Community News from 2009

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2010
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The quality of your musical instruments now directly affect your personal performance and your ability to play songs on stage. So for those of you who aren't in the habit of taking care of your instruments by polishing and tuning them should probably consider doing so now.

The character updates are up and running again. They are currently running faster than normal so you should get your missing updates, together with your regular updates, before the week is over.

We are aware that you have been missing out on your updates. We will get on to it asap and keep you posted once everything is up and running again.

During the initial stages of the Supreme Court, we've allowed lawyers and judges to learn the jobs appropriately, adapting to the new system. But we can't have that forever, so we are announcing the final dates for the end of the test run period. Read More»

Starting January 4th, 2010, closing arguments given by lawyers appealing cases will be held under strict scrutiny, so lawyers will need to send valid, appropriate and convincing comments with the defendants' files. Even if the appeal itself is valid, and the sentence reduction is sensible, if the lawyer fails to bring the case to the Supreme Court with a clear and rational closing statement written in English, the appeal will more than likely fail. Up until now, the Justices have been somewhat lenient, letting a few exceptional cases through so that the client wasn't punished due to the system being in its early stages, but that will change, culminating in the announced deadline.

In the same way, judges will be expected to do a responsible job when they sentence criminals. If the judge comments in the cases they judge aren't clear enough, explaining the case properly and including all relevant and required information, it might mean the case can be successfully appealed, even if the time given isn't excessive. The date from which the Supreme Court will stop considering inappropriate judge comments will also be January 4th, 2010. This means that all cases judged from that date on will require a clear and well explained judge comment to go with it, including the crimes the criminal is being judged on and the days or amount of money given as a punishment, or they might be good enough grounds for a successful appeal. We'd like to remind Chief Justices and judges all around the world that old rules regarding languages will still apply, judge comments should be in English, the local language where the sentence is passed, or a language the criminal will understand.

Tuning your instruments will immediately increase their quality to the level of “Wonderful”. If you wish for your instruments to reach a higher level than that you have to polish them a bit as well. Read More»

In order to tune an instrument you need to have the skill corresponding to the instrument. For example tuning an accoustic guitar requires you to have the skill accoustic guitar. (Although a microphone can be tuned by having the skill Basic Singing.)

If you have what it takes to tune an instrument simply click on USE next to it on your character's item page.

As of next week the quality of your musical instruments will directly affect your personal performance and your ability to play songs on stage.

Whenever a song is first published on a record or a music video it will be forever associated with the artist which released it. This information, together with the whereabouts of the original composer, will be used to determine the outcome of playing covers on stage.

Two important tweaks to interactions some of you might be interested in. Read More»

1. As of now the results of character interactions are calibrated for skills up to ten stars instead of five. This includes interactions such as first aid, prank calls etc.

2. The effects of interactions on your overall relationship is now slightly different as well. The friendship, romance, and enmity of your relationships are now a direct average of each partner's mood, love, and hate.

This means that building relationships will be slightly slower than before and it will be harder to have your way with other character's emotions.

It also means that the next time you interact with someone you might see a jolt in your relationship with that character as your relationship adjusts to this tweak.

It's now possible for convicted criminals to request legal help from lawyers. This option, accessible from the criminal's case file, will only be available for those too harshly punished. Read More»

Convicted criminals, currently locked up in jail, may request help from any available lawyer even if they are not in the same city. This might however change once the amount of active lawyers piles up in each city.

Equimanthorn highlighted the Big Bang with an earth shaking show, closely followed by Flight of the Wingless Pegasus. The Big Bang Beta went smoothly without the Mega Dome collapsing on top of all the bands, so next time we'll allow even more bands to join. More results from the Big Bang!

Skilled lawyers may now request a licence that enables them to work on criminal cases. If a criminal is too harshly punished by a judge, they may request legal help from available lawyers. The appointed lawyer may then appeal the case to The Supreme Court. Read More»

The lawyer's fee is based on their success and will be paid by the losing party once The Supreme Court has decided on the outcome, meaning that a failed appeal lets the criminal pay, while a successful one will make the local Courthouse pay.

If you think you have what it takes and the skills required, head on over to a Courthouse and request your licence.

As soon as we have enough licenced lawyers we will allow criminals to request appeals.

Those of you already planning your next world tour might find this of interest. Qualifiers for the next festival will be held on May 13-18 and the Final itself on May 25 - June 01. Even though the qualifiers are shorter than last time there will be more slots available for you. Stay tuned for more information as the Ministry of Music releases all the details in January 2010.

To complement the Popmundo Festival we've created the BIG BANG. This coming Tuesday we'll take this new feature out for a test run. If you're interested in joining us for this land mark event you're most welcome to. Please check THIS out for more details.

