected popular demand of hiding information about when a character was resurrected, we've decided to remove that particular personal data for everybody.
24	03.10.2018	We've redone the system which governs how tattoos are concealed by clothing. The old system was simply not up to the task of doing this properly. There are hundreds of items affected by this change so we've probably missed a few item / tattoo combinations when creating the new system. So if you spot anything weird about your Prominent Clothes & Tattoos please report this a a bug. Thank you.
25	28.08.2018	Since the dawn of time (not really), there has been an unforeseen way of getting hold of multiple head offices for your company. This has lead to a total of 15 (now existing) companies gaining a bit of extra benefits. Instead of confiscating these surplus offices, which we probably should have done a long time ago if we'd been aware of the problem, we've decided that if you have more than one head office in your company, only a head office in the same city as your company is registered in gives you any benefits. For all those with only one head office, nothing has changed. (PS. Sorry for using the word head office obsessively)
26	02.08.2018	As some of you have noticed, you can no longer request sole custody of a child before 2 PPM years (16 IRL weeks) has passed, regardless of the child's age. This new rule was implemented about a month ago, and is there to make sure that the due time that fathers have to submit a paternity request is properly respected (this could otherwise be bypassed by using a Mix Tape to raise the kid's age).
27	12.07.2018	Removed the "In relation to total game time" variable from your Time Alive view, since we can not have it make sense for characters who moved to The Great Heist from Popmundo. Also made a manual tweak to 69 characters who died before we started logging the date of their (first) death, but subsequently resurrected. In these cases, we've added a death date on January 3, 2008, which is when we started logging deaths properly. If you are one of those, and know the correct date of death, please submit a bug report so we can investigate your case.
28	04.07.2018	The character fraternization focus previously had an undocumented feature which allowed characters to interact more often in a day. We've recently removed this feature for two reasons 1. It conflicted with the new system which highlight interactions you've done recently that count towards your daily limit. This system was implemented to eliminate lots of common questions and confusion surrounding character interactions. 2. We didn't want to encourage people to switch focus temporarily with the sole intention of interacting a few times extra and run the risk of missing out on their valuable character updates.
29	02.07.2018	We're truly sorry that we have to show you a permanent notification strip, even if there are no new notifications to display, but due to how the Google Chrome browser behaves on Android phones (a combination used by many of you), we had to redesign the entire notification system. Sorry!
30	21.06.2018	Mayors can now move locales directly to the slum if the locale is falling too far behind in quality compared to other locales in the zone. This was previously only possible if the locale had less than 1* in quality but is now also an option for locales that are 3* below the average quality of the zone. Locales having lower than 1* in condition can also be moved directly to the slum.
31	13.06.2018	A safe Internet is a good Internet. We've started requiring that you use an SSL connection (that's the https:// part of the address) when playing our games.
32	11.06.2018	Power gamers might be interested in checking out the new genre popularity chart. It now shows trends as well as a new way of viewing the chart by sub genres.
33	05.06.2018	As of now your chess mastery skill won't improve when you win a game against someone with a measly chess rating of 800. This prevents people from boosting their chess mastery skill too easily by simply abusing poor players over and over.
34	21.05.2018	It is now possible for mayors to remove obsolete City Zones from their cities. In order to remove a zone, it needs to be empty from all locales. It is not possible to remove the last zone of its type.
35	14.05.2018	Whoops. Clicked past the new privacy statement without reading it? Don't worry, it's still here.
36	02.04.2018	Due to a problem with finding the correct type of bushwacking skeleton needed to complete the Them Bones challenge, we've manually completed all the challenges of that type that were still incomplete.
37	19.03.2018	It has come to our attention that failed attempts at staying in the crypt at Isla de los Muertos incorrectly awards you with xp for killing zombies. We have now fixed that problem and the only way to get any xp from that crypt is to collect the treasure once.
38	08.03.2018	In order to prevent players from increasing their sailing speed by dropping anchor all the time we've now added a 60 minute cooldown on using the anchor. That will reduce the efficiency of this trick while still fulfilling the needs of dedicated sailors. We've also altered the presentation of the Adventurer's Field Flask so it will show its available number of uses. That should remove some of the confusion surrounding this particular item. Please note that we didn't alter the number of uses available in any way, the item always spawned with 5 charges, it just wasn't visible to the player.
39	07.03.2018	The ability to give items to another person sailing the Seven Seas has been removed, as intended. For the time being, you'll receive an "Unknown error" notification if you try to do so.
40	09.02.2018	Starting today, the item details page will try to inform you about any "notable effects" on an item, as in if it can alter your age, health, mood, or distribute new experience points and so on. Please note that it is not at all fool proof.
41	31.01.2018	In order to prevent unwanted use of Channelle 69 and Yellow Rose Extract, they will create a "Puff" that's stored in your inventory when anyone sprays you. It's then up to you if you want to apply the effect (by using the item), or not (throwing it away or letting it expire).
42	11.01.2018	A few minor tweaks has been made this week. The two more notable are the ability to decide whether you want set High priority or not to a forum thread when creating or posting in it (finally!?), and a list of all available team activity types and their required locale and room types.
43	03.01.2018	From now on, weddings shouldn't fail if the selected minister isn't present in the locale.
44	13.12.2017	Contrary to popular belief, we've handed out all "hit machine" achievements retroactively this morning.
45	12.12.2017	Due to a problem introduced into the "conception engine", a total of nine pregnancies between characters on the same account has occurred since the 1st of December. The problem has been fixed, and the pregnancies terminated. We're sorry for any inconvenience.
46	08.12.2017	If you've purchased your citizenship with credits, it's now possible to give it up at the city hall in the city you're a citizen of and get 100 credits back. Rules and conditions will apply.
47	07.12.2017	We've tweaked the election system a bit, for various reasons. The biggest change is that you're now only allowed to cast one vote per user account in an election, in order to make the system a bit less unfair for those who do not control multiple characters. This change, and others not yet divulged here, apply to elections starting from today and onward. Any currently open elections are not affected.
48	06.12.2017	Effective immediately, winning on walk-over will not generate progress in team activity related Challenges such as "Racket Abuse".
49	04.12.2017	Effective Immediately. Entering gates, pathways, tombstones etc when hunting zombies in the netherworld will not temporarily pause the zombie onslaught anymore. This means that you can't hide from the undead by entering an exploring state when trying to earn the zombie survival achievements. It also means everyone will get a quicker more efficient zombie hunting experience.
50	09.11.2017	As of today, and all future festivals, it will be possible to purchase five limited edition festival items from the qualifying round, and an additional five limited edition festival items from the final round.
51	02.11.2017	Contrary to popular belief, your actual skill level has never had an impact on the quality of items you craft. Until today, that is. Those of you who are highly skilled in the required skill of a recipe should start seeing items being produced with a much higher average quality.
52	26.10.2017	The quality level of handmade items sold in shops will increase or decrease gradually as new items are added to the stock. Previously, the quality level would be set in stone the first time a handmade item was added. We're also starting to show the quality level of items when you go shopping.
53	16.10.2017	Due to popular demand, you won't see the "Bills" notification any longer if you have the system set to automatically pay them for you. Please do note that you're still required to have sufficient funding for them on hand, otherwise they won't be paid.
