Community News from 2008

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We are putting an upper limit of 10 to how many characters one user can control. Read More»

Let's clarify one thing:

You still may only have one account. Having more than one account is cheating and will get you banned from the game.

However, on that account you can sometimes have more than one character. If your character gets children, you will end up controlling more than one character. That is where we are now putting a limit.

While this is not really a problem right now (only 0.005% of the population, or 19 people, have more than 10 characters), we are concerned about the possibility for future situations where one user could potentially control so many characters that it unbalances the game, especially when their children gets children of their own, and so on. This is why we must set a limit now. Limiting stuff is never fun, but we feel it is absolutely needed.

This is what will happen:

If you have more than 10 characters now, you will be asked to deactivate some of them (or get rid of them in other ways such as adoption) whenever you log on. If you have 10 characters or more, you will not be able to get pregnant, or adopt children or take over as custodian.

This change is not fully implemented yet, but will gradually be so in the upcoming weeks.

From today and until Christmas you will have the possibility to purchase items as Christmas presents for your near and dear ones. Note though that Christmas presents ONLY can be opened on Christmas.

Remember that you are only allowed to control one account, and that you may not under any circumstances let anyone else use it for any purpose. This includes “babysitting” accounts by logging in on each other, as well as letting friends use your account to send a PM or write a forum post. If you fail to follow this you risk your own account. Read More»

You should also remember to keep your login details safe at all time. And please remember that no one from the Popmundo staff will ever ask for your password by e-mail or in game messages.

Shopping is back in the game. This time around you might even get a few pieces of clothing from it if you're lucky. Big spenders can even boost their star quality by going on wild shopping sprees. And needless to say…shopping on your spare time is addictive these days.

Nobody got their account terminated because of someone else buying them VIP. We only terminated the accounts of people who bought themselves VIP or Company Licence by fraudulent means.

Over the weekend nearly a thousand players tried to trick one of our payment systems to give them free VIP memberships and Company Licences by using fake bank accounts. Purchasing products online using phony bank account information is considered fraud. There are no exceptions to this rule. Read More»

We have in the past, in other games, successfully allowed players to receive their purchases in good faith when using bank transfers as payment methods. Unfortunately we will no longer allow for this to be the case here in Popmundo. As of now we won't activate any purchases made with bank transfers until we actually receive the money.

All player who entered fraudulent information in the payment system to buy themselves or anyone else VIP or a company licence have now had their accounts terminated.

Changes to your spare time missions were just made to make it easier for you to control your personal cash flow without making use of separate wallets such as bank accounts and companies. Read More»

1. Go shopping is temporarily removed from the game and replaced by Go for a walk which makes you both happier and healthier. For free!

2. Partying is now a cost free activity and it's now also an excellent way of gaining some easy star quality. Especially if you're just starting out. It's still bad for your health though so don't overdo it.

PS. Shopping will be back in just a matter of days. So you shopaholics out there will still be able to get your fix like you're used to. Don't worry… ;)

As of now whenever someone you love engages in romantic activities with someone else you'll suffer the effects of jealousy. You'll get diary entries whenever this happens, together with damage to your relationship and mood. Groupies are a source of jealousy as well. Read More»

We also added the possibility to have threesomes in the game. In order for a threesome to take place all participants must be in love with each other and at least one person must use aphrodisiacs. The rest we're sure you can figure out yourselves.

At the request of the editors our beloved ingame magazine It's POP will now be released on Thursdays 12:00 CET. So mark you calendars accordingly. You don't want to be left without a copy!

Global arrest warrants will no longer be handed out in the game. Crimes commited while exploring the wilderness will be automatically tied to the last city visited by the criminal. This means that if you get caught stealing something in Hotel California you will get a warrant for your arrest issued in Los Angeles.

Next week we will start using a new formula for calculating record sales. This new formula will get rid of the insane amount of extra records sold by releasing a record at the “right time”. Read More»

There's still money to be earned by keeping track of the record sales cycle. But releasing a record at the right time won't be a matter of hours anymore. Releasing a record the day before the weekly sales will be enough to maximise the potential earnings.

Because of this, and the new Media Coverage stuff, record studios might want to reconsider ordering huge amounts of records for new releases like they are used to do for some artists.

Things aren't all bad in the record industry these days though. As of next week your records will last longer on the market and together with the Media Coverage newbies might actually sell a few records for a change.

This is to remind you that Media Coverage will begin to influence the game this week. How it works is real simple. The amount of media coverage you have somewhere determines how easy it is to build your fame there. Read More»

This brings with it a drastic change in how the game is played most efficiently. Bands will have to focus on which areas of the map they find important or suitable for them. It won't be possible to dominate the charts all over the world like artists do today.

Although most of us will gradually feel the effects of lower record and ticket sales in the coming weeks, there will be more opportunities around for everyone to climb higher in the charts than ever before.

The game just became more level, challenging and dynamic than ever before. Enjoy!

