Spring is finally with us, and with the changing seasons come great changes in Twinity. There are more fun new features coming up in the next few weeks than the Easter bunny could carry in a single basket … unless we’re talking about some kind of super-strong, mutant rabbit, of course. Or maybe even a robot rabbit.

Before offering glowing descriptions of features that haven’t quite arrived, it seems appropriate to address the ups and downs of the current Twinity. And by up and down, I mean the ongoing struggle against the dreaded Crash Rate.

The crash rate is a simple measure of how many Twinity Members are having poor experiences using the Twinity software. A couple of weeks ago, we identified a major cause of crashes in the chat system, and by turning off some chat features quickly saw the crash rate cut in half. We then fixed these problems and turned the chat features back on … only to find that a bit of old code had slipped back in and pushed the crash rate right back up again. Chat is once again off, and the crash rate is back down. With our next release, we expect to end this up and down once and for all and have pushed all of our technical resources into lowering the crash rate permanently.

But onto the new! Regular Twinity visitors have already noticed any number of small improvement throughout Twinity — the most visible, probably, being the ability to teleport directly to many of the most famous places in the virtual city of Berlin. We’ll continue to enhance the tourist attractions.

Last week also saw the release of a completely rebuilt voice chat system. We know the new system is much more reliable than the old version, but we’ll likely need to make additional adjustments to maximize the quality of voice chat in Twinity. If you have never used voice chat, or haven’t used it awhile, please give it a try and let us know what you think. Your feedback will help get this feature right.

Looking forward, in the next few weeks you’ll start seeing some of the features Twinity Members have most requested; specifically, Member Groups in Twinity (and not just on the website) and an in-world Events Calendar. We think these will be great new tools to inspire our already amazing community, and we can’t wait to see how you’ll use them. You’ll also get a whole new look for the Chat and Friends window and expanded information in Member Profile. We’ve also reworked some of the ways in which Members interact with the virtual world to make it easier and more intuitive.

What’s coming after that? It’s too soon say too much, but expect to see many more ways in which you can bring your creativity into Twintiy!