unforum

[marczellm]

 Summary of events

[thebruce]

Thanks for the nice summary, marczellm!

[Ogawa]

Yes thank you!!

[dod123]

How long did it take to get the packages?

[Rikua]

Can anyone update with the information from Mission Icefly plus what was learned/discovered afterwards? I really don't want to look through the 70 something new pages in the trailhead topic since I last checked in....

Thanks!

[SolarMarr]

Long post is long. I wish uF had those collapsible spoiler tags. XD

Here's a rough timeline from today, so that marczellm might have an easier time editing that first post. I'll use links instead of pics to conserve space.


Pregame

-Emails from testsubjectsneeded.com (hereafter TSN) were sent out on the evening of June the 29th to players who had registered. The contents of these emails were similar to the notice that had appeared at the bottom of missionicefly.com. That same evening the official Twitter account @Mission_Icefly sent out its first tweet, "Less than 18 hours to go."

-Morning of June the 30th. Ground teams across the country rendezvous at locations of their choosing and get in touch with Oracles as well as each other. Net support teams begin lurking various Twitter feeds and engage in a number of large real-time chats.

-@Mission_Icefly makes its second tweet, "Ready?"

-The countdown at missionicefly.com reaches zero at 19.00.00 GMT/UTC (3 PM Eastern, 2 Central, 12 Pacific). The metal "eye" became clickable. When clicked, the "eye" would open and the icefly would zoom inside.


The game is afoot.

-After missionicefly.com apparently got nuked from the heavy traffic, @Mission_Icefly makes its third tweet, "Refresh."

-The new page of missionicefly.com, linked from the previously closed metal "eye," is missionicefly.com/rescue/ and lists our lovely fifteen cities in a column. Each name is initially greyed out.

-It appears the drops will be executed in batches, and New York and Orlando are the first two up. Their city names became white underlined hyperlinks, which linked to .pdfs that contained a latitude/longitude pair, some basic ground rules, and an image of what to look for (for example, a bench or doorway).

-Thanks to fantastic ground work and great net/ground cooperation, Orlando and NY reach their locations quickly. Each location contained a single black envelope depicting an icefly silhouette on its front. These envelopes provided the player with a key and paper slip describing their next actions: to text a number with a provided password and await further instructions.

-@Mission_Icefly updates with "Volunteers in NYC and Orlando have completed step 1 of 2." At this point the two city names are crossed out and no longer underlined nor clickable.

-Step two of the drop involved taking the key to a second drop point provided by the contact number and unlocking a large crate labeled "Human Preservation Project." Inside the crate is a single large mechanical icefly mounted inside a scifi-styled glass (?) and metal jar.

-@Mission_Icefly updates with "NYC and Orlando complete." The city names are now blue and accompanied with the name of the receiving player in brackets. The Mission Icefly flickr also updates with pictures of the players unlocking the crates and/or holding their iceflies. [I kinda quit checking source sites from here on while making this writeup, so feel free to correct stuff. It's late, shush. XD;]

-missionicefly.com/rescue/ updates with a video that's incredibly laden with static both visually and acoustically. [I've forgotten whether this first appeared after the first drop(s), or if it was always available right off the bat. Halp?]

-The next set of cities, Boston, Chicago, and Nashville, have available .pdfs. Noticeable patterns appear here, such as:
City batches go in a 2, 3, 2, 3... pattern, only deviating towards the end.
New city batches become available roughly on the hour, with seven batches total. [confirmation plz?]
Batches seem to move from east to west, beginning on the Atlantic seaboard and ending in Los Angeles.
Drops run in the same pattern: part one contains an envelope, and part two the prize. Each are in different locations.
City names are initially grayed out, then white hyperlinks (which lead to .pdfs) when the drop is ready, then crossed out when part one is completed, then blue with a player's screen name when part two is completed.
With each completed city, the video at the top of the page clears a little.
The official flickr updates with pictures of the first person/team at each crate drop with their brand new iceflies.

-After a long, stressful, and exiting day with many shenanigans (what the hell Nashville/Portland; our man in Vegas is a magician; .pdf witchcraft with Dallas and Denver; official Twitter re-tweets a player (and people went WHUT over that); chat clients more chaotic than a toy store on Black Friday), all drops are successfully recovered. And there was much rejoicing.

-@Mission_Icefly writes "Reports are in that LA has been picked up. Please stand by."


Notsofast- the night's not over yet.