Some small additions to the VIP features has just been added. The personal calendar has been increased to one whole month instead of two weeks. Some photo album information has appeared. We've added a university finder to the search page. And finally we've added the possibility to exclude skills from your skill list. Cheerio!

The slackers in the Ministry of Music are always looking for an excuse to put their feet up. This time they want YOU to do their job for them and help decide which city hosts the final of Popmundo Festival VIII . For more information take a look in the English General Forum.

Some features have been added, some removed and one of them has made a well awaited comeback. Also, please note that Credits now are available for purchase through all our payment methods. Enjoy!

Behind closed doors and shuttered windows, in chilly rooms and dark, dank corridors, the Ministry of Music is now working at full speed to bring you another festival. Read More»

Whilst nothing is finalised yet, plans are beginning to take shape. No definite dates or cities are yet decided, but to all of you who like to plan ahead we can reveal that year 49 is looking good for Popmundo Festival VIII.

It's been a while now but we're thrilled to introduce a new language as well as a city in Popmundo. Please welcome Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. A huge applause to Anatoliy Novikov, Andrey Prokhorov, Elvira Volkhonskaya, Fiodor Farafontov and Zurab Zverev who've made this possible.

Credits, and Credit Products, are an additional way to make sure your character doesn't lack the necessary bling and resources to make a stand in the game. Read More»

You do not have to be VIP in order to buy credits. The VIP membership is for players who wish to access additional content and functions that makes their daily life easier and more enjoyable over a long time period. Credits, on the other hand, are aimed more towards those players that need an item, a small temporary boost, or a special service to help them out with a specific need for the moment.

Before we start to sell credits as a separate product in the game all VIP players have now received 100 credits as a sample. As soon as we make credits available in the shop we will replace the old VIP gifts with a small stack of 100 credits. (This means that for a short period of time you get both 100 credits AND the VIP gifts if you've never purchased VIP before.)

For more information on Credits, Credit Products, and VIP please drop by the Shop.

Lawyers can now only be employed by law firms. Read More»

Everyone who worked as a lawyer, in a locale other than a law firm, is now employed as a clerk instead.

No salaries have been altered even though they might be higher than what should be possible for clerks in some cities.

The effects of clerks on the affected locales have been altered to match those of the removed lawyers.

This change was made because of the ongoing work with the Supreme Court and upcoming new features for lawyers.

The festival grounds will close next week. So if you haven't dropped by to pick up the merchandise you want you should do so within the next couple of days.

Credits, and Credit Products, are an additional way to make sure your character doesn't lack the necessary bling and resources to make a stand in the game. Read More»

You do not have to be VIP in order to buy credits. The VIP membership is for players who wish to access additional content and functions that makes their daily life easier and more enjoyable over a long time period. Credits, on the other hand, are aimed more towards those players that need an item, a small temporary boost, or a special service to help them out with a specific need for the moment.

Before we start to sell credits as a separate product in the game all VIP players have now received 100 credits as a sample. As soon as we make credits available in the shop we will replace the old VIP gifts with a small stack of 100 credits. (This means that for a short period of time you get both 100 credits AND the VIP gifts if you've never purchased VIP before.)

For more information on Credits, Credit Products, and VIP please drop by the Shop.

Lawyers can now only be employed by law firms. Read More»

Everyone who worked as a lawyer, in a locale other than a law firm, is now employed as a clerk instead.

No salaries have been altered even though they might be higher than what should be possible for clerks in some cities.

The effects of clerks on the affected locales have been altered to match those of the removed lawyers.

This change was made because of the ongoing work with the Supreme Court and upcoming new features for lawyers.

The festival grounds will close next week. So if you haven't dropped by to pick up the merchandise you want you should do so within the next couple of days.

Anyone not paying their rent on time will now be evicted by the landlord. When you get evicted the people in your apartment will be kicked out and all your items lost! So please pay attention to the exclamation marks next to your bills, after three failed payments you will be out on the street!

From now on it's perfectly possible to get 10 stars in a skill on your own, without the help of universities, quests, apprentices etc. Focusing your career mission on improving a skill, as well as spending XPs on a skill, will now do the trick… slowly. Read More»

This means that all the different ways of improving a skill have the same upper limit on how many stars you can get. You will have to decide which system works best for you. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of them.

Stay tuned for further developments on ways of gaining XPs and improving skills.

The competition was fierce. Never has a festival seen such tremendous lineups as it did this time around. Dreams were broken, illusions shattered, and egos crushed without mercy on stage. And just as the whole community was convinced the festival would be lost to Hip Hop, Çiko comes in and absolutely steals the show! Read More»

Congratulations God of Composing, Rebellious*, The Voice, and Professor Badass. It's a victory well earned!

