Saturday 30 April 2011

Meeroos Gone!

Oh man! It looks like every Meeroo on the Grid for Open Beta has wandered away! Don't worry, nothing is wrong. Well, not too wrong. As Catherine writes on their Blog: "...we left on our "Beta End!" switch that told the database to set Meeroos to the wild beginning today. Many people coming online today will find that their Meeroos have all returned to the wild with their families." She goes on to be very candid and forthcoming with this explanation and apology: "I'll be completely honest with you, this was our mistake. Please note, it was NOT our intention for it to happen this way, and we deeply apologize for the suddenness of it. We understand how shocking and confusing it was for many of you Meeroo Parents. Although our intention was to have them vanish to the wild, we wanted to provide you adequate time to say your good-byes and prepare for the inevitable." So it was just an accident.

I have to admit I was a bit worried when I got the offlines! I understand, these things happen, no big deal. It's Open Beta and we have known we were going to loose these little guys eventually. It is a bit jarring; which it is obvious Team Meeroos understands from the blog post. There is also an indicator of just how quickly endearing these Meeroos can be: I miss them already. I don't like that they are gone, and I want them back. How can they not be an amazing breedable if I feel this level of loss knowing they will be replaced on Monday? And yes, they will be replaced on Monday, May 2nd 2011, with updated versions!

I've read through the changes they are making for Mondays release, and it looks good. Some of the most mentioned topics I saw on the Forums are in there, including my personal favourite:

>> Meeroos petting distance increased! No more having to chase!

and the rest:

>> The Seasons displaying ---- has been being removed and replaced with text better indicating a Meeroo's status. 

>> Breeding time has been shortened once again. They'll be mature at 5 days old, and will have entered their first season by 7 days old.

>> Fix for Fellowship set Meeroos who are hopping around stumps set to fellowship stumps belonging to another member. "Home hoppers" as i like to call them!

>> No more spam! Every time a region would restart all the Meeroos would IM or email their offline owner to say they're going for a wander! We've reduced how often Meeroos contact a user.

I don't see any info about changing anything appearance related, so I would expect everything to look pretty much the same after the Monday release. I am pleased about that as I think everything looks amazing as it is. I am in the "big fan of the HUD" camp, so I hope it hangs around in something similar to its current form for awhile.

Fellowships and Regard will NOT be reset on Monday. So you will still be in your current Fellowship and your Regard will also remain intact. In fact it appears that you can continue to answer Oracle questions during this time and accumulate extra Regard while the Meeroos are away.

So, panic over. Everything is all right with Meeroo kind, well except that nobody has any Meeroos. It is going to be a long wait until Monday. I'll try to keep busy, maybe a little scripting, update my Meeroo finder a bit so it'll sort the list alphabetically [Don't fret, it will always be free]. Maybe read a book or two. But I'll make time, and perhaps some of you will do the same, to say a belated good bye to: Smeego, Minni, Lope, Blonk, Jimp and the single un-named Meeroo. I wish you well in the wild. Come visit home some time.




Friday 29 April 2011

New Babies!

Loads of people having little Meeroo babies over the past few days, and of course continuing now! I have not yet had a nest yet myself; during the night I am sure. While I am sleeping they will be breeding. Hope to wake up to at least one if not two nests. scarlett however has had two nests already, one is pictured below. Now time to dream of Meeroos and hope for morning nests. Goodnight!




Monday 25 April 2011

Extra Home Stump & Food from Team Meeroos

Team Meeroos, AKA Malevay Studios, has started sending out those extra home stumps and food to everyone in Open Beta. You should get yours shortly after logging in if you are wearing your Meeroos HUD. If you are InWorld I imagine detaching and re-attaching it would also work. The items come in a nifty egg basket pictured below (thank you scarlett Tamura for the picture).


The egg basket also contains a bonus surprise: a firefly generator. All nice and Copy/Trans, to help create that perfect mystical Meeroos atmosphere for your Meeroos home area. I am even impressed with the designs on the eggs! See, I told you everyone would get more food! Nothing to worry about. Now I just have to wait till they can breed...

