Future of the blog

 Hey Jammers!

I've been thinking more, and I believe I will continue the blog (although posting rather infrequently). However, I may not keep it solely Animal Jam-related: I'm considering branching out and writing a little more about Fer.al (and more specifically, its lore, which I'm really enjoying). Of course, the main focus of the blog will remain Animal Jam, and the majority of posts will be about AJ. Thanks everyone for the support, it really means a lot to me. I would write a full post now, but I have homework to do!

Amhdolphin 

Goodbye (kind of)

 Hey Jammers,

I'll get straight to the point today: I got hacked two weeks ago. They left me with 50 den items and 30 clothing (but left all my den betas???), and I can only assume it was recycled because I have about 900,000 more gems than I did previously.  I went back through my login history and determined the date of the hack, but there's no way for me to know who did it. Or to get my stuff back. I wasn't particularly rare by any means, but I lost a lot of collections I had worked for a long time on, such as my very first clothing items in the game, all of my Journey Book items, all of my art except for one, all of the birthday cakes and birthstones, and all of my nature/plant items. Just about everything, most of which I won't be able to get back ever.  Naturally, the game I don't care at all about, Play Wild, was left untouched.

I'm not quitting, because the game means a lot to me. But I doubt I'll play very often, and I probably will not continue this blog. I might post occasionally, but I just... don't really have the motivation to keep blogging. Thank you to the few readers I have for sticking with me. 

I don't understand why people hack. Like, enjoy your pixels, I guess, knowing you likely just made someone very upset. At least it was me and not some poor eight-year old who would've been inconsolable. I am very upset by this, but not nearly as much as I would have been, say, two years ago.  

Again, I am not quitting. But I'm not really sure if I can ever truly get back into the game - most of my old game friends have moved on and no longer play, and the one I'm still in touch with had their account deleted, so we talk on other platforms. And with less and less content, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be playing. Animal Jam has always been a big part of my life, and I'll always love it and remember it fondly, but it's not as important to me as it used to be. I've been playing for seven years now. It may be time to move on. Not yet, of course, but soon, maybe. Perhaps I'll keep posting, but likely not. I might write a formal goodbye post later, but why not leave it open-ended?

Thank you.             

Amhdolphin              

Sorry for the long break + new blog

 Hey Jammers!

Eep! Sorry for the long break! I’ll try and post more often now that school’s started again. I don’t have any fresh content today, but I do have some news: a new AJ blog has popped up! I learned of the Animal Jam Infox through the Animal Jam Stream, and it seems awesome. Head on over and take a look here: https://animaljaminfox.blogspot.com/?m=1

Thanks for reading!

Amhdolphin 

Adventures!

Hey Jammers,

I was trying to think up a post today and I thought, you know what, why don't I do an adventure. So I did. I completed Return of the Phantoms this morning and I decided to take some screenshots to share along the way. So here we go!

Okay, so here's one of my main adventure characters (I also have a seal that's a higher level but it was further down in the character menu and I didn't feel like finding it). Let's call her Rosy from here on out. Here she is by the portal. I decided to start from the base camp because I feel like no one goes there anymore. The music is nice.

 

And so we come to the lovely Bunny Burrow, where citizens aren't capable of walking ten feet.

So they left you alone in the danger? Ditch those friends, Binky!

I decided to take a selfie with Harvey.

Ooh, mysterious.

Ok, time to fill the pipes up.

*cue Tangled intro* this... is the story of how I died...

Okay, so now I need to water all the plants and make them happy and green again.

The plants looked like this before...

... and now they look like this.

So now I have to go back to BUNNY BURROW to get a PHANTOM KEY, as AJ likes to emphasize.

LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY'S HOME NOW

Thank you George.

Okay, got the key, headed back to the door which I'm now realizing I should've taken a picture of.

Good to know.

ooh

It took me inside a cave which I forgot to screenshot, but anyway, here's the prize.

Ok, now I'm freeing all the bunnies.

Caged bunny selfie!

I love how the act of unlocking the cage with a key causes it to completely destroy itself.

Okay, well, that's pretty much it. I forgot to screenshot the prize, but I won 500 gems. That was fun, I think I'll do that in the future. I feel like nobody does the older, easier adventures anymore, it's been ages since I've done this one. I think I'll do Meet Cosmo next, that's my favorite of the older ones. I like collecting the vegetables and ingredients.

That was fun. Here's today's customary animal: some baby ostrich chicks!