This tweak only affect those of you who rehearse more than one scene at a time. When rehearsing a new scene for a music video, other scenes you have rehearsed but not yet shot, will lose some of their previously gained rehearsal levels.

Just became a lot more expensive. So if you're short on cash you might reconsider your tactics in this area of the game.

A week from now we'll allow cities to seize control of banks which have been confiscated, gone out of business, collapsed, or have a negative amount in their deposit funds.

There is now something called “handmade” items in the game. Handmade items are created by people who know certain recipes. Read More»

There is still only a small number of recipes in the game, but we will add a lot more in the future!

Recipes are tied to certain skills, like for example Basic Cooking.

A recipe always uses a tool (another item). The tool is not destroyed in the process, but you must have it with you.

In addition to the tool, you need components. Each time you make something, one use of each component is consumed.

A recipe always requires that you have a certain skill. However, you do not have to be of a certain skill level. Just have the skill is enough.

How do you learn recipes?

There are several ways to learn recipes:

* Some recipes will be given automatically when you learn a certain skill. But most recipes will not be given this easily!

* You can learn a recipe from your master/mistress, if you are an apprentice. To learn it this way, you must : - Be present when your master/mistress makes the recipe. - You must have the required skill, of course. - Your chance to learn the recipe this way depends on your skill level in the related skill and your master's teaching abilities

* Third option is only available if you are VIP: You can spend Experience Points on “buying” a random recipe that exists. Yes, random - you cannot control which recipe you will learn. The price is 5 XP. Yes, it is expensive! The price is high because it is meant as a way to let little known recipes enter the game world, while the main way to learn recipes is meant to be through master/apprentice relationships. In order to “buy” a recipe this way, you need at least 2 stars in the skill, and you must also be a VIP member.

* A very small number of recipes are hidden in the game, and if you reach those places you can learn them. But this is very unusual.

Trashing hotel rooms now award you media exposure instead of fame. Other than that it works exactly the same as it always has.

The practice level of a song in your repertoire no longer fades if you've jammed it recently the last ten days. So it's no longer necessary to schedule your jam sessions “properly” before important bookings. We've also reduced the amount your repertoire's practice levels fade with time. This should make things a lot easier for a lot of you.

From now on, when you go on stage, your fans will base their expectations less on your current career and more on your greatest moments. Read More»

This makes it tougher for the heavily hyped bands out there to impress their fans. It also makes it impossible for players to lower the audience expectations and score higher than they deserve on stage.

We've now added the possibility of getting addicted to various substances and acts in the game. So please keep an eye on your rock'n'roll lifestyle before it gets completely out of hand. Read More»

The way it works is simple. Everytime you drink an alcoholic beverage your alcohol addiction increases. As your addiction becomes high enough you'll begin to feel the negative effects of your addiction. The higher the level of addiction the more often you have to get your fix to lessen the likelyhood of suffering from withdrawal. When suffering from withdrawal your mood and health will drop differently depending on what type of addiction is causing it.

Time, a healthy living, and hospitalization helps get rid of your addictions.

You can currently become addicted to the following things: alcohol, sex, drugs, vandalism, food, & smoking.

But don't worry… life in the gutter isn't all bad… there's a fair amount of interesting things to find in the chaos and filth down there as well.

There's now an option in your user page where you can invite your friends to play Popmundo. Read More»

You can choose just to create an invitation link or even send this as an email to your friend. Recruiting a friend will not give you any advantages in the game. However, the more the merrier right?

Today we announce a price increase for Popmundo's VIP and Company License. The new prices will come into effect on Monday the 13th of October. Read More»

The simple reason for this is that while we have not adjusted our prices since we launched VIP more than three years ago, our costs have increased. The dollar - in which we charge for our products - has lost 8 % of its value against the Euro, in which we have our costs. Add to this another 10 % in inflation. This means that price for VIP has dropped by almost 20 % in real terms duing this period. To lessen the impact of currency fluctuations, we will now set prices in Euro. The new price will be EUR 22,97 for one year of VIP, which covers inflation and the dollar drop, and gives us some extra margin to develop and maintain the game in a better way, perhaps even hire another developer. You can buy VIP and the Company License here.

The complete pricelist is as follows:

3 months VIP: 8,24 EUR

12 Months VIP or Company License: 22,97 EUR

12 Months VIP Company License combo: 38,49 EUR

Santa Claus is feeling the effects of the economic depression these days and won't be buying as many records as he usually does. The bonus sales aren't completely gone though so the super greedy people out there might still want to aim for a christmas release.

Rehearsal is now crucial to the outcome of music videos like it should have been all along. The appropriate music genre skills are also beneficial for the master director. Read More»

In a couple of weeks it will also be bad for your career to release crappy music videos. So if you've got any lame music videos coming out soon you're better off releasing them now.

Artists with a lot of band members are now judged a tad harder when doing special events on stage compared to solo artists or bands with fewer members.