As an aside, I have created and released a Meeroo finder to help locate lost or hiding Meeroos. It gives you their SLURL* instead of using particle beams, so you can TP directly to the Meeroo you want. Prolly easier to do that if their movement is set to OFF, but it gets you in the general area in any case. It is called "Where Is My Meeroo?" and the current version is 0.1.0beta, yes beta, please comment nicely! It's available on the Marketplace (SLX) and is Modify/Copy/Trans except for the script which is No-Modify/Copy/Trans. If you are interested: have a look HERE and let me know what you think. Preferably here not on XStreet, but is up to you. I'll try to incorporate any suggestions I can. [It also chats their ID# even if you have changed their name]



*To use the SLURLs: Open your local chat window. The SLURLs should be displayed in a different color. When you click on one it will open the TP window and allow you to teleport to that location.


Sunday 24 April 2011

How to Drop Your Meeroos

Toxic Menges has created a fantastic YouTube video showing how to correctly drop Meeroos after you pick them up for a cuddle. It is very important you do NOT detach Meeroos when you are done holding them because they can become lost. This, as I understand it, is very much a Second Life bug and there is nothing the creators of Meeroos can do about it. So, if you are unsure how to properly end a Meeroo cuddle, have a look at the video and all will be made clear.

 Video can be watched HERE.
or here:


Thanks for making this sort of invaluable information available to the Community Toxic, you rock!


Food bowl pictures: Full, Low & Empty

Thank you so much to Judi Newall for the lovely Full-Bowl photographs. I was silly enough not to have taken pictures and she was kind enough to help me out :) So, without further delay, the icing-on-the-cake realism that is Meeroos...

Meeroos Food Bowl Full:

Meeroo Food Bowl Low:


Meeroos Food Bowl Even Lower:


Meeroos Food Bowl REALLY Low:
(just keeps getting better)


Meeroos Food Bowl Empty:
(touch it and it poofs!)




Another score for the folks at Meeroos. I can't wait for breeding now, then babies, then the final stretch until the pre-orders are delivered after the close of Open Beta. It's just all so exciting!


Saturday 23 April 2011

Food bowls & Open Beta information

I noticed something awhile ago that I have been meaning to mention here on the blog. One of those little touches that improves the realism of the Meeroos experience. What I saw was the level going down over time in the food bowls. When I first put it out the top was domed and now, after some has been eaten, it is caved into the bowl. I hope that, when empty, the bowls will look empty. It is that sort of thing that I love about Meeroos. I wish I had thought to take pictures when the dishes were full, but had no idea they would be so cool. If anybody has some, you could send them too me... [If it is OK to post them here, of course]

There is also Open Beta news: It looks like Open Beta will continue for at least the next two weeks, as of Saturday April 23rd, 2011. So by my calculations that makes it about May 7th. That does not sound like a fixed date, but and estimate only. Something else very exciting, it has been confirmed that we will get to breed the Open Beta Meeroos! I am quite pleased about that, and looking forward to it. You can expect to receive an additional stump as well. I assume this will be for baby Meeroos. However that is only my own conjecture. Also: you will get more food, so no need to worry about that. Stay calm.

One final thing, yet another move by the Meeroos Team I am impressed with: There will be no Official Meeroos stores associated with any market or non-neutral location. Basically there will be only one Official satellite store and it is in a neutral Region. I applaud that decision as a declaration of their impartiality which, much like justice, must be seen to be done. +1 more for team Meeroos!


Friday 22 April 2011

Update v0.76 for stumps

There is an update out to fix crashing stumps. The update will take your Meeroos home stump from version 0.75 to version 0.76. The update process could not possibly be simpler. I am blown away with how much easier this update is to apply than any other breedable update I have ever done.

If you did not get the Group notice about the update (I did not: IMs capped) just pull up your Groups list and select the WW of Meeroos Group and click the "Group Info" button then go to the "Notifications" tab (I suggest sorting by date) and scroll down a bit you will see the notice with the updater Object attached. Select that Notification and hit the "Open Attachment" button and poof! you will have an updater stump in your Inventory.

Once you have your updater go to your current home stump and rez the new update stump next to it. [Make sure you are wearing the correct Group tag for the land you are on] The new stump will find the old one and, I love this part, moves itself to exactly where the old one is and then deletes it. The new stump then takes over for the old one and begins updating all your Meeroos. It took less than 5 minutes to update all 8 of my Meeroos, probably less than three but I forgot to time it exactly. In any case it is quick and painless. I have never updated anything in Second Life this easily before. It is essentially fully automated once you drop the updated stump!

Here is the text of the InWorld Group notice about the update:

Please read the following instructions very carefully, so you can update your Meeroos. This is an important update and MUST be carried out as soon as possible.

This update will fix stump crashing issues.

