Natural Disasters are Coming to Upland!

[UPDATE 4.1.23]

April Fools! There is no need to worry about any natural disasters hitting Upland and causing damage to your properties, whether it's a blizzard, a meteor, or any other natural calamity. However, if you're interested in knowing which natural disaster the community was hoping for to arrive in Upland first, you can check out the top three most-voted results listed below.

1. Zombie Invasions
2. Alien Invasions
3. Thunderstorms

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As Upland continues to grow, we are constantly looking for ways to make the metaverse feel more dynamic and alive. We’re excited to announce that the next feature in support of these efforts will be randomly occurring Natural Disasters! When disaster strikes, it will be on the Upland community to work together to literally rebuild the world.

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Natural Disasters

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Much like the real world, natural disasters will have a dramatic effect on how players interact with the metaverse. When a natural disaster occurs, players will need to take action to clean up their cities, neighborhoods, and properties. These actions may include paying UPX to redevelop your properties, or even the staking of Spark to repair your damaged structures. As natural disasters strike, this will create even more utility for UPX and Spark.

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When a natural disaster occurs, you will see a temporary animation on the map that denotes what type of disaster is occurring. Each disaster will have a different set of outcomes that will affect the world. For example, a zombie invasion might require the community to band together and donate UPX to “find a cure,” while something like a tornado or hurricane might require staking Spark to repair damaged structures. In other words, each natural disaster will have a different set of activities associated with it. 

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Recurring Disasters

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Natural disasters will occur at random, with no warning to the community. Players will, however, be notified if a disaster has occurred so that they can take immediate action alongside the community. This will create evergreen opportunities for players to work together across every city and neighborhood. 

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Different natural disasters will also have different scales of impact. Some disasters, like a thunderstorm, may cause minimal damage, whereas something like a giant meteor would have devastating and widespread effects.

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Voting

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This is a large, systematic change, so we wanted to get feedback from the players on which disasters they’d like to see us bring to life first. Deploying each natural disaster is a resource-intensive process so we want to make sure we start with the right ones. Starting today, players can vote on the following list of natural disasters to see which will be deployed first. As a bonus, every player that casts a vote will be eligible to win 5k UPX! 

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• Meteor Devastation
• Zombie Invasion
• Alien Invasion
• Hurricanes
• Tornados
• Earthquakes
• Tsunamis 
• Droughts
• Landslides
• Avalanches
• Sinkholes
• Volcanic Eruptions
• Floods
• Wildfires
• Thunderstorms
• Blizzards

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Note: Some natural disasters will only be applicable to certain locales, depending on their real-world geographic location.

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Conclusions & Feedback

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For now, there is no timeline for when natural disasters will be implemented. We’re still in the early stages of development, but knowing where to start will give us some valuable insight into how to tackle this massive system. Given the scale of this update, we want to make sure we have community buy-in, so be sure to share your thoughts about natural disasters with us on Discord, Twitter, and Reddit!

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