Merry Christmas GazelleGames!

Another year has just flown by and the holiday season is here once again. As we relax and spend time with our loved ones, we'd like to reflect back and get you all caught up on recent site developments over the past year.

This has been an interesting year, to say the least. Site stability and performance has notably improved due to some behind the scenes hamster wheel tuning from our tireless and intrepid sysop and technical staff. Meanwhile, staff changes abound. Some staff have taken a step back to focus on other endeavors, other staff have taken on additional roles and several new staff members have swelled our ranks. We are very pleased to formally announce the addition of 4 new staff members this year! Just ask lepik, who's been furiously whipping the new recruits (into shape) behind the scenes for months.

So, please join me in giving a hearty welcome to our new Senior Moderator lilac and our new Torrent Moderators dyno (Windows/DOS), tesnonwan (Windows) and Dieslrae (e-books). Lastly, we've also added 4 new staff trainees this year — zibzab, MagusV, sataris and tongakas_1. We are most grateful for their ongoing work and dedication, so please show them all some love when you run into them around the site and IRC.

Major Milestone
We're extremely happy to announce that we now have (very nearly) 500,000 active torrents! This is a truly monumental achievement, and we are so very proud of everyone who has contributed to make this community what it is today.
[ Updated Dec 24th, 11:22 UTC: 500,000th torrent was uploaded! ]

IP Address Change
We recently migrated to new hardware and as a result the site's IP address has changed. The new IP address is: ***.***.*.***. Please make a note of this for those of you who use split tunneling (or static routing) when accessing the site.

Editors
As alluded to in the Valentine's Day announcement, we've also made another important change in the way we approach torrent moderation and staff training. And so, we are pleased to formally announce the creation of the Editors program. Editors are a dedicated group of users who assist our torrent moderation staff with tasks related to torrent group content and formatting. They review torrent groups for errors and omissions and fix those torrent groups for our Torrent Moderators to then review and formally check. For all Editors, there is also the potential opportunity for advancement to become Torrent Moderators themselves (if they wish). Aside from a spiffy new secondary user class, Editors are also featured on the Staff page and receive some other perks (like free whippings from lepik).

Going forward, the Editor program will be the means by which new Torrent Moderators are trained. So, for anyone who is interested in joining the Editor program, please send a Staff PM with a brief application. For those who have already volunteered and not heard back, we will be reaching out to you in the coming weeks to discuss next steps.

And now, on to the real reason you're reading this post...

Winter Items & Crafting
Santa's reindeer follow a strict and energizing diet on Christmas Eve to fuel their journey around the world — gaming-themed pancakes! These pancakes give all of the reindeer the boost they need to deliver presents to every well-behaved gazelle — all in a single night. It’s an enormous task, but pancakes are the fuel that make it possible. Fortunately, the pancake griddle is fueled by a powerful quantum singularity, so fuel will not be an issue.

This year, however, disaster has struck! A herd of hungry reindeer stumbled upon the pancake stash and devoured every last one. There’s no time for Santa’s elves to whip up another batch, so Rudolph, Blitzen, and the rest of the team are in trouble. Santa and his elves are counting on us to save Christmas — can we cook up enough nerd pancakes to save the day? Let’s roll up our sleeves and get flipping!

Many thanks to MagusV, ThePeach and dyno for their invaluable help in creating this event!

To celebrate this wonderful time, our lovely Community Gazelle put together a little present for everyone to enjoy. You may have noticed the gift box in this post. Clicking it will award you with a variety of materials to be used in crafting, a chance to get some unique pets and legacy items, as well as a variety of chocolate, cookies, and gold! We hope you'll enjoy your gift. You can claim it here:

Be sure to claim it within two weeks. There's a warm front coming up and we fear that all remaining boxes will have melted by then.

GGn Staff