The Gate of Eternity
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As we’re nearing the end of the Quest for the Ancients, and something exciting has happened… we’ve found the Gate of Eternity!
If you’ve gathered all the artefacts, earned all four badges (the first one was given out without an artefact), managed to wear them together in the right order, you will have received the very magical Gate of Eternity…
But what are they??
I put our resident historian on the case, and after some research into the phenomenon, Neja was able to tell me this…
“A long, long time ago, when the Ancients arrived in Habbo, they decided Habbos should be able to go anywhere in the world. Habbos would get to explore and discover wonderful places: forests, seas, jungles and vast lands, full of plants, animals and other Habbos! For this purpose, the Network of the Ancients was built. The Gate of Eternity would take Habbos wherever they wanted to go!
The Ancients were very careful about who were allowed to be the gate guardians. The artefacts had to be handled with care, and the puzzle was not for all. Only those who could solve it, would be granted guardianship of a Gate of Eternity.
Years passed and the Network of the Ancients was used less and less. Some of the Gates of Eternity were shut down and some were forgotten, left in dusty corners of Habbo… Until now! With your help, the magic of the Ancients has returned and the Gates of Eternity are reactivated!
If you’ve been granted a Gate, make sure you create a wonderful place for it – you want your guests from all corners of Habbo to be in awe of the place they arrive to! And remember, this Network of the Ancients is exclusive – reachable only by entering a Gate of Eternity…”
So there you have it Habbos! Go exploring with your Gate of Eternity…
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Free Chat Is Coming Back!
With
all the new and improved safety measures that have been made, we’re
finally ready to return to “Free Chat!” It will be a gradual process,
starting with a pilot in the Spanish Hotel today and continuing with the
French and Brazilian Hotels on Thursday. If all goes well, all the rest
of the Hotels will follow as soon as they’re ready, hopefully next
week!
To celebrate, we’re throwing parties in all the Hotels where you can win a BADGE, a never-before-seen TROPHY and even unlock a week of FREE VIP for everyone that attended!
Get ready, Habbos… the party starts in Spain already on Wednesday at 1pm Spanish time!
PS: You can also read what Paul had to say about returning to filtered chat here ››
In the Footsteps of the Ancients – FAQs
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Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Portuguese, German, Dutch.
Today marks the start of a three week adventure following in the Footsteps of the Ancients! We’ve
got Quests and room competitions and new Furni – and some very special
artifacts that come with even more special badges… To get you started on
the right foot, here are some answers to a few questions that you might
have!
Good luck!
How can I participate in this campaign?
You participate simply by logging into your Hotel, the information is right there on the Hotel View!
How long will this campaign last?
3 weeks! Every week we’ll explore a new place – the desert, the savannah and the jungle.
How long will the new Furni be in the Shop?
There will be new Furni every week, and it will all be available until the end of the campaign.
How can I take part in the room competition?
Build a room that fits the theme using at least 3 different pieces of
the new Furni line. Once it’s done and you’re happy with it, you can
easily enter your room by clicking the button that appears in your room!
How many rooms can I enter?
You can only enter one room pr competition, so make it a great one!
How many room competitions will there be?
There will be three in all, one for each week of the campaign!
If my room makes it to Top 10 in the first room competition, am I disqualified for the other room competitions?
No we don’t disqualify talented people in Habbo. Even if you won the
first room competition you can still compete for the others – but you
can’t submit the same room of course.
If my room makes it to Top 10, do I only get a badge or will I get another prize as well?
You’ll get fame! In addition to a badge, your Habbo will be profiled on
the Hotel View, and your room will be listed in the official rooms tab
in the Navigator!
If my room makes it to Top 10, do I also get the badge for
Top 100 and for taking part in the room competition in the first place?
You will receive one badge according to your ranking.
How many badges can I earn in this campaign?
Four badges are available as parts of the Ancients’ map, then there are three for the room competitions.
How many times can I vote for a room/any rooms?
You have 3 votes per day. You can give all to the same room or split your votes between different rooms.
What is the big deal with these so-called artifacts, and how do I find them?