Now you (finally) have the possibility to choose which producer you want to work with on a certain track. Read More»

You don't “need” to actively set your producer. If you don't do this a suitable person in the locale will help you out. However, if you do choose to select your producer make sure he or she has some knowledge in the genre of the song. This might score you some extra production points.

Up until now you've never had to actively flirt with the media in order to climb up the charts. This won't be the case much longer. Read More»

As of now on we're keeping track of your Media Coverage in the game. Exposing yourself to the media is easy. Just set your career mission to “talk to the media” and witness your media coverage increase in the city you're in whenever you get a character update.

For more information about talking to the media please look up the rules on Character Priorities.

IMPORTANT: Get used to this new system and start building up your Media Coverage as soon as you can. In two months time your record and ticket sales will be greatly influenced by it. (This should give most of you ample time to adjust.)

We've now gone live with the code matching band members to the dominant instruments of your songs on stage. Read More»

Those of you who prepared for this day the last couple of months won't notice much of a change. However some bands will… Anyone interested in these latest changes should take the time to read the text on Performing on Stage again.

We also took the opportunity today to lessen the importance of jamming when performing on stage. This makes things easier for us slackers out there and should also make life easier for our beloved noobs.

Finally! All the code is in place and running properly. We'll go live with it next week. Anyone who doesn't remember what this is all about can read the rules about Performing on Stage.

As of now we will no longer issue arrest warrants for inactive characters who don't pay their bills on time.

The shows which were deleted two days ago have now been restored complete with tickets sold, prices, etc. However, those of you who don't use the default setlist feature will have to redesign the shows yourselves. Read More»

Lost shows which were scheduled to take place these last two days were not recreated at all.

During the day we'll also boost your local fame in each city where your shows were lost in the first place to smooth things out for you some more.

We're sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you all. Especially for the 224 artists who were directly affected by these events.

Although the world kept spinning behind closed doors, the game was offline for our players both yesterday and today. For this reason we've just extended all VIP memberships with an extra three days.

Today an ill-willing person made use of a simple hole in our code to cancel some of your bookings. This is the reason why we took the game offline for a while this evening. We've closed these holes now and will work to restore your lost shows tomorrow afternoon.

The amount of accounts being lost to malicious people is growing rapidly. In almost all cases it’s because the owner of the account has been, one way or the other, reckless with his user credentials.

In order to avoid unwanted guests on your account, make sure that you always log out properly and that you never ever store your username and password in the browser unless you are absolutely sure that no one else can access it. Read More»

Also, you must never hand out your user details or any other personal information about yourself (including your personal e-mail account) to strangers on the Internet – not even if they claim to be developers of this game. Asking other players for such information, as well as handing out personal information about other people, is strictly against the Rules of Conduct and can get you banned from the game immediately.

If someone asks you for that sort of information, either through PMs or at external websites, you should report them to the sentinels and/or inquisition at once. Of course this includes people pretending to be developers or similar. No-one from the Popmundo staff will ever ask for your account information.

We're proud to announce that our new prison rehabilitation techniques effectively reduce the criminal skill levels of an inmate causing minimal psychological damage. (Except for the occasional increased interest in classical music.)

Seattle is still a pretty darn cool town to visit. Many thanks to Rhonda Carpenter and Paulus de Beer who translate our grungy development texts to intelligible english.

Roads can no longer be closed by politicians.

We're going to take the game offline 13:00 CET on Monday the 11th of August. We expect the downtime to last less than an hour so it shouldn't affect you much at all.

The achievement “I support the game!” is no longer handed out when you buy a VIP membership to the game. It will be replaced by another achievement at a later date.

Up until now pets have been a pretty good way of maintaining a good mood. This is no longer the case. Pets can now be a source of frustration as well.

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As of today the right to borrow money from banks is limited to VIP players. Regular bank accounts will still be available to the non-VIP player. Read More»

Too often careless players borrow money they aren't able to pay back within their Popmundo lifetimes.

This has proven to become a huge burden on the citizens of Popmundo. Not only because of the cash drained from the banks resulting in dedicated players being unable to withdraw their hard earned cash from their banks. But also because of the huge workload on the judges who have to deal with these “criminals”.

By making loans a VIP feature we expect to see them taken by players who are generally more likely to pay them back. This will therefore make banks more stable and safer for all of us.

As of now whenever a Special Agent arrests someone the criminal gets automatically transported to the city the SA works for. This way the life of our hard working judges will be much less confusing as they will no longer be required to consider crimes committed elsewhere when sentencing criminals.

It is now possible to select color when you purchase a personal vehicle. Also, custom paint is available in car shops if you want to repaint your vehicle yourself. How to use it? Make sure you're carrying the custom paint and select the vehicle while being in the same locale. Have fun!

As of now, in those cities where inciting the masses is illegal, the game itself will hand out the proper arrest warrants. This will not be done by the local police anymore. Read More»

The game won't automatically sent out warrants for the crime, instead you will have to be “caught” in the act before a warrant is issued.

As with all game regulated crimes, judges should follow the recommended sentence lengths, unless the case is truly exceptional. Otherwise the judge himself could be subject to investigation by the Red Robes.

