Giftsplosion 2014: The Percy Jackson of Christmas Events

Giftsplosion: the Timely Woe of Outdated, Useless Gifts

Hello readers, RayMan36 here with what we've all been waiting for: disappointment. Yes, I'm here to talk about the overly-impossible gift hunt, and maybe what would come out of these presents from the depths unknown, which all of you certainly bought.

DISCLAIMER: You have been juggling a broken teacup with a milkshake straw in your sock while dancing to the Canadian national anthem, all with your iron man costume in your baby pool on your 8th birthday party only if it was July 20th and it was a full moon. Otherwise, just pay me $40,000.

Inactivity Problems

Hello Roblox News, recently you may have noticed a large dip within the amount of content produced at Roblox News; I am going to tell you why. I haven't had much time. That's the reason, I'm very busy with exams, and my interest in ROBLOX has gone down recently because I haven't been able to do much. I will start rebuilding ROBLOX News over the christmas period, be wary of posts that are soon to come. :D

Building Contests Have Returned!

Ayeeee, pbjms here, and with the return of building contests, you also get the return of me! I haven't written a post in ages, mainly because I've been busy with life, or I just didn't feel like writing anything, because you know, 5 minutes of writing is too much, right?

Anyway, back during a BLOXCast in December of 2013, your favorite fella pbjms asked a wonderful question: Will building contests ever make a return? And Arbirator has been asking this question long before this, since the dawn of time it would seem. Now, with my luck, the question wasn't answered on the BLOXCast. But don't fear my friends, because it was answered in a follow-up Blog Post! So basically, they said that Building Contests will come back at some point, but they just need to figure out how to balance them out.

New Site Theme Overview!

Hello readers, RayMan36 here with the reason I'm a god among men. I'm talking about the brand spankin' new Roblox site theme, which only 20% of the community has. There is a screenshot below:

I'm kidding.

Thank You Shedletsky!

From all of us at the Roblox News team, and everyone on ROBLOX, we thank you. You have inspired many young minds and adult minds alike, and have helped us all get to where we are today. You have helped Roblox progress for the past 8 years and I am thrilled to have had the chance to have met you, even if only for brief periods of time.

When I asked these people how you inspired them, I got these responses, and I am sure everyone agrees with them!

Best place to win Player Points

Hello guys, this is just a short article to take you to the best place to earn Player Points, unfortunately it is BC only though the owner does make it NBC often.

The game is Swordfight for Points 2, created by 1waffle1. At this moment in time, it only has roughly 4,700 place visits, though I am sure it will gain more.

Surprise!

Roblox News App for Windows 8.1 has been submitted to the Store. (ALPHA Version)

Player Points and Clan Points: The Issues

Player Points can be now seen on your profile.

Notice: Please observe that this article was written 4/28/14, since then, some updates have been made to Player Points.

Player Points and Clan Points are among the most recent updates to the ROBLOX site and platform. At first, the idea shined with a sort of potential - but the more that users like myself hear about the feature, the more we see this as being another failed project, a fad. At best, it could go the way of BC games, used solely for the abuse of making more TIX and out-casting the Non-BC members of ROBLOX from your game. The sad thing is: that for such an idea that may actually benefit the ROBLOX platform and game, this feature is already in it's death state. It is more than certainly on it's death bed, and the potential for it is slowly diminishing in value and interest. It's almost destine to reach a natural death, and here's why.

Leaderboards - What Are They?

Hello everyone! CYNICALCHRIS here and today I'm bringing you, yet another, site update! This time, it's something called "Leaderboards". So, let's take a look at what this thing is!

Player Points - What Are They?

Hello everyone! CYNICALCHRIS here, and today I am going to bring you something new, at least, new for me. It's a site update, I guess. User DarkGenex posted a tweet saying "I got a player point!" then a link to his profile. As you can see, under his picture, there is something new! It's a star and says "Player Points" with a value next to it. What could this mean?

Maker Faire/ Bloxfaire pros and cons

Coincedence? I think not!