Artifacts are legendary relics built by the Ancients – the Fathers of
Habbo who mysteriously disappeared years ago. Every week there is a new
Artifact to collect. You can buy the Artifacts with Stars, which you
earn by doing Quests. Every Artifact comes with its own special badge – a
piece of map that you need to complete and assemble in order to reach
the Gates of Eternity. It’s also possible to buy artifacts by Credits if
you haven’t manage to earn enough Stars.
What are the Gates Of Eternity, and how can I get my hands on them?
Texts are unclear about the Gates of Eternity, but we think that the
Ancients found them – and that the Gates completely changed their lives
forever! As far as we know, the only way to reach the Gates is to
complete the map. But think twice before diving into adventure, you have
do it at your own risk…
How can I take part in the Quest?
You can find it on the Hotel View, or you can go to your room and click
on the Quest icon in your left side menu. Activate the “Footsteps of the
Ancients” Quest to take part!
How can I get people to vote for my room when I can’t say my room name?
Ask people to follow you to your room to vote! You should also try using Facebook and Twitter.
Will there be any LTD Rares in this campaign?
We’ll see…
Everybody’s Talking
After a long period of study I am pleased to announce I passed the safety quiz in the English speaking Hotel! Having the Staff over me as I entered the answers didn’t make it any easier. But I’m now able to chat in .com as a trusted member of the community.
We have now restored limited communication to our entire community. Habbo is about friendship and reconnecting friends was our first priority. We recognize that the limited chat at first can be awkward. But we believe it’s better to reconnect you with your friends as quickly as possible, and once you learn the limits of the words you will be able to chat with ease.
Be assured that your ability to express yourself in Habbo will go well beyond this limited form of chat. We are going to re-introduce a less restrictive filtered chat so that you can earn the ability to express yourself fully without the restrictions of the current filter. Prove you are a trusted and responsible Habbo and you will be able to take full advantage of the social nature of Habbo. New users will always start with a limited form of chat until they have earned our trust.
As we continue to refine the safety systems here is what you are going to see. Guardians, an advanced level of the Helper Talent, are next. Guardians will be trusted members of the community who can perform limited actions to resolve situations. Helpers are members of the community who will continue to provide information and help. Moderators & Staff will continue to have the exclusive ability to take remedial actions. These multiple layers of assistance are designed to help you protect yourself. We are all working together as a community to make Habbo great.
Later this month the Ancients campaign, a big new game and more features will get us back to working on not only being responsible communicators, but also having a lot of fun with friends on the site.
Community Update
Habbos,
In the next 24 hours, we are opening limited communication in the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish language sites. We are doing final reviews for the restoration of the English speaking site and will have news on that later this week. We are working full time to restore the connections in our Community.
Over the last six months, we have tried several new communication methods to discuss the needs of the Communities with you. Some you have embraced, some you have not. Your feedback, which culminated in The Great Unmute, told us several important things. Friendships are all important. Campaigns must return. Clearly written articles describing latest news on the workings of the site must return. More contests. Revive Hobbas.
We’ve heard you and we are going to bring back a lot of these things as quickly as we can. Hobbas will come back in an updated form known as Guardians almost immediately. We will have campaigns in July and August that will have a greater focus on contests. We are going to make news more available and easier to find. We are going to gather feedback and encourage discussion about Habbo on our site. When we launch that, I will spend less time on external social media and more time in our site discussing Habbo with you.
To ensure we have a community that is as safe as possible, all Habbos have to earn the right to free expression. To do that you will have passed the security quiz and have spent enough time in the limited chat portion of the service to learn the Habbo Way. Once you have earned the Community’s trust, it is your responsibility to keep it. That means you do not engage in inappropriate behavior nor tolerate those who do. Engage or tolerate? Depending on severity, you will be asked to leave to start over from the beginning.
To earn your trust we will always protect your privacy and anonymity. We are deploying monitoring software that detects patterns of inappropriate behavior and we will continue to devote a majority of our resources to keeping the site a place that does not tolerate inappropriate behavior. And as Staff who supports your Community, we always engage in a discussion about what you need, and how we can do better.
