May 2008

==A Word from Alpha Girl, on Walkabout==
May 15th, 2008 
I was having so much fun exploring Celliwig that I almost forgot my favorite part, Stonehenge! And you won't believe how big it is in person! It's just the place for a BIG PARTY. I think over 200 of my best friends and I could totally "rock" there! I know where I'll be dancing, on the top of one of those 24 foot high trilithons! I also noticed that one of the latest medieval tunes is playing in downtown Celliwig, now if I could only remember its name.
Oh by the way, if you haven't seen Stonehenge yet, just take a left at the castle gate, you can't miss it!
Can't wait to see you there at the first big party!
Alpha Girl out
==A Word From Sara==
Hi Everyone!
Welcome to our second newsletter!! With only a short time left before the official beta launch we wanted to kick off this week with a brand new website design and alpha preview! That means new areas for you to explore on the home page, including info about the upcoming lands, games, and contests. Plus get a head start for May 22nd by checking out the behavior and conduct rules for VFK which you can read here in the VFK Constitution!
Get your exploring gear together and grab your sneakers, because there are lots of new historic areas for Alpha Girl to explore and it's going to take a lot of walking to see everything in the medieval city!
Here's Alpha Girl to tell you about her Alpha Walkabout.
I've been working in my garden today, I love plants and flowers! I'm glad my garden has lots of both! The pink flowering trees in the garden are cherry trees which were popular in Colonial America. I have to say, just staying here in my room all the time can get a little boring. So today, I'm off on a medieval walkabout. With so much walking to do, I've put on my favorite jeans, sneakers and VFK T-shirt, because what can I say? I ROCK!
I love medieval times and I can't wait to explore Celliwig the medieval city which is part of Camelot. Perhaps I'll even get to explore part of the castle at Camelot! In medieval times, cities and villages typically sprung up near castles or large homes called Manors. A medieval city was a busy place, where people lived, and sold all kinds of goods. It was also a place where people could buy fruit and vegetables grown on nearby farms from farmers who set up market stands.
There are a lot of exciting tales and legends surrounding the history of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere and Camelot and a Magician named Merlin. Merlin was an advisor to King Arthur who aided Arthur on his quests and helped him gain the sword Excalibur. Legend says Merlin could shapeshift, conjure spells and see the past and future. Some say Merlin could travel though time, while others think he aged backwards.
Stonehenge is an ancient circle of large stones just outside of Salisbury in England. No one knows who built the stone circle, or why. There are many stories about who built Stonehenge. Some think the druids built it for special ceremonies, but my favorite legend is about a magical stone circle which Merlin, a Giant and Uther Pendragon (King Arthur's father) moved from Mount Killaraus in Ireland to Salisbury field in England. The stone circle was thought to be built of magical healing stones by giants who brought the stones from Africa.
A king named Aurelius Ambrosias wanted to build a monument to remember the nobles who had died in a battle at Salisbury. When Aurelius told Merlin his plans, Merlin recommended �The Giant's Dance,� a magical circle of stones in Ireland. Uther Pendragon and 15,000 knights, and a giant tried to move the stones. They tried for several days to move the rocks but couldn't. Then Merlin using his mysterious powers easily moved the stones to Salisbury where they were dedicated. Now, there is a place I would love to explore! I wonder if I will find Stonehenge or King Arthur's roundtable on my adventures.
I can move my furni now but I'm still waiting for Alpha Boy to help me rotate it! I was just thinking, how much pizza can Alpha Boy eat? Alpha Boy is coming to help me explore our new world this weekend, I can hardly wait! I'll have so many things to show him and so much furni to arrange.
Well, I've got to get going! There's a lot of exploring to do, so let's get this party started!!
Alpha Girl Out
==A Note from Sara!==
May 16th, 2008
Just a quick note for everyone. If you didn't see it here at VirtualFamilyKingdom.com, it's not from Sara.
==Special Update==
We are overwhelmed with the response from all our friends coming to Virtual Family Kingdom. We are reconfiguring our servers at this moment to accommodate the large number of people visiting us. We should have the servers reconfigured in about 30 minutes, or about 11:00 AM Eastern Time. 
Are you as excited about the new Virtual Family Kingdom as much as we are?Well some great news! The Kingdom opens today! Our amazing world really makes history come alive, and today is the day we start rolling out this historic event! The best part is, that you are about to be a part of the legend! 
We are thrilled to have over 50,000 pre-registrations for the beta program, however we never anticipated that we would start our beta program with this many beta testers. There are just so many friends both new and old that we are not really sure how our servers will hold up. Because of this we are going to be opening with just a basic set of features. Our main goal is to keep the servers up. We will be rolling out new features all day, everyday over the next several days. We will announce when new features are available both in the game and with an e-mail update each day to keep you informed. Because we started this project only 7 weeks ago, everyone knows this is a real beta, in fact as far as we know this is the largest real beta ever attempted with a new virtual world, and it is only possible because of you! We are all going to make history together. 