54	21.09.2017	Time flies and suddenly we've all grown a bit older... and so has the age recommendation of this game apparently. It's still only a recommendation, so if you're younger than 18 we're not going to send an angry mob with pitchforks and torches your way.
55	28.08.2017	From this week's City Lottery and onward, you need to be an adult to participate. Any achievements or winnings from last week by underage characters will not be removed.
56	21.08.2017	As of today it's no longer possible to invite someone to the recording to a track once the recording has begun. Mr. Spock made us do it!
57	01.08.2017	All city owned shops (the old ones) have now been removed from the caring hands of their mayors and treasurers. The cities have been reimbursed with money covering for any remaining inventory in the shops, cash in the locales and the initial cost to build the locale. In addition to this, we have also removed all employees from them. This also means that cities no longer need to pay subsidies for the locales.
58	01.08.2017	The old shop types are making a temporary return to the Shopping Assistant search result, to help those who're trying to clear their shops from valuable old goods.
59	22.06.2017	A few small notes regarding new shops; 1. The Shopping Assistant will from now on only show items from the new shop types (meaning that items in for instance old Grocery Stores, Pet Shops etc will be excluded from the assistant). 2. The new shop type will only appear properly in the city locales page once mayors have made the appropriate changes (adding them to a commercial zone for instance). We will give mayors some time to adjust, as well as "old" shop owners time to convert to the new version before we make additional changes regarding zones. Next week we will remove the old shop types from the city locales listing and move any unconverted locale to the slums. It will still be possible to move back to a regular zone once the old shop is converted.
60	19.06.2017	Lovers with a high romance can now enjoy the pleasures of the Kobe Sutra... an ancient guide to the nature of love and the pleasures of life. Nothing more, nothing less.
61	15.06.2017	The Bag Lady has got herself a new friend (a shady character), that might be able to assist you in getting hold of items that are stuck behind somebody else's closed doors. Please be advised that he's very new at this, so we might have to teach him a thing or two during the coming days.
62	05.06.2017	Sadly, any images added to your content with PPML will not show up, unless the address end in a valid image file name (such as .jpg, .gif etc). This is to make it harder for assho... people using external services to try to get hold of your IP address, and breach the privacy that we offer you here.
63	18.05.2017	We've just upgraded substantial parts of our "presentation platform" (fancy name for the jQuery library), and although we've tried to capture all potential problems before releasing it, we're sure there are a few left in the system. If you stumble upon anything unusual in the user interface while playing, please submit a bug report.
64	15.05.2017	You may as of now only apply for one loan at the time in a given bank, and if your application is rejected, you must wait a few days until you can apply again.
65	03.05.2017	If you're in possession of untradeable items which belong to other people it's now possible to give them to their rightful owners. Kind of like going to the police station to hand back stolen goods... but more personal.
66	22.03.2017	Due to popular demand, the Silver Coin will be on sale as a credit product whenever the Venkmann Award challenge is active.
67	07.03.2017	Today we took a long hard look at the record review code which we haven't touched in well over a decade. As a result we altered the way some numbers are rounded off to make your record reviews a litte more predictable, and for a lot of you, slightly higher.
68	06.03.2017	The Cryptkeeper says that it's now impossible to return to the Halls of the Dead from Ye Olde Crypt and the Popogeddon Catacombs without spending two days in either area first. So choose wisely where you want to go or you might be spending more time in the netherworld than you planned to.
69	06.03.2017	A list of what challenges you've completed and how many times you've done it are now available on your VIP Stats page.
70	03.02.2017	Silver coins were temporarily reintroduced as a credit product item a few days ago. The sale of it will end on Sunday at midnight CET. The product will most likely be sold again.
71	18.01.2017	VIP members are now able to hide old songs they've written. This removes the selected songs from the list on your character sheet, and hides the name of the composer on the song details page.
72	16.01.2017	We've removed the possibility for adventurers to recover special quest items they've thrown away from garbage dumpsters. This was done to prevent players circumnavigating certain challenges present in our quests. So please don't throw away items you want to keep! That's always a bad idea.
73	10.01.2017	Kids weren't supposed to be able to pick up the new hall passes at the grave yard. We've now removed the 332 hall passes in possession by kids and we've fixed the bug. Sorry about that!
74	21.11.2016	We've now carefully recalculated the shows which were affected by reduced power capacity in the Sarajevo festival grounds.
75	18.11.2016	As of today shows played on festival grounds will benefit from maximum power capacity regardless of the quality and state of the locale. P.S. As a result of this some of the shows of the Sarajevo festival qualifier will receive a new score before the invitations to the final are handed out on Monday.
76	17.11.2016	As a mother to be, you can now choose what game world your coming child should be born into on your Body & Health page. A few other Wishing Well-wishes has also seen the light of day the last few days. We'll try to sum them up for you in the coming days.
77	17.11.2016	I ain't afraid of no zombies. You used to be able to prove this to the world by staying in the crypt from Day of the Dead to day 31 of the calendar year. This is no longer the case. These days you can prove this to the world by surviving in the crypt for more than 48 hours, regardless of when you entered. This prevents the Cryptkeeper's hall pass from being a free ticket to gaining this achievement with nearly zero effort, and it also fits in nicely with how we envision the future of our beloved Day of the Dead.
78	31.10.2016	All Turkish cities should now display the proper local time.
79	28.10.2016	The amount of song popularity gained when revealing a song for the first time on stage is now affected by the number of people in the audience. For well over a decade, this has always been a fixed number. Time flies when you're having fun! :)
80	29.09.2016	We've enabled secure connections for Popmundo. Just use https//www.popmundo.com instead, especially if you're playing in unsafe environments such as public WIFIs. Please note that we will evaluate its impact on our servers for a few days, and that we haven't enabled it for The Great Heist yet (although you can still use it by logging in to your TGH character via Popmundo).
81	27.09.2016	Do you want to have control over who buys you what? From now on you can select if other players should be able to purchase VIP/Credits for you. This setting may be changed at the Account Details page.
82	06.07.2016	We just added Bakersfield Sound, Southern Soul, Samba Reggae, and Cali Reggae to the game. How do you like them apples?
83	04.07.2016	We've just added a 10 band member limit to artists in Popmundo. We did this to prevent people from easily "selling" highly coveted achievements to ridiculous amounts of players at the same time. We also withdrew a bunch of "Spared No Expense" achievements while we were at it. There's a handfull of bands with more members than 10 in the game (mainly made up of family members and children) we're leaving those be although they won't be able to add any new members from now on.
84	28.06.2016	After analysing the data we've received from TV appearances so far we've now reduced their effect on market segment popularity by 33%. We've also reduced their effect on song popularity by 30% and the effect on media exposure by 15%. Time will tell if we'll reduce the effects of TV-shows on market segment popularity even more.
85	28.06.2016	The new synchronized genre popularity system just went live after two months of slowly adjusting the market segment popularities so we could fuse the old system into the new without upsetting anyone's game play too much. A topic has been opened up in the Development Forum for people who wish to send us feedback on this system in the near future.
