JT Smith

It's officially been 4 months since we launched the Perl based MMO: The Lacuna Expanse, so I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on its progress.

First, thank you. Without you Lacuna wouldn't exist. Many of you are playing it, and many others of you have built modules, techniques, and technologies that we used to build it. So thanks!

Three new jobs were created after launch to help serve the community. One of them was even a Perl job! So Lacuna has already started helping increase the Perl-based economy. This may not matter much to you, but it tickles me.

Today we launched our second server. This one is a tournament server, where the speed is greatly increased, the map is greatly decreased, and there is an end game.

A good number of you have spawned the Games::Lacuna::Client module. It's a Perl wrapper around the Lacuna web services API. Some have used this to automate their accounts, some have used it to generate web sites that mine data from the Expanse. And some have even started creating MUD-like clients for Lacuna.

Games::Lacuna::Client is HUGE for the Perl community, here's why: First, several people have been using it to teach Perl and web services development at their Perl Mongers meetings. Second, many people who are fans of the Lacuna Expanse are picking up Perl for the first time so that they can use Games::Lacuna::Client with their account! That's a big win.

We've continued evolving and releasing the modules we created for the Lacuna Expanse. Some include Chat::Envolve, Facebook::Graph, and JSON::RPC::Dispatcher.

Our user counts continue to rise. Our retention rate continually outpaces the most popular Facebook games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, and CityVille. We're profitable and plan to add more Perl jobs this year because of the game's success. So over all, I'd say it's a big success. Yay Lacuna! Yay Perl!