Random Saturday Ep 11: Happy Jamaalidays

Hey everyone, welcome back to another installment of Random Saturdays! Since we are in the final lap of the Jamaaliday season, I thought today's Random Saturday should be about the Jamaalidays. Without further ado, let's go!

For those of you new to Animal Jam or Play Wild, the Jamaalidays is a special season in Jamaa celebrated throughout the month of December. The Jamaalidays parallels Christmas, which is also celebrated in December. During this season, the whole of Jamaa becomes decked out in Christmas decorations. You can find presents, Christmas Lights and Snowmen all around Jamaa! In AJ, there is the seasonal adventure Jamaaliday Rescue, which is a maze adventure like twists and turns.

There also is a month-long gift calendar throughout the month of December. Every day, a new gift can be claimed from the guft calendar. Some of these gifts are really good, like diamonds in AJ or Sapphires in PW. A Jamaaliday Spiked Collar was also given out on one of the days in PW, and that was really cool too!

Throughout the season, Jamaaliday themed den items and clothing will be sold in stores. While Jam Mart Clothing is a common store to visit, why not check out the Shiveer Shoppe? After all, it is the shop in the Hot Cocoa Hut in Mount Shiveer.

Last but not least, why not hang out with your buddies? The Jamaalidays is a season of celebration. Spend some good time with your buddies and have fun!

There are a few days left to the end of the Jamaalidays, so truly, enjoy the great season! Happy Jamaalidays to you all!

-Dew

Agent Insights Ep 02: Trust Trading Scams

Hey everyone, Jade here with the newest episode of Agent Insights! Today, we'll be discussing one of the most common kinds of scams- trust trading. 

Trust trading, also known as trusting, is when you trade another user some of your good items for something bad, then they trade back the good items. For example: animaljammer1 trades a Spiked Collar for animaljammer2's Necklace. Then, animaljammer1 puts the Necklace on their trade list, and animaljammer2 trades back.

This may sound like just a fun game, but it can easily be twisted into more than this. How do you know you can trust the other person? What if they don't trade your item(s) back? The answers to these questions are very unclear. 

Because this method is relatively simple, it is often used for "giveaways" by scammers. Usually, the scammer will tell everyone that the giveaway is "trust" and that the best trade will win. Though they may trade some items back throughout the contest, in the end, they don't trade back at least one Jammer's items, and lock everyone out of their den, effectively scamming those items.

There are, of course, some tricks that scammers may play with this method to make it seem more believable. For example, they might tell everyone that accepting the trust trade is not required. However, they will often follow this up with either saying that unaccepted trades are worth less than accepted trades (which puts users who don't accept at a disadvantage in the giveaway) or that the final trade from the user who wins must be accepted in order to get the items.

Overall, there are much easier ways to do giveaways than trust trading. For example, the user giving away items could give everyone numbers, then use a random number generator, then give the items to whoever had the numbers given by the generator. Trust trading just isn't the way to go, even if the host is trustworthy- The giveaway rules don't even make sense! Why should the person with the rarest items be given more, instead of someone with less rares gaining them??

Moral of the story: Don't trust strangers on the Internet! You don't really know them, even if you think you do. Plus, better safe than sorry.

Random Saturday Ep 10: Evolution of Adventures

Adventures have been part of the game for quite a while now, with the first one coming out in mid-2013. They’ve changed quite a bit over the years. Below, I’ve tracked some of the changes in them over time.

Increasing Scale

Each consecutive adventure has increased in size, scale, and importance to the storyline. We’ve gone from saving small bunny burrows to taking down the Phantom Fortress. I think they might have reached the scale limit, though, with the newer adventures either being smaller or spinning off into different plotlines. We know they’ll never actually get rid of Phantoms in the adventures (unless a new enemy is introduced), because then you couldn’t make more adventures, but they will seemingly get closer. Eventually we’ll probably increase in scale enough to get to the Phantom Factory or the Phantom HQ or the Phantom Intergalactic Space Station (actually that would be cool).

Graphics

The graphics style has changed noticeably throughout the adventures. Mainly it evolved to/rotates between what I’ll call Traditional and Shiny. Adventures started off traditional. Everything looked very natural. There weren’t a whole lot of shiny machinery items, a lot of it was plants and old buildings and tree houses and things of that nature. 

As we moved on into the Phantom Fortress, Badlands and other such adventures/places, things got a lot shinier, mostly due to the style of phantom machinery. Den items from shiny and traditional adventures tend to look out of place next to each other. They’ve reverted back to traditional for Trials of Zios and beyond, though. I think traditional looks better in general, since it mixes with more other items/dens.

Mechanics

A lot of different mechanics and items have been added over the years. You started out with chomper plants, watering and plugs, and then added boomseeds, crystals, different phantom types (kings, engineers, heavy phantoms, etc.), paintseeds, snares, and a whole slew of other things. 

Nerfing

Lots of adventures got nerfed as time went on. The Normal Mode versions got shortened, had obstacles removed, and generally got easier as time went on. The Hard Mode versions stayed the same, resulting in some pretty big difficulty differences.

There we go, Random Saturday Episode 10 is complete. Bye!

Agent Insights Ep 01: Scamming for Pixels?

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first post of a brand new series we at the SASS are starting. This is Agent Insights, where we write about our thoughts on scamming. Without further ado, here is the first post: why do scammers scam for pixels?

First of all, let us look at these pixels. They only exist in AJ (and PW for some) and do not exist in real life. So why do scammers scam for these pixels that do not exist in real life? Let us see.