-@Mission_Icefly: "NOW"

-missionicefly.com/rescue/ video is now complete. Although still jumpy and messy in some places, it is watchable. At the end of the video we are given a very brief glimpse of a URL. Some fast-working players manage to get a still frame: SURVIVALCODE.COM/THEGENESIS/

-Pasting the above URL into the address bar sends the player to a much clearer and more coherent version of the video seen on missionicefly.com/rescue/ . The end of the video sends the player to a page depicting a very icy mountainous landscape. Clicking the image will direct to a second landscape presumably in the same area; a door is set at the base of the mountain, an icefly zooms across the open space between the player and the door, and the monologue continues briefly. Clicking the image again will put the player at the door, and clicking yet again will take the player to a closeup of the bright red panel set in the wall. Yes, a second countdown- one that expires fourteen days after the original on missionicefly.com, right down to the hour.

-Clicking the countdown brings the player to a login screen similar to the one previously seen on TSN. This page notes that "log files" have been added to the player's inventory.

-Logging in brings the player to a "Logged In" screen on the survivalcode site. This is followed by three links: "Back to Home," "View Your Profile," and "Visit Testing Facility."

-At the moment, the option "Visit Testing Facility" merely cycles back to the video seen on survivalcode.com/thegenesis/ and does nothing further.

-"Back to Home" takes the player to a sort of home page, featuring the drilling machine seen in the video as well as an icefly silhouette and the words "DISCOVERY BEGINS NOW." Links abound. Players can:
View their profile.
Logout.
Re-watch the /thegenesis/ video.
Return to TSN.
View a new video that features John Locke speaking to you and only you, baby.
A button labeled "Game Code Activation" is marked as "Coming Soon." It isn't clickable, but I do note that I get the little spinny wheely loader of doom when I hover my mouse over it- and only while it's over the button.

-"View Your Profile" (and also clicking your screenname on the home page) will take players to their profile. Three boxes are found here: Profile, Achievements & Commendations, and Log Files.
The Profile box features the player's screen name, Preservation Code, Join Date, Sense Print, and apparently the middle portion of a QR code (which will not scan properly, being incomplete and all).
Achievements & Commendations is fairly self explanatory; it appears that simply registering and creating an ID Badge will award the player with "Enlist In The Cause" (flavor text: Registered your account) and "Commitment Credentials" (flavor text: Created your badge ID).
Log Files appear to essentially be story-related comic pages. Players start out with a single log of five pages.

-Some enterprising players discovered a website for Traelek Institute after seeing the name featured in one of the log pages. The Institute's page seems fairly simple, with only a short blurb and phone number. Calling this number will result in an automated answer from the Institute.
[transcript goes here]

-Following the voice mail's advice, the Institute's original URL is appended with four words used in the association "test" given. Each of these yields a new web page:
An image of a gold ring.
A newspaper clipping featuring a child apparently having had burned down his parents' house.
Some pages out of a sketch book- the ones seen drawn by the red headed girl in the video. They can be cycled through if the player clicks on them.
A brochure for a military academy directed at teens.

-More on the Institute's pone number: originally given the option to leave a message immediately after the prerecorded schpiel ends, a short time later players can leave messages tagged as "urgent," "confidential," or both. Players can also try contacting an extension number by following the main number with a *, or ** and they can try a PIN for a main extension. It is discovered that players can leave messages for a "representative" by dialing in *[date of the fire from the newspaper article]#0 ; varying reports make it uncertain what portion, if any or all, of this extension allow for contact with this representative.

-Meanwhile, one of the lucky ground troops who came away with an icefly reported sudden flashing from the insect after leaving it plugged in for a while. Believing the flashing pattern to possibly be Morse, he shared his findings with the community. At this point in time consensus is that the light signs out survivalcode.com . Reports of similar flashings have come in, but nothing new has been recorded.



Ohmygod done. D:
Like I said waaay up there, I stopped checking for sources a long time ago. If anyone sees anything incorrect, please comment!

[CarnageBlack]

[thebruce]

I renamed the thread as 'introduction' is sometimes used here asking people introduce themselves to everyone Summary seems more appropriate *shrug*

[Caffiend]

So i dont understand Did i miss all the fun stuff or not
I am always missing stuff like this cus im always sick these days

[DamosGirl]

 so fun!

[SolarMarr]

[Ogawa]

A transcript of the Traelek Institute phone message when you call the number. From LINK:

[GrapesEatSnape]

Thank you guys so much!! I've been so behind and confused!! Now I'm excited

[thebruce]

Good news - the wiki is up and running!

It's in desperate need of content however, though I've added a lot of base content (a bunch of the timeline and base content for current pages).

If you're not good with wikis, but you have a lot of data in your brain, no worried, go and add it to the pages anyway! If you're good with wikis (especially other wikibruce wikis), your help will be much appreciated in populating and editing the pages, to help keep them clean and pleasing to read

So, the wiki off to a decent start I think, but yeah, definitely needs content. Go nuts!

http://icefly.wikibruce.com

[SolarMarr]

Wooooo! Thanks, thebruce! I can't do much at the moment, but I'm all over that wiki tonight.