Hello readers, RayMan36 here with free marketing! I'm talking about the new recruit-more-users-not-having-fun approach to this year's World Tour.

Roblox News Updates

Hello Employees,

I have not made a post in some time, and there has been a lot of changes here at Roblox News. Firstly, I would like to welcome all the new employees, congratulations on being selected to be part of the Roblox News team. I am writing this article to inform of you some upcoming changes and things you must follow when writing articles.

PhireFox's View on New Site Layout!

Hi there! Today I bring you a video from the well known ROBLOX machinima creator: PhireFox. In this episode, PhireFox discusses his view on the new site layout. The new site layout has been rolled out to roughly 1/10 of the ROBLOX community as the developers wish to gradually implement the new design, test for bugs and to receive valuable user feedback.




Thanks for watching and look out for more content from the PhireFox soon!

Disclaimer: Roblox News and PhireFoxRBLX are in partnership to provide dual content and promotion of each other's media. Video content was used with permission from the respective owner. The views discussed in the video are not endorsed by Roblox News and are solely PhireFox's personal views.

Think You Have the Most Anticipated Game Releasing on ROBLOX in 2014?

Well, lets see!

I promised recently over Twitter that I would make an article regarding to "The Top 10 Most Anticipated Games Releasing on ROBLOX in 2014" and I wanted to make this an engaging and interesting article that anyone could have the potential to be apart of.

For this, i'm looking at games not just by popular ROBLOX builders and scripters, but looking at work by common ROBLOX players! Think you have the most exciting game that will be released in 2014? I guess we'll have to see.

Read the rules for the 'contest' below to see if your game meets the guidelines, if so: send forth your game!

GUIDELINES:
- Your game must be releasing sometime in 2014.
- Your game can only apply for the contest if it is not complete and is still under development.
- Your game cannot apply if it has been released (as a final copy - a general release - if you need help understanding this, PM me)
- Your game must be original: no stolen places. Send me one and i'll laugh at you.


IF YOU MEET ALL THE GUIDELINES - SEND MYSELF (ITSFUTUR) A PM BY CLICKING HERE.

(Since it has been asked - you can send forth any game you think is the most exciting game coming out in 2014. Your friend's game, your game, your cat's game, any game you want to!)

In your PM, please list the game name, the user who made it, the genre, and other details that I should know about the project.

Winners may be contacted for an interview - this contest closes January 31. There will be ten winners, the winners (of course) will be posted about on here for the 'Top 10 Most Anticipated Games Releasing on ROBLOX in 2014.'

Best of luck, and as always: have a good day!
^ ItsFutur

The Black Friday User Retextures Revealed!

With Black Friday literally right around the corner (tomorrow morning) it's safe to say most ROBLOXians are saving up their hard earned Robux in order to buy discounted virtual hats, gear and packages over the weekend sale. The most anticipated of all items in the sale are of course the user-retextures that make an appearance every year. This year however, the user-made retexture section of the poll was nowhere to be seen. Instead, BrightEyes hosted a mini-competition in the Retexture Arists Official Channel group in which the best retexture designers on ROBLOX are part of. Previous years, retexturers relied on publicity in the polls to get their item published on Black Friday. The system rewarded those with the most tickets to spend on advertising and did not lend itself to higher quality user-content. This year there's a difference - it's not about who spends the most money; its about who can produce the best design in a time-period.

I believe this higher quality of user-content is already displayed by the winners of the Black Friday retexture contest, and showcase some of the best designs ROBLOX artists have to offer. So without further ado, let us list the four user-retextured items:

King's Knight - By DarkGenex 

Boasting a royal colour scheme of red and light yellow, this retextured helm brings a completely different look to the mesh of that hat compared to the original Alar Knight. The darker areas on the main faceguard part of the helm add extra depth to the design, bringing about realism and excellent aesthetics. The battle-worn effect on the metallic wings adds to the medieval/fantasy aura of the King's Knight making it look authentic on a ROBLOXian's battle-scarred head. The use of this texture on the plume is an interesting choice too. My prediction is that it will be non-limited, between 750R$ and 1000R$. 