DISCLAIMER: Everything I'm gonna write here is going to sound like I'm justifying scamming. Don't get me wrong. Scamming is still bad and against the rules no matter what I write. This post is just to see what scammers may think when they scam.

Ok so, we know that these rare stuff that scammers scam for are rare and valuable. I can see why some scammers scam for such items because they really, really want those items. Granted, some of those items actually have a good design. Old items that are not on sale anymore like flower crowns? They actually look good. Newer players never had the chance to buy them when they were available. Sometimes, trades are just a tad unfair. Usually, trades are rare items for rare items, but if you can't even get rare, how would you trade?

Another thing that came to my mind is self-esteem. For some, getting rare is a morale and self-esteem booster. It makes them feel good, almost elite, when they get their hands, or paws, on something valuable. Now, to correct this way of thinking, why not boost self-esteem by doing good for the community instead? Reporting scammers and bullies, hosting true, real giveaways, there are so many ways that happiness can be derived from doing good.

One last thing: bragging. Some people get rare to brag. However, how would you feel if you were listening to another jammer bragging? That isn't nice, is it? So, why would you want to make people feel lousy by bragging yourself? Think about that.

Well, that's all from me now. Until next time. Ciao!
-Dew

Monthly Update - November

Hey all! We apologize for the recent inactivity, but we're back now, hopefully better than ever! Here's your update post for the month of November. 

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The major thing that happened this month was the resignation of Is. We're all sad to see her go, but understand her reasons for leaving and wish her well in whatever she chooses to put work into in the future. If you haven't seen her post about her decision, you can read it here.

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We also modified the posting schedule a bit, it now appears as follows:

Tuesday (every other week, alternating with Sat): Agent's Insights/Scammer Replication/Scammer Thoughts 

Thursday (every week): Scammer posts 

Saturday (every other week, alternating with Tues): The regular Random posts 

Tuesday's posts will be mostly information about different methods of scamming, how to spot scammers and call them out, or analyzing different methods and motivations of past scammers we have caught.

We'll probably change up the schedule again to increase the overall amount of posts when we have a sufficient amount of members to do that (applications are always open on our Joining page!)

--

Finally, since we didn't have a recap post for October, here are a couple updates from that month's meeting.

We are considering starting a YouTube channel and a Tumblr page for added publicity. We're not sure about them yet, but we'll update y'all when we know for sure.

We are also considering instituting a new training system similar to the Academy page that the AJSWS used. It will be made up of a series of lessons that you go through one by one, interspersed with actual training with another agent on Animal Jam. Again, we'll update you all when we know for sure. 

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Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or concerns, leave them in the comments below and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Happy Jamming!

Society Update: Hey

Hey, all. This is gonna be hard to type. I'm resigning. Now, I think this needs a bit of explanation. I started this blog with he help of Dan and a few other people who have since dropped off the face of the Earth back in early 2017. Since then, we have closed down, re-opened, welcome new members, had others quit, opened a Discord and a bunch of other important things my late-night brain can't remember. I feel as though I am being disingenuous with my portrayal of this person who loves AJ, the community and scam catching. When, in reality, I think the only thing that kept me here was my love of the people and the friendships I've made. Don't get me wrong, SASS has been here when I felt I couldn't turn to anyone and I have learned so much over this almost two-year journey, but I feel my life surrounding this game moving further and further away. Like, when you're close with someone then realize they are receding and bit by soul-wrecking bit, they move away and you have to watch as they do so, helpless in a glass coffin in your mind.

My life outside of the internet has grown immensely since I first began this humble blog. I have the PSAT coming up, people who I view as family by my side, and things I am passionate about taking up all of my time. I am no longer a tween who spends her days on the computer, wishing she had friends. That said, I am very thankful for the friends I have made. Namely, Dan (You're the best, thank you for sticking with me and my crazy ideas), Stan (You're truly one of the best friends I could make), Dew (I'm sorry for leaving but I believe in you!) and Flint (The red reverse). There are so many more I cannot list here, but thank you all!

I know that this is the right choice in the end because my gut is telling me so. Guts are a lot more reliable than hearts, they break less often. I am still going to keep up with the society and do behind-the-scenes work and who knows? Maybe one day I'll come back.

I knew this was coming for a while. I don't play Animal Jam very often anymore. Scam catching becomes a chore if there isn't anyone to do it with. I want all of you, both viewers and agents, to know how much work goes into this and how rewarding it can be. This is a message directly to the viewers: I want you to flood the discord and the application form. I want as many of you on board as possible. As my last act as me, I am going to open applications to anyone. Even if you have already filled one out.

Again, thank you so much for everything this has done for me. I love each and every one of you. My heart is being wrenched out of my body by making this decision but the right one isn't always easy.

-Is

Random Tuesday Ep 09: The Phantom Dimension

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

What's up guys, it's me again with another episode of Random Tuesdays. Today, I'm going to talk about the new phantom dimension in AJPW, how to get in, and what you can do in there. Warning: there is a short rant near the end of this post. If you don't want to read the rant, I highly suggest you click that back button when you see the disclaimer message lower down.

Ok, on to the topic. So, recently, a strange portal appeared in the lost temple of zios in AJPW. Apparently, it was "under construction" during the night of the phantoms period. It officially opened just for 5 minutes on 3 Nov, 2100 EST. Once the 5 minutes was up, the portal became locked.