All of this together means more to do, more friends to have and an environment of trust where safety is a shared responsibility and we all know it works.
Thanks,
Paul
Parental Advisory Summit Launches and Chat is Re-activated in 4 Hotels
Following the successful reintroduction of white list chat to Finland, Spain and Brazil in recent days, I can now confirm that we are preparing to reinstate chat facilities into our French, German, Italian and Dutch Habbo sites on Friday 29 June.
The site is visibly different, with users unable to talk until they have completed a safety quiz to demonstrate that they are aware of the security facilities in place and understand their own role in actively contributing to the safety of the site. Users now earn the right to speak more freely, meaning that they are rewarded for responsible behaviour as part of our focus on driving a culture change across the community.
We are aware that creating a safe and secure user experience is a responsibility shared by the company, legitimate users and their parents. For this reason, we are now calling for parents to participate in our Parental Advisory Summit. It’s our chance to understand better how we can collaborate with parents to deliver the best possible levels of safety to our users.
Parents can apply to be part of this global forum and users can nominate parents via an online form. We are going to select two parents from each of the ten countries in which we operate to create a council of twenty. Applications will be open for one week before a short list is drawn up and successful applicants are contacted. The Summit will take the form of a three-day online forum, facilitated by senior manager from the Sulake business. Interested users and parents can find out more information and apply on this link: http://parentsummit.habbo.com
For parents whose applications are unsuccessful and for those who do not wish to take part in the Summit, but would like to contribute, we have also set up an email address: parents@habbo.com. This is an important learning exercise to help us finalise the future direction of the business, and all constructive contributions will be warmly welcomed.
For more information about The Great Unmute, see our highlights video below:
Reintroducing Chat and Inviting Parents to Contribute to Online Culture Change
- Translate: Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Dutch, German.
Portuguese is still to come.
Following The Great Unmute last week, the Sulake board took the decision to restore limited chat facilities [1] in certain markets, starting with Finland. This week, we are rolling out limited chat in Spain and Brazil, two markets that contain high proportions of active users. This will provide a representative sample of users on which to verify the improved safety of our systems as we aim to bring other markets back online.
Further new safety measures introduced onto the site in the last fortnight are listed below:
- All users to complete a new responsible use test prior to re-entering the site
- Additional tracking measures to clearly tie all virtual interactions to real user identities
- Active and visible staff moderators to be present in a wider range of rooms across the site
- User community volunteers to be given the opportunity to qualify as Guardians (a user-populated virtual police force)
- User community volunteers to be enabled to support on information requests so staff are free to deliver a rapid response to any reports of inappropriate use
- All users to begin on limited chat and earn their way to filtered chat through responsible interaction
- Basic level algorithmic chat solution to alert moderators to inappropriate content (- to be expanded in partnership with a selected supplier)
- Increased prominence of emergency button to encourage active use
We are aware that this list of measures does not provide a comprehensive solution to the safety challenges faced by social gaming sites. For Sulake, it is a sign of our continuing commitment to delivering a safe and secure user experience.
The last two weeks of community silence has provided an opportunity for reflection, both for our business leaders and our global user community. Previously, the senior management team addressed inappropriate interactions by equipping users with safety tools, working with partners and investing in technological and human moderation. However, the legitimate user views collected during The Great Unmute show a clear need to deliver a decisive culture change across the user base. Our users must be educated and engaged to move from acceptance and avoidance of inappropriate users to active policing and a policy of zero-tolerance across the community.
Creating a safe and engaged user community is a responsibility shared by the company, legitimate users and their parents. During The Great Unmute we gathered the views and insights of our users and have learned lessons that have changed the future direction of our business. Now we want to listen to the parents of our users. In the coming days, we will issue a call for applications from parents to participate in our Parental Advisory Summit. It’s our chance to engage with parents around two basic questions:
- What more can we do to deliver a safe and innovative experience for the teenagers and young people who use Habbo?
- What more can we do to support parents in educating young users about the importance of responsible behaviour on social media sites?
We will be issuing a call to users and parents to apply for positions on the Parental Advisory Summit in the coming days.
