December 14, 2019

Random Saturday Ep 36: Guides


Hey everyone! Welcome to another Random Saturday, this week's episode with your host Shade! Today, we are gonna be going into a lesser-known fact about the beginnings of Animal Jam. That is the Guides, found around Jamaa during 2010 and early 2011. 


Guides were Wildworks (then called Smart Bomb Interactive) 
 employees that were found around Jamaa during the beta days. Their main purpose was to interact with Jammers and help out new players getting used to the game. These guides are similar to AJHQ's Animal Jam account today, except it was more than one person interacting with the AJ community. Their accounts were very similar to normal Animal Jam accounts, being able to do basically the same type of things a normal account could do. There were a few differences, though: Jammers could not buddy them, jam-a-gram them, or go to their den, like you could with a regular AJ account. 


Guides also had a green tint to their chat boxes, so Jammers could know where they were and wouldn't get them confused with others. They were also noted to have an AJ badge next to their name tag, something that wasn't available to other members. Sometimes, guides played games with jammers around Jamaa, most notably a game called "Shaman Says," 'shaman' being what alphas were called in the beta days. The winner of this game would be gifted gems. 


Another cool thing about Animal Jam guides were their ability to become alphas (or shamans, as they were called back then). As seen in the photo above, one AJ Guide was sighted as Graham in the Lost Temple of Zios. However, this is the only alpha (at least that I've been able to find) that has been seen as a Guide. Sadly, there isn't that much information out there about Guides, partly due to the fact that had so little of a presence in Jamaa until they disappeared. But they are an interesting and cool concept! I believe it could've grown into a much bigger thing if given the time to, especially with the concept of Alpha Guides. What do you think about this feature? Should AJHQ have kept it in the game?

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