E2 News & Updates
March 22, 2021
Dear Earth 2 Users,
We hope all is well. 5 hours ago we sat for a 2 hour meeting between 8 key team members and advisors from across Europe, South Korea, USA and Australia. There were extensive discussions around the UAE, Essence, EPLs and Easter Eggs. Another meeting has already been scheduled for tomorrow to continue the discussions and draw closer to decisions.
We have investigated extensive data, including 3rd party metrics. From the Facebook metrics alone we discovered at the first point after countdown there were over 2,000,000 page views on our website and that does NOT include clicks, zooms, selects etc. This is what stopped many from being able to load the website and displayed an overload / maintenance page. At that point, we could see many people could not access the website so we intentionally took the servers down in an effort to re-launch and allow people fairer access.
A similar result occurred the second time, though servers stayed up a little longer (approximately 60 seconds) until again many received the overload message and we cut the servers intentionally when we saw many users could not access the site. We called an emergency team meeting with 4 key team members who were available to do a quick review of the situation and the decision was made to turn the UAE back on after an announcement and without an extended countdown in a hope the servers would remain online, and they did.
There are some rumors in the community that we would like to address.
Earth 2 did not intentionally give any advantage to any user in the UAE.
There have been suggestions we allowed certain users to be able to purchase land and this is simply not the case - personally we received frustrating messages from friends and colleagues who also could not purchase due to the unprecedented traffic on our website.
Some people have noted the YouTuber and MegaCity test ads popping up on the map and mistaken those for ownership of tiles that appear below them - those ads are random and have nothing to do with tile ownership, we simply decided to promote some of the YouTubers and MegaCity creators so other users interested in Earth 2 can see what they are up to.
Thousands of users were able to purchase in the moments that the servers were up during the first and second countdown, and then thousands more after the 3rd time going live. The real issue was the 2,000,000 page views. Not everyone was going to be able to secure the tiles they wanted and we are, as a team, sorry for those who missed out. We are looking into ways we can give those, who missed out, another opportunity with something in the near future but we also do not want to rush into promises without a full plan being properly vetted - for those who wait, there will be something . Our records allow us to detect who missed out on UAE. Realistically, we aim to make an announcement next week on what this could be and how it would work.
We had originally planned to launch Essence and EPLs this coming weekend, but after the UAE rush we are concerned there could be another scramble to secure the best EPLs for properties so we are also reviewing how this will roll out to be as fair as possible to users looking to secure an EPL for their property. In place of this, we are planning to start the Easter Egg hunt this weekend 'in style'.
In another important news, CC withdrawals look all set to go live this week and while it might first take a little while for us to process the initial demand, our new system will be massively streamlined moving forward. We allocated a significant number of developer hours to deliver this for our users and it clearly shows we are focused on improving our payment system at scale. We have officially processed payouts to our own cards via tests!
There is also exciting news that Earth 2 web will go 3D and it will mark the first step toward some MUCH bigger things on the horizon! We will also be rolling out choropleth to categorize countries this week! More to come!
One final point for now, to those who experienced payment issues, the amount charged should automatically disappear from your bank account over the next 24 to 48 hours - this is part of our automatic system that clears pending payments that did not complete.
We can say that our team is ambitious and dedicated. We are collectively working on a number of features that aim to bring you, as the player, more fun, strategy and enjoyment in what will become the core foundations of Earth 2 and we want these to be rolling out over coming weeks and months and we can tell you, it will be exciting!
March 5, 2021
Dear Earth 2 Users. We hope all is well. We are catching up while moving forward and transitioning to internal processes that will help us operate better as a global company long term. While this takes time, we are also fully committed to making progress on the product and vision of Earth 2.
Essence production has been working steadily in test environments and is almost ready to be released but it will go live at the same time as the ability to set a unique EPL (Earth 2 Property Location) for your property or properties. Frequent releases of Phase 2 features will then follow when ready.
Account Reviews
There has been extensive focus on custom scripts that make it easier for us to detect abuse accounts and accounts that interacted with those abuse accounts, this in turn will help us to speed up withdrawals for most of our users who are doing the right thing and who have not interacted with suspect accounts.
We do not want these types of users on Earth 2 and we are prepared to take necessary action to deter and eliminate such players early on, even if it means losing a little time. Our message to those users is that you will NOT benefit from such actions on Earth 2 as all activity is reviewed, including other accounts you have transacted with so you are simply wasting your time and not to mention everyone else's.
BOTs
Purchases on Earth 2 are to be made manually by a person, not BOTs. If you are using a BOT to automatically purchase tiles on Earth 2 we suggest you stop now. We are working on solutions to prevent purchases being made by BOTs and validation on purchases will soon be required.