[1] In a limited (‘whitelist’) chat environment, users are able to type only words that appear in the white list. When using a filtered (‘blacklist’) chat environment, users are able to type all words except those that appear in the black list. Regardless of whether the Habbo community deploys white or blacklist chat facilities, it is always in combination with monitoring software, human moderators and wider measures to equip users to protect themselves and each other from inappropriate or uncomfortable interactions.
For more information about The Great Unmute, see the video below.
Paul Updates On Limited Chat
I wanted to drop you all a note to let you know what is happening on the sites where chat has gone live again. Going forward, new users will only be able to use accepted safe words while they learn more about Habbo’s community values. By using the new system to interact, you are helping us to perfect the limited chat system and in doing so, earning our trust to give you greater freedom.
The new safe-words-only system is temporary and users will be rewarded for responsible behavior. This is about us all working together to solve the challenges in the community and we really appreciate your patience.
Together we are going to change the culture of the site and chase irresponsible users from the service.
Mute Update From Paul
- Translate: Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch.
Finnish still to come.
Habbos,
Here is the plan of action over the next few days. Firstly, we are already live in Finland verifying that changes to the safety system are making a difference. Users are having conversations that have some limitations to start. Finnish users are helping improve the system through interactive polls and direct feedback to staff. We have IP blocked Finland to keep the environment primarily Finnish speaking Habbos so we can improve filter performance. This is a temporary measure.
Once we are satisfied that the new safety approach has improved our effectiveness, we will begin to open up the conversation functions in two other markets, most likely Spain and Brazil. This will mark the beginning of the Great Go-Live and we are working to kick off this process on Monday or Tuesday of next week. Once we are satisfied that the technology and approach is working to a high standard we will then begin lifting the mute in other markets.
Next week I will share details of the new features we are introducing. You already know about the Safety Quiz and the limited chat we are working on now. There are many other new features. Be assured that you will be able to earn greater levels of free expression in an experience progression model you have seen in Habbo Helpers. We are seeking to make the site safer, not limit the appropriate topics you like to share with friends.
It’s still early days and at this stage I cannot say how long it will take to complete The Great Go-Live. My timeline is both as fast as possible while being as safe as possible. Our priority is delivering a good standard of safety to all users.
I’ll be making a big announcement next week about exactly the methods we are going to use to improve safety and set a new industry standard. Stay tuned for more news and thanks again to all users for your patience and support.
Thanks,
Paul
Response to the Great Unmute and a New Era of ‘Protected Democracy’ for Habbo Hotel
- Translate:
Portuguese, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Dutch, German.
The initial response to The Great Unmute was much larger than we could have predicted and it took some time to deploy additional servers to get the site running smoothly. We received a high number of submissions over the six hour period, many of which are still being moderated. This was always intended to be a forum for legitimate users and – although we will not be moderating the main site in the same way – the blocking of inappropriate conversations is a sign of things to come for Habbo.
We are continuing to upload content and will share with the world more than 10,000 thoughtful, balanced opinions from our responsible users. My team and I are reading them all and encourage parents and anyone else involved or concerned to do the same.
The teens and young people who inhabit our site have spoken in a mature, united and compelling voice. They have articulated the practical and personal benefits of a virtual community for a demographic full of young people still discovering themselves and their place in the real world.
The content generated by The Great Unmute will inform and direct my long term plan for the Habbo community, already in advanced draft form. When I finally allow the online community to speak again, it will be an era of ‘Protected Democracy’. By that, I mean a regulated environment that protects the free speech, as well as the safety and interests, of the legitimate user community. I understand these interests better because of The Great Unmute.
Protected Democracy is a new concept that we are pioneering in a poorly regulated social gaming industry. It can only be realised through a mix of technology, moderation, education and engagement. This is a complex combination that cannot be achieved in a single step. That is why I will turn the Habbo site back on in phases, focusing on specific markets to test the new technology. Before then I will be carrying out live tests (beginning in Finland today), to ensure our new systems are delivering the improved safety levels we anticipate.
The first phases of the Great Go-Live will commence early next week. At that point I will come back again and explain how site safety has already been improved as well as our long term plans to deliver a sustainable future for this valuable and valued online global community.