Seeya!

Amhdolphin

Old post

Hey Jammers! 

I know I already posted today, but I was going through my photos today and found this, which I had meant to post about a year ago but didn’t. It’s an AJ bingo board made by Difficult of the now-inactive Animal Jam Timber Blog.

Click here to find the original bingo board post on the AJ Timber.

That’s it for now! Seeya!

Amhdolphin

Interesting Daily Explorer posts

Hey Jammers!

Well, I’ve posted three days in a row. That’s significantly more than I’d hoped. Quick post today, because I don’t have a ton of time or content, but I popped into the Daily Explorer today and saw some interesting posts I thought I’d share. Next post will be more AJ-related, I promise.

Ok, so the first post I’m going to show is this one:

I thought it was nice to see an environmental post on there for once as opposed to endless bundle-and-RIM promotions. Of course, it would be nice if they did this more often, but it’s a good start.

The second one is probably my favorite:

“Check out this fantastic Masterpiece they did a great job!”

I have so many questions. Who wrote this? Who is “they?” Why are there no commas? Why is the message so short? Why didn’t they crop out the side of the art studio? Why is there no AJHQ signature?  We’ll never know. It is a great masterpiece, though.

And the third one is kind of a sequel to the second:

Similar to the other masterpiece post, we are shown another anonymous dog masterpiece, although this one is written much better by a long shot. I wonder why AJHQ is putting the masterpieces forward anonymously now - usually, they say the username. And the poorly written one makes me curious. Who knows?

Alright, that’s it for today. The interesting baby animal of the day is... drumroll please... a baby toad! I’m not exactly sure if it’s a baby or just very, very small, but unlike other pictures I post, I actually took this picture (sorry for the quality, I had to zoom in a bunch to get it). I found this guy in my backyard the other day and he could have comfortably fit on my fingertip. I released him after the picture though, don’t worry.

Hopefully I’ll continue posting frequently! Seeya!

Amhdolphin

More about Fer.al

Hey Jammers!

Well, what do you know! A post two days in a row! Today’s is going to be a bit shorter than yesterday’s, though. 

Now, you might remember I said I wouldn’t be posting about Fer.al. Well, I lied. Kinda. After this post, I probably won’t be posting about it much more: after all, it is the Animal Jam Breeze, not the Fer.al Breeze. But I wanted to briefly discuss a few things I like about the game.  

The first thing is my favorite: the community. One of the first days I was on the game in early June (within a week of starting) I popped into Centuria (the slightly weirder, larger Fer.al equivalent of the pillow room) because I had never been there before. When I entered and after all the characters loaded, I was greeted by a row of players dressed in the colors of various pride flags sitting together on the stage. I had time, so I quickly threw together a nonbinary-flag-themed outfit (yellow, white, purple, and black if you didn’t know) on my kitsune and joined them. Everyone welcomed me and returned to shouting “happy pride month!” (again, early June). On the same day, I logged into both Animal Jam and Play Wild, threw together rainbow looks, and shouted happy pride in Jamaa Township. It censored the word “pride.”  So I eventually got around the censors, but no one joined me. Now, this is likely due to the age difference between the games, but it was interesting nonetheless. I also feel like a system of rarity has yet to develop as concretely as that of AJ, so I feel like people are also generally more friendly on Fer.al so far. Not dumping on AJ, I still prefer Animal Jam, but it’s interesting. 

The second thing is the dens, or “sanctuaries.” I honestly love the fact that we can expand and add rooms/floors as we go, as well as the fact that we have an outdoor and an indoor area, although I’d love to see more free sanctuary types (all the additional sanctuary types cost real money). And I like the way it’s 3D too - I know the whole game is 3D, but it’s a nice change from AJ’s more flat dens, although I prefer the creativity and freedom AJ’s dens provide. 

The last thing is the art style. I love the gorgeous, almost alien  but also natural landscapes. My favorite land has to be Mugmyre Marsh, although Lakeroot Valley is a close second (it’s too easy to get lost in the valley in my opinion). I also love the designs of the animals in general, especially the senri and the dragon. 

Anyway, that’s it for today. I will, however, continue my tradition of posting interesting baby animals, so enjoy this baby ball python :)

Hopefully I’ll start posting more often! Next post is back to AJ, don’t worry! :)

Amhdolphin

I’m back! (not really) + name change + fer.al

Hey guys,

No one is likely going to read this, but here we go!

