submitted by JAllen1127 on Sunday, April 4 2004 at 6:43 PM
It’s time for the 3rd annual TWW Easter Egg Hunt! The contest will start on Monday April 5th at 8:00 PM and will end on Tuesday April 6th at 8:00 PM! The winner will receive a full year’s premium subscription!
Here’s how the contest works:
The egg engine loads eggs into the system and assigns each egg to a random user in the "Who's Online" list of users online. Once an egg is assigned, it will stay in the system until : 1) The user loads a page on TWW or 2) 20 minutes go by. If a user loads the page, the egg will appear somewhere on the page. It will only appear on the first page loaded, so if you miss it, too bad! Currently we have set the limit at 5 active eggs in the system at one time.
Do not keep reloading the page! You will have 20 minutes to find the egg once it is assigned to you. It will be more beneficial to slowly scan each page rather than quickly refreshing. Not loading an egg will not prevent other eggs from being assigned to you. It is even possible to have all eggs in the system assigned to a single user. The best way to increase your odds of winning is to stay on TWW all day!
Remember, no posting of pictures of eggs on the site to fool other users---anyone who does so before the completion of the contest will be suspended!
Have fun!
posted by CrazyJ on Sunday, April 4 2004 at 6:53 PM
The stats page will probably be linked from the homepage when the contest starts tonight.
And there is really nothing to understand. Just keep browsing the site and reading posts and if you see an Egg, click it. If an egg is generated for you in the system, then the next time you refresh a page or read a new post or something then you should see an egg.
CrazyJ is going to post the stats page later tonight, which will show how many eggs each user has. It will also show which users were generated eggs at what time.
Basically how it works is that there are a bunch of active eggs in the system. The computer randomly assigns these eggs to users on the Who's Online list. Once an egg is assigned to you, you then have 20 minutes to find the egg (it will appear on the page you are on or the next page loaded). So once an egg is assigned to you, you will see it when you make your next move (either by reloading the current page you are on, or by clicking a new thread, etc). But it doesnt help to keep hitting refresh rapidly b/c then you will miss your egg, b/c the egg only appears on the next page you hit. The egg will be big and bold colored, so it will be hard to miss anyway. After you find the egg (or 20 minutes elapses) then the egg is assigned to another user, who will then see it on their screen. You can see who has been generated eggs from the stat page that will be up.
I hope this makes some sense--I know it sounds kind of confusing! Once it gets started though you'll see its pretty easy. You just stay online, and if an egg comes to you, then click it. I think CrazyJ said there will actually be about 30 eggs going at once (rather than 5) so that will make it more interesting!