The Trades are now back! Sorry that they were down for so long, but they have been totally changed to run much faster. Thanks to account upgraders, we have bought a new server for the Trades system and I've spent two days recoding the trades to work better. The old scripts were not good enough for the amount of players online and the amount of use trades get, with trades sometimes taking as long as 8 seconds to load and 59 seconds to search. This has been totally changed, and you shouldn't see any part of trades take more than 1 second to load, unless the whole site is experiencing problems.
There is also a Trade Refunds link at trades for you to get back your mp, rp and bp you had offered on people's trades before trades were closed.
We would like to give you a quick update with our Maintenance so far. We have completed a whole site recode, which means that we were able to fix every known glitch, error and bug around the site. All we have left to fix now is Promote Marapets, Trades and broken Avatars. There is still the ongoing problem of sudden Server Errors randomly occuring and shutting off the whole site for a few seconds. We are well aware of it, and its nothing to do with any glitches around the site or slow servers. We have found out what is causing it and its currently being worked on so that the problem will be gone in a couple of days. We have also fixed one of our Image Servers which had been broken for nearly 2 weeks, and have also added another new image server, so images should be running a lot more instantly. Marasites, MaraUploads and MaraJournals will be getting extensive work very shortly, but we're first trying to get the whole of Marapets working as it should. We'd liek to thank you for your patience over the past 2 weeks, but as you should notice already, every part of the site that is open is working perfectly - just in time for our War.
A brand new Flash Game has been released in the Strategy Games section. You can play Hexxagon now!
Fresh from the circus, these two Clown pets have just been released.
- The Lottery has been drawn for this week. Sami11307 is the winner of the 336,000MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 10, 16, 13, 14, 12 and 17! Congratulations!
- Last Week's Raffle has now ended. gators1108 is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 11260! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
Site Maintenance
We'd like to thank you all for your patience while the site went down for maintenance. The downtime was actually longer than planned because it was more successful than we had hoped, allowing us to get more done while the site was down. The site has now moved to its new network, which you should by the end of the week notice has helped to improve the site's reliability. Its still not 100% complete because we're still testing and monitoring results and recoding to keep improving performance. Our network sites, like MaraUploads will not be on the new network yet, so if you change your password it will not change on these sites. These will be updated soon though. If you find any errors or glitches that are new, please report them right away.
The Forums have been updated too. We hope you like their new design!
Here is the new Plushie Ercuw!
NEW FLASH GAME
Today's new Flash Game has just been released. It can be played 3 times a day with a maximum payout of 1,500MP per game. Newth Box can now be found at the puzzle games category of the games section.
We would like to apologise for the downtime we've been having randomly for the past couple of days. The issue will be solved tomorrow, which will mean that at sometime tomorrow (Thursday) we will be going offline for a couple of hours for Site Maintenance. This will be a major upgrade for us, so please be patient tomorrow while we get it all ready. There may be a few new errors/glitches that appear tomorrow. Just let us know of them asap and we'll get them fixed right away.
Minipet Island Land War - Part 1
Dark times may be ahead for Marada... There have been many worrying events in the last 24 hours, which we feel we cannot keep hidden any longer. However frightening it is, you, the Maradan public have a right to know.
The first sign of trouble was when the residents of the Undying Woods were woken in the early hours of the morning by Elger having a fit. One of the newths (a very brave one!) was sent to find out what the trouble was this time and reported back that Elger was 'extremely displeased' (that's not the exact words she used, but we have to keep things clean) that she was no longer the most evil being in Marada. The newth then stuttered something about 'Queen Eleka' and ran away crying before we could get any more information from him.
As a few of you may know if you've been reading the Maradan encyclopedia set, Queen Eleka once ruled the dark side of Marada. Legends of the horrors of her reign are still told today, tales of a dark castle where nightmares can become reality, tales of a queen so beautiful and so evil that Marada has never again seen the like in a thousand years. For it was one thousand years ago today that the good King Baspinar the First finally defeated Eleka and banished her from our lands.