Congratulations to everyone who took part in this exciting event. You really rocked!

Special thanks to the Ministry of Music who made it all happen.

This Friday we'll dedicate our after work beer to Travis Armour, Nadine Actis, Myranda Nightingale and Joey Zaatman. Thanks to their diligent work Popmundo now has an Indonesian translation as well as a new city. Please welcome Jakarta into our world! Read More»

Whoever manages to figure out who the guy on the city picture is gets a free beer. You're welcome to pick it up right outside our office sometime this afternoon. Cheers!

The criteria for getting the election achievements for Mayors and Chief Justices has changed. From now on a person has to remain in office the whole term to receive these achievements. Read More»

Because of this we will also rename these achievements. For example the old Elected Mayor achievement will be named “Completed a whole term as Mayor” instead.

Noone will be robbed of any of these achievements we've handed out so far. So all of you who've already gotten these will get to keep them.

In addition to this, the “Promoted to Mayor Achievement” will be removed completely from the game. Everyone who've received this achievement will see it replaced by the new mayor achievement instead.

All these changes are made to keep careless achievement hunters from meddling with politics in the game.

The Seventh Popmundo Festival just kicked off with a revolutionary show by Yihla Moja. The time has finally come to see who are taking numbers, walking the walk, and strutting their stuff like nobody else! Don't forget to check out the action on the festival pages.

Everyone playing in the Popmundo Festival final has now been given Diplomatic Immunity. This tiny little document makes it impossible for the police to arrest a festival contestant. Read More»

This diplomatic immunity will be removed at the end of the festival. Warrants will be issued like always even if you have diplomatic immunity. This means that you will still be held responsible for your crimes after the festival.

Tribe leaders are now able to report offensive messages in “their” forums. These reports will then be handeled by the moderators as usual. Also, we'd like to remind everyone that the same rules applies to the Tribe Forums as for all the other ones. Read More»

Moderators are also able to expel users from forums they either not belong in or have misbehaved in. This applies to all forums, not only the Tribe forums.

Right minions… Time for le grande finale. Most of the regular riff-raff has been sorted out during the preliminaries and we are left with a bunch of somewhat less mediocre artists, even though it's not exactly Beethoven…

Let me remind all bands that I expect you to accept your invites right away without delay. Artists who do not do so will be replaced. Read More»

Maybe I will stop by to see some of the shows, unless I am not too busy with something more exciting, like having my toe nails painted.

Jeanne Stjärnblom

In a couple of weeks you will be kicked out of your apartment if you don't pay your bills on time. This means that you can't become a criminal simply by being unable to pay your rent on time.

The invitations to the Popmundo Festival Final have now been handed out to everyone who qualified in the preliminaries. So for those about to rock, we salute you, and may the Pick of Destiny be with you!

VIPs can now add shortcuts to pages and views they often visit. Just click the little shortcut icon next to the cell phone when you are at such a page and a new “hyperlink” will appear on your character menu.

In order to give shares or cash to someone you now have to like, or love, that person a little bit. This means that the recipient must have at least said hello to you before you can give him/her anything at all. Read More»

This also means that if you've blocked someone from forming a relationship with you. You have effectively blocked them from giving shares or money to you. In other words, this follows exactly the same rules as for giving items.

From now on when a locale is set for sale all open employments will be removed. This will not affect anyone already working in the locale.

A small addition to make parenthood a bit more fair and easy. Potential fathers can now demand a paternity test to be taken for a specific character. The service is located in hospitals all over the world.

There used to be a rather high limit on how low your health could get from playing on stage. This limit has now been lowered to 5%. This means that if you don't take care of yourself properly you might actually get hospitalized because of strenuous touring.

The Popmundo Festival qualifiers just began this morning. The players belonging to the Ministry of Music, responsible for organizing this festival, have done their best to make sure it turns out fair and square for everyone. So all eyes on the festival! It's going to be an exciting ride. Read More»

It took us a long time to get here and it's great to be able to leave this whole event in the hands of the players where it belongs. We hope you'll find this festival as exciting as we developers do. Stay tuned for further updates on the festival by the Ministry itself. Enjoy!

Jonas

We've now restored the looks of everyone who got their beauty ruined by the Birthday Bug two days ago. Read More»

To make up for the trauma caused by seeing yourselves in the mirror on that unfortunate birthday we've also increased the beauty of everyone affected a little bit. This also serves as compensation for those of you who sacrificed a few experience points to try to restore your looks. Please accept our apologies for this mishap. We'll try to do better in the future.