86	20.06.2016	We've added a 56 day band membership requirement to receiving the highly coveted (apparently) TV Appearance achievements. We also removed over 700 of these achievements which we thought were handed out in a particularly unworthy manner.
87	13.06.2016	Achievements for Earth Shaking and God Smackingly Glorious shows are now only handed out to band members of 56 days or more. That way people won't be able to "sell" these the way it's been possible in the past.
88	06.06.2016	Super Shotguns can now be reloaded manually with regular shotgun rounds. We've also fixed a bug with the automatic reloads of Super Shotguns causing them to waste ammo. Please keep in mind that Super Shotguns usually fire two rounds per shot and don't necessarily kill one zombie per round fired. The Super Shotgun overpenetrates targets and very often kill multiple zombies with each shot.
89	01.06.2016	Missing your Picture of Grandparents? There might be a way to get it back. Just put on your best suit, stop by your local temple and say a prayer for your lost items.
90	17.05.2016	Our ISP is confident that the connectivity issues that's been plaguing our servers lately are resolved. Page load speed should be back to normal. Thanks for hanging in there!
91	27.04.2016	Attention Mayors! We have now activated the infrastructure funding for City Zones. We will monitor the effects and tweak the formula over time to find the proper balance, and will discuss this more with you in the mayoral forum.
92	25.04.2016	Jokes, Sonnets, and Haikus are now tagged with their creators as rightful owners. We want as many items as possible to have rightful owners in the game these days. It makes keeping track of items much, much easier.
93	18.04.2016	We've (finally?) tweaked sonnets a bit. From now on, you're required to have interacted with your loved ones at least one time during the last two weeks in order for the sonnet to have an effect. This is to allow old romantic relationships to fade even for those of you who enjoy listening to sonnets.
94	13.04.2016	We've started tweaking the artist pages a bit. First out is an indicator on the tracks/recorded songs overview, which shows if you've released the track on an album and/or a single. Expect a few more in the days to come.
95	12.04.2016	Who's paying for supplies of an animal/pet has been tweaked a bit. From now on, it's only the current wearer (pun intended) or the locale owner (who can pick them up and release them at the nearest country side) who's eligible to pay for them, and possibly get the mood boost that comes with having pets. Animals lost in limbo will no longer be an expense.
96	07.04.2016	Autograph book and Silver coin are available as standalone credit products, the latter one only until the end of the month.
97	06.04.2016	Like it or hate it, but we just added support for emojis, usable wherever PPML is supported happy. You can turn them off on the content settings page.
98	17.03.2016	The song page will now display any artists playing it as a cover.
99	17.03.2016	It's now possible to cancel date invitations from your Invitations & Requests page.
100	15.03.2016	The Ukrainian translation had fallen behind, and due to there being very few players using it, the translation has now been closed instead of recruiting a replacement translator.
101	10.03.2016	You may now transfer ownership of your purchased home to any other adult character on your puppet master's account. Have a look in the locale management menu of your home for more info.
102	02.03.2016	Please be advised that gift wrapping a copy of the Halloween Horror does not protect you from its curse. To prevent any confusion, we've made it impossible to gift wrap further copies of it.
103	12.02.2016	The requirement of having a CEO at your record studio has been removed. This will make things easier for company owners with difficulties finding CEOs they can trust.
104	11.02.2016	The ability to purchase social clubs is enabled again. You are now also free to invite characters of The Great Heist to your club.
105	11.02.2016	The ability to purchase the social club credit product has been temporarily removed while we're doing some work on it. Should be back within a few days.
106	08.02.2016	With the arrival of the Bag Lady, the clerks at the Lost and Found found it necessary to up their game as well. You should now be able to pick up all items at once, or all items of a given type.
107	04.02.2016	Good news, everyone who speaks Bulgarian! Your hard working translators has done a marvelous job translating all content, so as of this week, you can use the Bulgarian translation of the game. Enjoy!
108	26.01.2016	Generic shops can now stock and sell the few "Social Club Items" we have. We've also removed the VIP requirement on all such items.
109	28.12.2015	A few of the items from the Holiday item package (not the very special products though) accidentally slipped into the normal ordering system, making them available to shops. We've removed these items from the shops who had ordered them, and reimbursed the money.
110	11.12.2015	As of now, you can extend your background & misc page with a little character trivia. And with you, we mean everyone, not just VIPs (subject to change if it's too widely abused). Happy holidays!
111	10.12.2015	It has come to our attention that it has been impossible to purchase credit packages from our e-pin supplier Rixty since yesterday. Rixty are informed and they have reassured us that the problem will be fixed very shortly. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused anyone.
112	18.11.2015	The forum is back after a successful planned maintenance.
113	18.11.2015	Venues which have been closed due to poor management will now host booked shows like normal. This means that if you've got a show booked in a closed venue it will no longer result in a failed show. However, you might still want to book a new show if the ticket prices aren't doing you any good, or if the power capacity is too low for your stage equipment.
114	03.11.2015	All who have asked someone for apprenticeship but not yet been approved need to ask again, since the system keeping track of such requests broke down. On a related topic, it's no longer possible for a criminal character to ask another character to become an apprentice.
115	29.10.2015	Purchasing an interaction boost should as of now notlead to your recent interactions list being cleared. Let us know of any bugs you find regarding this new behaviour!
116	19.10.2015	You may now spend more than one XP at the time while boosting your songs, just as you already could with skills. And as if that wasn't enough, we've also tweaked the boosting engine, so that if you've already maxed out on lyrics, you'll work (roughly) twice as hard on the melody, and vice versa.
117	06.10.2015	We've now removed all songs on the song market which were put up for sale by characters in the crime game. We've also added code to prevent characters with songs on the song market to join the crime game.
118	03.10.2015	The problems with our Facebook login and outgoing e-mail has now been fixed. Thanks for being patient!
119	22.09.2015	Due to restrictions in Facebook's infrastructure, you won't be able to log in to the crime game beta using the Facebook login. However, once you've set up your new crime character, you will be able to log in to Popmundo instead, and choose to proceed with your criminal character from the Choose Character screen.
120	18.08.2015	Silver coins handed out randomly by the system will now be tagged with the recipient as the rightful owner. This will prevent people from losing these items accidentally when dropping them in their apartments.
121	11.08.2015	Police radios won't work on anyone from our music game anymore. This is intended. From now on you'll only be able to use this item on a character which belongs to the proper crime game.
122	23.06.2015	We've altered the code governing arrests and imprisonment so that these things no longer affect your attitude or focus. The only exception to this is if you're stealthy when arrested, in that case you will no longer remain stealthy.
123	09.06.2015	The closed crime game beta is soon upon us. In final preparation for this we're reworking the "Life of Crime" pages and texts within Popmundo. In our new crime game the old criminal activities from Popmundo will be referred to as Player vs Player Crime, or PvP Crime for short. This doesn't change anything for current Popmundo players so there's no need to be alarmed if and when you see this change take place.
124	04.06.2015	Our hosting provider reports that they've found the problem, that the services should be stable now (at 15:00 CET) and that they will repair the underlying problem "tonight". We're at this moment not aware if the repairs will have any impact on our services, but let's keep our fingers crossed and pray to Kobe that it won't.