Naturally, mention of Queen Eleka concerned us greatly, and so several more newths were sent south from Dukka Caves to investigate the ruins of the Dark Castle. Unfortunately, although 24 hours have now passed, we have not heard back from them. We can only hope that they have run in terror and have not met some terrible fate.
Of course by now I'm sure you are wondering why, if all this has been happening, there has not been some proclamation from our King, Baspinar XII, to reassure us of his protection. We regret to have to inform you that an hour ago we were contacted by a palace aide who told us that Baspinar has now been missing for over 12 hours! The castle and grounds have been searched thoroughly, and the search is now widening into Puchala Village and the foothills of Biala.
We would like to assure you that there really is no need for panic at this time. Although the King's location is not yet known, it is possible that there may still be some simple explanation for all of this. We'll keep you updated on any new events as they happen.
The Random Events have been recoded and are now back.
The Space Quell has been released!
Pets can finally Die again. If your pet is neglected, you will get a random event saying you have 7 days to cure your pet. After those 7 days, if you haven't cured your pet you will get another random event where your pet has moved to the Gates of the Graveyard, which has just been recoded. You then have only 7 days to recover your pet. After that, it is moved to the Graveyard where *anyone* can pick up your Zombie pet and own it forever.
The Price Changes has returned to Dukka Caves. It has been down for almost 15 months now and was totally forgotten about. Its been recoded and restored now.
Pot of Gold Glitch Notice
There has been a glitch with the Pot of Gold for a while now which we have only just found out. When you donated one item by itself, it never actually made it to the Pot of Gold. Over 78,000 items were lost to this and were floating around in the database. 16 of these were missing Flayees for the avatar! We have fixed the problem and all of these items have been returned to you, in your inventory. Sorry for the problem and we hope you appreciate our efforts to return them - even if you are now flooded with total junk you thought you had gotten rid of!
I have fixed Shoutboxes on marasites, so you can now chat on them and get the Shout Avatar!
Flash Game Stamps now appear in your albums.
The Fairy Fasoro has been released!
- The Lottery has been drawn for this week. xSilverwing is the winner of the 301,800MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 10, 1, 2, 5, 3 and 7! Congratulations!
- Last Week's Raffle has now ended. dottie50475052 is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 1636! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
NEW FEATURE
We have just released a brand new game/feature in Lush Lake. This was supposed to be released as part of our million members party but that week was so packed full we never got around to releasing it. One in a Million is a FREE game you can play every 90 minutes. You guess how many coins are in the jar and if you do manage to guess correctly, you will win 1,000,000MP!!
We have fixed quite a few bugs and glitches around the site today and will carry on to do so all week. This has included updated all of the world maps, except for Dukka Town, Slater Park and Gigantic Paradise, for bigger versions with the new style of labels and new profiles with counters that were missing before.
We know you are all looking forward to our Plot/War so I will let you know a few more things about it. In a few days the plot will begin with a news release. The plot itself will be quite short, with most of it being user involvement. The war IS NOT JUST battling - there will be many other ways for you to take part. And finally, war points that you gain for the side you are fighting for will be redeemed in the war redemption shop to be released on mini pet island. You will be able to spend these points on items only released during the war and bonus prizes which will be added - which include X Box 360, Ipod Nano aswell as many other great prizes avaliable. The whole event will also last several months, ending in time for the annual Easter Hunt.
The Editorial for this week has just been released.
NEW FLASH GAME
Today's new Flash Game has just been released. It can be played 3 times a day with a maximum payout of 1,500MP per game. Phanty Rescue can now be found at the puzzle games category of the games section.
There are also two new Avatars for you to find!
Happy New Year
It hasn't been a great start for 2007 so far for Marapets, but we would like to let you know what has been happening for the past few weeks. As Laimay was getting married in mid December, we decided that both Laimay and I will have the whole of December off for a break, so that she can get married, have her honeymoon and move into her new apartment and so that I can go on holiday. While we were gone, the site was run by the great team of blue stars staff and I managed to keep the site without any downtime for the whole month.
