Hi folks -

It's been awhile since you've heard from me, and I wanted to apologize for that. My entire family came down with illnesses and it took quite awhile for us to all get back on our feet. And then we buried my Dad, which kept me away longer.

Originally we had planned to celebrate our 1st year of TEC x ThreeSeas in June, but with all those things, we're going to switch it up and celebrate in August. We will have a few flash promotions sprinkled throughout the month, plus a few other fun things planned. I'll share more details as we get closer to August 1st.

This also seems like a good time to reminisce about the last year plus. It was certainly a period like no other, thanks to a global pandemic. Some found themselves with more time on their hands, while others, like many of our staff, found themselves needing to shift priorities when their real-life work and family hours ramped up.

We were able to check off a few of our goals for the year - new traits were released; the option to @retire was implemented, providing players a little more control over the end of their stories; the SGLite program had two classes, which resulted in graduations to official staff positions; a new referral program was added; citizenship got its first boost in added value; two groups achieved org status; we implemented a newsletter; a number of bugfixes and requests were fulfilled; new @perks were added for subscribers; an updated & expanded RP expenditure list was shared; new housing options were offered; and more.

Due to reduced staff hours, we obviously didn't hit all our marks. I think that has been true for most "yearly plan" posts in TEC history, but I had hoped our year would be the first to cross them all off. We're starting to see more pockets of free time popping up, and we'll be rolling some of the 2020 goals into 2021 goals, with the hope to squeeze in a few more before the end of the year. In August, as part of our belated birthday, I'll have a recomplied list of what we hope to cross off before the end of December.

I and the rest of the staff appreciate you hanging in there with us during the growing pains that come with taking on something new. We look forward to being able to provide you all with more opportunities for fun and character growth with both the current storylines, as well as the ones on the calendar for the remainder of the year.