So where did the portal lead you if you managed to get in during the 5-minute period? It lead you to the phantom dimension, where phantoms live. The phantom dimension is basically A twosted version of Jamaa, with everything phantomised and corrupted. Going through the portal, you would appear in the lost temple of zios of the phantom dimension. In the land, there is a single paintseed tree, from which you can harvest paintseeds. Paintseeds there spawn only once a day though.

So what can we do with the paintseeds? Well, the phantom dimension has plenty of phantoms. You can use your paintseeds to battle them. When you are near a phantom, a sword symbol will appear with a timer. When the red ring becomes complete, you will automatically engage the phantom. Otherwise, you can tap the sword symbol to skip the wait. To defeat a phantom, you need to tap specific rings in time. The closer the ring shrinks to the centre, the more phantom coins you earn. You defeat the phantom by successfully tapping all rings.

Wait! What are phantom coins? Phantom coins are currency you spend in the phantom dimension. There is a phantom salesman in the lost temple of zios that sells stuff you can buy with phantom coins.

Now, after the 5 minutes of the portal was up, it became locked. You needed to perform some sort of code to open it up again. For those Jammers who need that code, don't fret. I'll give you a step-by-step guide to open the portal again. First, you need to put on the whole, full, phantom flight suit. If not, the portal will not open. Then, you need to use the 'cry' emote from the emote section. When you do so, a green light will appear. That's a sign that you are doing something right! The next part of the code is to sit. After you sit, another green light will appear. Soon after, the phantom eye at the portal will turn blue and scan you. If you have the full flight suit on, the scan should be successful and the blue phantom eye should turn green. After that , use the ninja emote from the emote section, and you get another green light. Finally, say "Open sesame!" from bubble chat. It can be found under "meetings". If you try saying open sesame from regular chat, that won't work and you have to restart all over again. Once you get 4 green lights and 1 green phantom eye, the portal should open for you.

All right, that's all from me now. Have a jamtastic day!
-Dew

DISCLAIMER: The rant starts from this disclaimer onwards. Click the back button now if you don't want to see it.

Why AHJQ why? Just a few random days ago, I said something along the lines of "AJPW is less dark than AJ". Why AJHQ why? Why must you darken the whole atmosphere of AJPW? Sure, the concept if a new dimension amd everything is great, but why must you make it so dark and spooky? With that change, AJPW is no longer less dark than AJ. Now, it is either as dark, or even darker. AJHQ, please. While it is an interesting concept, I'm sure there are other ways to present it! Ok, I'm done.

Random Saturday Ep 09: Den Maps

Hey all, Jade here, with episode 9 of Random Saturdays! Today's topic will be den maps.

For those who don't know, den maps are a commonly used tactic to show a full den in a single picture, often to show off den decoration. This strategy can't be easily used to create maps of other areas, unfortunately, as the icons on your screen are difficult to cut out.

There are quite a few pictures in this post, so the rest is under the cut! Click read more to continue!

Random Tuesday Ep 08: Secret Colours in Play Wild

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

What's up guys, its me again, this time bringing to you a Random Tuesday. This time, I'm gonna touch on 4 secret colours available in AJPW. 

This post has a lot of pictures, so the rest will be under the cut! Click read more to continue reading.

Random Saturday Ep 08: Scamming Justifications

Hi guys! Before we go, I'm not defending scammers here. That would be an odd thing to do on Special Agents STOPPING SCAMMERS. I am looking at common justifications I see for scamming (AJ scamming, specifically), and discussing them.

If you float around on the internet enough, especially in AJ circles, you will come across scammers who like to post videos of them happily scamming people. (Some of them are clickbait, but some of them aren’t.) Naturally, when the comments from people who aren’t active scammers come rolling in, people feel the need to make justifications for cheating small children out of their items. I’d just like to comb over some common ones I see a lot and discuss them a bit.

‘It’s just pixels! Why should you care about pixels in a computer game?’

This argument annoys me. Yes, they are pixels in a computer game. However, these pixels do have value in-game. There are only certain amounts of these configurations of pixels available in-game, and thus people place value on them. Animal Jam is also targeted at young children, and thus younger children make up much of the playerbase. Young children are not going to rationalize that these items don’t matter. 

Also, what’s the point of scamming pixels if they don’t matter?

‘Scams are really obvious. It’s your own fault if you get scammed!’

First off, victim blaming is almost never helpful. Especially since your average, functioning teen or whatnot is not going to fall for most scams. However, a good portion of AJ’s playerbase at any given time is not composed of average, functioning teens. Many small children, tired people, trusting people, and desperate people play as well.

You can draw an analogy here to actual, real-life scams. Many scams work because the victims are elderly, stressed, panicked, trusting, or desperate. Elderly people (and very young people) tend to not function at full capacity. This does not mean they are idiots, it just means that they tend to give in to panic or trust more easily. People who are stressed or tired are also not at their peak, and are more likely to fall for such things.

People who are panicked (say, because “the IRS” is suing them, or someone is “hacking” them) tend to act first, think second. Those who trust friends wouldn’t dream of friends scamming them, and thus trust them. People who are desperate for money, items, etc. tend to throw reason out the window when they see what they want. Scammers are not beings of superior intellect who are immune to human emotion. Calling people stupid for falling for scams is unfair and wrong.

“Alright, so you don’t like me/us scamming. So? How does it affect you? Just go on your merry way and leave us be, we aren’t hurting you.”

