It was Tuesday, October 7th, 2008, around the hours of 3:45-4:00 PM Whyville time when everyone who attended the Meet the Makers meeting came to a gruesome discovery revealed by Scylla. As if the title of this article didn't already give it away, WhyPasses will no longer be sold after Friday (October 10, 2008). That's right, no more WhyPasses. Here's the thing though: WhyPasses are being replaced. Replaced by a new system which will be known as "Pearls." For those of you who entered a valid parental email address when you signed up, the following was sent out to each parental email address about Pearls:
"Dear Whyville Parent,
The last few months have been exciting for Whyville! We've launched a whole new look, a music maker that allows our citizens to create music, and even a new island, Raven Island, that teaches fire safety. Whyville also won the Gold Award in the National Parenting Publications (NAPPA) Children's Products competition! Our virtual town will be featured in the holiday issue of Parenting Magazine. This top honor is a tribute to our commitment to education and safety.
The next few months will be just as exciting. First, we are proud to present our new Pearls allowance system. Many parents have written to let us know how earning, saving, and managing virtual money in Whyville has been a great learning experience for their children. With the Pearls allowance system, your children will now be able to manage a real allowance within the safety of our virtual world. We wanted to explain this new allowance system to our Whyville parents before your children come to you. We hope that you and your child will have a discussion about the Pearls system and make it a valuable learning experience.
With Pearls, you can set up an allowance for your child for as little as five dollars a month. Your child will manage his/her budget of pearls to purchase familiar, but previously exclusive things like Face Factory vouchers (which allow the creation of face parts) and renewal of face parts.
Also, in just a few weeks, Whyville citizens will be able to use pearls to purchase their own virtual pets! WhyPets will take virtual pet ownership to the next level. From creating pets to taking care of them and training them, your child's pet ownership experience will be creative, educational, and responsible. While we continue to offer our award winning virtual world at no cost, we will be offering WhyPets and other new and exciting premium services through Pearls.
The Pearls allowance system will launch on Friday, October 10. In addition to other coveted perks*, charter members will receive limited-edition virtual memorabilia as well as the privilege of previewing WhyPets before their official debut.
We are excited about these upcoming features! Revenue from Pearls will help Whyville continue to grow as the safest, most educational and most rewarding virtual space on the Internet. Thank you for your support as a Whyville parent, and we hope you will continue to be pleased with the activities and experiences Whyville brings to your child.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions at city-management@whyville.net.
Best,
Jennifer Y. Sun
President
Numedeon, Inc.
Creators of Whyville
* Other perks that come with a Pearls allowance:
+ You can wear twice as many parts on your Whyville face
+ You can have twice as many friends in your Address Book
+ "On-the-grass" seating at the Greek Theater (when available)
+ Expanded list of Friend Finder locations
+ Access to buy animated face parts"
So I bet you're thinking, "Wow 1260, are you deluded? It's the same as a WhyPass but you get the extra perk of a virtual pet!" That's correct, however, it differs from the WhyPass in certain ways. Each pearl costs one cent. So, $1.00 = 100 pearls. In order to renew face parts, we'd have to spend 10 pearls per each face part to renew, and it won't be a "never expire" type rule. When you see the face part coming near it's expiration date, you go to your satchel, click the renew button, which will set it at 91 days. I don't like the idea of this at all. There are people who have over 1,000, 2,000, and even 3,000 parts (Yes, I know the limit is 500, but people have their ways.) So for my friend who has about 3,000 parts, it'd cost about $30-50 each time to renew them all, when the price for a 10 month WhyPass was initially $30.00.
This not only spells trouble for people in real life financially, but it spells big trouble for the trading business in Whyville. You see -- the dates on the face part which say "created" don't actually signify when the part was created and accepted, it just tells us when the part was renewed. Now if you have a WhyPass, you can keep that date for several months/years, and the date plays a big role in trading. Due to remakes and other scams, the dates can help traders determine whether or not that part is the real original one, it validates it's authenticity. City workers confirmed that after this new 'law' goes into effect October 10th, all WhyPass holders will still have their WhyPass, everything will be normal, but when their WhyPass expires, that's it. No more buying new WhyPasses, you have to hurry up and buy a bunch of years worth of WhyPasses before Friday if you hope to keep a WhyPass for longer. If not, you can accept the fact that your parts will always expire, unless you buy Pearls and go through the painful process of renewing each part one by one for 10 pearls, and having to keep up with it every 3 months.
Now, there are some extremely lucky people on Whyville who don't need to worry about this, and those are the lifetime WhyPass holders. Your WhyPass is evidently staying for a lifetime! You have nothing to worry about (except maybe the obligation of having to renew your friends parts every now and then!) No, just kidding -- you SHOULD offer to renew your friends parts and what-not and help them through this struggle we'll be facing.
For those of you rare collecting non-lifetime-WhyPass holders with tons of rares who only have a 3/10-month WhyPass, I honestly don't know what will happen with all of your parts. The idea of having to renew them individually, for 10 cents is painful. What I'd really like to know is why can't Whyville just keep WhyPasses and also sell Pearls? As my friend Aichemist said, "They'd be getting the best of both worlds." It's true, they really would. When the City Workers revealed this entire plan at MTM though, I wasn't the only one who disapproved. The crowd went crazy, protesting, most pleading for the City Workers to keep the WhyPasses and do away with the Pearl system. I took screenshots so you could see people in the crowd protesting and sharing their opinion, some even so annoyed, making sarcastic comments, etc:
In the above screenshot, you see Zyrca to the left proposing the idea of making "pearls cheaper than whypasses, so people could buy them if they cant afford whypasses" as an alternative. I think it's a fantastic idea. Also, on the right, you see Gasohp sharing her idea about making lifetimes available for $100-200, which would make great profit considering so many people are dying to buy WhyPasses.
In this screenshot, we see someone above scyllaCat chanting "down with pearls" and someone in the top right corner joking about lifetimes possibly being taken away next.
Based on the 2 screenshots I've showed, and this all occurred before the launch of the Pearl system, people did not approve. I didn't get a ton of screenshots of the people who protested, but trust me, there wasn't anyone in there who approved of Pearls and WhyPasses being revoked. Is this a smart idea for Whyville? It obviously will not make as much profit as the WhyPass system did, so many people said they intend on quitting when their WhyPass expires, including a few well-known designers. Please reconsider, Whyville, I'm sorry to say but I feel that Whyville is no longer the place it used to be, it's all about the advertising and the profit now, a lot of people think so. I want old Whyville back, we want our old Whyville back. As for all the readers, please leave your comments and ideas in the BBS.
Thanks for reading,
1260
Editor's Note: I'd like to thank 1260 for sharing his opinion. We all have a right to express ourselves, and Whyville encourages free thought and freedom of speech. However, I will also say that the City Workers and creators of Whyville ALWAYS have Whyville's best interest at heart. You may not fully approve of something right away, but please note that we would not be changing something if we didn't honestly believe it was for the best. And give it some time, the idea might not be as bad as you think. Please, voice your opinions in the BBS and remain respectful of each other. Thank you.
