Aywas

About
Aywas (Ae-wahs) is an online browser based role playing game in the pet breeding/collecting genre. It has been operational since October, 2009 when it was started by Slash. Users can collect and breed pets, known inside the game as Ay and Ara. There are additional features; such as battling, exploring and daily games.

The word Aywas means "animals" in another language.

History
Aywas' first set of Pre-Alpha testers began their testing on September 8th, 2009. After extensive testing, Aywas V1 was released into Alpha status on October 1st, 2009. Several hundred users poured in from various other sites on the Internet, with over 270 users joining on the first day, and more than 930 in the first month. The community remained small and private for a few months, however.

For several weeks, players used the game as designed. However, the design of some of the game's features allowed for users to obtain a large amount of items and pets. Less than a month of the site being open, there were thousands of pets and millions of items in the system, which wasn't expected by the staff. Due to this, on October 18th, Slash announced that the game would undergo a re-design to address these issues, and work began for several months.

On December 31st, 2009, Slash announced the game was formally in it's second release, known in game as Aywas V2, or Aywas Beta. However, within a a few months, trouble arose. There was continual lag at at times, and there were numerous glitches and issues. On February 28th, 2010, it was made known to the user base that the programmer (known as Qwayzar) hired to complete the second release was a con artist and his work was the cause of most of the design and programming flaws in game. Further adding to the complication, the amount he was paid for his work on V2 was far beyond what it was worth, which lead the game into a period of fiscal distress. Slash and the staff team (along with a new programmer, Yasu) set out to repair the damage done and a third re-design was announced.

On March 24th, 2010, the site hit 5000 users, a majority of which were active players. This, and other positive growth factors, lead to several significant changes. On April 20th, 2010, Aywas began to sell real life merchandise and on April 29th, 2010, Frey was promoted to oversee the Breeding System. With Frey and their staff in place, a major overhaul to the Breeding System was released on May 4th, 2010. This led to a uptake in the number of users using the system, and a new generation of pets were unleashed upon the Aywas world.

Aywas V3 was originally projected to be completed by the end of April, but due to a few coding issues it was not ready until July 30, 2010, and wasn't open to the public until the beginning of August 2010. During this time, all of the Aywas species were undergoing art revamps, as many of the pet images were about three years old. The only difficult revamp was the most popular species, the Melo, and it took over a week to be completed, when most were finished within one day. Various new events and contests were created for the new V3 as well. All of the new features and events of Aywas V3 led up to September 25th, when Aywas officially hit 10,000 users. A few days later on October 1, Aywas celebrated its first anniversary, and a month-wide celebration event began. In the month of December 2010 there was another month-wide holiday contest, and the number of Aywas users on the site grew by the hundreds every day.

On December 2nd, Aywas V3's layout was changed to accommodate the increasing number of links the layout needed to hold, and to take up less space. In the start of the new year, January 2011, users continued pouring into the site. New features were released to have more customization on Aywas along with the biggest features of Breeding and Customs, such as users being able to create Human Avatar clothes and have their own personal items. The site continues to grow each day, and on February 25, 2011, Aywas celebrated having 16,000 users on the site.

On March 5th, Aywas began selling Breeding Pendant Charms for real money, signifying the continual growth of the site, and there has been discussion of other real-life items that the site may sell in the future.

Aywas Today
Today, Aywas continues to gather hundreds of new users a day. It is still in V3, and there have been no talks of another recode in the future. There are over 17,000 users on the site with hundreds joining every day. On average, there are 300 users online, with 100-200 being online in the mornings and 400+ in the evenings. The record for "Most Users Online at One Time" is 693 users on February 14, 2011, when Slash held a contest to get 600+ users online. Due to the great amount of lag when that many users are online, however, the number stays stable at around 300 users online at a time.

Most users describe the Aywas Economy as "stable". It is fairly easy to make Blue Paws, but there are many things to buy, so the high amount balances out. Gold Paws rates have also stayed stable, as there is always a great need of GP but also a constant supply of it. The Staff also frequently sends out random items and holds giveaways, so all Aywas goals are in reach of all users, with a bit of money saving.

A great amount of users appear to have at least one Custom pet, and many have submitted at least one Breeding; the two biggest features of Aywas. Though in the beginning these goals were out of reach for those without a lot of money, they have become more available to all with the frequent release of events.

Gameplay
One of Aywas' unique features is that there is almost always something to do. Each month, there are usually several small events that last a few days, or one large event that lasts several weeks to the full month. These range from being forum-based events, Explore events, or team events. Random contests are also held for users to participate in during event downtimes.

There are also continual art-based contests that users are able to enter. Users can submit Human Avatar clothing items, Pet Colorations, Monthly Pet Colorations, and Customs to contests that can be entered at any time. All of the events can be found on the Events Forum on the site.

Community
As advertised on Aywas' front page, the site's community is older and generally more mature. Though the ages range from 13 and above, most users appear to be in the 17-25 years old range.

A lot of the general discussion is labeled as "Mature" or [M]. This covers everything from swearing, the topic, and its discussion. While Aywas is a site more based towards older and more mature users, all threads with more "mature" content are marked with an [M] if users wish to avoid them.