The Korblox Keeper - By godsend

Sporting an excellently detailed texture, the Korblox Keeper is a shining example of what the best ROBLOXian retexturers can achieve with a little bit of time. The stained-glass-almost effect on  the main body of the helmet and the horns really adds the overall design. The shading within these parts and the gradual gradient look fantastic alongside the eerie, ice-cold colour scheme. The blue piercing eyes paired with the lighting effects and shine on the front armour piece make a great final addition to godsend's retexture. My prediction is that this item will be limited for a starting price of R$500 and will have one thousand unique owners.

Assassin of the Cold Abyss - By Errorless 

My personal favourite out of the four user-made retextures this year, the Assassin of the Cold Abyss features an excellent texture, colour scheme and great use of the original mesh. There is of course, some history tied to this hat. If you cast your mind back to April 1st 2012,  you may remember the Hooded Spacelord - one of the renowned 'hacked items' that was sold in a ridiculously small quantity (55) for its price of R$21. The hat's shape and design has become fairly prestigious over the past two-years with this retexture set to reignite the ROBLOXians' interest in the hood. What separates this from the original hat so much is the use of the realistic metal shading and worn effect place on the front breathing apparatus of the mask - it looks fantastic. My prediction is that the item will be limited for a starting price of R$10,000 with between 100-200 in stock.

Plaid Mustache Bandanna - By Mickmack

Bringing a less 'serious' looking hat to the table is mickymack who has managed to contact a solid looking design to amuse ROBLOXians. It features an authentic plaid texture and a large thick moustache in front of where the ROBLOXians mouth would be. It sort-of reminds me of cartoons where characters facial features sometimes look like they have been imprinted onto the headgear they are wearing. My prediction is that it will be non-limited and will be priced at R$150 like the other bandannas in the 'series'.

There are of course, plenty of other awesome items to be released in the Black Friday sale - including a number of other (non-user made?) retextures. I won't be revealing those, so I don't spoil the fun! Check the catalog regularly!

Thanks for reading!

-Arbirator

Editor of Roblox News

Arb's News Bites: 12th November

In this new series of articles, we will be disclosing the latest updates to hit ROBLOXia. Those covered will usually be smaller releases that often not discussed in the official ROBLOX blog such as the recent alteration to specularity. We will also discuss more community related news such as contests and exclusive prizes. 

Key Recent Events:

- BLOXTober has ended, with a month full of Halloween festivities such as the Witching Hour Event, the 13 Gifts and of course the dozens of Halloween catalog items

- With this, the Witching Hour Halloween event is now over. Prizes for the amount of BLOXikins earned will be awarded to players this week.

- The game's lighting system has been revamped once more, with specularity of parts and meshes altered for a more subtle look.

The possible BLOXikin Prizes

The Witching Hour ended on the 7th November with a 2600 second timer added to the game to alert players to its impending shutdown. The game servers were then shutdown and the game was removed from the user: Games' profile - reverted to inactive. The BLOXikins proved to be extremely popular prizes and thousands upon thousands were collected, but the rarest were decidedly rarer than previous Halloween event prizes. The Sorcus BLOXikin, for example, was collected just over 2000 times. Games announced on the Witching Hour's description that prizes would be awarded depending on the amount of BLOXikins collected. This will likely be in bands such as 1-10 BLOXikins collected will receive prize A, then 11-20 collected will receive both prize A and B, etc. These prizes may have already been found by a particularly curious user with Halloween themed hats such as a flaming pumpkin, top hat, riddling skull and multiple vampire items.

Specularity on various hats 

In-game lighting has been revamped once again. Specularity (the shine on parts and meshes) within the game is now less 'harsh' on objects with the over-powering white 'blob' of light replaced with a smoother and more even effect. The previous specularity appearance often hindered detail on items, obscuring imporant features on hat textures. This new lighting update comes amongst a whole host of rendering updates from the content team who have significantly altered ROBLOX materials.

Thanks for reading!