Yeeeahh, you aren’t hurting me, but you’re hurting other people. Since we like helping other people, we want to warn them about you and thus help them. Even if you think what we do doesn’t matter, it’s never a bad idea or a waste to try to help someone.

There you go, Random Saturday #8. Hope you enjoy! If you have another justification you have/have seen, feel free to comment it. Bye!

Random Tuesday Ep 07: Adventure Weapons

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

Hey all! Jade here, with episode 7 of Random Tuesdays. Today’s episode will be on a well-known, yet still confusing, aspect of adventures: adventure weapons! 

Adventure weapons are items that get you extra hit points when damaging something in an adventure. The default damage for an animal without any items is 10 points, but this amount can be increased up to 60 points with a single item. 

These items can make it easier and quicker to get through adventures, as they help decrease the amount of time you need to spend destroying objects, as well as decreasing the amount of times you need to re-spawn as a result of not destroying a Phantom item quickly enough.

The rest of the post is under the cut- click read more to continue!

Random Saturday Ep 07: Pet Phantoms

Hey everyone, it's me again, with this installation of Random Saturdays. This time, I'm going to touch on the little Pet Phantoms, and speculate a little on how they came about.

Pet Phantoms are pets that you can buy in the diamond/sapphire shop in AJ and PW respectively. The quote that came with the Pet Phantom when purchased (on PW) is: "While most phantoms want nothing more than to destroy Jamaa and leave it in ruin, it appears that some of them just want to be loved and cuddled!"

Now, one question we could ask ourselves is: Why? Why is there a distinction between regular phantoms and the pet phantoms? Well, I think this goes back to the origin of phantoms.

I'm sure most of you have heard about the tale of the phantoms' formation in Jamaa. You know, the one where Zios left Mira and her tears became the phantoms? That one. Well, I'm sure Mira was feeling many things when Zios, the one she loved, left her. She probably felt grief, betrayed, maybe even anger. Maybe, these negative emotions turned into the regular phantoms once the tears hit the ground. However, among, the majority of negative emotions, there could be a small minority of positive emotions that she could have felt at the moment. She could have felt love. It was her love for Zios that made her feel sad in the first place. So, maybe, when those tears that came from love hit the ground, they turned into the pet phantoms who just want to be loved!

Well, that's it for this installation of Random Saturdays. Tune in next time for your next installation of Random Saturdays.

-Dew

Random Tuesday Ep 06: Tunnel Town

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

Hey everyjammer! It's me again, and in today's Random Tuesday, I will be going into more detail of one of WildWorks' apps, Tunnel Town.

So, Tunnel Town is a free app that is available for everyone to download. However, there are in-app purchases that can be made inside the game. Tunnel Town is essentially a breeder game. You start off with a couple of bunnies, and then breed them to get more. Of course, they can be bought in the Tunnel Town store, at a significantly higher price.

This post is kind of long, so the rest is under the cut! Click read more to continue!

Random Tuesday Ep 05: Animal Jam Birthday Cakes

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

Hello all, Jade here! In honor of Animal Jam's recent birthday (September 9), today's Random Tuesday is on the well-known Animal Jam birthday cakes. 

Animal Jam has been going strong for eight years now, and we can all agree that it's changed a lot over the years. Many new features have been added, new items have been created, and new fun has been made possible. There are a lot of pictures in this post, so I'm going to put the rest under the cut! Click read more to continue reading!

Random Saturday Ep 06: Halloween Den Tips

AJ has just recently released the yearly Night of the Phantoms Update, and thus, I decided to follow the theme with a post on how to make a decent Halloween Den.

1. Do Not Use these items in your den

- Phantom Mech.
Why? Except for a few pieces, it’s all very bright, colorful, and shiny. It’s out of place with the texture of the rest of the Halloween items.

- Bright Items (Most Spring/Easter items, pool things, Epic Wonders things, etc.)
Why? Bright things lessen the coolness factor. Would you rather have a haunted house den with or without sports cars, Epic Trains, and gold bars? You generally want to go for darkness.

- Unrelated Items (Items from other seasons, events, holidays, etc.)
Why? Because they’re unrelated. They are made for their respective event, and usually they don’t mesh well with Halloween items. (Note that certain crops are excepted from this. Nothing wrong with pumpkins growing in the yard of your Haunted House.)

2. Where to get cool items?

- Adventures. Even if Phantom Mech looks weird, there are other adventures with softer dark things. They don’t even have to be specifically phantom. Lava Crystals, Fire Pits and Phantom Statues are all cool, non-Mechy items. Bitter Sweets is not usually a good place to get Night of the Phantoms items, since it gives out mostly candy, but I think there are a few Halloween clothing items for members in it.

- Parties. I’m talking about the ones AJ hosts here. They generally have a lot of cool items there, and although many are members-only, there are a few items (skull tombstone, dusty books) that are not.

- Shops. Around Halloween, most stores release halloween-related items. You’ll want to take a spin around all of the shops, including the underwater ones and the less-visited ones. There are also a few shops with year-round items that work with Halloween dens, like the Balloosh dock store, and certain items can just be colored black or gray.

3. Types of Den

If possible, get the Haunted Mansion. It’s a very cool den, themed for Halloween. If this is not possible, normal houses or Sunken Ships work. Really, any den works for it, as long as it isn’t something like the Princess Castle, with shiny pink things making it up.

4. Basic Things

-Put trees, plants, etc. outside, and put furniture inside. Fairly obvious.

-Experiment with where things go. On the wall, on the floor, floating, etc.