Shutting down important city services will from now on anger the masses and possibly trigger a revolution! After a government has been overthrown these city services will open again within 24 hours.

It's now possible to purchase personal vehicles at any car dealer. The basics for using them differs in some ways from using the Artist vehicles though, so make sure to read the instructions. Purchasing and using personal vehicles is a VIP feature only. Read More»

The biggest difference between your Artist vehicle and your personal one(s) is that you don't set up your travel schedule on beforehand. You just head off whenever you want to. Also travel times, parking costs and the risk for mishaps vary depending on which vehicle you choose. Anyway, have fun and try to avoid road bandits.

We're once again very happy to announce the opening of a new city in Popmundo. Today Sarajevo becomes the 39:th city in our ever growing world. Many many thanks to Cain Allport, Denis Akhmatdinov, Niall Jarratt, Toni Pulkki and Sally Trotter who have been working with the Bosnian translation. Read More»

Company Owners interested in building new locales in Sarajevo might want to look up the Building Regulations for the city. Some types of locales aren't privatized from the start like they've been in the past. Please do this before jumping on the first private jet to Sarajevo expecting to expand your global empire.

As soon as the first mayor is elected it will be up to her or him to decide which locales should be privatized.

The skill Professional Showmanship has now replaced Basic Showmanship in all genre-specific stage events. Basic Showmanship remains as the main skill for all generic stage events like always though. Read More»

This is part of the ongoing recallibration of the show system. Please look up older community news for more information.

As of now the game will never automatically offer anyone a citizenship. Read More»

To get yourself a citizenship you will have to go to the city hall of the city you want your citizenship in and apply for it.

To apply for a citizenship your character must be VIP, 16 years of age or older, and have been active in the game for more than two weeks.

As of now it will be much more difficult for songs to gain fame and popularity by being played as covers. And from now on you'll get your song popularity boosts from playing live directly during the shows and not once per day as before. So don't be alarmed if you see a jolt in your song fame the first time you feel the effects of this on stage.

We have together with our English translation team decided to split the English language into a US and a UK version. The translators for each version can (as usual) be found at the crew page.

There are some new rules in place for everyone about to run for office. Check them out here. The reason we're adding these rules is to weed out the “less qualified” players from from the serious contenders. Hopefully this will produce a more respected political arena in the game. Read More»

If you've already been appointed or elected or is already running for office somewhere you will not be affected by this right now.

We just added Tango de la Muerte as well as a bunch of other new stage events so that all genres now have 6 events each. Read More»

We also added the skill Professional Showmanship which will replace Basic Showmanship in all genre specific events in a little while. (Not in the generic stage events though.) So you might want to skill up on that if this change affects you.

Many thanks to all the people who helped us out with coming up for countless suggestions for these new events. And if your suggestion didn't make it into the game, there's always a second chance the day we add a seventh event.

PS: We realise the Tango de la Muerte might be a bit out of character for the game, but we just couldn't pass the oportunity of paying homage to Homer and the citizens of Springfield who've amused us all for so long on TV.

Once again we feel obliged to remind everyone that it is not allowed to buy VIP for other persons in exchange for ingame items or votes.

Also, link manipulation of any kind is strictly forbidden and will not be tolerated.

Write down June 6-8 in your calendars because that’s when the biggest (Real life) popmundo meeting of all times takes place.

Will it be fun? Undoubtedly! Will there be music? Yes! Seven international bands are already signed up for this “you don’t want to miss it” event of the year. Read More»

For those true wannabe rockers, there will be Guitar hero battles and Singstar available and also some surprise events along the way.

The Big Meet takes place at Parkhof in Alkmaar, The Netherlands. Further details about the big meet can be found in these forum threads: Big Meet (threadID=351630.1), The List (threadID=351630.1) Bit Meet, News (threadID=351591.1)

So sign up, tune in and get ready for a helluva weekend!

Important: - This is a real life event. - Parkhof only hosts 250 attendants so please be serious if you say that you will attend. - Non European visitors need tourist visa in order to enter The Netherlands.

Some more information about the ongoing recalibration of the show system. Read More»

1. The value of your secondary role on stage is not as great as your primary role anymore.

2. The value of generic events have lessened compared to specific genre events. Also there's an additional tiny bonus for performing stage events that are tied to your artist's genre. (We'll add more stage events to make this fair for everyone.)

3. The dominant instruments of a song will soon begin to be matched against the instruments you bring with you on stage. (And how well you play those instruments.) So you won't get away with playing songs composed for big bands with just an excellent banjo player for much longer.

Stay tuned for further news on all of this as we continue to improve the state of the core game.

New skills and minor changes affecting all dancers and DJs out there. Anyone out to maximise their scores as either dancers or DJs should read this extra carefully. Read More»

Dancers: We just added the skill Professional Dancing. This new skill, together with Basic Dancing, will serve as the two main ingredients of your score as dancers on stage.

