Note: Emoji reactions were turned on during the beginning of this AMA. Some of what wwadmin said is a response to reactions.
First question is about the Terms of Service. I will answer that now so mods please delete any and all questions related to Terms of Service. that should whittle down many of them
In response to the request to be given 30 days notice, we will update the landing page to reflect 30 days notice. The game will still be in maintenance mode but currently there are no active season passes/memberships in Feral. Upon 30 days passage, we will open the game up for a day, as promised, and everyone can access it for a day.
Someone here suggested making everything in the game free and accessible for the day. I think that could be a cool idea and can look into it if you wish.
i should have made those two separate replies.
3o days notice starts now.
Do you want all items for free
haha looks like everyone likes free stuff.
ok point taken. back to the AMA
What makes us think Cinder wont flop and many of you feel like it wont do well.
To be honest, we dont know. How can we? We have high hopes for it, like we would any of our products. We think web3 is going to play a big part in the future of gaming. Ive seen seismic shifts in gaming before.....console to streaming.....PC to mobile....now web2 to web3.
I respect that others are not fans of web3 and see the complaints
I dont wish failure on any one, not my vibe. I hope we are successful. Ill leave it at that
Can we resell the code or give it away for free?
The answer is no. WW is owned by investors who have invested quite a bit of time and resources to create assets. AJ, TWR, Jump, Dash, Feral, Cinder, TT.....stuff that was never even released that none of you got to see (sick stuff too).....those assets have value and they are not ours to give away.
We did look for feral investment but it was hard for various reasons. I mentioned those yesterday. Im sure someone has it archived or screen shot and can share in /general or on an alt
Mods please keep deleting redundancy. Keep the rest. thanks
Also mods please delete anything that isnt just a question. if it comes with a paragraph of text i want to move to the next thing
Someone asked what we will do when crypto dies out. I will answer that when it dies out. Right now it doesnt seem to be anywhere close to that. Fortunte 500 companies, financial industry, everyone is staffing up for web3. You can even buy crypto with your banking apps now.
what is that red thing? is that a shrimp? lol.
you guys
What wil happen to Animal Jam????
Great question. My hope and prayer is nothing ever. AJ raised my own kids. They grew up playing it. And it still has a very vibrant community that supports it both socially and financially. Im not a dev so i cant speak to product roadmap. But AJ is a core lifeblood of WW. It is our DNA.
I have a feeling many of you were Jammers or still are. Its really an amazing game. Ive traveled the world for work and ive met people from so many countries that have kids or themselves have played AJ. So cool
oh ok there you are. didnt know why reactions took so long. I didnt change any settings, prommise
Im not a dev so i cant answer about the NPCs. sorry. i said i would tell the truth
Brazil? awesome. como vai
What is the exact reason feral is being shut down. Asked and answered already a ton. You can accept or not.
Cinder server questions....answered already as well. If a servers utility doesnt fit our needs, it isnt the server for us.
What changed our minds from sunsetting to closing...that was a difficult decision we had to make. We had read multiple calls here to rip the bandaid off, so to speak, and we felt that ultimately the proejct's utility as a gathering spot for positivity and edification was ceasing to be effective.
Will we get feral back later or is it dead...
Feral will never truly cease to exist. And im not simply saying that in an emtional intangible way (although that is definitely true)
we own feral. we own the IP. we own the servers. We built it. We are proud of it
we arent going to delete its existence.
so in that sense feral will continue to exist.
Im sensing the spirit of your question is will it ever be brought back online for access
that i cannot say. But in saying that I am not saying no either. We are aware of ferals emotional and social impact on its community and on us, frankly. Would be nice to figure out a way somehow to see it live. To clarify, i am NOT making a promise here or even a rep. And there are no immediate plans for any Feral reboot.
are reactions lagging for everyone?
lots of clowns and feces. you all are a tough crowd! but thats ok.
Feral social media....
great question. Honest answer, i dont know yet. We havent discussed it to my knowledge. Sorry i dont have an answer
will we be allowed to make rewrittens. I promised the truth. I have no idea what that is, sorry. So i cannot answer
Sam......we all LOVE Sam
They may know what that is. I will ask them to address that if they can.
Note: Previous message edited. Only change was correcting a pronoun.
THEY
I am always trying. i have erred again. I really am trying every day to remind myself how to be better.
Ive been asked to turn off reactions because it is making my replies unreadable. To clarify this is not punishment. Ive been asked to do this. So i will. i personally like them because i can at least see how you all are feeling. You are definitely feeling shrimp and clown today, no doubt
and bread?
ok turned off. im sorry.
Was feral a beta test for cinder. Dont lie.
I didnt come here to lie to you all and i wont start now
that question is super easy in fact im surprised nobody has really considered this carefully
We started work on feral YEARS ago.