5. Have fun! I really can’t give you a guide for how to place the items, let your imagination run wild!

Monthly Update - September

Hello all, we’re really, really sorry we didn’t have an update post for the month of August. I guess we were all too busy and we all kind of forgot so…

Anyway, thankfully, there was nothing much going on in August. Most of our society upheaval came in September anyway so this update post will be focused on September! Hooray! 

We formulated a new posting schedule at the last society meeting. Now, we will have Random Tuesday posts in addition to the Random Saturdays. In addition to that, we are no longer posting scammers on Monday, and will only post scammers on Thursday. 

Also, we’ve decided unanimously as a society that the chat rooms should go. I guess nobody uses them anymore, so the society chat room is pretty much unused. We decided that it wouldn’t make a difference if we took it down, so there you go. Now, you may contact us through our email or through our discord. 

We host recruiting days on AJ after Agent Adventure Day, and our applications are always open on our Joining page. We encourage you to send in an application, as we are always looking for new agents to join us! 

So, with all that said, that’s the society update for the month of September! We sincerely apologize to those of you who came over to our blog, wanting to read some scammer posts, and end up viewing a wall of random posts instead. We promise you that we have not completely forgotten about our scammer posts. Sorry! 

On behalf of the SASS, it’s Flint and Dew.

Random Tuesday Ep 04: Mobile Apps

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

Hey again everybody! Welcome to another installation of your Random Tuesdays. Today, I'll be writing about the mobile apps that WildWorks has created, and give a brief overview of each app. I may go into detail for some apps in later Random Tuesdays, but today's will just be a quick summary.

Did you know that WildWorks has released five apps for mobile? I'm sure you are familiar with AJPW but have you heard of Tunnel Town? That's right, Tunnel Town is an app that was created by WildWorks and is still available to download onto your mobile device.

1.Tunnel Town.

Tunnel Town is probably one of WildWork's oldest mobile app out there. In Tunnel Town, players breed bunnies and expand their collection. Different combinations of bunnies give different possible babies, so there are many possible combinations to experiment with. Players also get to farm food for their bunnies and build their own bunny burrow. This game is free to download.

2. AJ Jump

I'm sure you guys have heard of AJ Jump, most likely due to that special non-member pet, the Joey. Anyway, AJ Jump appears to have similar game mechanics as with Sky High from the main AJ game. Just that, everyone in AJ Jump is a kangaroo. Apparently, the gems earned in AJ Jump can be synced over to your AJ account so you can be earning gems away from your computer. Oh, and purchasing the game (yes, it is not free) gives you an exclusive pet in AJ - the Joey.

3. AJPW

This app by WildWorks brings Jamaa into your mobile device - in 3D. Well, AJPW isn't an exact copy of AJ. There are some differences as mentioned in a previous Random Saturday. This is a great app to download if getting on your computer for regular AJ is too much of a hassle for you. Not to mention that the graphics in PW are awesome!

4. AJ Academy
Do you remember those books you can find in the Chamber of knowledge? AJ Academy is pretty much that. AJ Academy has many books for people to read about animals. From otters to toucans and foxes, the app has 29 books for you to choose from!

5. Dash Tag
I'm sure you have seen the advertisements for Dash Tag repeatedly appearing in the AJ News in both AJ and PW. Well, Dash Tag is WildWorks' most recent app after all. In Dash Tag, players attempt to keep on running for as long as they can. If you've played Temple Run or Subway Surfers before, then I'm sure you can adapt to Dash Tag quickly. Players also can collect more pets as they progress through the game.

Well, that's all from me for now. Stay tuned for your next episode of Random Tuesdays!
-Dew

Random Saturday Ep 05: AJ Fame

Hi guys, sorry there haven't been many scammer posts, I promise, more are coming soon.

Now, onto the post. It has been drawn to my attention that our blog has a pretty massive following and you could even say we are somewhat AJ famous. (I said somewhat, don't @ me) We definitely aren't as famous as GellyJones, Aparri or anyone else, though.

So, how do we do it? I find that most people whose lives take a large place in Animal Jam don't have much of a life outside of it. In this post, I'm gonna explore with you why that is.

Having an AJ blog, YouTube channel or anything else is a lot of hard work. That's part of the reason we have a team of people working on this one. It brings less work upon us. To split it evenly, you could say.

But having a life outside is hard to do when your life is so wrapped up in this community. Most of us on the SASS team have pretty crazy schedules. I, personally have a bunch of other things I have to do. I'd chalk it up to good time management and multitasking. For those of you who don't think it takes that much work to do this and other things, I've decided to do some calculations on a typical day for me if I were to do everything by itself and get healthy amounts of necessary things.

There are about 24 hours in a day
8 hours of sleep
7 hours of school
1.5 hours for any travel needed
1.5 hours for Society stuff
1 hour for food
1 hour for practicing my music
2 hours for DI practice
1.5 hours for health and cleaning
.5 hour for other chores
1 hour for homework
1 hour for socializing
1.5 hours for goofing off and recreation

I would need at least 3 and a half extra hours in the day to complete all of these tasks. Yikes. I'm a bit scared for my health now. Thanks a lot, mathy part of me. That's all for now.
-Is

Random Tuesday Ep 03: Safe Chat Plus for All Jammers!

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

Hello, it's me again, with a rather exciting Random Tuesday to share. Yes, the title says it all: Safe Chat Plus is now available for all Jammers on AJ!