Credit Card Withdrawal
We are extremely excited to announce our initial approval for direct withdrawals back to Credit Cards! Though Earth 2 accounts making withdrawal requests will still need time to be reviewed, it is nonetheless wonderful news as the request will be streamlined (not via email) and the final payout will take minutes without the need of us validating your banking details in full (which takes a lot of time at present) and waiting for bank transfers to complete! We realise withdrawals are a bottleneck for us at present and we have been working hard to improve options to our users in this area.
Minimum Bid
A number of days ago we rolled out an update that forces minimum bids to be at least 30% of the previous price paid for that property in order to reduce the number of users sending low ball offers in the hope that the recipient would accidentally accept. For now, this has been applied to every account, however, next week we will add the option for users to toggle the feature on and off.
Selling Properties
Another update rolled out recently which reaffirms the price of a property after the user sets a price and lists on the MarketPlace. This update shows a final reminder to the user on how much they paid for the property and how much they are planning to sell it for to avoid users accidentally setting the wrong sale price.
Bids
An update to the bid received display was also rolled out to make bid details easier to read on the property page.
Ads / Promotions
Our Earth 2 Ad form is back online. We received so many enquiries in such a short period of time our Type Form account exceeded its 10K limit and closed. It is open again now and we are really excited with the interest so far and pushing forward!
Tile System
We have spent a lot of time on the tile system over the last few weeks, and we have found a structure that will allow us to both continue to support the high value of the class tiles and to provide permanently affordable tiles in the future. The base class tiles will then not have all the advantages of the high-classes (Classes1-5), but players will be able to adapt their functionality very precisely to their own needs.
It is a rather extensive system that cannot be implemented overnight, and it still needs some attention to (design) detail and preliminary work, but the question of whether high-class tiles will have advantages later on during phase 2 and 3 can now be answered with a clear "yes". The costs for these tiles will be justified and LIT!!
A Hunt
It's coming.. an Easter Egg Hunt and it will be in March! One goal of ours has always been for Earth 2 to become a place where opportunities may come from effort and this hunt, in a way, is the beginning of such ideology.
The hunt has not started yet and there will be ample warning before it starts. It will also be fair and will include rules. This is the introduction of the Easter Egg concept to Earth 2 but it does not mean Easter Eggs will always been used in this way and yes, there may be more to it than what you see. More details to follow!
Editor Note: In a tweet, Shane (Earth 2 founder) used the hashtag #NFTs after a comment and photo regarding the Easter Eggs, implying that along with an actual cash prize that comes with finding the easter eggs, there will also be an NFT with each one - which could potentially be worth thousands - or even hundreds of thousands of dollars (eventually). The photo of the easter eggs show each one with a different texture (possibly representing different “biomes” in Earth 2) and each egg has a dollar amount underneath, ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 - this is the cash prize that comes with finding each egg. It’s speculated that the eggs will not be visible in the map before actually purchasing tiles that the eggs would be found on, as making the eggs visible on the map would make them too easy to find.
Editor Note #2: It’s possible that the upcoming “easter eggs” may have something to do with the Blue Dots that previously appeared all over the map.
Moving Forward
At present we are balancing progress and preparation. We plan to be better prepared for our next 300,000 users, having more streamlined support and withdrawal amongst other things. Once prepared we will resume promoting Earth 2 on a much larger scale. Game development must continue and will progress in parallel as other systems are improved.
Oh and Dubai / UAE..
Yes, the countdown will start within 7 days.
February 21, 2021
Dear Earth 2 Users. We hope all is well. Part of our team has been working very closely with the team at Mapbox to launch new features for tracking user activity like the purchasing and trading of tiles. You will soon notice a heatmap toggle option available on the Earth 2 website app which displays where transactions and purchases have been occurring across the Earth 2 globe! The results are quite stunning and give an amazing insight into where hot zones are appearing on Earth 2!
You will also notice some random E2 UI holders pop up when viewing the map a little closer. These are early stage tests for delivering ads and promotions from inside the Earth 2. As time progresses we will aim to serve generic content that becomes more location based over time, a move that carries the intention of creating more benefit for property owners. Over time we hope for property owners to be able to also set their own ads or promotions. The ads will randomly appear and disappear for now, it's part of the testing.
This early stage test system for delivering ads and promotions is also being piloted as a way to deliver bonuses to our users, such as Easter Eggs and 'other cool things' throughout Phase 2 and into the future!
Over the next few weeks we expect our withdrawal system process times to start improving. Having said that, there is still a backlog created due to hyper-growth, but more team members and new internal processes should start to translate into progress, thank you for your patience. We are also working on faster ways to identify scam accounts and other accounts linked to scam accounts which will in turn speed up manual reviews on accounts wishing to withdraw.
Finally, we are negotiating a contract with an American based company that specializes in payouts for Virtual Goods while at the same time exploring faster payout methods via our own payment systems hence why we are focusing on our own system right now, more will come on this when available.