Rez the updater next to your stump. Your stump will update and then one by one your Meeroos will update. Please do not pet them, click them or attempt to attach them until the update is finished.

Once finished your Meeroos will be updated to 0.76 as will your stump.  IM a CSR if you need help.


Keep up the fantastic work team Meeroos!


Last day for Meeroos Pre-Orders

Don't forget today, Friday the 22nd of April, is the last day to pre-order your Meeroos Family pack. Pre-orders will cease today at 6pm SLT. If you want to order, or order more, make sure you do it soon because you do NOT want to miss out. You can find the pre-order trunks HERE, you have to pay the trunk itself not the kiosk it is next too. Don't forget to keep your reciept number safe. I put mine in a notecard in SL, in a file on my local computer and backed it up via Dropbox to an external server as well. Just in case the building burns down I don't want to loose it ;)

Remember: you will receive your pre-ordered Meeroos packs three (3) days before they are officially released! I am not looking forward to being without them from the end of Open Beta until pre-release starts, I could not possibly wait the extra three days until the Official release. I am sure many of you feel the same.

Go Meeroos!


Thursday 21 April 2011

Pictures and stuff

Meeroos: Best breedable ever or best breedable possible? Not sure yet, but I am impressed with what I see. I have some pictures for you of these adorable little guys and a little bit more. First off the team at Malevay Studios [Meeroos creators] have set up two sticky topics on their forums to address likes and dislikes. I encourage you to have a wander over there and let them know what it is about the Meeroos you do and don't like. This is the only way they will be able to improve their product, if it can get any better... Just remember to be constructive, or at least polite, in the dislikes thread. Just complaining is unlikely to get much done. There is at least one post in that thread right now that makes little, if any, sense to me. I bet the staff deal with tools way better than I would. More credit to them!

Thread links:
Likes and Dislikes  (You will need to be logged in to view/post)

Now some pictures to keep you oooooohing and all that:




Hope everyone out there who has them is enjoying their Meeroos as much as I am. My only issue is: I am becoming too attached to the ones I have now and I know they will poof and the end of Beta. Why did I name some? Why? :)


Monday 18 April 2011

Pre-Orders have been re-enabled

Pre-ordering has resumed for the Meeroos Family Pack. The Group notice says the last day for pre-orders will be the April 22nd which is this coming Friday. These packs will be delivered three days prior to the official release of Meeroos giving you a chance to get a head start! They also come with a necklace that will never be available any other way and a unique golden home stump as well. If you want to see pictures of the nifty pre-order gifts have a look HERE.

Text of the Group notice:

[21:09] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: We have re-enabled Pre-Orders|We have activated the Pre-Order trunks once again. Pre-Order will cease on Friday April 22. They will not be made available after that day. Thanks!



Open Beta trunk delivery round 2 has been paused!

I have now both received and birthed all 6 of my Meeroos and they are amazing! However, if you have not gotten yours yet: deliveries have been paused again. The load on their server is not high enough to test it so they are waiting until more people are online to resume sending trunks out. Unfortunately that may well be in the middle of the night for those of us in Europe/UK, somehow I don't think people are going to have a problem staying up [see: Coffee], unless they have work tomorrow... (Just quit, or call in sick with Meeroo fever!)

The text of the Group notice:

[19:59] Levio Serenity: Group Notice: Trunk Deliveries Paused|Sorry, but things are going good. TOO GOOD.  There isn't a huge demand on the server (it's yawning at me) so we're going to postpone trunk deliveries until later today we can resume and try to spike the server with another big blast of fluffy Meeroos all at once.

TY for your patience with the process!

Once I get done petting and looking at my Meeroos I will get some pictures posted as well as a bit more useful info, if I have any. Good luck to all of you still waiting for your Meeroos and I am excited for all of you who have them now!

Note: I have not had ANY issues rezzing or birthing my Meeroos but my partner has; her home stump is showing duplicates of all her Meeroos. [See Edit below] Remember if you do have any issues: use the Meeroos Forum to report them. That is what Open Beta is for, finding bugs and issues that got missed before. If you find an issue and don't report it, well, it might not get fixed. That being said: Cut the CSRs in Group chat a little slack, they are busy. And please let's try to be civil with people in Group chat as well. Not everybody knows what is going on and many people are a bit confused. Really no point in attacking people for their questions who may, a month from now, be your customers at your Meeroo store or in your fellowship helping you out. Everyone asks uninformed questions sometimes, best to provide information not ad hominem slights. See you all in Group chat.