We've removed the option for the police to issue arrest warrants manually. Instead this feature will go to the Chief Justice who will be able to formally request a manual warrant to be issued. A new entity in the game which we're currently working on, called the Global Supreme Court, will then decide if the manual warrant should be issued or not. Read More»

This new option for the Chief Justice will be in place before the end of the day.

The Global Supreme Court is currently a work in progress and Bernard and Jonas will, together with a handful of trusted players, sort out which role it will have in the future.

NOTE: To reduce the amount of mindnumbingly boring tasks for the Chief Justice and police, failure to pay your rent will cease to be a criminal act. Instead people will simply be kicked out of their apartments. Stay tuned for more info as we continue to improve the legal system.

In order to give an item to someone now you have to like, or love, that person a little bit. This means that the recipient must have at least said hello to you before you can give him/her an item. This prevents strangers from dumping unwanted or illegal items on your character. Read More»

This also means that if you've blocked someone from forming a relationship with you. You have effectively blocked them from giving you an item forever.

Some 3000 people who celebrated their birthday today got their looks suddenly ruined completely by the effects of a nasty bug. Read More»

Everyone who was affected by this Birthday Bug has now gotten perfect looks for the time being. We will obviously restore everyone's looks as soon as possible, we just have to go out and buy you all new presents first to make up for the trauma caused by all this. Sorry!

You no longer become wanted for vandalism when you're discovered tagging buildings. Instead you get beat up by outraged citizens. Read More»

We've begun reworking the legal/criminal system in the game now. This system has needed a major overhaul for a long time and we're glad to finally be able to get to it.

This small graffiti tweak was just a warm-up. Stay tuned for more important changes as we get cracking on the more fundamental parts of the legal system.

Playing a song live on stage now boosts its practice level slightly and updates its “last jammed date”. Very much like a small jam session would do. This way you don't have to ditch your groupies on a world tour to go jam all the time.

In just under three heart-stopping, nerve-jangling weeks the festival qualifiers kick off, filling the sixteen hosting cities to the brim with sex, drugs and rock n' roll.

Jeanne's minions in the Ministry are thrilled to see the big interest in taking part, and Connie is already busy stocking his bus with beer for the Does. With all slots booked and many more bands wanting to take part, the interest has been greater than we ever hoped. Read More»

So we'd like to extend a friendly reminder to all competitors to keep the rules for participation in mind. The rules for lineup changes (which you can read in the Ministry of Music page, under “Festival Information”) won't be enforced until when the show is played. Therefore, if you already know you'll be ineligible to play in the qualifier once the time comes, then please remember there are many, many other bands who would greatly appreciate the chance to compete.

So gather your band mates, polish your instruments and let battle commence. All in the purest Festival spirit of course!

It's finally time for the launch of a new city and language here in our wonderful world. Manila, capital of the Philippines, is accompanied by the Tagalog translation. Big up to Gavin Bakhtar, Amparo Mínguez, Cindy Gannon and Geraldine Kilcline for a great job with the translation.

Time for the evil of the thriller to roll down the curtain. This upcoming Day of the Dead will be a BETA test of something completely different. No zombies will come looking for brains to feed on, no treats will be awarded for hunters, and no insane browser activity will slow down our servers. Read More»

The new Day of the Dead will be a much more silent event hidden away in the dark corners of the game where it won't interfere with the general theme of Popmundo. It won't influence the core game very much, and most importantly, it won't be a target for player created scripts which bog down our hardware.

A small group of selected players will be allowed to join the beta on the day of the event. If nothing goes horribly wrong with the test this piece of news is probably the last official info you'll ever get about Day of the Dead. We're sweeping all the things that go bump in the night under the carpet from now on.

Popmundo of today has become a rather large community and so has the group of forum moderators. This has brought with it a need for an improved organisation. We have therefore decided to introduce a new office – Senior Moderator. The Senior Moderators are especially experienced moderators who will mainly have two tasks. First of all they are the coaching staff for all the regular moderators and secondly they will handle appeals. Read More»

If you feel that you have been banned wrongly from the forums you should always start by writing the moderator who banned you, stating your case. If you still feel a mistake has been made after that you can now turn to the Senior Moderators. The Senior Moderators are contacted through the form on the Contact page, not by in-game messages.

The decisions of the Senior Moderators are final and cannot be appealed further. Also note that the Senior Moderators are fully authorized to increase bans, both if they feel the initial decision was too lenient, but also if they receive appeals which are pure nonsense. Don’t be afraid to contact them if you really have a case and just because they might disagree with you it does not mean they will increase your ban. Only appeals which are deemed to be sent in malice or being a complete waste of time will be punished. Use common sense and you will be fine.