So what is Safe Chat Plus, you may ask. Safe chat Plus was once known as Safe Chat in the olden days of AJ. Back in the day, non-members had to use either restricted chat, or bubble chat. Restricted chat was what it was called - restricted. It was very challenging chatting with buddies using restricted chat because there were so many words that were censored. Bubble chat was equally, if nor more, bad. Basically, Jammers using bubble chat can only choose phrases from a given list. In a previous Random Saturday, I talked about the member non-member divide. Well, these chat options was a driving force for that.

Now that I've gone through restricted and bubble chat, let me talk about safe chat. Once upon a time, members of AJ had safe chat instead of safe chat plus. Safe chat is still a litlle restrictive, but less than that of restricted chat. Basically, the chat tries to predict what you are trying to type, and suggests words from the approved safe chat dictionary for you. The main difference between safe and restricted chat was the range of approved words in their respective dictionaries.

Now, AJ began to respond to the calls of the non-members, and gave them safe chat. So what did they give members? Safe chat plus, an upgrade of safe chat. In safe chat plus, the chat does not refer to any dictionary at all. Jammers are allowed to type anything, but their messages get put through a filter before they get displayed. Pretty neat huh?

For a long time, safe chat plus was only available to members. However, AJHQ has finally released safe chat plus to everyone. Why? It's because AJHQ recently reported that 100,000,000 players have registered for AJ and PW combined!

Well, that's it from me now, until the next post.

-Dew

Random Tuesday Ep 02: Jambassadors

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

Hello, everyone! I was drafted for the excruciatingly difficult task of coming up with a random Tuesday post. Sorry in advance if this is boring, this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.

So, Jambassadors, you either hate them or love them. No matter what, they're here and bigger than anything else in the AJ world so why not talk about them? Animal Jam has a list of requirements for Jambassadors to meet:

• You must have an interest in Animal Jam
• Be positive
• Be creative
• Be unique
• Be authentic
• Have a minimum of 10,000 subscribers
• Be at least 13 years old
• Follow Animal Jam's rules
• Consistently create content appropriate for kids 13 and younger

Then, it says "If you have the above and would like to apply, send an email to Jambassador@Wildworks.com with your AJ or Play Wild Username and a link to your Youtube Channel." With this explicit statement, it seems to rule out all other forms of internet media (Blogs, social media pages, ext.) in favor of YouTube, even though you can subscribe to/follow almost all (If not all) other things. 

That little tirade aside, what makes someone ineligible to be a Jambassador? Alistairz has 31k, lovesbetas has 20k and Artymis has 25k. (Pardon me if they were Jambassadors at one point, I don't follow AJ social media) Have they just not applied or is it something else? Eh, I'm not one for conspiracy so, let's leave it at that.

In total, if there was no mention of a YouTube channel, the SASS team would all be Jambassadors and I'm really just bitter about it, LOL. To be honest it's just a bit of an exclusive club that I don't really completely agree with. With that, Imma sign off.

-Is

Random Saturday Ep 04: AJ vs PW

Hello guys, and welcome to another episode of your Random Saturdays. Today, I'm going to be touching on the similarities and differences between AJ and PW. Without further ado, let's go.

To do this comparison, I will be listing a few categories, and comparing AJ and PW using the listed categories.

1. Age

AJ is definitely older than PW. AJ started in 2010, while PW started in 2015. This makes AJ older than PW by 5 years.

2. Membership Advantages
In both AJ and PW, members are able to do more and get more than non-members. In both AJ and PW, members get premium currency - diamonds in AJ and Sapphires in PW. In addition, in both games, there are member-only items that only members can purchase. However, there is a significant difference here. In AJ, many of the items sold in all stores are only purchasable by members. In PW, all items in all regular stores can be purchased by all members. The only member-only items can be found in packs (as weekly gifts), the weekly member gift and the travelling salesman, who carries both member and non-member items. However, although only members can purchase the items, it doesn't mean that only members can use them. That's right, non-members are also able to use and wear those items, provided they are able to trade for it. However, there is another difference. In AJ, all adventures (except for the forgotten desert) are available to all members. On the other hand, PW has a mechanic called Pack Runs that is only available to members. In this regard, both AJ and PW have membership advantages. However, the membership advantage in AJ is much more glaring that the one in PW.

3. Lands
Being older, AJ has many more lands that PW. Balloosh, Bahari Bay, Crystal Reef, Deep Blue and Kani Cove are the lands that exist in AJ but not in PW. (As of writing this post)

4. Animals
Being older, AJ also has more animals than PW. In fact, PW has no flying animals at all. While AJ is continually releasing new animals, the animals that we get in PW are animals that can already be found in AJ. However, in AJ, most animals are member-only. In PW, all animals are available to everyone for purchase.

5. Regular Games
Being older, AJ has many more games than PW does. Sky High, Mira Says and Swoopy Eagle for just a few examples of games that exist in AJ but not in PW. On the other hand, PW also has a few games that AJ doesn't. Jumbled Up, A Puppy's Tale and Block Break are a few examples. That being said, AJ still has a wider variety of regular games than PW does.

6. Buddy Games
While AJ may have more regular games than PW, PW actually has more buddy games than AJ. PW doesn't have Pairs, Rock Paper Scissors, The Shell Game and Tic Tac Toe, which AJ does. However, AJ doesn't have Checkers, Pop'n, Super Cube, Trivia, Jamaa Derby, Beachside Blitz, Stack Attack and Log Jammer, all of which PW does have. By a direct comparison, PW has a wider variety of buddy games than AJ does.