-Arbirator
Editor of Roblox News

Rememberance Day: Information

I know this has nothing to do with ROBLOX, but it is a important part of the United Kingdom and other commonwealth countries. It is a day to remember all the soldiers who fought in World War 1, those who allowed us as a country to be the way we are today. It is the day back in 1918 when hostilities formally ended. I feel that ROBLOX should commemorate this event like they do with Veteran's Day in America - remembrance day is a hugely respected and high profile event in Europe. The European player-base is growing quickly with millions of users within the EU.

Remembrance Day/Poppy Day/Armistice Day

Although the time has passed for the 2 minutes of silence, I hope that before all of you read on, you will take a brief moment to remember past battles and the innocent people who died for them.

On the 11th Day, of the 11th Month 1918, at 11 am, people in the United Kingdom are silent for 2 minutes as that was the day the Armistice was effective. People also hold parades in most if not all towns and cities and villages in the UK on the Sunday before the 11th. They call this Remembrance Sunday. The symbol/emblem of Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday is a Poppy, because in a famous war poem 'In Flanders Fields'. The poppies bloomed across a few of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War 1. Their red colour is appropriate for all the blood spilled from the dead soldiers.

The parades and war memorials are usually held by Ex-Servicemen. Scouts, Guides, Explorers, Beavers, Cubs, Cadets, Rainbows all take part in the parades. Before I became too old, I took part in 6 or 7 parades. They were serious, important and interesting.  There is little else I can say, for it won't be the same for everyone, and some people may never have heard of it. The links for it will be just below.

Armistice Day
Remembrance Day
Remembrance Sunday
World War 1
Remembrance Poppy
In Flanders Fields - War Poem 
Flanders

I hope you remember this for next year, and maybe buy a poppy and stay in silence for 2 minutes.

-Prolixen

How ROBLOX Managed to Take a Perfectly Good Meme, and Ruin it in hours.

The Doge.

This was once a meme. A good one, popular across Tumblr, iFunny and other outlets, but it's life of seclusion came to an end last week with the beginning of a doltish and vapid scheme of ROBLOX users that overused the meme.

ROBLOX users managed to take a perfectly good meme, and make a joke out of it. A joke that expired in my mind in less than twenty minutes. This so called, doge takeover is even more proof of how our generation takes not only memes, but music, art, creative work, networks, games, and other variations of pop culture, and blows them up into an absolutely awful perspective. They attempt to make big deals of things that anyone else can see and do, and this isn't just exclusive to ROBLOX.

Define Slenderman; Slenderman was a highly popular (lets called it) 'meme' beloved and highly original.

Then, you had people similar to the general ROBLOX community blow it up. They made this Slenderman 'meme' into their variation of Internet Pop Culture and within weeks of doing this, the meme altogether started to die. People tried to make their own variations of "Slender: The Game" on ROBLOX, and other platforms and not only was this destructive, but it was unoriginal.

If you haven't noticed; I have an issue with unoriginal people. I suppose using memes in the proper way is a great thing, but making entire games of them on ROBLOX and other platforms is absolute lunacy.


So, the ROBLOX Community managed to take a PERFECTLY GOOD MEME and ruin it in hours through an insensitive and unoriginal attempt to make something comedic and dulled the meme to death in the wrong way. It was okay for the first 12 hours, but covering everything in Doge for a couple of days took it too far.

tl;dr: Stop making a big deal out of memes. They're nothing special. They look a tad silly if used in the wrong context.



MY RANT FOR THE WEEK IS NOW OVER
IT WAS NICE SEEING YOU ALL HAVE A NICE EVENING

ROBLOX: Doge Takeoever

I know what you're thinking; 'slow news day' - and you'd be right. 

'Doge is a slang term for “dog” that is primarily associated with pictures of Shiba Inus (nicknamed “Shibe”) and internal monologue captions on Tumblr. These photos may be photoshopped to change the dog’s face or captioned with interior monologues in Comic Sans font.' 

- Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge

The internet has been taken by storm by the Doge meme several times with famed examples such as the 4chan raid of the Murica Reddit sub reddit-section, and the creation of the Doge sub-reddit. ROBLOX has fallen victim to the latest wave of Doge fever and thus references to the Shiba Inu 'Doge' have appeared all over ROBLOXia. 

