filed by Agent O
Hello, Agents, and welcome to another year later? Huh.
You may be experiencing some mild fatigue or disorientation. This is a not unusual side-effect of being deactivated for so long. I’m told there are pharmaceuticals for this, but if you’re feeling off I recommend just having a hot drink, a decent meal, and a shower. Actually, I recommend that for if you’re feeling off in general.
The Black Hole has completed its orbit and is returning to us with our Teams and our Players in tow…
But not together?
Only Moments Later
Navigating to the Blaseball website proper reveals that the front page has been replaced by this:
Moments Ago… the universe ended. A god is dead. A Black Hole swallowed the League. Play was Stopped.
Now… a New Beginning. Officials gather. Challengers orbit. Will you help Them? Can our heroes escape the gravity of their situation?
Fill the stands. Make some noise. Stars will Fall.
Play Must Continue.
In the background of this page there is a slowly rotating ring of white splotches on a black backdrop. One of the other Agents has speculated that said ring is actually the words “PROBABLY BLASEBALL” stretched and warped beyond recognition, but who even knows.
There is also an odometer-style counter, and a big red button reading “Press Start” that instructs visitors to add their email address to “sign up for Fall Ball”. Beneath is a list of “prizes”, all of which are presently locked. Out-of-band these have been referred to as “commemorative pins”, and we have been promised that they will be revealed at certain levels of signup/engagement.
Signing up states that the first Fall (whatever that is) will occur on Friday October 28 at 3PM EDT, which is the equivalent of 2PM Central (Texas) time.
Spies Wake
Fall Ball was announced on the Blaseball main Discord server as a “prologue” to the new era. Shortly afterwards, the Commissioner’s twitter began to tweet in an increasing panic:
wait
was that a burp
oh no
it’s gonna barf
make space
HEADS UP
Over a period of time after the initial announcement on Blaseball maincord, multiple sideservers began pinging @everyone to call people’s attention to said announcement (since the announcement itself did not have a ping attached to it). This included our own.
Seven hours after the initial announcement and roughly an hour after the @everyone ping on spiesserver, our very own agent kit already created a Google Form, just to check that everyone’s button-clicking fingers were still attached. This has since been crossposted to Twitter. Our consensus level of hype has been verified to indeed be very high.
Out-Of-Band Communication
Articles on IGN, PC Gamer, and Screenrant have been published with significantly more information on the game.
Highlights include but are not limited to:
- While we’re keeping the main 24 teams, the players have been sucked out and will be falling from the sky onto random teams, in a manner roughly resembling a draft format. Which players, and whether the process will draw from Static or the Shadows, remains unclear. When Winnie Hess falls, we will have Horse Plinko.
- Said players are likely going to have mods and/or stars crunched down to fit into a significantly smaller space.
- The development team now has 27 members. How they all fit inside a blaseball is a question for the ages.
- Almost all of the game, including the UI, betting system, and underlying sim, has been rewritten completely.
- The lore apparently is going to take on a less continuity-heavy format, where each week will explore a new idea which will usually be dropped afterwards.
- The mobile app will be launching with the new era.
- New “community social features” are supposed to facilitate communication about voting strategies that doesn’t require use of Discord or Twitter, though given that our existing voting strategy talk involves a lot of Google Forms and Google Docs, I have no idea how we’re going to interface with that.
Given that the Spies have a weirdly high incidence of the sim just randomly giving us good players, several Spies are optimistic about our chances of getting a good team out of this. Me, I’m just hoping we don’t get a superpopular player.
So Why Us?
As long as we have content enough for daily Debriefings, I will be doing my earnest best to organize the continued writing of daily Debriefings; and if daily is simply not possible, we will do it as often as we can manage. Sure, it might matter less on an overarching plot level, but what remains out-of-reach of any other type of documentation is the experience of Being A Fan. And honestly? I don’t think that’s ever going to be replaceable.
Should you wish to help contribute to the Debriefings, poke your head into spiesserver, pick up the Recaps role, and keep an eye out for pings. (You do have to be willing to declare yourself an Agent (Spies fan) to contribute.)
Regardless of your status as a Spies fan or otherwise, please do make sure to click the big red button on the Blaseball site, since apparently the “prizes” that will be earned for the signup milestones will be bits of lore. The maincord announcement suggests that the email address you use should match the one attached to your Blaseball account proper, if you already have one, so that you can properly collect your rewards. But don’t sweat it.
I look forward to seeing you.