125	04.06.2015	Yes, today's another trying day. Internally, the servers are working at full speed, but there is something in between them and us all that's causing pages to load very slowly. This has of course been reported to the hosting provider, who are "working on it". Now, as much as we'd like to change our hosting provider for someone who can actually deliver the services we pay them for, that is our last resort. The reason is that moving Popmundo takes time. Not hours, but days of total downtime, and we expect you to want that as much as us (as in "preferably not"). We're trying to be patient, and sincerely hope that you can be that as well.
126	02.06.2015	Our hosting provider is quite confident that they've finally identified the problem, and have a fix to it which should - in theory - do the trick. They also have a few people with insight into the problem on standby, if it arises again. Last but not least, they are planning to migrate us and all other affected customers to a new environment. We'll see how everything works out. Fingers crossed!
127	02.06.2015	Today's short (partial) downtime with our hosting provider has led to some issues with the game engines. We're in the midst of getting them back up and running. On the bright side, our hosting provider seems confident in finally having found the problem with the firewall. Let's hope this is the last we write on this subject.
128	22.05.2015	We've added two new entry criteria to player competitions. These are based on minimum and maximum character play time IRL. This will allow competitions to be aimed at newly generated characters or older characters which have been around the block a couple of times.
129	11.05.2015	A win isn't a win without a medal to prove it! As soon as your local shops start to stock up on them, you'll be able to award friends (and life long enemies) with gold, silver and bronze medals. They're both nameable and wearable.
130	07.04.2015	We found some really ancient code which made it possible to jam songs to 100% practice level without having near perfect genre skill levels, like it's written in the rules. This has now been fixed so it's working as intended. Unfortunately this means that jam sessions are now slightly more demanding on your genre skills than what some of you might be used to in order to produce perfect results.
131	31.03.2015	We've now altered the code so that at least one band member must be present for the start of a track recording session or it will fail immediately. (Apparently there were still some old code running from the time when we allowed band members to come and go as they pleased when recording tracks... a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.)
132	24.03.2015	We're altering the rules of the game so that whenever someone pulls a rabbit out of a hat it goes into the inventory of the magician as personal property. Hopefully this will reduce the number of roadkill on our highways.
133	18.03.2015	Hospitals ordering vaccines can now only stock a maximum of 200 units of a particular vaccine at a time. When ordering vaccines they must also shop around for a decent price, they aren't allowed to order from expensive factories.
134	18.03.2015	We found a bug that caused it to look like you had selected "no thanks" on your groupie setting, but the system would still give you groupies. This bug has now been fixed, so if you suddenly stop getting groupies, head on over to your Personality page and make your selection again.
135	18.03.2015	We've added the possibility to turn off the red coloring of external links. Use at your own risk.
136	27.02.2015	We just added the ability to schedule your release party in a club of your choice, provided that the club supports public bookings. Please be advised that there very well might be a few bugs in the user interface, so don't make any drastic changes to parties you don't want to see screwed up. Another notable change is that you from now on cannot schedule a release party if there's already one scheduled in the same locale at the same time.
137	26.02.2015	This was actually done a while ago but not properly communicated. Sorry about that. Releasing more than one record of the same type at the same time will no longer award you any additional artist boost.
138	26.02.2015	This isn't a direct change but something we've been asked to clarify. Due to the increased overall quality of songs it takes a couple more updates and/or a little more XP to finish composing a song. We have no intention of adjusting this to make it easier for anyone since we think the increased song quality is a fair reward for the extra effort. HOWEVER, we will be analyzing the data gathered from ALL core game changes we've made in the last couple of days, and should we come to the conclusion that something isn't working as intented there might be additional tweaks made.
139	25.02.2015	As of today, release parties can also be hosted at clubs, as long as they are owned by the same company as your record studio.
140	23.02.2015	We've now tweaked the formula for determining your personal performance rating when you perform on stage. That 5th star is now within grasp and top performers should see it pop up once in a while.
141	12.02.2015	From now on it's impossible to schedule a release party on a date that falls before the date when fans are eagerly awaiting your next release. More on this change and other things related will show up in the forum before the end of the week.
142	09.02.2015	We added limited support for changing the venue of your release parties. For now, you're limited to what other studios your record company can offer you, but once we see that this mechanism is in place and working properly, we'll most likely offer other locales as well. Please try it out.
143	05.02.2015	Release parties has been release (pun intended). You'll find it in your artist menu. Please remember that it is considered a beta version for at least a few weeks.
144	29.01.2015	The points value of the invitation achievements has been reduced. Your total achievement worth will recalculate itself within a few days or so.
145	13.01.2015	As of today it's possible to alter the name of a song and its lyrics after you've finished composing it. (As long as the song hasn't been revealed to the public or has been put up for sale on the song market that is.) You can also see the progress of your song composing directly on your character focus page. This makes it easier to select the right song to work on when updating your character focus.
146	07.01.2015	We've added the option to delete upcoming/unused competitions which haven't been launched yet.
147	29.12.2014	We've renamed the character setting "Talk To" to "Conversations and Invitations" as well as altered the description of it to clarify that this setting also controls how you want to receive invitations from other people. This isn't new, it's simply a clarification. When making that system we decided early on that communication was a requirement for invitations to be handled properly, but we forgot to update the text on the page itself.
148	19.12.2014	Although we really appreciate and need the willingness of our players to spend real money on our game, we have decided to limit the amount of credits you can keep on your account when activating prepaid codes. This means that if you have over 5000 credits on your account you will not be able to activate any more prepaid codes untill you have spent some of your credits first. We have had this limit on paypal-purchases for a long time but when a generous player recently triggered overflow errors in our database after activating "too many" payment codes it was clear that we needed to limit that payment system as well. Granted, we could easily have altered our database to accomodate for larger stocks of credits, but there's a social responsibility to shoulder here as well. Most people, ourselves included, work very hard for the money we earn, and our financial decisions might not always be the wisest. Thank you for your understanding and thank you for sponsoring this game with your money.
149	17.12.2014	A few grocery stores have been able to stock up on furniture, due to a little glitch from the time we tested housing equipment before releasing it. These stores have had their stocks emptied and have received a refund for their investments.
150	11.12.2014	As of an hour ago or so, it is not possible to give away presents (wrapped gifts) that somebody else gave you but you didn't open. One reason for this is that it's rude, another reason is that it prevents some loop holes. As soon as we've released the updated code, you should see a proper error message if you try. Until then you'll just see the "unknown error" exception. We've also fixed a loop hole which made it possible to open other persons gifts when they are stored in your home.
151	10.12.2014	We have fixed a minor bug that prevented the "dance off" activity to appear in all homes (including rented flats). In addition to this, we have added two new activities available for those that have the proper equipment in their homes: 8-ball and water polo.
152	05.12.2014	A beta version of the beta mobile skin is up for beta testing (note that we stress the word beta here). Read more about it in the forum: 2220653.1.
153	04.12.2014	The housing equipment you can purchase via credit products has been moved to its own item category, called "Special Housing Equipment".
154	03.12.2014	Attention all store owners who stocked up on wall mirrors and the mysterious item named "-". Neither of these items were supposed to be available (at least not there) and have now been removed from your stores. All the money you spent on restocking these items has been returned to each affected store. Sorry for the inconvenience!