Literally thousands have expressed concerns about missing the launch of some of the exciting new features of Virtual Family Kingdom, so we have planned to start introducing the new mini games on Saturday, when no one has to miss out. So again, to all our friends, welcome! Let’s get started exploring all the historical settings in our new world and begin beta testing! Plus, we have an amazing surprise for you! Here’s a hint, once you login you will definitely want to find the staff and visit with them. 
Coming later today As the day unfolds we will be adding these features to our new world: 1. Enabling Friends List 2. Releasing the Wild West Setting 3. Room List 
Tomorrow will also be a busy day as we release: 1. The Victorian Setting 2. Lots of Furni 3. Merlin’s Magic Shoppe 
Saturday will also be a big day, and we have saved the best for last as we release: 1. Our first mini games 2. Lots of hair styles and clothes to customize your character* 
Special Update 2
We have just completed the reconfiguration on our servers, and testing everything.
We should be ready to start taking registrations in about 15 minutes.
Again, thanks for your patience.
==An Update from the Developers - 1==
We are overwhelmed with the response from all our friends coming to Virtual Family Kingdom. 
We are reconfiguring our servers at this moment to accommodate the large number of people visiting us. 
We should have the servers reconfigured in about 30 minutes, or about 11:00 AM Eastern Time. 
Are you as excited about the new Virtual Family Kingdom as much as we are?
Well some great news! The Kingdom opens today! Our amazing world really makes history come alive, and today is the day we start rolling out this historic event! The best part is, that you are about to be a part of the legend! 
We are thrilled to have over 50,000 pre-registrations for the beta program, however we never anticipated that we would start our beta program with this many beta testers. There are just so many friends both new and old that we are not really sure how our servers will hold up. 
Because of this we are going to be opening with just a basic set of features. Our main goal is to keep the servers up. We will be rolling out new features all day, everyday over the next several days. We will announce when new features are available both in the game and with an e-mail update each day to keep you informed. 
Because we started this project only 7 weeks ago, everyone knows this is a real beta, in fact as far as we know this is the largest real beta ever attempted with a new virtual world, and it is only possible because of you! We are all going to make history together. 
Literally thousands have expressed concerns about missing the launch of some of the exciting new features of Virtual Family Kingdom, so we have planned to start introducing the new mini games on Saturday, when no one has to miss out. 
So again, to all our friends, welcome! Let’s get started exploring all the historical settings in our new world and begin beta testing! 
Plus, we have an amazing surprise for you! Here’s a hint, once you login you will definitely want to find the staff and visit with them. 
Coming later today
As the day unfolds we will be adding these features to our new world: 
Enabling Friends List 
Releasing the Wild West Setting 
Room List 
Tomorrow will also be a busy day as we release: 
The Victorian Setting 
Lots of Furni 
Merlin’s Magic Shoppe 
Saturday will also be a big day, and we have saved the best for last as we release: 
Our first mini games 
Lots of hair styles and clothes to customize your character
==An Update from the Developers - 2==
We now have our servers working in New Mexico, New York and backup servers in Dallas. This gives us both the bandwidth we need, and serious redundancy.
We will be doing live tests throughout the night, so if you happen to get into the virtual world, keep in mind it will only be up for a few minutes for any one test.
Your development team
==An Update from the Developers - 3==
We have not quite completed final configurations, but hope to have this done shortly.
We have a couple more tests to run, and everything should be ready to go a bit later today.
Your development team
==An Update from the Developers - 4==
We want to thank all the night owls who dropped in to help us with our live tests tonight. It was a lot of fun, and the tests went great.
We should have everything back on line sometime tomorrow, and we look forward to seeing everyone then.
We would give you a definite time, but something always comes up that takes longer than we expect, but it will definitely be sometime Thursday.
Your development team
==An Update from the Developers - 5==
Great news, we have just received the replacement router, and we are letting you know even before we have it completely out of the box.
We will keep you posted,
Your development team
==An Update from the Developers - 6==
We want to keep you up to date on our upgrade, as when we are done it will mean we will have 100 times more capacity at any moment to support our new virtual world.
One of the routers which we are installing this evening is not working correctly, and we are going to have to wait till tomorrow morning to get a replacement. We will keep you updated on the progress of the upgrade.
Your development team
P.S. We have left the game up for you in single user mode on one of our servers, in case you would like to walk around and check out any of the details in the game while we are upgrading the rest of the servers and setting up the new network. 
==An Update from the Developers - 7==
Our beta test is going better than we hoped, and we want to thank everyone yet again for all your help.
This afternoon we exceeded 8,000 online again, and this is very exciting!
To support all of our beta testers, we are doing a server upgrade. We will be offline while we do this, however, as soon as we are back up we should be able to support many more than 8,000 at one time.
In addition, this will allow us to load the rest of the character names which have been approved, so everyone will know each other! Also, you will be able to finally change your clothes and get a new hair style, so that you can meet your friends in a fresh outfit!