Edit: Ok, so the float text on the stump actually displays your Male Meeroos on the left followed by the Female Meeroos they are compatible with! So it is, in fact, not duplicates. It might be a bit confusing since the float-text can get truncated in length and so you might not see it all.

Also:

There does not appear to be any way to edit or delete your Forum posts from the Meeroos site, so I am not sure what to do if you have reported a problem but then realize it is not one. I am sure the Meeroos staff will sort it out. Don't let it put you off reporting issues, they can ignore ones that turn out not to be. Now, back to playing with Meeroos!



Open Beta trunk delivery round 2 has begun!

As per the WW of Meeroos Group announcement:

If you've been waiting for your trunk still, now is your turn to grab yours! Detach and reattach your HUD if you've not gotten a Delivery.

If you are InWorld right now you will need to detach and then re-wear your Meeroos HUD v0.89. Once you do that, or on login if you are not InWorld now, you should get a message that looks like this:

WW of Meeroos HUD V0.89: The Oracle has sensed your presence online. Queueing your Open Beta Trunk for delivery. Please remain online and ready to accept it!

Once you get that message your trunk should be offered within a minute or two, mine and my partners were. Just waiting for peace & quiet IRL to rez our trunks and see what Meeroos have to offer! More here soon.



Trunk deliveries have begun, and stopped...

The delivery of Meeroo trunks had begun, apparently before midnight SLT (circa 2:57 UTC) which was a surprise. Unfortunately their server is having some issues and deliveries have been suspended. It looks like you should NOT rez/open your trunk if you have gotten one. [I have NOT seen any all-clear-to-rez messages yet] The issues are not with sending out the Open Beta trunks but with the load associated with the mass birthing of Meeroos, from what I gather via Group chat and the notices. As you can see from the last Group notice (below): trunk deliveries should re-start sometime this morning (SLT I assume?). I am guessing they will issue the "all-clear" to rez Meeroos either prior to that or at the same time. See below for a complete list of Group notices sent about the Open Beta trunk delivery event:


[03:57] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: Detach - Reattach HUD|Many packages have arrived from a mysterious island, and each one of them are destined for doorsteps around the grid. Yours is on it's way, so at this time, please detach and reattach your v0.89 HUD, a surprise awaits you!

[04:31] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: Errors|As this is beta, we understand that many of you are experiencing database communication errors when birthing, having blue glowing meeroos, hatching nests, duplicate meeroos and trunks or meeroos vanishing! This IS what we wanted to see, so we could gauge bandwidth usage and impact on server, and consequences of such a load. Please do not worry. These error will be remedied!

[04:38] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: Pre-Orders Temprarily disconntinues|Pre-Orders are temprarily discontinues until we sort our database issues. Please do NOT birth any more meeroos until we give you the all clear or risk losing them.

[05:00] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: That's What beta is For|In order to ensure we provide the best quality experience for our customer at launch, we must go through this beta stress test. We know it is an inconvenience and a challenge, but it is necessary for us to be able to optimize our system. We will discontinue trunk release until tomorrow as we tweak some coding on the back end to ensure prompt and seamless delivery on the second try! Thanks allf or working with us!

[05:44] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: Make sure to check the forums!|The forums is a place where we collect and filter information as we trasition through these phases! Our forum moderator, Allatu Augustus is doing great at keeping things nice and tidy over there. While we work through this issue, you should head on over there and give her a warm greeing and a friendly smile! Also introduce yourself, read up on known issues and share your thoughts, concerns and ideas at http://www.worldofmeeroos.com

[06:03] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: Lost Meeroos?|If you've lost meeroos, do not fret! Tomorrow our CSr's will whistle them back from you and retrieve them from the wild, but as a matter of priority, we need this time to potimise and improve our backend so the results of the next delivery are much improved.

[06:24] Catherine Farspire: Group Notice: Beta Distribution: Round 2|Tomorrow morning we will commence Beta Distribution round 2! If you have not gotten your new HUD 0.089 from notices, do so now. TRUNKS will not be distributed again until the morning so we can re-guage perfomance of our servers and the impact on them. If you have your meeroos, they will be fine! Please remember to use the forums for issues! 