However, what we didnt know was that our main database server had been installed wrong over 6 months ago, and that the disks on that server were quickly been filled up, not from our data but from server error logs which we not noticable. A few days ago, the server ran out of disk space to save new data. This meant that new items, pets, members and a few other things were acting odd as they couldn't be saved. To stop the server from crashing, we had to quickly shut the whole of the site to try and fix the problem. This was not easy and it has taken a team of us the past few days to fix the problem, which was very close to losing us lots of valuable data, such as items and pets from the December. Luckily enough, we managed to catch the problem in time and fix it, but would like to apologise to you all for the lack of warning and notice for the downtime. It has cost a lot of money to get this fixed, and we hope that you understand how serious this maintenance was. The problem has been fixed and cannot happen again.
We will be continuing with small maintenance this week while the site is open, with much overdue glitch fixing and we will be returning to normal with regular news.
You may also like to know that in a few days, a new and unexpected visitor will be returning to Marada, and she may even be declaring WAR....
You may all be sick of looking at the maintenance error page, but the Burnt Chibs is now avaliable!
- The Lottery has been drawn for this week. Pudgybunny is the winner of the 644,400MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9! Congratulations!
- Last Week's Raffle has now ended. mishi8 is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 26406! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
- The Lottery has been drawn for this week. catken1 is the winner of the 993,900MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 22, 21, 18, 15, 17 and 14! Congratulations!
- Last Week's Raffle has now ended. BxXXxXXxXXxJ is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 22545! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
We'd like to apologise for the advent calendar not working today.
As some of you may have heard on the forums, our Christmas Newths who pack the calendar prizes all went on strike demanding more pay! Ian has been negotiating with them today, and after a promise of paying them in salmon rather than pilchards they have agreed to go back to work. It doesn't seem fair to let it only run for a half day today as some members would miss out, so it will be working from midnight mara-time and continue for an extra day at the end to make up for today.
Marada is looking particularly heavenly today... Maybe it's something to do with these new Angel pets!
Our elves are having a special giveaway for our younger members today... As its been harder for people with an under 13 account to participate in some of the other givaways, 20 random under 13s who our elves spot online today will win either a Christmas costume or one of the enchanted christmas plushies!
Some more stamps are now available for you to buy:
Congratulations to the following members who won a seasonal or christmas tree stamp!
lilaj378, alezma2, CanadasBabe, moka1973, maradev, gota15377, Dangelica, x0Dante, mrkite, and cyberkitty
Finally, has your club got a holiday layout? If so then tell your club leader to send an invite to our Chief Elf! (her username is "Elf" ). Ten of the most festive clubs will be getting a rare seasonal item to use as a club prize! (Please note - clubs must be active to participate in this giveaway and only ONE invite per club should be sent)
- The Lottery has been drawn for this week. snedden11 is the winner of the 1,034,500MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 8, 12, 10, 21, 25 and 11! Congratulations!
- Last Week's Raffle has now ended. haywaysay is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 34101! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
Congratulations to idunnowhy, Aliyah, Dev0na, Firstborndragon, and chickflickgal who are now the lucky owners of their choice of seasonal pet!
After much persuasion (and a promise of free fish sandwiches) the Plushie Machine Newths have agreed to make Enchanted Christmas Addow Plushies much less rare for a while! This will hopefully last until Christmas, but they might end it sooner if we run out of fish sandwiches...
- The Lottery has been drawn for this week. legends92 is the winner of the 1,519,300MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 5, 8, 15, 19, 24 and 21! Congratulations!
- Last Week's Raffle has now ended. katzman is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 29048! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
Congratulations to ronozoro, ShootingSky9, AirForceMomma, goodwrinch, whitemerlin, jessicamz95, freakysuzy, xrosebud, ObviouslyInsane, and LaurenElizabeth who won a Frozen Advent Wreath!
Another giveaway will be coming soon...
Two more pets have dressed themselves up for the holidays! The Bolimo and Reese can now be costumed Seasonal.
If you are under 13 and do not have access to the forums then dont worry - there will be a giveaway just for our younger members soon...
Congratulations to kitties555, xiangying, girlflower388, puppiespawz, drew22, Tahu1SuperMission, dannygrunder, magical_sea_faerie, Drag0nCharm, and seababy323 who all won a Seasonal Egg! Look out for the next giveaway in a day or two...
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