News & Announcements - 15SEP11 - NEW TECH GFX, IMPROVED SHARING

RESEARCH TREE GRAPHICS

The City tech research tree now has graphics for all the skills, and the other tech trees have placeholders graphics for the other skills.

Examples of unresearched Carpentry, researched and researched Safeguard:

Examples of unresearched Magic tech, researched Magic tech and researched Sovereignty placeholders:

MESSENGERS

Now displays 1 as the number to be sent in the orders page.

MAX BUTTON

Now capped at 10,000 units, to agree with the maximum number of items you can add to a queue.

GLOBAL CHAT

Need to build 1 building before chatting in global

NEW PLAYER PROTECTION

Increased to 7 days

ISSUES WITH SALLY FORTH

The issues preventing Sally Forth have been resolved.

VAULT ADVANCED RESOURCES

Now protects 10 per level rather than 2 per level previously

ABANDONED ACCOUNTS TRADE OFFERS

When an account is abandoned their trade offers are now cleaned up.

ACCOUNT AUTO-ABANDONMENT

We have just loosened the rules to abandon more accounts - as the number of new players that are joining Illyriad every day has jumped quite considerablly:

Every time a new player joins Illyriad we try to remove an "abandoned account" in the following priority:

0 pop where Last Active > 4 days, oldest Last Active first [non-prestige purchaser]
< 10 pop where Last Active > 14 days, oldest Last Active first [non-prestige purchaser]
Last Active > 28 days, oldest Last Active first [non-prestige purchaser, hasn't customised own profile]
Last Active > 28 days, oldest Last Active first [non-prestige purchaser]
Last Active > 84 days, oldest Last Active first [prestige purchasers]

Last Active includes sitters. Also the account that we are abandoning cannot have unit incoming or an active siege/blockade in progress.

Of course this does not mean an abandoned account will match the above criteria in which case the pool of active accounts grows.

When an account is abandoned by the system at that time it will be removed from the Alliance it is in and all its towns removed from the map.

Note: We've just recently added prestige purchasers to the deletion queue (alas...) and also just recently added Facebook, Mobile and Google Checkout to the purchases that will move a player into priority 5.

This means a recent (or old for PayPal) prestige purchaser will have around 3 months of inactivity before being considered for deletion. Non-prestige purchasers will have around 28 days of inactivity before being considered for deletion.

IP PARTIAL BLOCK

A few IP addresses were blocked from accessing certain pages due to a very bizarre bug. This has now been resolved.

FACEBOOK LOGIN

As part of Facebook's ongoing platform changes; and as a requirement to stay on the Facebook platform, we have upgraded our Facebook login system to use OAuth2 for authentication. You should not experience any difference to the login process.

FACEBOOK REQUESTS 2.0

As many players have complained about the Illyriad bookmark disappearing from their Facebook side panels and as part of Facebook's ongoing platform changes we have bowed to their desire for greater "social engagement" with Facebook. Facebook players will now receive in-Facebook notifications when they are not logged into Illyriad and they receive an in-game notification. These will appear as a count on the Illyriad bookmark and in the Facebook games dashboard.

You will receive these notifications for things like buildings/research complete, incoming armies etc. When you next log in to Illyriad these Facebook notifications will be cleared. Don't worry we won't be spamming your friends.

SHARE ON FACEBOOK

You on the other can do so if you want... In addition to the "Invite friends" Facebook option - which sends out invites that are largely ignored, we have integrated the delights of "Post to your Wall" and to "Send Message" - these can be use from the About Prestige page. These posts include your prestige buddy link, so anyone signing up with this links and reaching 100 pop will give you 50 prestige.