An appeal must always be written in English. It must also be specific, i.e. which forum post it is about and why you are complaining. Messages with just unspecified complaining will be disregarded.

A tiny bug in the new encore system caused encores to be scored lower and judged harder than they were supposed to. This bug has now been eliminated and all shows played since this system went online have been awarded with a couple of points extra to make up for the mishap.

The new way of judging encores is now online. An interesting new feature with this system, in addition to the ones mentioned in the previous community announcement, is that this system loves it when you play old hits from the past. Time to dust off a few oldies but goldies!

The way encores work will change next week. Everyone who end their shows with encores should take a moment to read this piece of news. Read More»

Next week bad encores will no longer end shows prematurely. Instead bad encores will damage your show more and more as long as you insist on playing them. This means that you have more to loose by scheduling encores you might not successfully pull off.

A bad encore will not add any fame or popularity to a song whatsoever.

Your artist ambition level will become more important when determining if you play encores successfully.

Some never thought this day would come… but it finally did. Multiple releases and stockpiling of music videos no longer effective. Read More»

Here's the basics of the tweak that you should all be aware of:

1. In order for a video to reach its full potential it shouldn't be released too soon after another one. The optimal release interval is approximately the same as record singles. You'll get a note in your artist journal saying if the release was well timed or not.

2. The release of the video should take place sometime soon after the video was filmed. Wait too long to release your filmed video and the fans will think it's old fashioned and outdated. (This is actually not something new but this effect will be much more noticeable from now on.)

3. Videos that make it to the Music Video Charts will receive their song populrity boost like always.

4. Good videos can affect song popularity for up to a month now. Not just a week. (Even if they don't make it to the charts.)

5. Crappy videos, poorly timed releases, and out of date footage can reduce or even eliminate any positive factors that affect a song's popularity. Videos are no longer guaranteed to increase song popularity.

We realise that this is a painful tweak for some players out there. But we're certain it makes for a much better game for the vast majority of players.

The Melvin Memorial Foundation is delighted with the number of bands planning to walk the walk after barely a day of bookings being open for the Seventh Popmundo Festival. With such great early interest and the odd possibility of skullduggery the Ministry has made a few changes. Read More»

1. If you cancel a booked gig in a festival qualifier you won't be able to book another one for five days.

2. Cancelling a festival gig will hurt your global fame & popularity. (This won't come into effect until next week.)

3. Whenever a gig is cancelled a new open invitation will take its place after 12-24 hours. This delay is determined randomly to prevent players from easily babysitting slots for others in qualifiers.

Miss Connie Perkins today announced the details for booking your place in the festival preliminaries - that is, if you're good enough. So whether you want to knock 'em dead on Green Lake or lay down your claim as a legend in Ephesus, you better head on over to the Ministry of Music and get updated on the latest details. Read More» Read More»

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that a Great show is now required during the very first week of bookings, rather than the Sweet level originally announced. The Ministry decided to make this change after hearing what the community had to say, Miss Perkins offers his apologies for this change, but remember - if this puts a dent in your plans, you can always blame Connie…

Make sure you pick the right park; no one wants to be in fifth place.

In order to tend to your company head quarters you now need to select “Manage Company” as your career mission instead of “Focus on Work”. Read More»

In case you do not wish to spend character updates on your head quarters you can still visit them “manually” while logged on like before.

We made this change so that “Focus on Work” doesn't have any special effects other than simply focusing on the current employment of your character.

Starting next week we'll be using a new formula for creating the weekly radio charts. This new formula will allow for more artists to get played on the air, remove a few slightly unfair elements from the game, and add more depth to the gameplay. Read More»

In addition to some minor tweaks there are 4 changes to the radio calculations which you might want to pay special attention to:

1. Media Coverage is now a factor when calculating the charts.

2. The new system will favour the opening track on singles. From now on it's a lot tougher to see both tracks on a single to make it to the charts.

3. Videos, like always, make it easier for a song to be played on the radio but not as much as before. The videos must also meet a certain standard otherwise it will simply damage a song's chances to make it to the charts. Also, a song backed by a music video will have a shorter life span on the radio charts than before.

4. A song recorded in a genre other than the genre it was originally composed for will NOT make it to the radio charts.

Together with these changes artists will also begin to see their Media Coverage boosted in the countries playing their songs.

Pregnant women now have the possibility of predicting the gender of their child. The ultrasound is available at all hospitals, though it's not that accurate before at least three weeks of pregnancy.

The Melvin Memorial Foundation is proud to sponsor the Seventh Popmundo Festival. At last it is time to once again put your skills where your mouth is, weed the Brides from the bridesmaids, walk the walk and ROCK! Read More»

The Festival will be hosted by the city of Stockholm on 30th September - 7th October. Preliminaries will be held in sixteen cities, throughout 10th-18th September.

