The release has been great despite Mother Nature’s best attempts to stop us. Everyone at Muse is safe though a few of us are still trying to get our power and Internet back on. We want to thank everyone for your patience during the launch’s server outrages, and we want to give a shoot-out to the community ambassadors who were able to get online from home to help keep everyone up to date.
More after the break…
Since launch, everyone has been super helpful to report issues that they are seeing in the game, such as Store not working foreign currency, keys unbinding, etc. With our power and Internet connection crippling, we actually managed to fix a few of these issues, and of course we made the devilish promise of delivering the Halloween masks on Halloween! This means, we need a way to make an update build.
Making a build would normally be easy. All we need is Alex’s computer on. But in the aftermath of Sandy, this turned out to be a monumental challenge. Our room of an office is located in downtown Manhattan, next to Bowling Green, Battery Park, and the Wall Street Bull’s buttocks. Downtown Manhattan is flooded, devoid of power, completely paralyzed with traffic gridlock, and car accidents happening in alarmingly high frequencies. This is where we had to go back to if we were to retrieve Alex’s computer.
With Halloween looming, Conrad decided to take matters into his own hands. In the midst of all the chaos, he put on his helmet and jacket and decided to bike in. Bubbles was supposed to go meet him, but traffic in Manhattan is like Tokyo at its worst, so Bubbles could only wait by his cell phone and pace around the room. Conrad managed to ride into the cordoned off part of lower Manhattan.
Victory? Not by a long shot. Our building was without power, so was the entire lower Manhattan. Imagine half of all of Manhattan without power. Our building was also sealed off, so Conrad managed to sneak into the side door, but was then blocked by a security guard who stubbornly refused to let Conrad go up to our own office to get what we needed. So as Conrad waited and watched the waves, Bubbles emailed and called the management company. Did it work? Who knew, but the building manager let Conrad in. Finally, gear in hand, Conrad was ready to take off. But how? Not with a desktop and monitor on a bike through treacherous cityscape!
Plan B. Luckily the buses started to run, and surprisingly going uptown was relatively uncongested until Midtown where the big construction crane dangled from the crazy tall building. In that area, the streets were completely sealed off and empty, while the areas around it, Broadway and 8th Avenue for example, were essentially parking lots, with streams of unending pedestrian traffic. No one has seen this since 9/11. Conrad ditched his bike (you heard me right, he tossed his bike next to the office building) and hopped on the M5 bus that crawled uptown, to Bubbles’s place. The bus was jam packed, and Conrad’s face literally pasted the wall. In that fashion, Conrad had the good sense to hop off a few blocks before the traffic melt down, and hand carried the gear the rest of the way, through numerous city blocks of mayhem, to Bubbles’s place, where power and Internet were restored.
After an ordeal of several hours, we finally managed to set up the computer, and spent the next few hours deploying the build. The Halloween masks arrived on Halloween, but behind this were the daring efforts of one person – Conrad the Rad. Hollywood script? Meh. Just another day at Muse.
Still unknown: the state of Conrad’s bike.