Here are some notable examples of the Doge takeover: 

• 'Dogeness' - Most of you will know this game as 'Darkness' by loleris who has created two aliases in spirit of the Doge mood: Dogeris and Shedogesky (a personal favourite of mine). It would be cool if the monster that viscously hunts players down was adorned in Doge attire. 

• All Things Doge - The prestigious and esteemed 'All Things ROBLOX' sub forum was changed to 'All Things Doge' for a short period highlighting the moderator's sense of humour (yes it does exist). It's nice that there is still a relaxed attitude towards the ROBLOX forums and the professionalism of their appearance - ROBLOX employees haven't turned into drab profiteers and businessmen, yet. 

• Apocalypse Dogeing - The Apocalypse Rising everyone knew and loved has been removed to be replaced by the new and improved Dogeing! On a serious note, this was pretty funny and satisfied the cries of the masses (i.e Shedletsky). Sadly Gusmanak hasn't changed his username to Gusnmandoge - we can only dream.

• The Doge - The Stalker, a  creation by none other than CloneTrooper1019, has been modified to meet the Doge needs of ROBLOXia. As you can see from the thumbnail  Doge likes using short sentences to convey his complex emotions.

• Doge ball - Dodgeball as it was known previously, is a game by alexnewtron. This is an excellent play on words as the original title was very similar to Doge ball. It would be awesome if you got to fight a Doge boss. Sadly this latest fad will probably die before Alex gets round to it. That is the way of the world. 

• Shibe Transparent - Why not make the most of this Doge occasion by purchasing the lovely Shibe t-shirt created by the popular ROBLOX forumer: weinmanj? For a price of 20 Tix it's a bargain. Alternatively you could make one for yourself for free, it really depends how lazy of a person you are. 

There are plenty of other examples of Doge madness on the ROBLOX games page for you to check out! 

And regarding the point of this article apart from the slight amusement of the reader; users will be able to use it as a reference to look nostalgically at the time of the 'great Doge' before everyone got bored of the fad (or the mods decided enough puppy business was enough). 

I'll leave you with this wonderful quote from Shedletsky: "Cry Havok! And let slip the DOGEs of war!"

Thank for reading!

-Arbirator

Editor of Roblox News

BLOXTober Costume Contest

BLOXTober:

Halloween Costume Contest

Hello, Robloxians. During this spooky month of the year, BLOXTober, ROBLOX has decided to release something new, an official Costume Contest!

I know you're probably wondering, "Why enter a Halloween Costume Contest??" If you aren't wondering, then start wondering, because that's what this article will be about. I will mostly just be recapping the important parts of this blogpost, so if you want a more in depth look at this, read that.

My entree, if anybody cares to know.

First of all, here is how you enter:

• Dress your character in a costume and save it as an outfit.
• Using the dropdown gear next to the outfit, click “Download as image” and save the image to your computer (important: do not change the name of the file)
• Go to the contest site, enter the required information and upload the image you just saved

So, now to answer that very important question that I doubt any of you have, "Why enter a Halloween Costume Contest??" Well, there are just a few reasons, really, most of them ending in fame from being in the blog.

1.) Exclusive Virtual Item

Yeah, the top three winners get an exclusive virtual item. It is unknown what that item is, though. I do suggest trying though, as the virtual item, whatever it is, will be EXTREMELY rare. Only three out of millions will own it, and if it ever goes limited (which I doubt), it will make a ton of money.

2.) The Halloween Event

According to the Blogpost, the winners will have a special feature dedicated towards them in the Halloween Event. If any ROBLOXian wears the winner's outfit, they will get a special boost in the game, unknown as to now. So really, you will pretty much get a free bonus in the event.

3.) Fame

Yeah. You will be in the Blogpost next week, which will most likely give you some fame. And fame is always good.

So, if you want a chance to get a ruper rare virtual item, free bonus prizes in the event, and all around fame, I highly suggest you take a chance with the contest.

Good luck!

~pbjms~