Dragon's Eye Productions, creators of long-running social MMORPG Furcadia, have set up a Kickstarter project to fund a web-based overhaul of the service, entitled The Second Dreaming.

On the morning of 28 November, the project met its its base funding goal - $55,000 - for which DEP and spinoff Catnip Studios pledge a web-based client (to be offered on Facebook and elsewhere), and a new Furcadia website. All backers may choose a new feature and avatar from a list: the winning choices will also be added to Furcadia.

Upgrades are sorely needed; the current Windows client was designed in 1996 and lacks support for modern platforms.

While the sale of virtual items (or digos) provides sufficient funds to keep the service running, development has slowed to a crawl; according to DEP, core team members have not been paid in two years, and most have found other jobs. *

Furcadia's creative director Dr. Cat (Felorin) is to host an "Ask Me Anything" for potential backers on Reddit at 2PM CST on Wednesday November 28, and will be a guest on Twitch TV's TopWizard channel on Saturday December 1 at 3PM CST. Funding ends December 14.

Furry multiplayer social game Furcadia is now available on the iPhone for US$4.99. Purchasers will also receive five golden dragonscales, redeemable for in-game goods.

Initial reviews appear good, though some are disappointed by the anti-idle mechanism (enabled when unplugged to prevent battery drainage):

Runs smoothly, no graphical lag at all and the whisper feature is awesome.

The app was developed by Ayluro (Ghost Tiger and Talzhemir) in collaboration with DEP.

Furcadia's owners plan upgrades, and are selling discounted DragonScales (store credit) to fund the new hardware.

Dragon's Eye may not get many takers for the US$500 600-scale offer (including a "Furcadia-For-Life" tag), but smaller lots are available.

Those who liked the Floofs or Fluffs from earlier this month can also purchase them as temporary avatars for $4.99.

While the sale itself isn't that unusual, the announcement gives details of Furcadia's server hardware and connections.

Those entering Furcadia's Vinca got more than they bargained for today, swiftly falling prey to the transformational virus sweeping the dream.

Over 100 furres have been infected as of press time.

Furcadia has a history of problems after seemingly minor spring updates.

Dragon's Eye have released a new Furcadia update, plus an OS X installer.

The new version offers several new avatar and portrait features. But lower-level changes may matter more to dream developers — and to DEP's bottom line.

Furry-themed online social MMO game Furcadia has settled a perennial topic of debate by adding "Noble Hyoomans" to its set of purchasable avatars in an attempt to boost revenue. Rodent avatars were also added.

Human-style avatars have been advocated by Furcadia CEO Felorin (Dr. Cat) and programmer sanctimonious, but opposed by game designer Talzhemir. An earlier poll of players found that 61.5% favored the addition of an official human avatar, while 38.5% were opposed to their presence - some citing their absence in Furcadia's canon roleplaying continuity, The Dragonlands.

Those disappointed in Digo Market prices are unlikely to be pleased by the new additions, which sell for $19.99 for one year of use. Dragon's Eye Productions have indicated that further free avatars are unlikely, at least until a future upgrade to 32-bit colour.

Furcadia players logged-in early this morning were surprised to find a list of usernames, emails and passwords arriving through the online news channel.^[1]

The person behind the attack - who identified himself as "Uildiar"^[2] - claimed to have root access to the server on which Furcadia runs, and access to the game source code, though a subsequent post by Felorin suggested otherwise.^[3] He also claimed being behind past attacks on Fur Affinity.

The attacker's statements indicate that passwords were stored as the output of a SHA hash function with no salt. While this format does not grant immediate access, it is vulnerable to a precomputation attack. Reportedly many accounts using short or dictionary words as passwords - including some forum moderator and Dragon's Eye Productions staff accounts - were compromised, although some had already been changed.^[4]

Players are already making heavy use of the new "lead and follow" functionality to form conga lines

Earlier today Dragon's Eye Productions launched the first client update in over a year for their massively multiplayer online game Furcadia.^[1]

The Kitterwing update provides a number of new features besides support for the Kitterwing avatar itself,^[2] including a new class of wings, a free bovine/minotaur avatar, and 24-bit non-remappable portraits. Prior versions used indexed colour which provided only a small number of switchable colour values per portrait. Full in-world 32-bit colour support is still "two updates away", according to producer Emerald Flame.^[3]

The update was originally intended to contain an even larger number of features, but was rushed out to provide compatibility with Windows Vista, which places restrictions on where programs may write documents such as log files and user preferences.

Contrary to seemingly limited furry information, KWKAT is not the only furry radio online created by furry, and operated by furry. Dark Legacies Radio has been around for quite a while now, pumping out ADULT music 24/7 for listeners and furry alike.
"We cater to an eclectic group of furry who are into a more select choice in music." stated NiteMyste, Rah and Program Director for WDLR.

There was an article today on gamespy.com about Furcadia. Read it here.

The top 10 finalists at the IGF (independant games festival) were announced today, and furcadia was one of them!

Approximately 100 games were submitted to the IGF this year.

For more information visit the IGF website

One of the judges in the Independent Games Festival has just posted a glowing review of Furcadia. Worth having a peek here.