(A minor rant, don't mind me.)

So it's been two months since the beta test opened up for the FV site. I've been on more or less since creating an account there. And now I have some thoughts on the whole thing.

I'm very much into the character creation of it. When you go to create villagers, there's a pretty broad range of animals to choose from, in some pretty interesting patterns. And they're adding more, too. The game also features Painties, whcih some of you may have seen people putting up here. For about $5 USD, you can do a custom design for your villagers, or if you manage to get the Shifty species, a completely original design. It's actually pretty flexible and the various users have come up with some really stellar stuff. I've gotten seven different ones from various artists at this point and I have yet to be disappointed.

The villages you have to choose from are all fantastically designed. I'm based in Dragonsmaw Manor, which has a great Halloween aesthetic. One of the careers you can give your villagers is Animal Husbandry, which lets you collect, tame and breed animals you find in your area. DMM has the best animal designs. I'm especially partial to the Kritty, a rare collect.

However. In the two months since the beta began and since the now legendary temporary closing of the forums, the average number of users online has gone from around 2000-3000 to a measly 400 at best. And honestly, these remaining players are almost intolerable. The majority of forum topics are either advertising Paintie services (which I can totally get behind because they're awesome) or just extensions of places like Tumblr, which is just plain irritating. But this might largely be coming from being an actual adult on a site that is plainly populated mainly by people still in high school. Teens, I love you but you're all friggin' crazy when it comes to adoptable games like Furvilla.

There's also the fun little fact that the Animal Husbandry career, because of its popularity, has really screwed up the same game economy that is also a popular bitching topic in the game. Mostly what bugs me about this is the fact that it seems no one's made that particular connection either- whenever the topic of the game's screwed up economy comes up, I have yet to see people questioning how the making cute little pets aspect has impacted things because, y'know, GOTTA CATCH EM ALL.

One of my favourite things I came across as a forum topic was users worrying about how things in the game are going to be messed up once the beta ends and they start letting new users register. The commentary was about how no one is going to enjoy the influx of newbie players wanting to know how to play. I'm more worried about the kind of asshole that wants to keep a social game like this exclusive. New players need help. Get over it and stop worrying about hypotheticals.

All in all, the game's been a bit of a mixed bag. The one thing I'm sure of at this point is FV actually has the potential to be a pretty awesome thing. It's a good concept and it's creative and encourages creativity. You can enjoy it regardless if you're a furry or not and in fact, it seems a good chunk of users aren't. I hope the beta ends soon mostly because I'd love to see more people involved in this and contributing to the game. I'd also like to see some of the clique stupidity diluted at this point, which more users would help with. So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the site's future. It'll be interesting to see where it goes from here.