7. Freedom of Speech
AJ has 3 ways to chat. Safe chat, bubble chat and safe chat plus. Safe chat plus is the most unrestrictive of chats. However, it is members only. PW has 2 ways to chat. Bubble chat, and safe chat.

8. Music
Although both AJ amd PW have amazing soundtracks, I have to say that PW has an overall better soundtrack than AJ, from my point of view. This is because PW comes up with a new soundtrack for every new den that comes out in the game. Those soundtracks have very high atmospheric quality. They set the ambience of the paired den very, very well. Also, PW and AJ have the same land OSTs for the lands and parties they share, if I'm not mistaken. Thus, overall, I feel that PW has a better soundtrack.

9. Earning premium currency
The premium currency for AJ is diamonds, while that of PW is sapphires. I personally find it easier to collect sapphires in PW than diamonds on AJ, as a non-member. This is because the only way to get diamonds in AJ as a non-member is through the daily spin, amd chances are so low. In PW, they have a system I like to call the Games Rewards System because they reward you with sapphires when you hit certain milestones in PW games. For example, you can earn a total of 30 sapphires for completeing all the levels of gem breaker. Thus, it is generally easier to earn sapphires on PW than AJ.

10. Extra features
In this regard, I think AJ has more extra features than PW. AJ has the Jammer Wall, party hosting, and adventures which PW does not have. However, PW has packs, pack runs and levels which AJ does not have. However, from an overall standpoint, AJ still has more extra stuff to do than PW does.

11. Other thoughts
I personally feel that the overall atmosphere in AJ is slightly Darker than the atmosphere in PW. I think that this could be due to the fact that AJ has the adventure storyline going on, while PW does not. In AJ, the story about phantoms is all over the place, while phantoms in PW only make their appearance during the night of the phantoms.

Alright, that's all I can think of now. Stay tuned for your next random saturday coming next week!
-Dew

Random Tuesday Ep 01: Sol Arcade Den

Disclaimer: Random Tuesdays have been discontinued and merged with Random Saturdays.

Flint here with your first Random Tuesday! Today, we'll be talking about the Sol Arcade Den. 

The Sol Arcade Den is a small-ish den released in 2014. It’s nearly identical to the Sol Arcade structure, only lacking the machines/shops.

The ground is composed of blue platforms, including the platform you spawn on, connected by paths/floor on the rest of the ground. Next to the spawn platform is a rocket, identical to the Sol Arcade structure’s rocket except with wood filling in the doorway.

There are some rocks surrounding the rim of the den, as well as rocks surrounding certain platforms and a half circle of rocks in the middle of the den. On the bottom left of the den, there is a boarded-up light source carved into the rock. It is unknown what this is supposed to be.

The floor- and wallpapers in this den usually have special textures. Most of the wallpapers change into the surface of a planet or another space theme. The floors can be a variety of things, usually more abstract/loopy versions of the original carpet.

Time for my opinion!

I like the overall theme of the den, as a spaceship. The wallpaper patterns are also creative and pretty. The platforms are open, but still defined, so you can use them as rooms. The den is also small enough that you can easily see all of it, preventing you from getting lost as you do in bigger dens.

I dislike the amount of nooks in this den. There are multiple places where the area is too small to set up a room in, but too big to leave empty. There are also almost no walls aside from low rims around the platforms and the outer walls, which makes it hard to use wall decorations. The outer walls also appear to be perfectly smooth, while the trim is a polygon with corners, making most things placed on the wall look weird.

Overall, the design of the Sol Arcade Den is cool, but it also has a weird layout that makes it hard to set up things in it. That's all for today! Thanks for reading!

Random Saturday Ep 03: Den Mazes

Hello all, Jade here, with episode 3 of Random Saturdays. Today’s topic will be den mazes!

Den mazes are a connected series of dens, with options to both go to the next den or to go back to the original den. You aren't told which option is which. The goal is to pick the right portal and make it through the entire series of dens. If you're bored on Animal Jam or are having a hard time thinking of something to do, they're a great way to waste time!



You may or may not have heard of the user aflower, who has created one of the most famous mazes. The maze starts off in their den, which looks like this:

Their den contains a portal leading you to the den of themazeshop, whose den contains a masterpiece listing the rules of the game, as well as the next portal.

(Rules: Try to pick the right portal or you come back here. Make it through the correct portal to win! Good luck!)

From then on, all portals in the den will take you back to themazeshop, except for one, which will take you to the next den in the maze. This goes on for around 16 dens. I’ve listed the dens and the correct portals at the end of the post (click read more) if you would like the answers to the maze.

aflower’s den also has a portal leading to the den of windyartshop, which has a few other art shops connected to it. After around 3 dens, you are led to another series of “maze” dens, but without options to go back to the original den. Some of these dens are also pretty cool, so if you’re still bored after exploring the original maze, I suggest going through these as well!

That's all for now. Tune in next time for another episode of Random Saturdays!

> Jade <

Society Update: Removal of the Chat Room

Hello everyone, sorry for the recent inactivity, we froze all posts while we got some stuff sorted out. With that, we have decided to remove the chat room! It has been around since the society was started and it's very bittersweet to see it go. From now on, if you want to contact the SASS team, the only way to do that will be through our email or Discord server.

Random Saturday Ep 02: Is AJ Going Downhill?

'Sup guys. I'm back with this week's Random Saturday post. Ok, just want to say that I lied, random Saturdays occur once every two weeks. Without further ado, let's go.