Cross your fingers that the upgrade goes smoothly, and wish us good luck.
If all things go smoothly we will be back up in a couple of hours. If not, it may take us the rest of the evening. In any case, we will all be here until the system is back up.
Your development team
==An Update from the Developers - 8==
Wow, what an amazing day we had on the first day of our Beta Test!
We had lots of fun finding bugs. We had people stuck on walls, ghost chatting and even walking around alone in rooms filled with other people. If you missed the first day you missed quite an experience! And, what did you think of the surprise of finding your favorite staff already in Virtual Family Kingdom waiting to greet you? That just made the day even better!
To help make this experience more memorable, our graphic artists have created the "I Survived Day 1 Beta" shirt which you see here. Like the experiences we all shared, these shirts are destined to be rare. For everyone who got registered yesterday and also for those who register today, this "I Survived Day 1 Beta" shirt will be part of your wardrobe.
Front
Back
We have had some questions about Day 1 pins. These are given when the beta period ends and the New World is released. Because all of you are such great beta testers, we have our release date set for June 26th! All of our friends who participate in the Beta Program will receive the Day 1 pin.
There are some exciting new features for you to test today. The first you will discover when you leave your garden. With our sense of pioneering, you will definitely want to explore the new western setting. Just as our Medieval village of Celliwig is part of Camelot, you will find the essence of our early western towns founded by pioneering stock just like you, right here in the Virtual Family Kingdom.
==An Update from the Developers - 9==
We ran our final tests this evening with the customization of characters, and with the help of our devoted beta testers everything went great!
We will resume operation at 12:00 noon pacific time!
Thank you all for your help, see you in our new virtual world!
Your development team
==Great News!==
9:11 AM, west coast time
We have already broken all the records for number of people online for saturday morning!
We have just reset the servers, and increased the capacity again. Hopefully this will mean that everyone can see each other.
The first two days of the Virtual Family Kingdom Beta test have been incredible!
This is day 3, and our plans for today are really ambitious.
We have already confirmed the character names of over half of the tens of thousands who have completed their registration on day 1 and day 2. That means that today, more than half will have their character names displayed. That means finding your friends will be just that much easier.
Everyone will find logging in more successful today, as we fixed some bugs that impact this process over night.
As soon as we see how the logins and new names are working this morning, we willl turn on the "Ask to be a friend" feature. This should occur before noon on the west coast!
We have lots of clothes, hairstyles, and furni for everyone. Our goal is to let you start creating your signature look by four this after noon. So, if you want a "Clone" picture, you had better get it this morning!
Have fun, and lets make day 3 be our best day yet!
==A Word From Sara - 2==
Woot! Is this the greatest community or what? You guys ROCK! But hey, what's this? You DON'T want invisibility magic? ;) Now there's something I never thought I'd hear!
Thank you all for standing on top of roofs, hanging from walls, being ghosts, moving the "pink couch" incognito, and of course, being the best beta testers ever! You made it possible to create a stable environment in less than three days and we've had an awesome time doing it!
Because we had over 8,000 members online at one time today, we are behind our ambitious schedule, so we are posting a new revised schedule below. Who knew we would have an opportunity to beta test with so many of you at once!
Knowing this great community, you will probably take our servers down again at least a few more times, but we can't wait!
So let's kick this party up a notch, we want to be ready for our "mates" from Australia in June.
Sara
Virtual Family Kingdom:
Revised Schedule:
Sometime this evening:
Friends List 
Customize your character (maybe, if not, tomorrow morning)
Sometime tomorrow:
Victorian Setting
Rooms List
Whatever else we have time to do if our servers aren't taken down again.
Mini games if at all possible!
==A major update for all of our Beta testers==
As you may have heard in the news, there was a large explosion caused by electrical equipment failure in the H1 data center in Houston that knocked down three walls at about 5:00 PM CDT. Fortunately, and most importantly, no one was injured. In addition, no data was lost and there appears to be no damage to the servers or networking equipment.
You remember when you first started playing that the servers went down? Well that was because of bandwidth, so we went to The Planet, which is recognized as one of the most RELIABLE providers in the world.
As luck would have it we are among an estimated 100,000 websites that are down around the world.
We have been assured that engineers are working around the clock to get the H1 data center back online, and we are told it will resume operation sometime tomorrow, Sunday, June 1st.
We are not going to waste this time though. This gives us the opportunity to complete enhancements we are working on, and add new lands. Our goal is that each day you log into the kingdom, it will be better than the last.
Keep an eye out and make sure you log on when the services are restored, because our world will be better than ever.
We have rerouted the DNS for the WWW server, so that we can share with you what is happening.
However, we do need the bandwidth from the H1 data center in Houston to support all of us in our virtual world.
We will keep you updated about the progress being made in restoring the Houston data center.
Your development team
Virtual Family Kingdom