2013: Our year in review (Part 1)

We've had an amazing and busy year this year, with lots of developments and more expansion of Z&A. Like last year we thought it would be fun to write a review of this year's key events.

January was a month that looked pretty quiet but, behind the scenes, was very busy. Antony and Zardia/Vila were busy working away on brand new product ranges that would be revealed the following month. Also, during the month, we were starting to evaluate CasperVend as a vendor system for our mall locations and also with a view to launching an affiliate programme (something people had been nagging us about for quite some time). Part of this testing involved a dabble with lucky chairs.

During January we also put the finishing touches in place in the Raven Park Mansion and we also added a pony play area to the region.

Finally, we decided to make great use of one of our RLV vehicles, while also making great use of our shop bot (Zanda), and gave everyone the chance to take a naked subbie for a ride around the shop (or the whole region if you like).

February was an amazingly busy month for us. To start with, it was our third birthday. To coincide with this we released two brand new product ranges. One was Raven Street, a range of rigged mesh latex dresses designed by Vila; the other was a brand new range of catch and hold furniture and BDSM devices, all built on a ground-up rewrite of our device code that Antony had started work on the previous November.

During February we also finally launched our affiliate programme, installed a cute swing on Raven Park and took part in Bouddicea's grand reopening celebrations.

March too was very busy. We added a new game to Raven Park and also released the gift we'd given everyone at the birthday party as a product. We also introduced another bot to the main store -- Black Fishnet -- to help show off the Raven Street dresses (we also introduced the world to George, the Raven Street delivery bird). We released three garden-related products based around the new Z&A device scripts (one partly inspired by the fact that Antony's Mistress had him as her human pony at that point).

We also released a product that Antony had been planning for quite some time and had finally got around to development, much to his Mistress' delight: the Z&A Sub-Allowance.

March is also the anniversary of Z&A taking on the other half of the region and forming Raven Park Rentals, which also means that it's the anniversary of Evelock coming to Raven Park. To celebrate that we decided to have a little party. Although we didn't realise it at the time this was the start of something that would turn into a (mostly) regular event.

This month we also started yet another product range. This time it was one that wasn't planned in advance, it just happened as fallout from a chance conversation. The fallout was that we started a range of petite RLV devices.

Finally, given that it was Easter, we had an experiment with Casper's Midnight Madness system and gave people the chance to get their hands on the Z&A Chocolate Cell.

April had a few product releases including the feather duster gag, six more devices in the new range of catch and hold RLV dungeon furniture and the release of two new RLV-enabled vehicles.

We also had a couple more dances at Raven Park. Again, at this point, it wasn't so much a planned regular event, just more a case of Raven Park residents and friends getting together and having some (mostly geeky) fun. The first dance of the month was themed on the TV show Firefly. The second was themed around all things relating to middle-earth. During these dances there was much talk about other themes that would be fun to do and, so, a list was drawn up and this became a regular fortnightly event for the rest of the year.

May started out by revealing a project that Antony and his Mistress had been working on behind the scenes (well, mostly it was Antony's Mistress doing all the work -- she's the one who throws around the big prims). Earlier on this year we'd realised that the main store was getting very full again and Antony already had lots of new products planned. More space was needed. So it was finally decided that we needed to build the "last shop we'll ever need" -- that's to say, a shop big enough that it should cover all our needs for quite some time to come (as of the time of writing, 7 months on, we still have plenty of empty space on the top floor so this plan is working).

At the start of the month we nuked the old shop and dropped the new one in place. We also released four new products that day and also had a dance to celebrate the arrival of the new shop.

Other product releases this month included more petite RLV devices, a new addition to the Z&A cell store, a palm tree to go with the cell, and more additions to the new range of RLV devices (including the first couple of "reboots" of our very early builds).

Raven Park dances this month included the dance to celebrate the new store (okay, technically not at Raven Park) and Steampunk.

June saw us releasing more RLV device products that aimed to "reboot" our very early builds. This included the short and tall display stands, the spanking stand, the display board and the range of cell beds.

The Raven Park dances carried on and started growing. Themes this month included Zombies, Blade Runner and losing my mind.

Behind the scenes we also started the initial planning for The Femdom Hunt IV. Also, late on in the month, Antony started testing out some ideas for a product that would be one of our gifts for the hunt and would go on to be a new Z&A product later on in the year. Again, this was something that his Mistress had been asking for for a while and it was high time he delivered.

And that takes us half way through Z&A's 2013. The review of the second half can be found in this blog post.