Welcome to Gaia! ::

For those of you who may not know yet, here have been some big changes and some big news regarding WW in the past few days. The long awaited Whuddle Online Gossip Log has finally been posted! They have several different sections and each has different news related to WW.

Everyone who was once a member needs to go and register to show your love for WW! They even have a little badge you can have that says 'I <3 Wuddleworld'

From The WOG:

Posted in Announcements by The Elder Council on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

"It took me a long time to compose this blog post - the topic is not an easy one for myself or any of the original team members of WhuddleWorld. The news that was promised is probably not going to be at all what any of you expected - it certainly isn’t what we expected.

The Story…

After WhuddleWorld ceased its online operations almost 10 months ago (April 2007) I and the dev team immediately began to look for options to keep WhuddleWorld going. We all believed that it was a very unique and worthwhile site and we wanted to do whatever we could to find a way to keep it going. Many other “friends” of WhuddleWorld also attempted to assist us voluntarily, as well, with things like helping to pay for hosting, domain renewals, demos to potential “buyers”, etc. out of their own personal funds. Others offered their services and even equipment upgrades (computer repairs, networking maintenance, legal and business related services, etc.) voluntarily as well, in attempt to help us find a solution for the situation. (We’d like to offer up a very heartfelt thank you to each of those individuals - you all know who you are!)

In the early months we were optimistic and had many companies we talked to about WhuddleWorld - and we remained insistent about trying to keep the general “spirit” of the community in place under potential new ownership. Please don’t ever think that, even as a business, we didn’t care about each of you and we wanted to ensure that whomever became the new “captain of the ship” (owner) in the future cared as much about all of you as we did. But we seemed to be unable to work out a deal with terms that worked for everyone involved. This is, to be honest, just the way business negotiations go sometimes.

As the months began to drag on, it became difficult to remain hopeful. Most of the dev team had to move on, simply out of necessity (everyone needs to eat and pay their bills, right?) and only I and Elder Kaitler were able to hang on. I was able to stay on because my husband (and I appreciate his efforts more than I can put into words) was supportive of our goals and had a full time job to help us keep afloat, and Elder Kaitler has a very supportive family who also believed in WhuddleWorld and what we were trying to do who also was able to help her stay the course.

But, sadly, we’ve reached a point where that is no longer possible. NOW, that doesn’t mean WhuddleWorld won’t be back someday in the near future - but we want to be clear that NONE of the original dev team will be involved in any future launch of WhuddleWorld or of decisions made about the general content and implementation of the site in the future. If the “assets” of WhuddleWorld are sold, we do of course, wish the new owners the best of luck and continued success with the site, but Elder Kaitler and I have to move on at this point.

We understand this may upset some of you who have been so supportive and faithful and patient with all of these ups and downs over this past 10 months and we’re truly sorry. We (Elder Kaitler and I) will be working on a new project and we hope that we’ll have an opportunity to “see” all of you again else places on the net, but it is time for us to finally say goodbye to WhuddleWorld. (Sorry, we can’t mention that new project here.)

Sadly, this blog will be removed at the end of the month as well, as this was maintained voluntarily, by myself, Elder Kaitler, Elder Codus and Elder Sarukie. We’re not sure if the domains will remain in tact - that will be up to the the shareholders of WhuddleWorld, Inc. and, potentially, the new owners of WhuddleWorld to determine in the future. Again, please keep in mind - there are many talented people out there and we remain hopeful to the ideal that if WhuddleWorld is ever transferred to new owners, that they will do a great job in re-launching the “magical world of Whuddle” and who knows, it may even be better than what I and the original development team were able to put together. Again - there is no anger from us toward anyone, we simply wanted you to understand why the WOG was going away and that Elder Kaitler, myself and the original development team members will not be returning to WhuddleWorld.

One final GIANT hug to each of you. We’ll miss you all and our little Whuddles very much! And hopefully maybe we’ll run into each other again somewhere on the ‘net!

~Elder Lyrael

EDIT: Please note while there are still businesses considering buying WhuddleWorld, we have no confirmation at this time of a sale or that they intend to re-launch or publish WhuddleWorld in it’s original format. This is why Elder Kaitler and I have now had to move on to other things. The most recent discussions and negotiations regarding the purchase of WhuddleWorld, while we believed would lead to a re-launch of WhuddleWorld, changed direction unexpectedly earlier this week.

EDIT2: It would be unethical for us (Lyrael and Kaitler) to “use” our access to all of you through WhuddleWorld to advertise or inform you of our new project. I’m so sorry. But we just can’t do that. But you are all very good “internet detectives” - I’m sure someone out there will figure out where we’ve gone. ;P "

~~~

More From the WOG, Elder Lyrael's reply to comments made by Bibbles — January 18, 2008

RESPONSE:

"I’m sorry, but I just have to respond to this. Elder’s Kaitler and I (nor any of the elders for that matter) did not just “abandon ship” as some of you seem to think. We put EVERYTHING we had into trying to find a way to get WhuddleWorld launched and back up again. And we shared with you CAREFULLY, what we knew or believed to be true ourselves. Up until just days ago WE WERE told and believed that WhuddleWorld would be purchased and that the purchasing company’s intent was to do JUST THAT - relaunch. At the beginning of this week they changed their minds. We cannot control that nor do we have the personal funds to maintain this site. Trust me, if we could have found ANY WAY to do so, we would have and we tried. Elder Kaitler and I are beyond bankruptcy level in our personal finances, and if we do NOT go off to pursue other things we will each be living in a cardboard box begging for food. I do not say that for pity, but in simple defense and outrage that anyone would accuse us of not doing EVERYTHING we possibly could and then some. Many, many people would have abandoned this property months ago. We _chose_, willingly, not to do so - because we felt a responsibility to this community.

People made promises to us that we, naively, believed they would make good on, and we then in turn reported those things to you. If those people then did not deliver what they promised to us, then we were unable to live up to those things that we had promised all of you. That was probably an error on our part, but certainly no intentional lies were ever told. And I would think, at the very least, those of you who have been around this long, should know that to be true about us.

WhuddleWorld, with just 5 people maintaining it full time (and this is just maintaining - not including continuing development) cost approximately 35,000 per month - and as it grew in size and scope, this cost would have increased as well. The entire team that you may mistakenly believe was getting “fat” off of your purchases (the site was bringing in less than average of 3k per month when we shut down) was working for what has been defined as “poverty level” wages - literally, what we absolutely needed to get by on and nothing more. Elder Kaitler and I have been working since April 2007 on trying to find a solution for WhuddleWorld with NO wages whatsoever, and continued to support ongoing costs out of our own pockets. Every bit of WhuddleWorld always took into consideration that while we needed to be a profitable business, we WOULD NOT DO SO at the expense of our membership. So believe what you like, but I take great personal offense that anyone would believe or suggest that we benefited or profited from unfairly, or abandoned WhuddleWorld in ANY WAY.

And you can start a petition, but unless you have approximately $750,000 or roughly around that much with which to purchase the site, it’s assets, the trademarks and deal with the shareholders (those people who gave us money to develop WhuddleWorld to begin with) and pay its debts, then a petition will not do much good."

~~~

Bibbles later went on to apologize.