It’s award season in Hollywood right now, and it’s always fun to look back at all the amazing shows and movies that came out over the last year. We’ve had our own exciting year on Arena, that I wanted to look back on and celebrate too. We covered a lot of the new features earlier in the year, but even more has changed even since then! As well, I want to talk about what we launched today, and what’s to come, SO LET'S GET STARTED!

Discord Polls and Adventures

First off, we should really talk about the new Discord bot and the Polls and Adventures we rolled out in June last year. I know Cartire and I have had a lot of fun watching to see if we can guess what the community is going to do and pick and coming up with the adventures themselves. 
Plus, now we have a new way to give out ARP, and have fun with you all while doing it? Honestly, it’s a solid win/win situation on this one. We’re looking at adding even more features to the bot this year, but sorry, I won’t be fixing Cartire’s terrible dice rolling skills.

We cleaned up Game Vault

We launched the Game Vault in 2022, which feels like a decade ago honestly. We have loved being able to get some really awesome codes for fantastic games for you all, but we weren’t really happy with all the site issues with it. The dev team worked hard and even with our biggest month EVER in December, we’re proud how well the Game Vault holds up now, and we hope we can keep expanding it with new games for the community.

Added more Twitch Streamers

We also were able to expand the Twitch streamer offerings to cover a lot more ranges and time zones by partnering with our friends over at Team Liquid to include their streamers with the Alienware Extension! We also added new Hive members to team like SypherPK and Sydeon. Now it’s rare to check the site and find a time that at least one streamer isn’t online. I have a lot of big plans for the Twitch extension next year, so stay tuned for that!

Dell Rewards In More Countries

We were also very lucky to be able to add Dell Rewards to France, UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand! That's so many countries that can now get some some extra money off on their new gear!

Arena Arcade

You told us you wanted to be able to play the mini games outside of the daily quests, so we rolled out the Arena Arcade Beta! Now you can play a selection of mini games any time you want on Arena for free! Don't forget, it's just a beta right now, so we have a few more fun ideas for the arcade that you will definitely want to check out once it's fully released.

Community Events Update 

One of my favourite features we rolled out this year are the changes to Community Events. Now to keep things exciting, everyone has to hit a personal milestone to be eligible, which means that even if a certain level was passed when you found out about the event, now you can come back and earn all the rewards even if you started late. 

Community events as a whole has been a great feature that we really love and I can't wait to keep expanding on it as this year unfolds as well!

So... What's New?

Well, that’s a wrap on 2023, but we already have some BIG new features we’re launching TODAY! So I want to take a minute and walk you throw some of these.

Control Center

First on the list is Control Center. It’s time to say goodbye to the old sidebar as, let's be honest, it didn’t fit with the rest of the site anymore, and made more sense on the designs of the past. Now, to access anything related to your Arena account, hit the gear, select Control Center, and you’ve got access to everything.    

From here you can check your quests, change your Avatar, find your game keys, manage your ARP, check your messages, and modify any of your account settings. This new layout will also make it a lot easier for us to add new features onto the site so stay tuned to see what else we may be adding in the future.

Profile Page

We have also updated the profile pages to be a lot cleaner and let you show off your artifacts, and more. You may also notice that your avatar looks a little bit different in here. We’ve updated the proportions of your little Alien to make sure they fit the rest of the site better. Also while on this page you can find lists of the folks you’re following as well as your recent Relays and Achievements…

What is this Relay thing you are talking about?

This is the feature that I personally am the most excited about. For the people who have been here for years, you’ll know that forums have long been a part of AWA, but you probably have also noticed that their usage and prevalence has dropped over the years as well. With so many new tools like Discord, Social Media, and more, communities have found many new ways to share updates that aren’t as intimidating to newcomers as forums are. 

With Relay, we’ve reimagined how the forums work on Arena and made them more bit sized and easier to discover. We’ve shrunk the length of posts, keeping them short and sweet, to share all your gaming and Alienware related news and updates. You’ll be able to comment on other posts to add your own thoughts, as well as react to let the author know how you feel!
We understand this is a VERY big change, so there will be some growing pains as we get used to things, and fix any of the bugs that creep up now that you all have a chance to check this out for yourselves. We would love to hear all your feedback on the feature (just keep it constructive). You can leave a comment here and let us know what you think or tell us something you’d love to see in the future. 

That's All Folks! For Now...

That’s all I wanted to cover for today, but there is even more in the pipeline that might be here even sooner than you think. Our intrepid explorers have also made new discoveries on their adventures that contain fantastic new powers and information from a lost civilization... And that’s not all, but I don’t want to giveaway anything, but I think the next feature rolling out might be one that everyone will be quite excited for…

Cheers,
Pylawn
Alienware Arena Global Site Admin!