I’m sorry it’s been so long! Everything’s really crazy right now, and to top it all off I was locked out of my email for the blog (finally got it back! woohoo!)! Anyway, I probably won’t be posting much anymore, if at all, but who knows? Maybe I’ll start back up again. I haven’t been playing AJ as much anymore, but I’m definitely not quitting.

I also started playing fer.al under the same username as AJ. I love it so far, especially the walking-around-and-finding-stuff bit. I’m not playing it very often either (been reading a lot lately), but I really enjoy the art style, although I am a bit disappointed that Wildworks is pushing paid “subscriptions” on us already (season pass). Just to be forewarned, even if I do start posting more frequently it will likely not be about fer.al.

And now to the more substantial thing to discuss. At first, this post was supposed to be no more than one paragraph explaining to you guys where I’d been, but then I remembered the whole name change thing and decided to talk about that. Quick not before we begin: I will be referring to the games by their original names (Animal Jam and Play Wild). 

So let’s start with a quick question to Wildworks.

WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU GUYS THINKING?!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the change itself and its aftermath (or lack thereof, in AJ’s situation). I’m sure that by now, most of you know that Animal Jam’s official name has been changed to Animal Jam Classic, and Play Wild’s name has been changed to Animal Jam. If you didn’t know before, now you do. They’re basically putting all their effort into PW and pushing AJ to the wayside. Oh, sure, we’re getting new items, but where are our new animals that aren’t just the same old ones with some stars slapped on the side? Where are our dens that aren’t cheap recolors? What about new lands and adventures? While PW is over here getting dens the size of lands with secret passageways all over, we get a bundle of items and an animal that already exists! And look at that: it’s another bundle! And another! Every update now looks something like this:

Page one: LOOK! IT’S A NEW BUNDLE! It has a whole bunch of fancy LAMPS!! It also comes with the EPIC arctic wolf and a pet hamster!! Come get it for 40 diamonds today!!

Page two: Seasonal party! Also, seasonal adventure!

Page three: Ya know, Play Wild over here has some really COOL STUFF! This elaborate 67-story den that’s spaceship-themed with 24 secret passageways is brand new! Come check it out!!!

Page four: DID YOU KNOW? Adventures exist!!

And that’s pretty much it for the Jamaa Woodslab (credit for the name to DoomyPanda :P).

I do have to admit, some of the bundles were pretty cool (like the vet one), but the majority are just eh.

Now, when I checked the Daily Explorer that fateful day sometime in late April, as I sometimes do, I saw the first post, and, not gonna lie to you guys, I shed a tear. This felt like the beginning of the end. I was placated a little by the promised in-game celebrations for AJ’s tenth birthday, but... where were they? I know the game’s birthday is in September, but the way it was written seemed like the celebration would be in May. So who knows, it might still be coming. The alternative is that the “massive super fun celebration” was just the release of the few crappy recolors of some older items as “Classic ______.” Also, the Daily Explorer promised some ~exciting new content~ coming to both games, and for awhile, that was true. Updates got better in AJ, until they didn’t. And now we’re back where we started while they put all their effort into Play Wild. We just get new item after new item, but no real new content.

If you go to the homepage, you’re greeted by a variety of colorful animals with colorful, shiny items under the benevolent logo of Animal Jam. Then, to get to the newly-named Animal Jam Classic, you scroll down, down, down, to the banner labeled as such. And then you have to click the Play Now button, which takes to you a new page labeled Animal Jam Classic. This page is adorned with a simple natural background with four fairly plain-colored animals with no items. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the whole natural aesthetic. But kids are going to look at the shiny, colorful one, and then the harder-to-get-to plain one, and join the shiny one. Wildworks is clearly trying to focus its attention (and money) on Play Wild.

And then the issue of the naming itself. I seriously doubt any of the people who played before the change are going to call the games by their new names. It’s like if Apple came out and said, “Okay, folks! We have renamed the iPhone! It is now called the fluggaboo!” Even if Apple put up banners everywhere advertising the next fluggaboo every year, no one’s going to call the iPhone a fluggaboo. They’re just going to call it the iPhone. This is the issue with Animal Jam, except less extreme.

Okay, well, that was far longer and more pessimistic than I intended that to be. I might post more frequently, I might not. Who knows. Depends on if my email locks me out again.

To end on a happier note, enjoy this adorable picture of a baby zebra with polka dots instead of stripes.

Stay safe, wash your hands, and wear a mask! See you guys around in AJ!

Amhdolphin