DJs: Your Basic Turntable skills just changed into Basic Electronic Instruments. (You get to keep all the stars you had previously obviously.) And we added the new skill Turntable Techniques as an addon to it.

We're tweaking the equations which determine the scores for your shows so they'll focus more on the music side of things. Just in case you wondered what's happening with your stars. This will be an ongoing process over the next week or so. Read More»

This doesn't mean we'll completely rewrite the whole book on how to get things done in here. We don't expect there to be any major surprises for anyone. Just focus a little bit more on the quality of your music and you'll be fine.

One of the most cumbersome tasks for the game engine has always been the character following/stalking function. Because of this we've now made this option VIP only. We're sorry to limit your game like this. Read More»

Roughly 50% of the people making use of this function are clones though. So if there's a silver lining to every dark cloud it's that we deprive most clones out there of this feature now.

But we realise a lot of decent, honest players will be upset about this change. And for this we're truly sorry.

Some Internet Service Providers around the world aren't up to speed on things. For this reason we're temporarily using our old domain name popomundo.com. We expect things to be back to normal real soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

People running for office can now, if they have the skill Basic Politics, set their career mission to “Campaign”. This will award them campaign points which will move them higher in the election lists as well as win eventual ties. Read More»

The amount collected by each candidate will be clearly visible to the voters. So it's a pretty darn effective way of showing everyone who's serious about running for office or not.

Campaigning in the relevant city is more effective than campaigning elsewhere.

NOTE: don't forget about the previous community news regarding candidate prerequisites which will soon become a reality.

A large round object was seen falling down in flames from the skies and land somewhere in Rome!

No, it’s our new and improved logo! The sharp eyed of you may notice that it resembles our old logo, and that we didn’t do much more than just remove one letter. A minor change, but still for the better since we can keep calling ourselves popmundians. Read More»

We appreciate all suggestions that dropped in a half year ago, even though we didn’t use any of them. After all we didn't expect that this name would end up in our hands in the end.

We have selected a few random users that sent us suggestions. They will receive one year free VIP or company license.

On Monday the 28:th of April, sometime between 05:30 and 07:30 CET, we'll go offline for approximately 30 minutes due to maintenance in our server dungeon. This will not affect your concerts or travelling plans but your access to the site will be limited. Thank you for your patience.

It's now possible for a parent to claim custody of a child if the primary parent hasn't logged in for one rl month. We've changed this time limit because the gap between the former game-year limit and the two month inactivity death became too short.

Also, we've temporary disabled the one week limit so that anyone who has tried to claim custody this week will be able to do so again.

There are some new rules in place for everyone about to run for office. Check them out here. The reason we're adding these rules is to weed out the “less qualified” players from from the serious contenders. Hopefully this will produce a more respected political arena in the game. These new rules will go live a month from now so you all have time to adjust. Read More»

Together with these requirements everyone running for office will also be asked to write an official statement of what their political views are as part of their campaign.

So you might want to start working on your campaign speech right now.

As of now, if the audience at your shows aren't satisfied they will start leaving the show. When the whole crowd has left the club the show is over. People who leave the club beforehand will sometimes demand their cash back.

Bernard Mackenzie is a promiscuous person with perfect charm and perfect looks… so there was never any doubt that he'd make an excellent addition to the Popomundo development team. Read More»

Bernard is an avid gamer, who up 'til now has only been partly employed by us and that other game we do not speak of. We've tried to hire him full time in the past, but it's never been the right time and place, for either him… or us… until now!

He's got a lot of catching up to do and some big shoes to fill now that good old Frank Blomdahl is no longer coding with us. So, please treat him kindly.

At least for the first week or so.

Since we first launched the VIP package way back in the spring of 2005, we've never once raised its price. Inflation and the weakened dollar now force us to do so for the first time. Read More»

So, a month from now, we'll increase the price of VIP and the Company Licence.

At the same time, we'll also change our currency to Euro as well as launch a new payment system which will make it easier for a lot of you to purchase our services.

We're very happy to announce that Català now is available as a language in Popomundo. Many thanks to Arja Ivonen, Justo De las Heras and Viktor Beketov who've been working hard with the translation during the last couple of months. Thank you!

We've added a late easter egg to one of the pages in the game. The player who finds it first getsss to keepsss it.

Special interactions are now available to married couples out there. These interactions can be done in addition to the regular three. This means that married couples get a total of four interactions if they're in the same place.

Those of you willing to spend character updates on fraternizing can now interact with your friends once every six hours instead of once every 12 hours. Read More»

Keep in mind that it's not enough to set your priority to fraternize. You have to WAIT untill you get a character update with the priority to be able to interact more frequently. When you're in a fraternizing state it will be clearly displayed to you on the interaction page. The bonus will then last untill you get a character update with a different spare time priority.

The regular friends list is now removed. From now on, you'll have to rely on the regular relationship listing to keep track of your friends in the game. (Unless you're VIP, in which case you have your phone book.) If you find your list of relationships to be excessive, you can now end relationships immediately on the relationship details page.