Today's topic is about AJ in general. Is AJ going downhill? Well, AJ started back in 2010 when there was no member - non-member difference. Those were the early days of AJ. Back then, AJHQ was able to roll out new content at a rather steady pace. It was, after all, new at that time. As with all new things, content is easy to create. More lands got released, Mt Shiveer, Kimbara Outback and the Oceans are lands that did not exist in the old Jamaa.

However, as time went by, AJ became more developed. To help AJHQ keep the content coming in, they need funds. Where do they get that? Memberships, of course. The member - non-member divide began to grow, and with each update, the divide only worsened. Remember the times when Oceans were member only? For those of you who joined AJ in recent years, non-members of the past had fewer animal choices, couldn't change the colours of their items and didn't have access to (almost) all adventures. That was when AJ probably reached its lowest in the earlier days. However, things took a small turn.

AJ noticed the problem. They made changes to the system by allowing non-members to change their item colours and more. While it worked for a while, I personally do not think it can pull AJ out of the hole it dug itself into. Mindsets were fixed. The member - non-member divide is still there. Older players are leaving. It just isn't the same AJ that we knew from the past. To make things worse, since AJ is already well-developed, new content rarely comes out, if at all. In other words, I feel that the content in AJ is getting stale. Could this be a contributing factor to the downfall of AJ? Maybe.

Now, let's look at an example. In 2017, club penguin closed in favour of a new club penguin game, club penguin island. By doing that, it allowed club penguin to start anew. AJ had AJPW. However, AJ still existed. Also, AJPW wasn't completely new - it was simply AJ-for-mobile-minus-adventures-plus-treasure-hunts. AJ didn't really start afresh like club penguin did. In that sense, it didn't truly come up with new content.

All in all, I do feel that yes, this is AJ's downfall. If AJ doesn't do something about it soon, I feel that the AJ userbase will just fade away. With the userbase fading away, AJ's funds from memberships will be cut (since there will be fewer users), just further speeding up their downfall.

Well, that's it from me now. Do tune in 2 Saturdays from now for your next Random Saturday. Ciao!

-Dew

P.S. With the downfall of AJ, comes many consequences, for one, many people would lose their jobs. All of the AJ Youtubers, bloggers, and employees, for example (That includes us) would be down and out. Not to mention all of the merchandise and resources gone to ruin if and when this occurs. Think everything that went down with Club Penguin on a slightly larger scale. Thanks, Dew, for letting me invade your post!
-Is

Society Update: Code of Conduct Update

Howdy-do-da everyone. Life is all well and good and now, for some exciting news. (It's not actually exciting, I have to do this) We have updated the Code of Conduct. Two new rules have been added, numbers 16 and 17. I seriously recommend reading it. Everything going on here will make more sense if you do.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/106Q88FiB6oSKGlWxRwKZq7me8eMj3IlVXesLs94HdhU/edit

Toodle-oo

-Is

Society Update: Resignation

Hi all, I am so terribly sorry to inform you of this but, Beta Maretu has resigned. We have no ill feelings towards her and wish her the best. Like many people, she grew disinterested in the game and had many scheduling conflicts. We are not only down an agent, we are down a friend and will severely miss her and everything she has done for SASS. Farewell Mar, good luck with everything.

Peace

-Is

Random Saturday Ep 01: Flower Crowns in AJPW

Hello guys! Dew here. We've started a new series titled "Random Saturdays", in which we post about non-scammer-related AJ stuff. Without further ado, here is your first Random Saturday post.

What I'll be posting about today is the return of flower crowns in AJPW. It's been out a while now, but flower crowns have returned to stores. It is currently being sold at epic wonders for 2,200 gems. That's right, it's being sold for gems.

 Flower crowns were released during the Beta Testing period of AJPW, and they used to cost only 500 gems. What made them very valuable is that they disappeared from stores after Beta Testing. You might think that the price hike is reasonable for an item as valuable as a flower crown. However, I personally do not think so. Back then, gem earning was rather tough. Best Dressed and Jamma Derby didn't exist, making gem-earning more difficult. Now, with more games added (jammer vs jammer included), gem-earning is relatively easier. This could mean that the valuable flower crown could be bought for relatively similar effort. However, the release of the flower crown in epic wonders disrupts the trading plans of jammers. What if the flower crown was the only valuable thing they had on trade? In my opinion, AJHQ made the item close to worthless by releasing them in stores. This is even more so if they become "permanent items", or items that never leave the stores.

In summary, I do not think that is was such a good idea to release the flower crowns back into stores. I feel that AJHQ could have come up with a better way to make the crowns available to all jammers to obtain, instead of using gems which are easier to obtain these days.

Well, that's all for now. Do tune in next Saturday for another episode of Random Saturday! Yay!

Monthly Update - July

For the first update, this new series. It's mainly to make sure everyone is on the same page about society happenings. Basically, one of our agents will be picked to write a brief summary of the past month and everything semi-climactic that happened in it. Organization, am I right?

Secondly, we hit 10,000 pageviews this month! I already made a gushy post about that. You can read it here.

We've also implemented a schedule to go with the new recap thing. All agents have been briefed on it. We will be doing scammer posts every Monday and Thursday with other special surprise posts throughout the week.

The final new thing we have added comes from our Discord server. We put in a Fun and Games channel where we play some games Delta Dew put together which rotate every five days. It's so much fun. You can join our Discord through the many links on the site.

With that, I bid you all ado... Until tomorrow. See you then!

-Is