I had a very nice break, got to do some family road tripping to San Diego and San Francisco, and along the way got to see the northernmost and southernmost Historic Tiki Bars in California.

The Tonga Room is located in the basement of a beautiful old hotel on Nob Hill in SF, built out of the hotel’s old pool room. The centerpiece of the restaurant is a large “lagoon” made out of the old pool. A live band plays from a floating platform in the middle, and there are indoor thunderstorms every 30 minutes or so. Though it’s pretty pricey as Tiki Bars go, this place has a lot of vintage charm and solid drinks.

The Tonga Room during a “thunderstorm”

Another great destination in San Francisco for Tiki (which wasn’t the only thing on the trip, I swear!) is the de Young art museum in Golden Gate Park. This museum has an excellent collection of authentic Polynesian carvings and real tikis.

The Japanese garden at Golden Gate Park is another fun diversion. It was choked to the gills with other tourists and a little pricey to get into but there are some old buildings and architectural features that date back to the 1915 World’s Fair.

Also, took a separate day trip last weekend to see the Bali Hai, a San Diego Tiki Bar that celebrated their 60th anniversary last year. More reasonably priced than San Francisco, the drinks were pretty good and despite not having Crab Rangoon on the menu it was still a good time.

This ancient holiday celebrates a successful armed revolt against the Greek Empire, and of the miraculous oil that burned for 8 days and nights. Though not a major holiday on the scale of Passover, it has become a important winter tradition in the United States. It’s celebrated by children with a wooden top (dreidel) emblazoned with Hebrew letters that stand for Nun, Gimel, Hei, Shin which means נס גדול היה שם “A great miracle happened there”. It’s also associated with chocolate coins (gelt) and lots of food friend in oil. A lovely and very old custom!

For this week’s recipe, I’ll be making up some delicious potato latkes to show during the stream, with sour cream and applesauce. You wouldn’t think that a fried potato pancake wouldn’t go well with something sweet like applesauce but it’s surprisingly tasty!

The song of the week is by the group The Leevees, who have a great album of modern-day Chanukkah songs.

Aloha folks and welcome to the second week of December! Here at the Warpportal office we’re hard at work at getting the gigantic level 175/60 update prepped for Renewal server. This is the first level cap increase since characters were able to level past 99, and with it comes unique skills for your third job characters.

For the best stuff this week, be sure to let me know in the comments of the thread version of this post what things from THIS week you’d like to see get a shout out in next week’s post.

THREAD OF THE WEEK

With the big update coming this week, many players are already looking forward to what’s coming next! One of the best threads on the forums is Jaye’s What to Look Forward to thread, which lays out what updates we’ve gotten and what updates we’re still missing. One of the things that players have expressed a lot of interest in is the update which increases the vend limit past it’s current 99,990,000z cap. Magmag starts a discussion about it here.

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
We have a winter/holiday themed art event going on in the forums, with some great loading screens already posted. If you’re a creative type, please make sure to participate!

If you missed last week’s stream due to twitch being, well, twitchy, you can watch all of our previously livestreamed content at our youtube page. In fact, we’d really appreciate if you give it a subscribe and like while you’re there!

Hope everyone had a very nice Thanksgiving week, if you’re in the United States. At the Oda homestead we had plenty of turkey, green bean casserole, mai tais and ham (which I baked). We had the chance to reflect on the things we are thankful for. For me, it’s been the privilege to be the CM for the RO community.

For the best stuff this week, be sure to let me know in the comments of the thread version of this post what things from THIS week you’d like to see get a shout out in next week’s post.

THREAD OF THE WEEK

Our big update news is that level 160/50 and level 175/60 updates are coming very soon! We’re testing the level 160 on Sakray right now and Volunteer Mod Cinnamon put together a great thread to provide feedback, report bugs and request gears for testing.

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Always love seeing Akeris’ work, who always has a lot of humor in her artwork.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Speaking of art, I love seeing process videos from our creative community, like this one from Tenshiii’s thread.

I’m not going to be in on Tuesday, so I’ll be doing the Tiki Tuesday live show on Monday! Please ask your questions in the forum thread.

Image of the week—————————————————————————

A great Halloween loading screen from Kuci’s thread on the forums.