We released it in beta during pandemic.
Who in the world even knew about NFTs back then??
If you did youd be a millionaire by now
and many more would have purchased a ton of BTC im guessing
The idea is totally without merit.
We had no clue that bc gaming would even be a thing back then.
Cinder was a concept that was born just this past year.
We wanted feral to work, it didnt. But we didnt want to lose everything we had built.
We wanted it to find an audience.
but we also needed it to be financially viable.
Remember that even last summer most NFTs were simply art projects. Yes there were some tokenized games like Axie, but fo the most part NFTs were about art, less about utility
We had another project...Dash
Same thing
We thought it was cool, but it didnt do what we needed it to do
So we partnered with Ryans Toys and recrafted it into TWR
The Dash DNA is still there, of course.
But it lives on now as something different.
Cinder is the same
I know this does not fit in any way into the popular narratives here about feral as a test lab for years when we were really doing cinder all along
If i knew about NFTs back in 2016 i would probably be doing something else right now and using a bored ape as my avatar. I dont own an ape. and I work here. Because this is where I want to be. And i didnt really know much about NFTs in 2016. Nobody did.
Very good question, though. I have answered truthfully
we are almost at one hour here
id like to stay a bit
i will assume you are giving me some thumbs up, some shrimp, some corn, and some of that blue thing that looks kind of like a rock but is actually two people hugging
Note: Previous message was edited. Didn't see what it was originally.
In an ideal situation, what would keep feral open
thats a tough one, for sure
im not really sure tbh. I mean, sure, in an ideal world, first and foremost feral would be financially viable so we could pay the people who build and develop it. Im sure some or many of you have jobs, full or part time. Working for free isnt fun. People have bills to pay. So that would be one thing for sure
I also think that the product itself (and corresponding but separate tools like the discord) would need to a place of positivity.
When tools that are owned and operated by WW are being used to harm WW or its employees, to threaten harm (phyiscal or economic) those tools cease to have utility.
Do we plan on using user created assets in Cinder?
To my knowledge, no. We have plenty of our own assets plus we are creating more already.
However it is important to note that the ToS indicate (as you have quoted) that we can use them if we want, so there is no issue of consent. You have already consented. That isnt our intent though. We have enough of our own stuff. You all have created some amazing stuff though, thats for sure
Why not give players more time?
We made the decision to end the project because we cannot continue to devote resources to Feral, be them in game, in discord....or elsewhere. We cannot control elsewhere, but we can control in game and in discord. Doing this will help us get back to execution on current projects.
Dont throw away the disc...lots of memories here
We wont be deleting anything. we are just closing it down for the public. Again, we do not delete things we create. We like to preserve them in some way
We have been asked about leaving the discord in a read-only state. That isnt a bad idea, tbh. Thinking about that.
Compensation question
there are no plans for refunds. There are no active season passes to my knowledge.
MOnster beach party asked 3 questions, not 1.
but i admire the tenacity
we will try to be better in the future.
for some, the lack of comms might be a bridge too far. There may be no coming back. I understand that and I respect that.
It isnt in our interest to lose customers, so it isnt something we want to happen
We are trying now...I am trying now...to at least answer honestly. Again, up to you all if you want to believe. And i understand if you refuse to believe. i cant force anyone of course.
i know this...going forward we will be better at communicating with everyone. We have to be. We will be
No more triples! one question only
Outside workforce to dev Feral.
Again, probably cant do that. We dont have the resources to manage that project right now. Also it isnt financially viable. feral is a big game.
Question about feral funding cinder and vice versa...answered that yesterday if someone can help out with that in general
Possibility of feral closure to be delayed.
Im afraid no. Discord closes today at 7pm MT. Feral game will be opened in 30 days and we will update the landing page.
we encourage alt server links to be shared here so that everyone can have time to migrate over.
A few final words and I will let you all go
Sam is gearing up to share some cool thoughts about feral, the lore, the commnity. I believe they will be in the Sam channel, which makes sense of course
I know you all love Sam. I would simply ask to show them courtesy and respect. Sam did not make any of these decisions to wrap things up
I will repeat what i said yesterday....Sam and Kit were the two perfect advocates for the feral community. collectively the two of them have loved you all and championed for you
We miss Kit too. We love Kit. Kit was so awesome to know in real life. I wanted to simply acknowledge Kits impact on this project and on everyone at WW. Anyone who worked with Kit either in person or remotely would tell you that this was someone who loved feral and the community.
Everyone, please be safe. We appreciate all the memories and we appreciate the passion for feral. I wish everyone luck and hope you all continue to explore new projects that suit your needs and tastes. Best to all, good vibes to all.
thanks