Hello everyone. I’m really excited that The B.C.U. Times already has over 30 followers. We’ve only just started out, but I wanted to send a newsletter to everyone to give some more information on the publication, and this project overall.

I also wanted to comment on something I found rather interesting, though a bit odd. Specifically, articles seem to get a lot of claps from accounts with every little, if any, activity. It’s probably because a lot of people have created Medium accounts just to follow Blockchain Cuties, but you should at least fill out your profile. In fact, include your a link to your Blockchain Cuties profile so we can find each other more easily.

Additionally, please consider subscribing to Medium. Subscribers that clap for articles contribute monetarily to those the authors who write them. It’s a really big help, as it can be difficult for a freelance journalist to make a living without the support of their readers. And now for the main part of the article.

There are really two main topics to go over in this first newsletter. The first main topic is some drama that’s been happening in the chat. A minor topic is some new social media activity. The second man topic is about the upcoming event.

Chat Drama

Tensions are high in the B.C.U. chat.

The chat dynamics seem to be the most interesting part of the game at the moment, as we wait for the upcoming expansion. And admittedly, I’ve been a little on edge in the chat lately. So what’s happening? First, there’s the outages, and there’s also some issues with scalping.

B.C.U. has suffered a number of outages, not having anything to do with their own infrastructure, but rather the broad outages that the internet is experiencing thanks in part to Cloudflare. Luckily the B.C.U. team created a temporary URL to access the site, although it lacked an SSL certificate. The lack of the certificate — while not really a problem since pretty much everything is on chain anyway — resulted in some people complaining, and one person demanding compensation.

Scalping

The other source of drama in the channel came from people trying to flip the recent promotional items that they won from the decentraland giveaway. While it’s fine to sell a set that you don’t need if you prefer to use the cash to play the game, when a game runs a promotion where there are a set number of items available, by playing just to scalp, you’re taking the set away from someone else, only to try to sell it to them for a profit.

One way to avoid this issue in the future is to prevent these kinds of items from being sold on the market, or at least prevent them from being sold for a certain amount of time, perhaps a month or so. While this approach would require some more work, it would prevent scalping, which can be a real problem if you’re trying to make a game fun.

Either way, if you win something that’s limited edition, please be respectful about flipping it. Maybe you play the game but need extra cash. That’s fine, but realize that if you’re not really a player, some people are going to find it offensive that you entered, won, and are trying to sell the item for lots of cash.

Bringlish?

Not drama, just funny. The B.C.U. site changed its English language icon to the US flag, probably for the fourth of July, so there was a short lived discussion on the nature of the English language. One thing’s for certain, English is a very weird language, whether it’s British English or American English.

General Chatter

And of course there’s the general chatter about breeding, trading, and other general B.C.U. discussions that goes on in the chat. Overall the environment is a fun place to discuss the game, though over the last few days, the chat has died down a bit. Things should pick back up once the event starts. If you’ve yet to visit, check out the Telegram group. We also have a group set up for B.C.U. scholars that focuses on genetics, economics, and other related topics of discussion. There are still a number of attributes which have yet to be discovered. Maybe you’ll be the first to breed one.

SpiderDex recently finished running a giveaway on Twitter. Unfortunately I just found out about this today. Maybe they’ll run another giveaway soon. If not, the B.C.U. Times might do our own giveaway.

Speaking of social media, Blockchain Cuties joined BelaCam yesterday. Make sure to follow them to show your support, and if you don’t yet have an account, feel free to use this referral link, in order to help support the B.C.U. Times.

Upcoming Event

The date of the upcoming event has been moved back, with the current estimated launch date being Monday, July 15. It does look like it’s going to be a major event, which explains why it’s taking a while to get the final touches right: better late than buggy. There are a lot of new tribute cuties teased, as well as a new raid boss, which is apparently going to be even more challenging than the ones we have now.

New Raid Boss Is Coming! Sometimes we get stuck in the less than ideal situations. And sometimes it involves other … creatures. medium.com

One thing I’ll note on is that there seems to be a lot of love for lizards. I get it; people use them a lot and with the dragons they are powerful. But while doing some breeding research, I’ve noticed there is just a huge disparity between species in the B.C.U. The lack of certain species could actually end up being a problem with the launch of the Cutieland expansion, which apparently has different bonuses for different species.

Summary

That’s about it for now. Hopefully we’ll have more info on the event soon, and when the event goes live, there’ll be more to talk about. As more people follow the publication, I’ll release more newsletters, and eventually bring in more authors as well, so stay tuned. You can also follow us on Twitter, and more social media accounts are being created as we speak.

Originally published on the B.C.U. Times publication on Medium.