155	03.12.2014	Please note that the 20% extra credits only apply to purchases through PayPal, or redeemed e-pin codes in our shop. Credit vouchers have a fixed value (1000 or 500).
156	28.11.2014	EUREKA! We finally found the elusive bug causing some people to not get their fire fighting achievements like they should. That system is now working as it should, at least according to the developer who found the bug... right Beavis? Yes, yes, fire, fire, fire!
157	21.11.2014	The rider option "Live TV Broadcast" is back.
158	18.11.2014	We have enabled our ad-system again. If anyone happens to experience the same issues as before, please write us a bug report and provide us with a screenshot and as much details as possible (url to banner, on what page you encountered it etc).
159	12.11.2014	All web servers experienced a short outage this evening as we applied a critical software update from Microsoft. Sorry for any inconvenience.
160	11.11.2014	Please note that yesterday, the servers were updated to display the correct local time in Moscow. This is a presentation only fix, which set the clock back one hour. It does however cause your shows and other things you have scheduled in Moscow before yesterday to seemingly start one hour earlier, so please double check your shows' exact start time before scheduling anything that might collide with it.
161	07.11.2014	For a couple of weeks we've had some issues with the banners on the site. Some players were affected so badly that the game became impossible to access. We’re hoping that this should be resolved once and for all during next week, but until then we have decided to temporarily remove all banners.
162	31.10.2014	A few age requirement tweaks was just introduced. You must be an adult to be selected as producer of a track, and you must be at least three years old to participate in activities. Also, meeting young (non adult) opponents in activities will give you a slight advantage.
163	30.10.2014	We have changed the name of the skill "Basic Tennis" to "Basic Racket Sports".
164	20.10.2014	Attention factory owners! A minor bug allowed newly installed CD production units to have the "price per unit" set to zero (by default). Since the minimum level is slightly above zero, we have changed the price for the affected factories.
165	20.10.2014	We've lowered the age requirement for the non sexual phone interaction types from 16 to 13. Let us know of any bugs you find.
166	16.10.2014	The Ukrainian translators have worked really hard to bring Ukrainian up to speed again, so we've just activated it as an in game language. Good job!
167	15.10.2014	You can now remove your own access codes to other peoples homes. This can be done in the "Housing & Access Codes"-page in your Character menu.
168	08.10.2014	The storage capacity of penthouses has been upgraded to 1500 melvin units.
169	07.10.2014	We've updated the charts on most achievements and most common achievements so that you can either see these charts for all achievements in the game, or core game achievements only.
170	29.09.2014	You are now able to pick up a specified number of items from your locales and vehicles. The feature is located on item details page. We've also made some changes to the various shopping interfaces, to prepare them for some future endeavours. Fingers crossed we didn't introduce any bugs!
171	18.09.2014	A few items in the locale menu has switched places. Don't be alarmed. It'll all make sense in the future.
172	09.09.2014	Team activities that haven't been started within one week will be automatically called off once per day, starting today.
173	08.09.2014	All quest related credit products have now been moved into a category of their own to make things easier to find. Silver coins have temporarily been made available again for those interested as well.
174	08.09.2014	During the coming few days, it may be difficult to reach us by e-mail since we're moving from our old e-mail provider to our new one. Most likely though, you won't notice anything.
175	27.08.2014	In order to help pay the costs for developing and maintaining this game we've added an extra banner in the forum for the non-VIP. Although it's been a long time since we increased the cost of VIP and credits we felt this was the right thing to do. We still think banners are evil though, and will continue to use them as little as possible.
176	25.08.2014	In order to make it a little bit harder (or rather, a little less easy) to get the new activity achievements, we've removed the ability to sign up for more than one match at the time. This will prevent you from participating in multiple simultaneous activities.
177	21.08.2014	A set of new achievements for activities have just been added! They will be handed out retroactively every few hours, so don't call bug if you don't get it directly after finishing a game :)
178	20.08.2014	With the addition of Scuba Gear in the game we've moved existing sporting goods previously listed as toys to the Sports Equipment category. Sports Equipment can now be stocked in general stores.
179	15.08.2014	Company message notifications will now be sent out to all share holders, and not just those with a valid old company license or one purchased via credits. This should remove some confusion in this particular area of the game.
180	21.07.2014	According to the festival rules an artist who cancels their show in the festival qualifying round will not be able to book another one for five days. A minor confusion in the code allowed for this rule to be ignored. This has been fixed now.
181	02.07.2014	When locale managers check out their locale income and expenses it won't show transactions from last game year. This is a temporary effect of the database maintenance we did earlier today. After the annual financial reports were calculated this morning we seized the oportunity to give that area of the database a thorough cleanup.
182	01.07.2014	A new credit product called Antidote has just been released, to help in those very rare cases when somebody regrets their decision to take poison, but are unable to get help from a friend.
183	30.06.2014	Good news everyone! Estonian made it's way back into our list of active languages by some good work from our Estonian translators.
184	27.06.2014	Fancy a chat? The officially unofficial Popmundo Chat welcomes all players who are interested in chatting away some time with fellow Popmundians. Do you want to know more? Please visit the chat info page in the Social section for further details!
185	27.06.2014	We have now made it possible for companies to use a company name from previously abandoned companies (no matter who the previous owner was). The name cannot be taken if it's held by an active company.
186	24.06.2014	Anyone interested in the intricate mechanics running your shows will probably want to know about this change: Taping the setlist to the floor no longer counts as a stage event when determining the balance between the number of stage events and songs performed on stage.
187	24.06.2014	Some diary events for team activities (started or called off up until 08:30 CET today) won't display properly. There's unfortunately nothing we can do about that. Activities created after this point should work just fine though.
188	17.06.2014	As of today, your old blog posts won't disappear when your VIP subscription ends.
189	17.06.2014	In order to avoid confusing results from recording sessions we've now made it impossible to invite the same person to multiple recording sessions taking place at the same time.
190	16.06.2014	Attention CEOs! The day workers were really happy about their increased salaries last week. We have now made sure that all open positions and jobs taken by real characters also have salaries that are at least set to the minimum level.
191	13.06.2014	Attention CEOs! Day workers with salaries below their minimum salary requirement have been updated with the correct (minimum) salary. An ancient bug in the past allowed for absurdly low salaries (some even worked for free!). While the bug itself was fixed about a year ago, the salaries affected were not.
192	10.06.2014	There's a rumour going around that we've added Photographs Published to your VIP stats.
193	10.06.2014	It will be a cold day in hell when we finally add Visible Graffiti Tags to your VIP stats!
194	09.06.2014	We have now removed the old guide Mother's Wishes and replaced it with 3 tutorial guides mainly aimed at new players. Everyone who finished Mother's Wishes in the past will automatically have completed all three tutorials. In the process we have handed out the "knowledge is power" achievement to those that were entitled to it.
195	04.06.2014	Automatic teleportation has been turned off.
196	02.06.2014	To deal with the game engine problems of this morning, we've turned on automatic teleportation, which means that all band members will be automatically transported to their venues approximately 2 hours before the show starts.
