PMOG News

Hello, Passive-ists,

PMOG has been and always will be about giving you the opportunity to share with others how you play the web, in a fun and open manner. There are times though, especially in the recent past, where a few players have chosen to abuse the openness of PMOG through harassing individuals, and disrupting the game as a whole.

During the month of June, I opened a Community Standards discussion, which asked what you as a community hold each other accountable for. A number of you responded with feedback both advising us that you enjoy the freedom PMOG gives its players, but at the same time desiring a clear set of expectations for general conduct.

In counsel with this thread, along with feedback I’ve received personally from players on IRC, PMail, the forums, and e-mail, we at GameLayers have crafted the following policy in order to provide both newer and veteran members of our community with some general standards and expectations.

The policy can be read in full at http://pmog.com/about/community.

Essentially, it asks that all players be conscious that there are other people playing PMOG in addition to themselves. This includes labeling NSFW content, not harassing other players, keeping avatars “clean,” and generally being aware that egregious behavior will not be rewarded.

I would like to point out this policy does not deviate in any way, shape or form from our Terms of Service; it merely serves as further clarification of what the majority of players are already doing and expecting from one another.

This thread on the forums is open for your questions, comments, and opinions about our new Community Standards and Expectations.

If you’d rather contact us directly, please either drop me a PMail (@burdenday) or e-mail feedback at pmog dot com.

Thanks again for making this wonderful community, I am glad to call my virtual home.

Yours,
Joe
@burdenday

The Tubenauts: tonedef, snocrsh, and ethdem, are back with a second installment of the unofficial PMOG podcast.  Just in time, they cover drudge’s Week of Chaos, including a weather report by pixielo explaining the recent shoat shrapnel falling from the PMOGeon skies.

Download your own copy from Zous’s website (above) or subscribe via iTunes to get each week’s episode downloaded directly to your computer.

This edition of Tubenauts also includes further discussion of the Shoppe bug, some speculation revolving around the recent PMOG survey, and my personal favorite another installment of “What Nicks my Mines!” where ethdem discusses the ever crate topic of bad mission making.

New and old players alike, support and stay in sync with your PMOG community by listening to the Tubenauts! These players have put together a professional grade, well thought podcast for your listening pleasure.

Oh, and don’t forget to listen in next week when the Tubenauts cover uselessness’s Week of Order, which starts June 30.

Until then, enjoy the rest of the Week of Chaos.

Armors on to you,
Joe
@burdenday

I’d love to know how you play the web with each other. The survey is only 10 questions, and the questions are about PMOG. Thanks!

This Sunday, from 9am until 11am GMT, PMOG will be undergoing some maintenance.

Stay asleep, as always, that’s the safest bet!

A group of players who call themselves the Tubenauts banded together to start a PMOG webcast about the Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Apart from the enjoyment to be had by listening to funny banter, the cast also serves as a crash course in the PMOG community. The panelists talk about the recent tool reset (which I didn’t handle very well, but which taught us a lot about our players), whether they play passively, and what their tactics are.

The cast is pretty professional: tonedef serves as the host, and ethdem, lehall, and snocrsh are all panelists. The cast is produced by zous and Pixielo; it includes some really great musical interludes by pornophonic. It’s all very This American Life.

I love the section, What Nicks My Mines, in which one player rants against well, what upsets him. I think I am going to start using that phrase in my speech…

And to top it all off - the entire webcast is licensed by Creative Commons.

GameLayers is developing PMOG in concert with our players. As we build new features we’ll be testing them with small slice of the community, and we’re always listening to the feedback we’re getting. PMOG will only become more complex in its game dynamics and more flexible with its community.

So I will be taking notes during future Tubenaut webcasts, sipping on a bacon martini.

Many thanks to the players who made this webcast!

If only maintenance could be achieved through passive activites.

Alas, it cannot.

For some, Sunday mornings may be easy. For others, pie is the only thing that is easy. For us Trustees, though, we will be hard at work for a couple of hours this Sunday morning (9am - 11pm GMT, 1am - 3am PST).

You may experience some interruptions to your normal Pmogian existence, and for that we are apologetic. You should stay in bed, though, you really should.

We update PMOG every few weeks (check our version history, no lie!). So it’s not normally a newsworthy item. But this latest version, version .415 is exciting.

Too many folks were having login issues. Working with Mark Daggett we looked at some awesome extensions like Twitterfox to see how they handled multiple users. Now the PMOG toolbar shows you your last successful login, it makes switching easier, and you can clear out previous records so PMOG logins don’t get confused. All of this means fewer folks should ever notice logging in to the PMOG toolbar!

We integrated a bunch more help. Now, right-clicking on a tool give you a “Learn about…” link. There’s a Help menu with a Reset command, handy for switching skins after changing your preferences. There’s a Report a Bug window, so anyone having trouble can help us tease out their PMOG’s confusion. And, you can browse deep into the Codex, discovering the difference between a bedouin and a benefactor, a portal and a lightpost, and a ready link to the Appendices for even more strategy.

And, there’s more icons in our toolbar, courtesy of the skilled cursors at Turbo Milk in Latvia.

As of today, we’re listed publicly on the Mozilla site for extensions: Firefox Add-ons: PMOG - out of the sandbox! Alex Polvi sighted a final bug - players who are veterans of the February and March 2008 PMOG wars who have been away from the toolbar for a while would find a preference error. Fixed now in .416!

Polvi has been working on favicoop:

(give it a second to load)

favicoop - an extension which collects the tiny little web icons from each site you visit and contributes them to a shared mosaic. A Mosaic of the web! It’s about time.

Greetings Passive-ists!

We at GameLayers wanted to give you an update as to what is happening behind the scenes of PMOG right now.

To start with, we greatly appreciate everyone sticking with us through this growth phase! We are working daily on optimizing our code for faster page loading times, and providing greater overall stability and performance.

We are working to resolve a number of gameplay issues: bugs with mission making, editing and taking, and a few issues with badges. For an updated list of top known issues please see the 16 May Top Known Issues Forum Post.

Additionally, thousands of badges will be being issued over the next few days. Another batch of badges has been added for your earning pleasure including rewards for visiting Digg, Reddit, Massively, and keeping up on World of Warcraft.

You might have also noticed a recent increase in your level, too. We have readjusted levels to reward you for your hard work and for the leveling experience to be more of a gradual curve rather than a steep climb to the top.

To keep up to date with news from the development team check: http://pmog.com/forums/pmog-news

If you’re having any issues, check to see if you have the latest version of the extension. We release an update every few weeks which tends to solve more bugs than it creates. Soon we’ll be serving up PMOG from addons.mozilla.org.

A big thanks to those of you who have submitted bug reports and have helped to get a number of issues quickly resolved. If you ever need assistance, find a bug, or want to provide us with your valuable feedback, please use the contact information listed on our Contact page.

A game is nothing without its players; a heartfelt thanks from everyone at GameLayers to you.

Yours,
Joe Wagner
Player Support Liaison
@burdenday

Great news, there’s more maintenance on the way!

On Sunday 25th May PMOG will be down for some routine maintenance between 9am and 12pm GMT.

On a Sunday, mind, you should either be asleep in bed or asleep in church, so missing out on all those datapoints won’t hurt all that much

Hello,

We’re going to run some general maintenance tomorrow at 10am GMT for 1 hour.

During this time, PMOG will be offline.

Never fear, you’ll be earning valuable datapoints shortly after!