Tomorrow morning, wednesday 10 am CET, we'll go live with the new relationship system. Read More»

Some important stuff to keep in mind:

1. Interactions are now divided into different categories (verbal, physical, phone, sexual etc.) Your interactions with one person will be limited to one interaction per category per day up to a total of three per day.

2. A lot of interactions are only available in specific locales and to people engaged in certain activities.

3. No one gets automatically moved home when having sex.

4. A new set of character attitudes will help you unlock different interactions sooner or later. (We'll launch these right away.)

5. Chaste and Promiscious aren't the same anymore. Being chaste isn't a guarantee you wont have sex with someone but it sure gets a LOT harder. Likewise being promiscious isn't a guarantee you can have sex with someone simply by performing the right interactions first but it's A LOT easier.

6. Keep in mind that boosting your partners mood, love or hate as high as possible isn't necessarily the best way to maintain a good relationship. There has to be a healthy balance between both character moods in order for a relationship to thrive.

7. Stay clear of reaching the higher levels of romantic and hateful relationships if you aren't prepared to face the consequences of sexual acts or acts of violence. (Some interactions can SERIOUSLY hurt your character!)

8. There's currently well over 100 interactions available in this new system, and we'll add more as we go along.

9. Beware of jealousy.

10. Enjoy!

The new rules about being stealthy have now been activated. Being stealthy works basically the same way it used to. One difference is that being stealthy is now a priority tied to the skill “Basic Stealth”. Also, when the police force use their tools to look for a criminal, the criminal's skill level in Basic Stealth will be useful. Read More»

During the next week, it will become much more clear why we chose to remove “Stealthy” as an attitude. The game rules section will be updated as soon as possible.

Some new tools for the police to find stealthy criminals are in the pipe. So, if you really, really don't want to be found, this means you will have to use both your spare time as well as your career mission.

After some investigation by our hosting company it seems the problem has been located to a misconfigured Turk Telecom router. We're doing our best to speed up the process correcting this and hopefully things will be solved by tomorrow morning.

We're aware of the fact that many of our Turkish players have experienced problems accessing Popomundo from time to time since Thursday. We have forwarded this urgent matter to our server host to investigate if this is something on their end since we obviously haven't blocked any players from here. We'll keep you updated on any news in the matter.

The option to report a message as abuse and/or spam is not something to play around with. The purpose of this function is to protect good people from random insults and provide them a pleasant gaming experience. Read More»

If you feel truly offended and also think that the person reading the report shares that point of view you should report it. If you just report it for fun you’d better be aware of the consequences. Because there will be consequences since you most likely end up being accused of false accusations by the inquisition. And they really don’t like wasting their time on false accusations. Makes them rather moody…

For a clarification about what is considered abuse, along with the definition of spam, read the Rules of Conduct.

First of all, “Basic Stealth” is the skill that's needed for the new priority “Keep Stealthy”. However, “Basic Disguise” (for which there is a book out by now) will also be very useful since the absolute best way to stay away from stalkers, paparazzis and the police will be to combine the new priority with the career mission “hide in wilderness”. Stay tuned for more updates!

Being stealthy is no longer just a matter of attitude; it is now a new spare time mission which requires the skill “Basic Disguise”. Furthermore, your level of stealthiness will be proportional to your knowledge of this skill.

This new rule will apply beginning Wednesday the 19:th of March in order to give everyone a chance to update their priorities.

As of now the amount of star quality an officer gets for arresting a criminal is based on the difference in star quality between the two characters. Read More»

This means that if a total nobody arrests a major celebrity the arrest will grant the nobody a lot of star quality.

If the criminal has less star quality than the arresting officer the arrest won't produce any star quality at all.

We've now sorted out the payment crash we had over the weekend to the best of our ability. If you still haven't received the goods your purchased, please send the paypal TransactionID of your purchase to us using the contact pages and we'll help you out as soon as possible.

Tuesday the 11th of March, at 11:00 CET, we'll go offline for approximately 30 minutes in order to update our db server. We'll do our very best not to affect concerts or travelling plans. Thank you for your patience.

The payment system is now up and running again. Any purchases not yet activated will be taken care of within 24 hours from now. Please accept our apologies for this delay.

It has come to our attention that users have received spam messages encouraging them to submit their user credentials to an external site.

This is a friendly reminder to all players - we recommend that you never give out your user name or password to another player or another site under any circumstances, not even if they claim to be a developer of the game. If you suspect someone has gotten hold of your account information, please change your password immediately.

Bad voodoo caused our payment system to malfunction over the weekend. We're currently investigating the situation and will try to eliminate the problem as soon as possible. If you've paid for a product in the last couple of days which hasn't yet been activated, there's no need to panic. You'll get what you've paid for when things get back on track.

It's now possible for Police Lieutenants to sign out a tracker dog in their local police station. With a tracker dog and the animal training skill it's possible to scan a locale for known criminals. Only uniformed Police Liutenants have the ability to use the dog.

More areas of use for both the dog and the skill are in the pipe.