197	23.05.2014	The problem with Wonderwall (reward points) being inaccessible from iPad and iPhone has finally been identified: it was one of the providers (SupersonicAds) that was causing it. They have thus been removed.
198	23.05.2014	As of this moment, anyone who purchases VIP will get a replacement Back Stage Pass in case they've somehow lost their old one. This is something which is often requested by resurrected characters which lost all their items when they died.
199	19.05.2014	Anyone who paid ingame cash for a Book of Secrets have now gotten the money they spent on it back from Melvin Stjärnblom. Please read the latest community news for more information.
200	16.05.2014	The Star Quality requirement for signing an autograph book has been lowered to 60%. This should go live within the hour.
201	14.05.2014	On popular demand; it's now possible to claim one wedding ring per person and marriage. This can be done by going to a court house and review the marriage details of an active marriage. This option is only available when you haven't previously claimed or received a wedding ring. Also! Record studio owners and -CEOs are now able to offer record contracts directly from an artist page.
202	14.05.2014	Auto bill payment is here. VIPs can now activate it on a character basis on the settings page. It follows the same rules as manual bill payment, which means that you need sufficient funding on hand for the payment to go through. The process is performed every 12 hours, and since this is a new and not yet performance tested feature, please keep an eye on your finances and expect some fine tuning to be needed in the coming weeks.
203	12.05.2014	Successful weddings will from now on provide the married couple with a wedding ring each. This change only applies to upcoming future weddings.
204	09.05.2014	It's now possible for non-VIPs to ignore persons in the forum. We've also made sure that you don't receive notifications when someone you've ignored replies to one of your posts.
205	08.05.2014	We have closed an old loophole that allowed the item "Picture of Grandparents" to be used by someone who wasn't the rightful owner of the item. After all it is a picture of the rightful owners grandparents and no one else. On the same topic, it IS perfectly fine and possible to gain a second picture of your grandparents in one of the new guides. There's still a restriction on how frequently you can get in a good mood by looking at your grandparents so there's no real benefit of having more than one picture.
206	07.05.2014	VIPs can now select their primary character under Content Settings in the Account Details section, which will sort that character on top of all your character listings. The rest of the characters will be sorted by their age, from oldest to youngest.
207	02.05.2014	Did you ever alter your character focus only to have the game engine give you an update based on your previous focus a minute later? This should no longer be possible. As of today, if you try to alter your focus while the game engine has already begun processing one of your character updates, you will be asked to alter focus a couple of minutes later when the game engine is done with your updates.
208	29.04.2014	We're sad to say that due to low usage numbers and inactivity with translations, we've been forced to remove the Serbianand Azerbaijani translations.
209	28.04.2014	Competitions arranged by dead characters will now be closed/finished shortly after the arranger has passed away. Competitions arranged by players which are "inactive" will close 4 weeks after the competition is over.
210	25.04.2014	Within a few hours or so, the Zombie Tracker will be available also for non-VIPs. Enjoy!
211	24.04.2014	From now on, items should be handed over directly if the person you're giving it to is on the same flight or in the same vehicle. All other old rules for giving items still apply though, such as if you have a relation, if you're over encumbered etc.
212	23.04.2014	Brand new band members won't be able to successfully talk to media until they've been a member of the band for more than a day. This closes a potential loophole where highly temporary band members could be used for increasing your media coverage.
213	14.04.2014	The comic section of It's Pop is back. Feel free to submit some fresh material there, while we take care of any bugs and try to see if your old comics can be imported to the new system.
214	09.04.2014	Due to the widespread problem with young people becoming addicted to vandalism, the age requirement for visiting a shrink has been lowered to 12 years.
215	02.04.2014	Cities can now build more than one stadium each. Stadiums can now host ten shows per day regardless of slots booked. The requirement for accountants have also been removed.
216	27.03.2014	We've now removed the parachute allowing you access to the Endless Desert and the Singing Cactus. Everyone in the desert right now will still be able to visit the cactus if they complete the quest like it was intended.
217	24.03.2014	The old clone report tool is back again. It's found at the help pages.
218	19.03.2014	Tricksy little hobbitses have been using the magic chant to reach the cactus without parachuting into the desert first. This is no longer possible.
219	18.03.2014	The singing cactus will no longer give brand new characters of the game any Harlem Milkshakes or bottles of Dom Melvinion. Together with this tweak we've also sent a bunch of characters to the lake and withdrawn some items from here and there in the game world.
220	17.03.2014	Support for throwing teddy bears on stage, regardless of how old you are, has been added.
221	17.03.2014	Attention young folks! If you're at least 12 years old, you should now be able to go out and "spread your message" on town. Paint graffiti, that is.
222	11.03.2014	We added a new credit product for sticky situations when you're in serious need of a fresh supply of records in time for the weekly record sales. Please use in emergencies only. We don't intend for a credit product like this to replace the regular factory orders. Also, don't expect this credit product, or others for that matter to always be present in the game at all times. For example, an approaching festival is an excellent reason for removing a credit product like this temporarily.
223	10.03.2014	We've just added few requested forum tweaks. Go have a look, and don't miss the new forum settings.
224	03.03.2014	It is now possible to use external images for rented apartments. This option is only available for players with an active VIP membership.
225	24.02.2014	From now on, band members turned producers on track recordings should be listed as intended. Either that or we broke the recording sessions. Time will tell. :)
226	12.02.2014	Vi er røde, vi er hvide! Folks, the Danish translation is once again available. Good job, translators!
227	05.02.2014	From now on, you won't be able to sign an artist guestbook if one of the band members has blocked you.
228	03.02.2014	Within the next 24 hours, a few animals will shrink in size while others will grow.
229	28.01.2014	The system should now properly select a new leader for a social club when the old leader dies. From now on, the person who has been a member for the longest time will inherit the title. Please remember that temporarily leaving and then rejoining the social club causes your membership date to be renewed.
230	23.01.2014	Good news everyone! Our Azerbaijani translators has been working so well, that we've decided to activate it as an in game language.
231	23.01.2014	A bug that prevented us from displaying the "server is going down" message is being fixed now, so from now on you should expect to be notified before the server is restarted (most of the times, at least).
232	22.01.2014	You can now save portraits created in the avatar makeragain. Please note that some of the avatar images are still being copied from our old server in Zürich, and it might take a day or two more to complete the transfer.
233	10.01.2014	Concerned Popmundo citizens are upset about the way the Radio & Video Chart Achievements are sold by unscrupulous bands. For this reason we've changed the rules regarding these achievements so that they are only awarded to players which have been band members for more than one game year (56 days).
234	08.01.2014	If you've recovered a stolen item which you're the rightful owner of you can report this to the police if you want to. This will remove the data on when the item was stolen and the item will no longer be considered stolen goods.
235	07.01.2014	Santa's Sleigh is no longer available at the airport and ectoplasm can't be harvested as easily anymore.
236	02.01.2014	Social club leaders must now manually select a new leader for the club when leaving.
237	02.01.2014	Santa's Sleigh will be removed on Monday.
238	23.12.2013	From now on, it is not possible to gift wrap items that expire, since that has caused a bit of confusion. After the holidays, we'll add a more readable error message when trying to do so.
