Important Information About Trunks

The delivery of pre-ordered Meeroo Family packs is almost upon us. They begin in slightly more than twenty four (24) hours. A lot of people who were not in Open Beta will be receiving their first ever Meeroos Trunk, and there are some things they should know: The single most important caution is: Never "Open" a Meeroos Trunk! They are designed to be "Touched" and then unpacked via a drop-down menu. If you "Open" a Trunk and extract its contents to your Inventory it, and the contents, will be broken!

Malevay Studios has said they will not replace Trunks broken by being "Opened." Catherine's quote from their blog is: "If you break your Chest after it is delivered by opening it incorrectly(i.e. extracting contents to your inventory via edit mode)or deleting it altogether, we will not be able to replace it or refund your money for it. This is not because we want to be difficult!" That might sound a bit draconian but if you think about it: as a company, they have nothing but your word that the Trunk was "Opened" and therefore broken, someone could have set those Items out correctly and then simply claim that the Trunk was broken. I am sure the vast majority of us would never do anything like that, but some people will. While I suppose there might be some way to match up purchases with Trunks and Meeroo counts; you can sell/buy Meeroos and people will use that to obfuscate things in an attempt to get free product. That coupled with the fact that, I assume, every Trunk sent out or purchased [of a specific type EX: Family Pack] is identical until you rez it InWorld. Prior to that you could transfer it to anyone, they could rez and open it and then hand you back the empty (read: broken) Trunk.

Perhaps I am over thinking it. I bet Team Meeroos have thought about it quite a bit. Especially in light of what I consider very customer-friendly policies and TOS. If they say they wont do it I am sure it is for a good reason. In the end preventing Meeroo fraud protects everyone who owns them except those perpetuating the scams [They will get theirs eventually, see: Karma]. So while I am sure there are going to be some very angry Avatars who do "Open" their Trunks, that has to be balanced against the damage not having that policy in-place would cause.

It seems the best course of action for everybody involved is to make sure everyone receiving Trunks knows how they work and how to correctly unpack them. Team Meeroos has made a tutorial video for just that purpose [Below]. I can only assume it will also be in the instructions notecard that will, I hope, come with the Trunks (i.e. not in the Trunk). I believe the Trunk itself chats the instruction not to "Open" it when you rez one. In my opinion there really is not much of an excuse not to know how to unpack it, but information can be overlooked. Especially in the excitement of pre-orders and getting your first forever Meeroos. If you have friends who are going to be getting Meeroos for the first time: make sure to let them know. A Family Pack is a pretty big investment, at least they were for me. I think it is better to take the risk of telling someone who already knows than not to, and potentially have that investment lost.

So, grab a cup of coffee [Video is: 3min 19sec long] and have a watch of the helpful Tutorial video produced by Team Meeroos. Make sure to point your friends and family who are expecting Meeroos there as well.

If anybody knows what the correct term for them is now that would also be helpful. I'm not sure if we should be calling them Trunks or Chests. It seems like we're moving toward Chest as the proper term, but I'm uncertain.

Trunk Deliveries Paused

Trunk deliveries have begun and, once more, been paused. Looks like there was a problem with the Meeroos server's firewall thinking it was under a DDOS attack from, well: the Meeroos themselves. This caused some issues that Tiger is hard at work fixing or has fixed. The CSRs InWorld do not have a firm time for when deliveries will resume, just "sometime this evening". They are waiting for enough people to be online and ready so that they can send out another large batch of trunks at once. This helps them test their servers.

Also it would appear that error reporting has changed somewhat. I believe we were originally told to report all Open Beta error on the Forums, but recently the CSRs have been putting the following in Group chat: "We are aware of the problems that you are all having right now we're very sorry, if you could please send a Note Card with your name and give as much detail as possible (ID#s and or names of any missing ), add a LM so if we need to fix babies and you arent online we can get there and if you have Ban lines or any security please add the CSRs to the allow list...Deliveries have been stopped for right now please read http://www.worldofmeeroos.com/node/1152" So it looks like, for now, you are supposed to send a notecard to a CSR if you have problems. Especially with disappearing ones or broken Meeroos. Please do your best to comply with what Team Meeroos asks in terms of reporting issues. If we get the reports to them in the way they prefer then they can get to them more quickly and process them faster. That means less time in Open Beta and more time with our real Meeroos! [And more problems / bugs fixed prior to release!]

I will update this blog again as soon as I find out trunk deliveries have re-commenced. Very much looking forward to it! You will have to have your new v0.90 HUD on to receive the trunk, so make sure you get one from the Group Notices and have it on before tonight!

Trunk delivery informational update!

Brand new blog post from Team Meeroos with specific times for Open Beta trunk delivery has been posted. The times below are for tonight, Monday May 2nd, 2011. A time-line: 

7:00pm SLT: Last Phase of Open Beta begins
8:00pm SLT: Attach your Meeroos HUD & Accept any HUD updates [Wear the updated HUD]
8:20pm SLT: Delivery of trunks [chests?] begins!

We have been asked to place and birth all the nests as quickly as possible once received. However for those of us outside the US this may prove difficult. While I would love to stay up until 4am to participate, I fear my bedtime falls much earlier when the kids have school the next day. And a nasty habit of waking up at 6am... But I will get my Meeroos placed and birthed at the earliest opportunity, I promise! The timing is intended to take advantage of Second Life's peak concurrency, when the highest number of people are logged on, which makes sense. Unfortunate for some of us, but best for the Meeroos overall.

On the Meeroos blog Catherine has written, once the deliveries arrive: "Begin unpacking your Chest as quickly as possible! (Remember, do not open the contents and extract to inventory, you'll break it!) Simply click on the Chest and unpack it from the dropdown menu that appears." So there you go :)

Some additional information: The petting range for Meeroos has been increased, which we knew, the new range has been confirmed as 3 meters. I don't know what it was before the update [1 meter?] but that feels more reasonable. There are a few projects Malevay Studios have in progress as well, they are:

>> A Mute button for HUD sounds.
>> A Redesign of the way you engage the Oracle.
>> Alternative sized HUDS for multiple UI Sizes.
>> Tiny Animations
>> Hovertext toggle on/off button on Meeroos

Looking forward to seeing the multiple sized HUDs and will be great to toggle the float text. Makes identifying a specific Meeroo in a crowd, um... flock, no, herd? Anybody know what a group of Meeroos is called? Going to need to look into that. If anybody knows... IM me, or comment.

Update: the following was just sent out as a Group notice InWorld:
We know for our European times, the release is unfriendly! Our intention is to release at peak time SLT (Or american west coast) and have it roll across the world so the  server experiences multiple  stress spikes. Each of you, no matter your timeszone, is valuable to this ongoing release! Thank you so much for understanding.

No Trunks yet...

No reports of Open Beta trunks being delivered yet. I am monitoring the situation by logging in frequently and, when InWorld, detaching and then re-attaching my Meeroos HUD every so often. I will let you know here as soon as I can confirm that the deliveries have begun.

I expect there will be a Group announcement as well, but those can be somewhat unreliable for me. Often: I just don't get them. If you have gotten your new trunk, or when you do: IM me InWorld and let me know, if you like. Again: as soon as I hear anything I will update this blog.

Let us hope it is not much longer. I am going into some serious Meeroo withdrawal! Go Meeroos!!