It's been a long, long time since the world of Popmundo last rocked at a Festival so take yourself over to the Ministry of Music for the lowdown on the past and all the details on this Festival.

The late, some would say great, Melvin Stjärnblom's daughter Jeanne will be present briefly in the forum soon to remind us of the wonder of the Festival.

Good luck!

Poison is now the only way to go if you want to end it once and for all. The effect is lethal and permanent and the one week long dying process can only be reversed with an adrenaline injection.

A couple of thousand players who were trying to learn a new skill at a university were spammed by learning updates during the last 24 hours due to a minor bug. All these diary events have now been removed and the affected characters have received full mood bars as compensation. Sorry about that.

The amount of artist boost gained from record releases is now determined by the quality of the record review and how long ago you released a record of the same type. Singles now only award you half as much boost as full length albums as well. Read More»

This change eliminates the old trick of gaining undeserved artist boost by releasing a bad record before releasing a good one.

Bidding on locales for sale will now partially limit company cash flow. Read More»

This means that the total sum of a company's current locale bids will be reserved and unavailable for the president to spend on other things untill all auctions are over.

This tweak prevents wicked company owners from sabotaging and abusing the locale auction system.

Due to the quest bug on St. Kobe's Day we've awarded everyone who heard strange music beckoning them over the weekend with 5 XP. We'll try to stay more on top of things in the future.

Due to the recent server problems we've extended all VIP and Company Licence memberships 7 days. Once again we'd like to apologize for the poor performance of our website.

We've just added a university to each city in the game. Information on how universities work can be found in the rules.

We have experienced a shaky week with very slow web servers and we know it's been frustrating for you, to say the least. We're very grateful for your patience and the fact that you endured it (without chasing us with tar and feathers). The current status is that our tweaks and work this week is beginning to pay off resulting in improved performance. We will continue to improve this next week and by then we should most likely have decided on how to compensate our paying customers properly.

As you all probably have noticed the poor performance of the site has not improved. The problems with logging in and the generally slow site is caused by overloaded web servers. Read More»

Basically all our efforts are currently spent on addressing these issues but we cannot give you a good estimate as to when all will be back to normal yet. The problems are most likely worsened by the fact that some users run illegal scripts despite our warnings. We want to remind everyone that we will strike down hard on those doing so.

We are really sorry about this and any inconvenience this might cause you.

Hamster-powered parks. Knights who say 'Ni!'. National Theatre, OneWayTrip, Kissing Slits… Read More»

To some, these words mean nothing. To others, they may be distant, vague memories. But soon, tales of ages past will be told once more, and new legends will be created before our very eyes. The sole question is: will you be ready to claim your place in Popmundo history?

Even now - at the direction of the mysterious Jeanne Stjärnblom, and under the supervision of the first Prime Minister of Music, Connie Perkins - the Ministry of Music is taking shape, and whispers of a new era echo within its halls.

A battle looms this autumn, so take heed! Keep your parks clean, your bandmates happy, and your eyes open for more information yet to come…

We're aware of the fact that our webservers are performing poorly right now. We're doing our best to fix that problem, but things will probably be a bit shaky in the days to come. Read More»

The good news is that the game engine itself isn't bothered by these problems. So you don't have to worry about any serious damage to your careers because of all of this.

We apologise for any inconvenience this might cause you.

We've just tweaked the calculations behind the Artist Rankings so that record sales are finally worth a lot less than what we've grown accustomed to. Read More»

The full effect of this tweak will be seen after the next two Artist Ranking update cycles. So there's no need to panic if, all of a sudden, you jump up or down a couple of hundred notches in the rankings.

You now have the possibility to comment on other characters' blog postings. However, it's up to each character to choose whether (s)he wants to allow comments or not. Everyone with a blog has the option to turn comments on; the option is found in the Priorities page. Blog comments (as well as the blog itself) are a VIP feature.

We took the site offline for some routine database maintenance today. The downtime was supposed to last 30 minutes but shit hit the fan and it lasted a bit over two hours. The good news, however, is that the game engine was only down for roughly an hour so any damage to the game world should be minimal. Read More»

Like always we'll deal with any damaged careers as soon as possible.

The downtime allowed us to reduce the amount of data in the game by 30%. So all things considered, today was a good day.

Thank you for your patience.

Hospitals now have to pay for Medical Supplies whenever a patient is hospitalised.

Lately we have seen increasing problems with users who are not forum moderators but still act as if they were. Not only does it cause an unfriendly atmosphere, but it also creates uncertainty among unexperienced users. From now on users who do this systematically will be dealt with as spammers by the moderators.

