Gifting, Items and Websites oh my!

I am guessing some of you might know who I am For those of you that don't, I am Elfindreams aka John Tennyson. I am among other things, a member of the Advisory Board, the first backer and I even help out developing and managing servers for Descendent Studios in my spare time.

It is in that last role that I get to talk to all you good folks today. You might have seen something new show up in the site store on Monday. You might also have noticed that if you look at your purchases you have a lot more than you used to. We have been working very hard the last couple of weeks (special thanks to Stormwind aka Jason, Fallarnon, Stealthguy and Dunkelza for all their work on this) to get you gifting and start the database back-end work necessary to eventually get you your items in the game. Those two items are the visible parts of the fruits of those labors.

If you didn't notice them, that's what I am here for

If you have extra packages or packages that contain "giftable" packages, you should now be able to go to the Store and see a new tab named, appropriately enough, "gifting".

It is from that screen that you can choose one of your giftable packages, scroll down to chose an email and message and send gifts. You can also see gifts that you have sent that haven't been claimed yet and resend or cancel them (in case you put in the wrong email, etc).

When you send a gift, the recipient will receive an email with your notes and a link that they can use to claim the gift. If they are not already a member of our community, they will be led through creating an account and once the gift is redeemed they will have all the special items (ribbons, etc) that you graciously gifted them.

Speaking of ribbons and special items, if you go to the store and select the client area and choose purchases you should see a lot of new items.

A part of the database work we have been doing to make sure you get your items in the game and to enable gifting meant we had the pleasure of breaking out the many, many sub-items. You may notice a few items missing. Ships that have not yet been unlocked (like the Torch), ship cosmetic items (skin packs) and currency (Pals and script) have not yet been awarded. Don't worry you will get them, there are just some dependencies that mean we will be adding them at a later pass.

You may also notice (if you have them) ship tokens in your inventory. Right now we do not have the user interface to allow you to select a ship from a token, but rest assured it is on our list.

We also know that the user interface on the client area is a bit cumbersome to work with. That too is on our list

In the mean time, I sincerely hope you enjoy gifting, thank you once again for all your support and most of all I hope to see you all underground.

Elfindreams