The long-awaited bonus quest for Mocktropica Island is here. It's the first bonus quest to be released after the start of Early Access. Members, go to your Home Screen, click on the Mocktropica tile, and enter the basement of Poptropica HQ. Then check out my guide by clicking here: Mocktropica Island Guide. But there's more news...
Click to examine. Take a look at this screenshot. Look at it. It's an inter-room advertisement on Poptropica. Well, we've seen those often enough, you might be saying. Well, this one is different in a dreadful way. No friendly island theme in the background, no relation at all to the rest of the game, like the normal interstitial ad spaces had. This one has video that plays by itself. And sound that you never asked for. Not only that, but it shows up between every room, even in places where it doesn't make sense for there to be an in-between. In short, the end of the world. Looks like the dire predictions I made in this post (click to read) are coming true, slowly but scarily.
Further, the game itself is getting harder and harder to play. Sure, the different-but-not-bad new physics engine is bothering some, but this problem is different. (side note: anyone noticed the really erratic cursor behavior? They might as well have kept the crosshair, the classic, fun mode isn't working right at all). Have you noticed that Poptropica is chomping on much more of your computer's power these days? The advertisement loading alone forced me to close a few tabs on my browser--and I'm not using any old dinosaur either, but a laptop I got last year. Sound effects are loading way too late, music tracks are overlapping... I could go on and on. And the worst part is, this isn't even considered beta anymore. The Creators are even turning our classics, like Time Tangled (done), 24 Carrot (done), Mythology (confirmed), and Spy (rumored) into this mess. What can I say? Poptropica is the most awesome game in the world, and the only thing that can destroy it is itself. I hope that's not happening...
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play Mystery Train. It is my most favorite game in the world.