It's now possible for VIP users to view a list of their friends who are present in a locale. This replaces the old color markup of friends and acquaintances. Also, a maximum of 100 characters will be listed when using the regular “Characters Present” feature.

This change has been made due to performances issues in heavy crowded locales.

As of today it's no longer possible for cities to tax locales into negative numbers. Locales which can't pay their building tax suffer a tiny dent in their quality. Privately owned locales now also get a journal entry when they are unable to pay the building tax or when the city is unable to pay their daily subsidies to make the cash flow easier to follow.

We're adding two new servers today. So if things go haywire for a while there's no need to worry. It won't affect the game in any way. Good stuff!

Buy a box of syringes down at the hospital. Create the medicine like always. View the medicine details and use the box of syringes to create a shot of medicine. Interact with the patient using the shot. The effects will be instant and if the patient is cured you'll get the achievement.

From now on you will be considered inactive if you haven't logged in for more than one RL month. Your character will then stop getting his/her regular updates until you log on again. Also, if you don't log in for more than two whole RL months your character(s) will eventually die of inactivity. Earlier this limit was set to three RL months but to save our servers we've decided to narrow it down. Stay online!

1161 hunters killed 80920 zombies and collected 6662 treats this year. Danko Cvetković got 551 of the walking dead. Most treasures were collected by Eugenia Chicote and Kerem Gülbahar who received 40 treats each.

Within a couple of days both prospective parents will have to be VIP when doing the wild thing if the woman is to become pregnant. Read More»

Children take up a huge portion of all our character related data and tax the servers just as heavily as regular character updates. And when so few of our players help support the game by paying for a VIP membership we cannot afford to be as generous with our hardware as we'd like to be.

We've all felt the effects of the slow servers lately. And we've got more servers coming our way in the near future. But adding more hardware won't help in the end if we continue to give away more server capacity than what the players are willing to pay for.

Keep in mind that the VIP pregnancy limitation is only relevant while having sex. Once someone is pregnant, or a child has been born, the kid stays with you like always regardless of your VIP status.

Sorry.

As some of us know it's possible to play all your songs first and perform your special actions last in a show to boost your show rating. As of next week this will no longer be possible. So, it's time for the likes of Inimigos do Ritmo to change their strategy a bit.

We never wanted banners in the game. But the harsh reality of the server situation has forced us to reconsider. Only 3% of our players are VIP which makes it hard to keep up with the costs of running a growing game like this. For this reason we're currently trying out a new banner that will appear for at least two weeks on top of the page.

VIP members have the option to deactivate all advertisement in their user preferences.

We've made some big changes to this system. Along with the upcoming school system we hope this will both be easier to understand and more convenient to work with. Read More»

First of all: The teacher will be required to know the skill Basic Teaching. A Master must also have 5 stars in a skill to be able to teach it to someone. When one of his students learns the skill the Master will immediately improve the selected skill himself. (But not before the apprentice gets the eureka message.) As the master's skill level increases it becomes harder and harder to become better. Those last couple of stars will be real hard to get.

Although it's possible for a master to have as many apprentices as he/she likes, the master/apprentice relationship is the most efficient when there's only one apprentice. The more apprentices the less effective the techings will become. There will be an enforced upper limit of maximum 10 apprentices per master though.

VIP Masters are also able to see the progress of the student along with the usual information on the apprentice page. The progress bar shows how likely it is for each apprentice to learn the skill in his next update.

Some former bugs and “bugs” that should be erased thanks to the new system: * Teaching kids flaws * Getting false messages about absent apprentices * You don't have to wait for the “started listening to master” message.

This new system will go live during the day (Wednesday). Stay tuned for more info regarding the upcoming school system which will enable masters to teach their skills to a greater number of students in a less personal fashion…

NOTE: Since there's a ton of players with up to a thousand apprentices we're deleting all current master/apprentice relationships where the master have over 20 students. (Even though the normal limit is 10.)

Tomorrow, wednedsay, the artist rider will finally become a factor when determining the outcome of your shows. If the club can't pay the entire rider at the time of the show you'll lose out on the bonus altogether.

Sick and tired of waiting in line at the airport? Don't want to share the stewards attention with countless drunk tourists? Want to dazzle your groupies with a quick trip to Paris? Running late for your show in New York? This is the way to fly.

We're thrilled to announce the launch of the Polish translation and along with that the capital of Poland - Warsaw.

Thank you Fausto Nanni,Gaia Dal Martello, Santo Antonucci, Stephen Vohmann, Tancredi De Rose for your efforts!

Oh, and a friendly reminder that the World Tour achievement does NOT have a time limit ;)

The mayor can now decide if convicted criminals should be allowed to get new apartments in his/her city. Lesser crimes such as vandalism and debt are excluded and sentences over two game years old don't count.

The Forum is now back in business again and has found its home on a new server. Unfortunately we didn't have the possibility to transfer the gigantic data file containing your read messages which means all threads/messages will appear as unread even though you've read them. Thread priorities and Forum memberships are however intact.