Let's hope they get that server back online soon. I will keep an eye out for announcements on their blog. I really hope they update it to let us know when trunk deliveries have resumed as it can be inconvenient to stay logged in all day to follow Group notices... I will post it here as soon as I know myself :)

NOTE: In my experience you will not get any notification that your Meeroos are ready to be delivered or ready. You have to log in and, according to the Group notice, detach then reattach your Meeroos HUD. Of course this will only work if the server is up. I suggest detaching the HUD for no less than 10 seconds to allow the Linden Labs asset server time to process it properly.



Sunday 17 April 2011

Meeroos HUD Pictures

I took some pictures of the HUD to show what it looks like when open and when hidden. It feels good so far, it does use a lot of space when open; any HUD that displays a lot of data does though. And the important thing, that it gets out of the way when you don't need it, the Meeroos HUD does very very well. I love that it allows tab access to quickly open the HUD on the page you want even when it is minimized. The HUDs default attach point is HUD Top-Left.

Meeroos HUD Open

Meeroos HUD Minimized

Open Beta Meeroos have been announced for Monday if everything goes well with the HUD release. I hope it does go well because I am very excited about testing out the Meeroos themselves now! Bring it on!




Saturday 16 April 2011

I have my HUD!

I just received my Meeroos HUD about twenty minutes ago and it's looking good so far. I really like the look of the HUD and it hides away very nicely. It attaches to the Top-Left HUD position by default. I suggest using "add" instead of "wear" if you already have a HUD on that location.

The process of using the HUD is very simple, it is NOT boxed, simply wear the Object sent to you. Once it appears you can click through the various tabs and even answer questions from the Oracle for regard points. I have not played with all the options yet and will elaborate in later posts.

Once you have worn your HUD you should proceed to Twas, the Meeroos SIM, and grab your activation key from the Oracle. [SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Twas/93/71/131]. Once you arrive, wait for the Oracle to rez (it's in the middle of the "room" there) and touch it (while still wearing the HUD!). You might have to touch it a few times in my experience. Eventually it will IM you that it is checking on your status with Meeroo-kind  and, assuming everything is in order, it then IMs you your activation key. Mine is: HG45HAHAHA no not really, just kidding. Once you have your key the staff there are asking people to move on so others can access the SIM.

You can now take your shiny new key to the Meeroos web site and enter it to verify/activate your account. The web address is: http://www.worldofmeeroos.com. Once you get logged in there follow these steps to enter your key:

1) Go to: My Account
2) Select the "Edit" tab.
3) Select "Meeroos" from the selections directly below the "Edit" tab.
4) Enter your key where prompted and save it.
5) That is it, you are ready to go, try answering some of the Oracle questions by clicking on the "Oracle" tab of the Meeroos HUD.

I'm very excited by the HUD so far, beginning to hope for great things from the Meeroos. Hope this has been helpful, now back to paying with the HUD!



HUD Deliveries have begun!

The delivery of the Open Beta Meeroo HUDs has begun! Some people in Group chat have said they have already received theirs. Neither I, nor my partner, have yet but I will keep you informed on how it goes when I do.

The Group notice says you will have to visit the Oracle in Twas once you receive your HUD. It will give you some sort of key to activate the HUD. I will blog more in-depth about how the process works when I do it myself.

I hope some of you already have your HUDs out there! Full text of the InWorld Group notice below:

"HUDs are being delivered please be patient there are a lot of us :) Once you have word* your HUD you need to come talk to The Oracle on Twas and listen carefully to what she says."  -Toxic Menges

* I think that is supposed to read "worn" prolly. I bet she was far too excited to type slowly. I know I am!



Tuesday 12 April 2011

I know, they are not even out yet...

Ok, so I know that Meeroos have not even entered open beta yet, that will be this coming weekend. But hey, why not get a blog set up before I get too busy minding Meeroos that I can't be bothered?

What my intent with this blog is to chronicle my ascent into Meeroos. I am starting it before open beta, which I am set to participate in, and will post on my progression. Every "awesome" and "um, not sure about that", ok so not every one. More of a summary to be fair, but you get the point.

I intend to be informative more than speculative or editorial. For myself, having the correct information is one of the most important parts of any endeavor. Meeroos and other breedables are no different. Sometimes information from Groups and blogs can get confusing and contradictory. My aim is to sift through a bit of that and post some useful, and more importantly, valid information and maybe even some tips [If anybody shares any cool ones with me].

So, follow early, follow often. IM me inworld if you have info about Meeroos, I'll attribute all info to its source or you can be anonymous. With that I end my first post, the final thing on my mind is:

I can't wait for Meeroos!