The database gave up on us earlier tonight. The game is now up and running again after some 4 hours of downtime. We'll tend to eventual damage to your careers as soon as possible so you don't have to worry about any failed shows because of this. We apologize for the inconvenience.

As of Wednesday afternoon this week the Who is Winning chart will be directly based on the Artist Rankings. Read More»

Right now this tweak won't bring any shocking surprises with it so most of you can safely ignore this piece of news. This is just to inform the players who keep a close eye on these things about what's going on.

We have made a tweak to the mission of busking. Read More»

Busking used to hit really, really hard on both mood and health. It now no longer does so for newbies.

The negative effects of busking now depends on how much of a newbie you are. What makes you a newbie? Well a couple of things are weighed together: time in game, and how much your character have improved during that time.

(The positive effects are unchanged, by the way).

The VERY ROUGH guideline is that during your first couple of weeks you are probably going to be classified as a complete newbie by the game. As such, your health won't suffer from busking, and you will only lose a very little mood.

After a few weeks (or so), you will start to get diary entries indicating that busking “feels wrong” and that you were supposed to become a celebrity. At this point, you will lose more mood and health while busking, and also a bit of Star Quality. Note: health and mood effects are still not as bad as they used to be before this change!

Finally, you have reached a point where the full health and mood loss starts ticking in when busking. You will get diary entires saying that it feels embarrassing and you hope no one you know sees you. Mood and health will now drop at the full rate which it previously used to drop at. In addition, now you start to get a significant loss of Star Quality.

The Avatar Maker is now available for everyone. You'll find it on your character menu. Now we'll dig through the pile of suggestions for new items.

We've removed local business hours from locales in the game so that shops etc are always open. Read More»

The local business hours system was never fully developed and turned out, in its current state, to be more of nuisance than anything else.

Chances are the system will return some day in a more challenging player controlled form. But for now we're simply removing it so it won't bother anyone anymore.

Due to an increased amount of copyright violations we'd like to remind you that it's forbidden to use copyrighted material or material that violate the Rules of Conduct. This includes blogs, forum posts, song lyrics, character statements and any other place where you can submit this kind of content. This has now been added to the Rules of Conduct, even though it's actually been in the rules (Content Agreement as well as Crime and Punishment) for years.

We've added an Avatar Maker for those of you who'd like to create an avatar that suits the game graphics. The Avatar Maker comes along with the new character statement feature. Even though the AM is just available for VIPs right now it will be a feature for everyone in the near future. The Character statement will remain a VIP feature. Read More»

You'll reach the Avatar Maker from your character menu. VIPs are able to save up to five snapshots from this “photo booth”. Non-VIPs will be able to save their latest creation as a snapshot.

We just went live with the tweaked rider effects. This means that riders now affect your mood both positively and negatively depending on how well your rider scores and whether it gets paid or not.

Thanks to another great and ambitious team of translators we're happy to announce the launch of Sofia along with the Bulgarian translation. Read More»

Big ups to Dina Roma, Jonathan Lancashire, Bódog Bodnár and Casper Harrison who've been working on the translation.

Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria and one of the oldest cities in Europe.

In a not too distant future, two locale types are going to be phased out and eventually removed from the game: Research Centers and 2nd Hand Stores. Read More»

This is to let you know in advance, that these two locales, will eventually be removed from the game. We do not like their current role in the game, and they are fundamentally prone to either exploits or other problems.

Some of their functionality is going to be taken over by other locales (new or existing types).

We will not remove them overnight, though.

But they will be phased out “in the near future” (estimated timeline is “a few or a couple of months”).

If you currently own a RC or 2nd hand Store Don't panic. We will not remove them without at least some sort of limited compensation. But you are advised to not invest too heavily in their future.

If you are thinking of buying a RC or 2nd Hand Store We advise you not to build new ones. While it is possible (unless your city decides to ban it), it is probably a bad idea to invest in a type of locale with no future in the game.

Riders no longer influence the outcome of your shows. However, a week or two from now they will start affecting your character. Read More»

Currently there's also an awkward situation with differently unlocked rider items which will be attended to in the days to come.

Keep in mind though that the key to getting the most out of your rider is having an appropriate rider. Not simply squeezing as many extravagant items into it as possible. Rolling into town with a rider that's out of your league can even be really embarassing.

So for the time being, untill the new rider system comes into full effect, the smart thing is to keep your rider to a bare minimum.

We've tweaked the locale maintenance update system a bit. The update will be executed city by city on different times, pretty much like the character update system but not as frequent as the later one. Read More»

We've made this tweak due to performance issues and our db server just called us to express his gratitude for this tweak and promised to do his best to keep up the speed in the future.