Tomorrow Tuesday we will take down the Forum server in order to do some maintenance work. The downtime will most likely last the whole day. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Important notifications for all players interested in protecting our brains this year. Read More»

1. The skill Basic Fire Arms is now needed if you're to fire any hand held weapons such as shotguns. The use of this skill also comes with a time limit. This means that it will no longer be possible to rack up crazy amounts of zombie kills by carrying 15 shotguns with you.

2. The zombie tracker will require the skill Paranormal Tracking Devices to operate successfully.

3. Chainsaw.

This means that Day of the Dead just got a whole lot tougher, boring, lame, or exciting depending on which type of player you are. So you might want to think twice about if you're to attend this event or not this year.

Clubs are now able to control how much of the show earnings will go to the artist. The default percentage will be 50% like it's always been. Read More»

We know these latest changes have made it more difficult for the clubs to stay on top of things. We're going to update the interface on the company end of things to make it easier on you all. So don't despair just yet.

Just because it wouldn't be rock'n'roll without them. Artist and club owners will get a week to sort out things out between them. Then we go live with the code early next week.

Today is the first time the artist crew salaries are paid. From now on this will be a weekly payment. The mood and skill levels of the crew are also subject to automatic updates as of today.

It has been discovered that several user have exploited a loophole that made it possible to generate huge quantities of donuts. Deliberately exploiting loopholes such as this is considered cheating. Read More»

What is worse is that some of them have also used automated scripts in doing this which is not only cheating, but can also cause serious harm to the game.

Those who have been found guilty have been dealt with the usual way.

Isn't it boring to travel around the world and never notice any differences between cities? From now on all shops, as well as plastic surgery centers, tattoo parlors and city halls, will now only be open from 7 am to 11 pm local time.

When we added the community event page we meant for it to be for seriously cool and interesting events such as Nigel Cameron's big meet in the Netherlands. Read More»

Thus, in an effort to sort out the madness over there we've decided to make it a VIP privilege to post something on the community event page.

We have now rewritten the whole banking system. From now on there won't be a single transaction taking place in the dark. Read More»

Bank owners/CEOs are now able to see all transactions from each account/loan as well as get a list of all recent transactions and activities regarding the bank's deposit fund. In addition to being completely anonymous in its activities the old banking system also had a nasty bug in the code which dealt with money from dead characters. This bug caused some deposit funds to fluctuate “without” reason.

Those of you who have loans will no longer pay your mortgages automatically on sundays. Instead, you'll receive a weekly bill which you'll have to pay within 14 days.

Using scripts that constantly trigger pages is something that shouldn't be done, and from now on, all players who use such scripts will see their characters slip on banana peels and hurt themselves. They will continue to slip on banana peels at regular intervals until these scripts are deactivated. Read More»

We're not out to get anyone and there's no ill will behind our actions. We simply want to spare our heavily burdened servers from having to deal with these pointless page views.

So if all of a sudden, you slip on a banana peel, please deactivate the scripts you're using. The scripts are doing things they shouldn't without you knowing about them!

Character updates have been a bit delayed this weekend. The problem is taken care of now though and everyone will get their update within the nearest future.

Considering the huge amount of citizens in both Istanbul and Ankara we figured it was time for one more Turkish city. Please welcome Izmir, the third largest city of Turkey.

With the vast majority of the criminals in the game being clones we've decided to make that whole part of the game VIP only. Read More»

A life of crime should represent a life where criminal acts come with meaningful consequences and potential dangers. When nearly all criminals are clones (used to harvest stuff in the game and sabotage other players efforts) the dangers and consequences of becoming a criminal doesn't mean a thing.

We realise this will upset a few honest players out there. For this we're truly sorry. This decision is hard on us as well. We never wanted to regulate crime this way.

We're very happy to announce that the Romanian translation finally is finished. Many thanks to all the people who have been working with it during the last year. Simon Hackett, Forest Biggerstaff and Neil Malcom, we welcome you (and everyone else) to Bucharest!

Good news for all slackers! As of next week all adult characters (16+) will get at least one experience point. Read More»

To get two points you need to do roughly the same amount of stuff as before, but it will be somewhat more difficult to get a full three points.

We've also looked over the code to make sure firefighters, swats etc get the appropriate points they deserve.

We've made some changes to how the experience points are valued in the game. Read More»

You now get more potential experience points from jamming, recording tracks and shooting videos.

You also get experience points from writing songs from now on. The better the song turns out the higher the chance of earning experience points from it. Theoretically, although highly unlikely, one shockingly good song could earn you three whole experience points. Likewise if the song sucks you won't get any potential experience from it at all.

In addition to these music related tweaks photography won't get you any potential experience points anymore unless the person photographed is on the paparazzi list.

Prison transports between different cities have always been a source of confusion to both our players and our system. For this reason we're removing them untill further notice. Prisoners can still be transferred from one jail to another within the same city though… just in case someone real nasty needs to be isolated.