You should read these threads—————————————————————-

Zerotigress speculates on what kind of interesting future content could be added to the game in the Expanding RO’s Worlds Thread

Zoesensei has a thread organizing a live reading of A Christmas Carol ingame! Check out the progress and get involved.

Feedback Needed!—————————————————————————–

Improving the Turn In Experience : Post your thoughts on how we can better choose monsters for our Gramps Turn In system!

Get Creative!————————————————————————————

We have multiple contests running this week for all sorts of creative types, so be sure to participate!

Myzery posted a contest for RO Pixel art, if you are a 8 bit warrior you should definitely enter.

If you’re more of a writer, take a look at Sapphic’s Wanted Poster event!

Video of the week——————————————————————————-

 

This awesome video by RodHazard infuses the theme of Payon with the music of the Andes!

Thread of the week:

In the “Spill your secrets” thread, players give their tips and tricks for quickly leveling, making potions and other semi-hidden things you can do in the game.

Current contests this week:

For the writers in our community we have Sapphic’s Wanted Poster contest, where players create a “dead or alive” type poster for monsters in RO.

For those who are skilled with creating/editing sprites from the game we have Myzery’s Pixel Art contest.

For the physical realm, Tatihana00 has a fun Holiday Card Contest, where you can mail or photograph your seasonal cards.

Arwork of the week:
Tenmuki’s always had some fantastic character artworks, with this image they have created a fantastic background as well! Check out her thread here.

For the content we put out this week, CM Maridah and I had a lot of fun dusting off the Dreamcast and playing some Skies of Arcadia.

Community Spotlight: This week the Pumpkin Carving Contest came to an end. This was a lot of fun, with players drawing or carving festive Halloween Pumpkins!

I’m announcing the winners here!

Digital:
LillKraujas

Anonymous

Traditional Paper Drawing:
Facekiller

Kamikali

Carved Pumpkins
Chetchet

Ralis

Tatihana has started a fun Holiday Pop-Up Card contest where players design (and perhaps mail) fun 3d holiday RO themed cards. Check out the rules and submissions here.

We also have a new thread for people to submit ideas for headgears they would like to see next year. We’ll send the best of these to our development team in Korea to get made, so we need lots of reference material and descriptive descriptions!

For the art of the week, Aojima is a new poster on the board with a really fun chibi drawing. They have more non-RO arts to sample as well so make sure to check it out!

Monday Spotlight on popular community created content

Probably the biggest thread this last week was a spirited but mostly civil discussion about Renewal WoE. Big and small guilds gave feedback on the state of our weekly Guild vs Guild event and how they would want to see improvements. The thread is very long, but there are a lot of interesting points being made by players new and old.

For the art of the week, we had lots of amazing art for Halloween, but this striking piece by Equisce combines RO with the festive decorations of Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

We have a number of events going on for the forums, like this one that Ralis is running. Complete these devious puzzles to earn prizes! We’ll always have the forum or ingame events sticky’d on our main community board so you’ll definitely be able to find a event/contest that suits you.

If you would like to see the WP staff play games for 24+ hours, we have an archive of our Extra Life Stream being uploaded to our youtube channel! Thanks to CM Buttercup, who has been dividing up the massive archive videos and posting them online!

This is probably the only video on the internet that has a “Jimmy Stewart in the world of Diablo” impression.

Why not chill out this TT with the music of Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar from the Disneyland Resort? A mix of older and newer Exotica tracks, this soundtrack is one of the most impressive parts of the bar experience. Trader Sam’s is one of the very few tiki bars that still plays Exotica music, I would highly recommend going there if you find yourself near Disneyland!

I’m going to use Tiki Tuesday thread as a sort of spotlight for the best stuff from the community, so if there are some things you particularly enjoyed from that week, let me know!

Thread of the Week:

The Headgear Creation Event planned by Cinquine and Myzery was a huge hit, with some fantastic headgears from RO making their real-life debut!

Pic of the Week:

This was the second place entry for our Halloween Loading Screen event and lots of fun. The expressions of the players and the stylized monsters in the background really sell the vibe of the season!

Also since I oftentimes focus too narrowly on the drawn art from the community make sure to check out ShamStalin’s music thread! Shammy’s singing covers of songs as well as original compositions.

One of my personal favorites, the Musical version of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. Intensely British, this combines fun synth with the classic Victorian sci-fi epic.