Hype gained from competitions has been removed from the game. This means that from now on your ranking will not be directly influenced by the outcome of competitions. Read More»

Any hype currently won will still remain in the system until it has faded away.

As soon as all existing Hype has faded away from the game the “Who is Winning” chart will be changed so it's based on the global artist rankings. This will produce a more accurate view on who is actually “winning”.

It might have lost some of its rock'n'roll status since the premieres of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi at La Scala. Nonetheless, it's a welcomed addition to the world of Popmundo!

Salaries are now paid on Friday afternoons instead of Friday mornings. With this tweak salaries should always contain pay for 7 days of work. (Not 6 or 8 days which sometimes was the case before.)

We've tweaked the calculations for your individual stage performance grades. Mood and health is now less important than ever before. Read More»

Age, beauty and intelligence, on the other hand are a tad more important than what they were before.

We also eliminated a bug in this calculation which handed out the sixth star a bit too easy for top performers.

All in all these changes make it a lot easier for everyone to put on great shows while mistreating their characters a bit more than what we're used to. So unless you're playing in a major festival where every point counts there's really no reason why you shouldn't party like it's 1999 while on tour.

The Hype & Fame gained from winning competitions is now calculated differently. Easy wins in small competitions won't get you much of anything anymore. Instead your rewards will be based on how hard the competition was to win. Read More»

Some other minor competition tweaks:

1. There's also Media Exposure to be gained from competitions now.

2. New rules to prevent people from using special items such as Bats etc are optional and can be added when creating a competition.

3. New Festival Rules are also an option when creating a competition nowadays. These rules grade events during the shows differently reducing the importance of certain extraordinarily boosted skill levels.

Kwaito has touched more than the music scene in South Africa. In recent years, it has become deeply embedded in young South African culture because it represents “the streets” and the people who live there. Read More»

And while we were at it we added Joburg, the largest city in South Africa, to the game as well.

We've removed all the links to character portraits hosted by the external site avatarmundo.net. Read More»

We took this drastic action since avatarmundo was asking all our players for login credentials whenever one of their pictures came up. We're sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused you. Please contact the people running avatarmundo for more information if you have any questions about this situation.

Please make sure it says www.popmundo.com in the address field of your browser when logging on to the game. You don't want to hand out your account information accidentaly when trying to log on to a site with a similar name.

Our Internet Service Provider is experiencing technical difficulties. This means that some of our players can't access the game right now. Hopefully the problem will be sorted out shortly.

The ZombieMundo skin is now only visible to people who activate their Zombie Trackers. Also, as of next year, the infamous “View Zombies” link will only be visible to people with trackers activated.

As of a while back we're keeping track of when people join artists. This information is now visible on your artist member lists. This new data is also used to determine when you're awarded with Touring Achievements. Read More»

This means that in order for you to get a “Played in 10 cities” achievement. You have to personally and successfully play ten shows in ten different cities with your current band.

If you leave your band you lose your current city count and will have to start over from scratch with your next band.

When booking events for your character, such as jam sessions and performances, you should always leave at least an extra hour between the events to make sure your character has enough time in its hands. Otherwise one of the events might fail and something really bad might happen as a result.

Players can now throw you off their backs by going to the shrink and having their addictions treated effectively. For more info please look it up in the rules on priorities or visit your nearest Psychology Clinic.

A couple of weeks from now the rules for competitions will alter slightly. For this reason you might want to hold off on scheduling any more competition based tours untill you've decided how these changes affect you. This is a crucial step in paving the way for the next festival. Read More»

1. The amount of hype gained from competitions will be calculated differently. Easy wins will no longer award much hype at all. Instead a competition will have to be real tough to win in order for it to award the winners with a lot of hype.

2. The use of special items on stage (Bats out of Hell etc) will be limited by new rules.

3. Extraordinary skill levels will be treated differently in competitions putting the focus more on the quality of the music.

Stay tuned for the completion of these changes, as well as a couple of other tweaks to the core game. Music Videos anyone? The next festival is closer than you think.

In order to improve (your) account security we have made your e-mail addresses hidden. This means that if you ever need to change it, you will have to enter both your old, as well as the new address before any changes are made. Read More»

Once again we remind you that you must always keep your login details to yourself. Never ever hand them over to someone else in any way and remember that no one from the Popmundo staff will ever ask for your password by e-mail or in game messages.

Yesterday evening the game suffered from a server crash affecting shows and studio recordings. All failed shows from the time of the crash have been partially restored so you won't suffer negatively from the crash. Delayed shows were completed normally although slowly. We'll sort out the remaining problems with the delayed recordings during the day.