239	19.12.2013	The "ability" to re-tag items in your name by gift wrapping them has been removed.
240	17.12.2013	The bats are back in Hell.
241	12.12.2013	Two small skill related tweaks was just released: it's now possible to spend more than 1 XP at the time while boosting a skill, and your personal list of skills does not show your hidden skills unless you want it to.
242	12.12.2013	If you are at a restaurant, you're now able to have the local band play a serenade for your date, or for yourself if you're there alone. Just make sure to select the proper song for them to play.
243	12.12.2013	Offers made by the Devil should be personal. You're no longer able to part from them in any way. Use them in the quest when you get them, or watch them disappear from your inventory within a day or two.
244	11.12.2013	The log out button now does exactly that - it logs you out. If you control more than one character, use the character drop down to get to the character selection page instead.
245	10.12.2013	When you're evicted from an apartment for not paying your rent the items in the apartment will now be sent to the local lost and found. You'll be able to pick up the ones which are rightfully yours for a little while before they are thrown away for good.
246	29.11.2013	Now you can control which persons in your address book you want to be notified about when they log in. Click the little pen icon (formerly: read/add notes) next to the person, and check the checkbox in the bottom of the page.
247	29.11.2013	The ability to welcome your friends online is back. Whenever a person from your address book logs in, you'll see a tiny speech bubble next to the notification. Click it!
248	27.11.2013	Those of you (mobile users, those with screen readers etc) who are having issues with the notification popup menu, are now able to make the icon lead to a notification page instead. Just enable the new preference setting at the bottom of the Content Settings Page.
249	26.11.2013	A few small tweaks and twirks have seen the light of day, including but absolutely not limited to an updated recipe list pageand a list of upcoming weddings in temples and court houses.
250	21.11.2013	The temporary lag and errors you've experienced today was because of us doing some major performance tuning. The whole game should now be faster and more responsive than you're used to. Quick heads up: a scheduled downtime is on the horizon, for some maintenance that we cannot do with the game online. This will be announced in the community news.
251	20.11.2013	We've made a small tweak behind the scenes: the noble art of mooning does, ass of today, not create new relationships any longer. We don't think there's a backside to this implementation, butt feel free to report any bugs you find.
252	19.11.2013	It's now possible for mayors to alter the city laws which are still relevant for the new version of the game.
253	18.11.2013	Inviting people to recording sessions and video shoots should now hopefully be a bit easier.
254	18.11.2013	The available interactions for Penthouse and Palace has been fixed. A minor bug made a few interaction types available (that shouldn't have been) and vice versa.
255	15.11.2013	Car Dealers have now been added to the list of available Company locales. As usual they come with both a credit- and an in game cost.
256	08.11.2013	We've added some options to refine your search of competitions on the social pages.
257	30.10.2013	Since there apparently were two "Cointreau" recipes, we've renamed the old one to "Triple Sec", which is basically the same thing. Alas, no need to be alarmed if your recipe list doesn't seem to match the one you had yesterday.
258	25.10.2013	VIPs can now select to pay for delivery when giving away items to persons who aren't in the same locale. The fee is the same as in the shopping assistant, which means that it increases with the size of the item.
259	17.10.2013	It's Throwback Thursday, right? VIPs can finally discover recipes using experience points again.
260	11.10.2013	From now on, whenever the system, or someone else, changes the marketing level of an artist, the change will be shown on the record contract details page.
261	11.10.2013	We've tweaked and fiddled around with a few (many!) things that, in theory, should help speed up your Popmundo experience. Feel free to report in the game development forum if you actually can feel a difference as of this morning.
262	07.10.2013	We've currently altered the rules on booking shows at stadiums so that you're only allowed to book ten stadium shows during a time span of one game year. This limitation is subject to change in the near future as we continue to tweak stadiums for the core game.
263	07.10.2013	We've reduced the audience size of shows at the Big Bang from 50,000 to 15,000. This is to keep extra song popularity gained from the event on a moderate level so it won't upset the core game too much.
264	07.10.2013	All of you Trout Fu Masters out there: you can now name your precious... fish. Enjoy!
265	04.10.2013	Server 124 has been temporarily disabled, since it seems that not everyone can reach it (including the devs). We expect it to be back at the beginning of next week.
266	18.09.2013	As of today you'll get a diary event marking also when your rider was ok, and not only when there was something special to report about it.
267	18.09.2013	Anyone stuck with only kids on their account will now be presented with the option of creating a new adult character with which to play the game properly when they log in.
268	17.09.2013	Personal vehicles in locales which no longer exist will be moved to the local garbage dumps from now on. That way criminals won't be able to use deleted locales to protect their goods.
269	17.09.2013	Friendly dating is now called "hanging out" instead. It should also be possible for relatives to hang out with each other, as long as they're over 12 years old.
270	09.09.2013	Message notifications should now show who sent it, and how many messages you have pending from that person. Old message notifications aren't that smart though, so we suggest you clear your notification lists.
271	06.09.2013	Due to the crash this week a lot of players didn't get their full salary payment today. Because of this Melvin has handed out cash to everyone in the game who has a job.
272	03.09.2013	The shopping assistant now features the item category Medical Supplies.
273	02.09.2013	We've temporarily converted our test server (nickname "stage") into a public web server. Those of you who had access to stage will have to do without it for a while.
274	29.08.2013	We've now blocked the possibility for children to use personal vehicles to travel between cities. We've done so because otherwise people will start killing off older characters only to have youngsters reclaim their vehicles. We don't want to encourage that kind of game play, life should be more precious than that.
275	28.08.2013	If you've got a bunch of items of the same kind with various expiration dates you now get a list of their expiration dates on the item details page.
276	27.08.2013	It's now possible to change the gender of an unborn baby, with the help of DNA Manipulation. It works just like a normal sex change, minus the sterility and the awkward questions.
277	27.08.2013	We added a little feature which allows you to, once per week, enjoy the comforts of your home. Or at least try to... some homes are less relaxing than others.
278	27.08.2013	We just added Statue of Liberty Fireworks to the game. These can be used, in addition to regular fireworks when celebrating the new year, but only in New York City.
279	19.08.2013	Good news, everyone! The Norwegian and Chinese translations has been activated.
280	16.08.2013	Record studios which can't afford their artist marketing costs will now automatically stop marketing artists. This prevents studios to market bands indefinitely without ever having to pay up. Earlier today we also cleared the system of all "unwanted" artist marketing.
281	14.08.2013	New social clubs (Tribe Headquarters) now start in the slum. A proper place in the regular city zones must be earned by increasing quality and convincing the authorities that the club should be moved.
282	12.08.2013	Croatian/Hrvatski is once again available as an in game language.
283	09.08.2013	Concerned Popmundo citizens should be aware that we've decided to remove those (few) Who Is Winning achievements that we're obtained unethically, since it goes against what we feel is the spirit of the game.
284	05.08.2013	Concerned Popmundo citizens are upset about the way the Who is Winning Achievements are sold to the highest bidders, and rightfully so, these highly coveted achievements should not be distributed in this manner. For this reason we're changing the rules regarding these achievements today so that they are only awarded to players which have been band members of a winning band for more than one game year (56 days).
