View his full announcement here:
Dear Earth 2 Users,
We hope all is well and that you have been keeping safe considering the current world climate as some countries begin to open up, others sadly remain locked down. We can only dream of a world in the future which is immune to such restrictions..
Essence and EPLs
Essence and EPLs (Earth 2 Property Location) were scheduled to roll out a few weeks ago. Our design, development and QA teams invested a significant amount of time and effort to ensure the features were ready to roll out but at the eleventh hour a massive opportunity was brought to our attention and ultimately there was a decision to delay the roll out. We believe the delay was warranted given the potential upside for all Earth 2 landowners long term and it has allowed us to begin planning around certain tweaks to our original Essence systems. Even so, one thing remains the same, that the roll out was to introduce the beginning of Phase 2 and more specifically Essence, which plays a vital role in a number of the future game design elements of Earth 2.
The tweaks and restructuring is coming along well and we believe that there may be an option for us to roll out Essence and EPLs while internally progressing and preparing for the opportunity that caused the initial delay. By doing so we would allow Phase 2 to officially begin, something we would ALL like to happen! It will also give us time to monitor and balance the use and production of Essence and very importantly allow other subsequent planned features to roll out and not remain being blocked. If we were to follow through with the above it would be subject to possible live tweaks and balancing with the intention for the end result of a big twist that would be beneficial for all land owners inside Earth 2.
Internally our team has not slowed down since the delay of Essence but has used the time to continue working on a number of key areas that focus on improving the position of Earth 2 moving forward! We cannot talk about some of these key areas just yet but have listed a few below.
React
Our MVP was built using Riot.js as a Front End which caused us numerous headaches navigating hyper-growth, security, improvements, updates and user experience in general during earlier days. Early on our developers identified and proposed the benefits of moving our FE to React but we could never find the spare time to execute but we have now used the Essence and EPL delay in part to upgrade the landing page and app to React while the strategic team explored changes to the Essence system. This update will eliminate a significant amount of technical debt we were inheriting by continuing to roll out features in Riot as, among other things, React offers a more strict and straight forward data flow making the app more maintainable and flexible when adding new features.
The pivot is almost complete and to summarise, once done, will allow us to implement and roll out more secure changes, fixes and new features significantly faster, such as holo-buildings and property attributes, while also providing the opportunity to expand on features we have been wanting to tweak and improve for some time.
Blockchain
It is with great pleasure we officially announce that Earth2 has been in the process of developing a strategic blockchain plan and will be integrating on-chain assets into our core virtual metaverse experience. We believe the upcoming decentralized components for Earth2 will greatly enhance the overall benefits for our community by enabling the continued ownership and marketplace transactions in exciting Earth2 digital assets - both centralized and on public blockchains.
We see the power of decentralization and rapidly advancing blockchain innovations as a natural progression for Earth2 and our community as we continue to create our exciting new virtual world! While we are certainly investing substantial time and due diligence into ensuring we make the right decision for all of Earth 2, we have been both excited and inspired from the incredible connections we are talking to in this space!
Resources
Design and metrics for resources are progressing well. You will notice an update that now displays the initial resource types which can be expected on Earth 2. This list contains those resources that will be available when we roll out the resource system. These are the resources that your tiles may produce during the first months of the economic simulation.
It is just a start, of course, and these resources - as well as others that we will later add - will play a critical part in the Earth 2 simulation, building, improving and advancing technology over time. They are the first building blocks of everything that Earth 2 will become. They definitely won't be the last.
Our plan is to first rollout resources in one lucky country in order to test and balance resource production properly before expanding the system to the whole world. Thus you, our users, will play an important part in the final design and balancing of this feature.
Earth 2 MasterCards
We are extremely excited to officially announce the introduction of the Earth 2 MasterCard! Initially an Earth 2 Virtual MasterCard will be offered to users who have trouble withdrawing funds to their existing credit cards. The cost of each card is not insignificant, but Earth 2 will cover that cost for the users who are having trouble withdrawing. The Earth 2 Virtual MasterCard can be used at any e-commerce site that accepts MasterCard.
At present, users who reach out to us experiencing issues being paid will be given the opportunity of receiving an Earth 2 Virtual Card. After accepting, an invitation will be sent and then once the user has successfully signed up, the virtual card will come loaded with the requested funds. This effectively introduces another option for users to be paid out while our team continues to work on additional methods, some of which are coming soon.
The virtual cards are only the beginning, Earth 2 is also working on a physical card that will initially be available in limited quantity. These cards will include the additional ability of being used anywhere MasterCard is accepted which will include ATMs. You will also be able to load funds onto your Earth 2 MasterCard and holders of the Earth 2 MasterCard will receive discounts and benefits inside the Earth 2 platform. There will be costs associated with purchasing physical cards and we are working on the ability to allow external businesses to reward Earth 2 MasterCard holders when purchasing their products or services outside of the Earth 2 platform.
5CA, Accounts, CM, MODs and Support
We would like to say an official thank you to the amazing 5CA team, our internal accounting and support departments, our Community Managers, MODs, and other team members for their dedication and perseverance in helping Earth 2 clear the thousands of support tickets we had backlogged from hyper-growth earlier this year! We now have internal goals of maintaining a 24-48 hr response time. The clearing of the backlog is another key requirement ticked off from our list of items we wanted to improve on before raising larger scale awareness of Earth 2.
Community Driven Earth 2 Trading Cards
Earth 2 was approached by a number of community members seeking permission to use images from some E2 team members on trading cards they intended to sell as NFTs. Permission was provided from us on the proviso that a percentage of the proceeds were directed back into a charity that would help less fortunate children around the world. We recently learned that multiple children had been sponsored as a result of this community driven system and although it's a small start, we were very grateful and are driven to do a lot more in this space from Earth 2 directly moving forward.
Final Comments
Some weeks ago Banners were added to Earth 2 profiles. Though this is a very small update, it marks the beginning of you being able to customise your profile and properties and will also play a part in the long term game play as is displayed by the image flying a banner over a virtual tile.
We have also fixed and updated the Earth 2 heat map plus released over 40 bug fixes with more planned fixes and improvements on the way! Taking the present Earth 2 timeline into consideration, these are still early days and some big pieces of the puzzle are well and truly coming together behind the scenes. Although the next steps before us are focusing on Phase 2, our E2 Engine team are making exciting progress for Phase 3 and are working diligently in the background!
It has been predicted that the global AR/VR market will reach over $550b by 2025 and Earth 2 plans to become a prominent platform within this market and beyond. We thank you for being part of this journey and look forward to sharing more updates with you soon! In the meantime, keep an eye on Earth 2 as we may not always make announcements before releasing things on our website!
An IMPORTANT reminder that if a product, service, feature or affiliation is not displayed on our website or official social media accounts then it is not associated with Earth 2 directly - we have recently seen an increase in copycats and groups trying to mimic our product and even using our logo and name. Please be careful and check thoroughly, there is information we learn of confidentially through large corporations we deal with and sadly it seems there are copycats faking data and more.
He then attached this image of a profile flag flying:
E2News Conclusion
Shane officially revealed plans for an integrated Blockchain, rumored to be on the GoChain platform. He unveiled perks for future Earth2 mastercard owners, and offered a free virtual card to anyone who has trouble withdrawing. New website updates are coming, with the addition of a resource interface to the main site earlier today.
This post will be continually updated as more theories and news is brought out.
More info:
In addition, a user by the name of Chris has reportedly solved Shane’s riddle.