News Archive: Week 39, 2023

Do you smell the scent of pumpkins in the air? It can only mean one thing: Autumn is here, and the Millionaire Center is ready!

Get your quests done so you can get enough points for these new autumn quest shop items!

Earlier today we updated what was once the Cursed Quests to be the Duality Quests. I'd like to provide more context into why that change was made, why it's been so long in the making, and how we can move on in a positive way going forward.

First, users brought up the issues regarding how Mori and Nori were portrayed so this brainstorm thread so born. If you look at the date, you can see it was created well over a year ago and users brought it up before that. It's unacceptable that we took so long to address this. While yes, our team is small and incredibly stretched thin, it shouldn't have taken us the amount of time it did. We as a team have a problem with breaking tasks up into smaller things; we always want to do everything at once. In this case, we really thought it made the most sense and was the most respectful to get everything changed at once. It was clearly not the right way to go about things, and I personally want to apologize to those I put off with my "we're working on it" generic comments.

Now, what was the issue with Nori and Mori?

This was beautifully said by user who has experience with DID and has been a champion for educating the staff and users. I asked them to sum up what the problem for users without having to read the entire suggestion thread.

We've updated the text for the Mori and Nori quests (the intro text, the turn in text, the failed quest, the reward text), the quest shop text, the subetapedia main entry about the two as well as the quick facts listed in the quest givers list, and various items around the site. We've also renamed the achievements associated with Mori and Nori. Did we miss something? Please ping me () so I can adjust it.

In the future, I will actively try to not offer excuses ("our team is small" "our focus is on a holiday") and will do my best to work with users to get things updated in a timely manner. This isn't always possible, of course, but I personally could have done a lot better job with this particular issue.

Why does this all matter? Like 's quote says, we really do strive to be inclusive and diverse. We don't want to have things on site that upset users in a negative way like this. It's one thing to not like an item because you think spiders (or something similar) are scary, it's another to have to deal with an item promoting negative stereotypes to a mental health disorder you may have. By not addressing user concerns about Mori and Nori in a timely matter, we as staff made part of our user base feel unheard and unimportant which is never what we want. We've adjusted items with a quick turn around before (Algonquin Plushie comes to mind) and the fact we took over a year to make these changes was plain wrong.

Why post a new news post instead of just adding another comment to the earlier post? The users who brought up the issue with Mori and Nori, continued to fight for the change, and actively tried to educate users and staff deserve this post. They deserve to be publicly acknowledged for the work they did.

Why play with toys when you can battle Tobias?

The friendly challengers this year will not disappear after their month finishes.

Use the Sapphire Embedded Clay Figurine from the Cash Shop to unlock formidable Serphire.

We’ve changed the special item for our Subscription Quester, Councilor, and Goddess plans. We will be changing this special item slot every month.

The formerly named Cursed Quests have been updated to the Duality Quests. You'll notice Mori and Nori item descriptions and subetapedia articles have been updated as well to reflect these changes. [I]You can find out why we changed this quest here.[/i]

I've also reset all quests to celebrate this change! :)

Note: If something isn't working correctly based off Mori and Nori's quests, like shop search doesn't show their quest shop items properly or something, please let me know. Quests get mentioned in a lot of places and while I think I updated everything everywhere, I could be wrong!

⭐ Babette recently received word that the Freyalise has run off course due to some particularly angry sea storms and won't be docking until sometime next week. ⭐ Did you know the first day of Autumn is this Saturday? The Millionaire Center and Seasonal Quest Shop will be rotating their stock sometime Saturday, so get your Summer gear while you can. ⭐ Bug Catching will end when Autumn officially starts on Subeta. ⭐ Don't forget, the birthday suit cookies will be removed from the various shops around the site once September ends. So grab them while you can. The Token Shop and Crystal Shop cookies will likely stock at least once more!

What a delicious free gift!