285	04.07.2013	We've reduced the influence ticket sales have on the ratings of shows played at stadiums a wee bit.
286	01.07.2013	Cities can now purchase one stadium each if they are interested in helping out with the ongoing stadium testing.
287	20.06.2013	Audience attendance affect the outcome of shows at stadiums now. This means that if you want to score as well as you normally do at a club you have to fill the stadium. Failure to do so can reduce the score of your performance up to 20%. Also, the maximum ticket limit at a stadium has been reduced to 40,000 to make stadiums less powerful in the game.
288	12.06.2013	It no longer matters if you're a band leader when talking to media. From now on, any band member will get the same effect as a band leader did in the past. As of today, the only things that matter are your skills and the number of members in your band. This removes unfair advantages for certain band constellations while at the same time making things easier for everyone. Jonas thinks this is the worst implementation ever!
289	10.06.2013	From now on doors to closed business locales will automatically be opened when building repairs are purchased.
290	07.06.2013	Ludovico treatment... otherwise known as prison rehabilitation now boosts one of your criminal skills. In addition to making you a fan of classical music. In all cities.
291	06.06.2013	World Tour T-Shirts for sale in stadiums.
292	05.06.2013	We believe in equal rights for credit homes. That's why we've upgraded the default quality for all homes purchased with credits (including those houses and cottages that were purchased in the past).
293	04.06.2013	This change is almost too tiny to mention... The random extra ticket reservations awarded on a daily basis to artists who've reached the limit of what their fanbase is willing to reserve has been tweaked. Artists of lesser fame will see less reservations and artist with more fame will see more reservations.
294	04.06.2013	The beta on criminal activities such as theft & burglary is now public.
295	04.06.2013	The 80% treshold on when a city office is impeached by rulers from other cities will be reduced to 60% during the day.
296	03.06.2013	New players now start the game with some new Newbie settings. This involves a special Newbie Startpage (available for non-newbies as well) and some newbie help scattered around the site. We will expand Newbie help even further in the future.
297	03.06.2013	VIP-players can now select startpage. The selected startpage is shown when logging in and when clicking the Popmundo logo. This setting can be changed at your Content Settings page.
298	31.05.2013	Rules on Crime added to the help section. Public testing for everyone interested in this will go live next week.
299	30.05.2013	Prison Break has been added to the game for criminals again.
300	30.05.2013	The problem with image tags we introduced yesterday should be solved by now.
301	29.05.2013	Blog bookmarks on your own personal blog are now visible.
302	29.05.2013	Hey! I moved down! The excerpt of the Change Log that shows on the news page has moved down under the Community news (and the amount of CN's showed reduced to 2, to make space for them).
303	28.05.2013	Skill rolls got it's final tweak today. All will benefit from it, as it makes it easier to succeed when using your skills, but those who will see the biggest improvement are those with lower skill levels (up to 3 stars).
304	28.05.2013	You can now spend XPs on songs you're composing, to help composing progress. This function is roughly twice as effective now compared to the old version of the game. Also, songs composed by characters which aren't accomplished song writers, can also receive a tiny increase in song quality this way.
305	28.05.2013	The chart Top Locales is now back in the game. Also the main city page holds information on how many business locales there are in the city.
306	24.05.2013	There's a new view for your high priority threads only in the forum.
307	23.05.2013	This Rocks is now available on Community News and on Songs.
308	23.05.2013	Worn items will from now on be listed in the order you put them on. Undress completely to reset the list.
309	20.05.2013	Your relationship listings may appear a bit funky the coming few hours.
310	17.05.2013	You may now download the entire conversation you've had with someone, for reference or safe keeping. Check out the shortcuts section on the conversations page.
311	16.05.2013	The changes we did to the company management pages for employees are now completely done. This means that salaries for does will have to be paid in full. For the last two weeks those of you who hired does in groups only had to pay for one of them.
312	16.05.2013	A minor tweak to the rules on when a club can cancel a show: A show can always be cancelled if it's more than a week away and there has been no ticket reservations made for it. If tickets have been reserved it can only be cancelled if it was booked less than two weeks ago. However, if your venue is associated with a specific music genre, you can never cancel the show of an artist from that genre if tickets have been reserved.
313	14.05.2013	Kids are now able to go on a date with other kids again.
314	14.05.2013	For the time being we've removed the idea of items being secret from the game.
315	13.05.2013	We've altered the age limits on some interaction types to avoid players from becoming romantically involved with minors. This change will come into effect within 24 hours.
316	13.05.2013	Continuous touring without break will lower the personal scores slightly of the people touring heavily. People normally only playing one show per day do not have to worry about this change unless there are extreme circumstances affecting their well being... such as zombie hunts or similar. Really old songs are now worth a bit less on stage.
317	07.05.2013	Theft & burglary added to the game once again. A limited beta with roughly 100 players has begun. Police radios, Gold Bars, straps of cash, and valuable paintings added to the game.
318	02.05.2013	Unread notifications older than one month are not shown.
319	02.05.2013	Added a change log system.


1	Date	News
2	12/03/2004	Hello world! Server time12/03/2004 Do you have what it takes to be a rockstar? Join our new game and see if you have the skills to become the best musician the world has never yet known! We are very happy to open up the doors to our new game. Please remember that this is an open beta where new features will be added over time. If our code appears to be broken somewhere it's most likely not intentional. Stay calm, don't panic and let us know so we can fix it. Enjoy your stay!
3	30/12/2005	Crime wave hits the streets Server time30/12/2005 A crime wave is striking Popomundo, as the impoverished and disgruntled masses ("The Does") take to desperate solutions to their situation. Some places are worse hit than others - truly abysmal parks, to name one of the worst places, are to be avoided if you are a wealthy pop star with loads of money in your pockets and personal safety important to you. Obviously the Law obedience of the workers (which can be viewed in the City Details page) is important. The current crime danger for each locale is shown in it's "header" as a rating for Law & Order.
4	29/12/2005	Use your skills Server time29/12/2005 Skill dependent interactions are now shown with a different background color than interactions that are not depending on any skill. More and more the outcome of your actions are becoming dependent of what skills you have. Therefore it might be a good idea to focus on the skills you consider valuable just for your character. There is no official guideline showing which skills that are most useful. It's all up to you to decide!
5	28/12/2005	Skill details Server time28/12/2005 Skill names are now clickable in your list of skills. Clicking them brings up details about the skill. You can always read the details of your own skills, and the details of public skills on other characters. A note: Collecting skills that you don't bother to learn to a significant level is pointless. Skills are useless until you have some level of proficiency. In the future you might even forget skills that you have no proficiency in and do not use. Don't bite off more than you can chew.
6	28/12/2005	Attention Cover Bands Server time28/12/2005 From now on it is a lot less profitable to play covers on stage.
7	27/12/2005	Master and Apprentice Server time27/12/2005 We are now adding an entirely new way of learning new skills: Find a Master or Mistress, become their apprentice and start trying to learn one of their skills. This can be a very time consuming process, but for some skills it will be the only way of learning them (and there will be much more such skills in the future). The Skills chapter in the Help has been updated with full information about this. Of course, some of you might ask how the Master will learn the skill in the first place. Well, there will be ways... ;)
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