After ten years of hiatus, I made my return to Whyville. After a few months, this grey feathered disease showed up on a few people. Those people were lucky it only lasted three days to start. When I finally got it, I was excited. Sure, most people found it annoying, but for me, I had fun with it.
Early on, I found out if you move your avatar while swooping it would glitch the swooping animation. This glitch would make your avatar appear sideways, or backwards depending on when you clicked the new spot. You'd go back to normal if you let the next swoop finish. Unlike the first batch of "victim" mine lasted a week and a half, good thing for me though is that I'm not very sociable.
They introduced some things that would help you protect yourself from the flu. Scale block, a mask and the Umbrella. You could always try to protect yourself the old fashion way, by washing and covering yourself.
The vaccine drive was announced about a week before the next evolution of dragon flu arrived in Whyville. I ended up putting about 40K into the 1 million clam fundraiser. I think the drive ended close to the 2 million clam mark, but don't quote me on that.
They added a feature where you were able to gift people masks, and scale block if you whisper to them. This was the most annoying part of my experience and wish it was disabled. I really wanted this cough.
This evolution of dragon swooping cough was red, but if you didn't get it the first time you'd get the grey version. Another new ability was this fire breath animation. I was only affected for a few days but, I was disappointed in my experience. This was like the grandpa version of a dragon cough. The animation was slower and you were able to socialize more easily.
Finally, a vaccine arrived and I decided to get myself vaccinated. I had fun with this disease but know it could have lingering effects on my avatar for years to come. Hopefully, this vaccine is successful to all those who hate this awful annoyance. If dragon cough does goes extinct. I'm sure Whyville has something cooked up to annoy us once more. Probably five years down the road though.
This is D3MoNiAc signing off for the first time, and probably the final time.
