MyCoke

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Coke Studios

Developer(s)	Studiocom
Publisher(s)	The Coca-Cola Company
Distributor(s)	Sulake
Latest version	2.0
Release date(s)	2002
Genre(s)	Massively Multiplayer Online Game
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Platform(s)	Cross-platform
System requirements	Windows & Mac OS X as it needs a Web browser with the Macromedia Shockwave Player plugin
Input	Keyboard, mouse

Coke Studios, is a massive multiplayer online chatting community (MMOCC), much like Habbo Hotel and VMK, created in 2002 by Studiocom for The Coca-Cola Company as part of CokeMusic. In late 2005,"Coke Music" became "Mycoke" and can now be found at www.mycoke.com. The environment had over 7 million users in 2006. The game is open to players seven days a week from 10:00 AM to 2:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. The services and the game are free to use.

The British version of Cokemusic (shut down on July 31, 2006 [1]) bears no relation to the U.S. version. It was a music download site that used cap-codes to provide cheaper downloads.

1 Gameplay
2 Locations
3 Sponsors
4 Changes
5 Gameplay issues
6 Exploits and Cheating
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The primary focus of the game is to create new friends and music, and decorate your own personal studio. A user can create their own music, demo it, and listen to others. Participants can earn decibels, or dB, the currency of Coke Studios, by:

Getting "Thumbs Up" votes from other users when performing music. A user receives 5 dB per "Thumbs Up," and 10 dB in the Coca-Cola Red Room. A user can achieve up to 400 dB per day via this method.
Drinking a Virtual Coke found in crates, vending machines, and refrigerators. Each act is worth 10 dB, and a user can achieve up to 100 dB per day using this method.
Taking a survey on the MyCoke web-site, good for 250 dB per week.
Special Competitions which happen a few times each year.

There are numerous locations where a user can perform throughout the simulated world, including San Francisco, Mexico, Goa, Tokyo, and London. Numerous venues were added with the second release of MyCoke in 2004.

[edit] Locations

MyCoke has many locations, some are fake but most are real. Here is a list of all the MyCoke locations.

London - For relaxed chatting... and intense performing.
Miami - Cool drinks, hot sun, and gorgeous yachts.
Mombasa - A sunset party between mongrove forests, plains, and overhanging cliffs.
New York - The heart of urban culture.
Rio de Janeiro - For beach-party lovers.
Seattle - High level west coast party. It might get a bit windy sometimes.
Sydney - Chillin' by the bay with the amenities of Modern Living.
Tokyo - Big Bear Disco Dancing!
Goa - A Mystical Dance Extravaganza
Alaska - For Chilling....Literally!
Moscow - A sunset party over the Red Square.
Coca-Cola Red Rooms - Earn double decibels with every vote!
"American Idol" Call Casting Rooms - No Desc.
San Francisco - Chic Cali nights.
Central Park - Catch some rays in the Park.
New Orleans - Feel the steet party vibe!
Mexico - A relaxing getaway.
Neptune - Dive into the deep blue.
Atlantis - Must enter the "Submarine" furni to enter
RoofTop - Must enter the "Elevator" furni to enter
Coke Studios Arena -(Newest World View)

Members also involve themselves in several businesses and trades in order to collect valuable items. Things such as 'groups' often called mafias or gangs, and record companies, involve individuals who are paid valued items to work for their company, advertising, hiring, etc. One example was of a group of extreme power for a prolonged 4 years on and off called J.r Records

[edit] Sponsors

Coke Studios has also sponsored a few shows and movies, such as:

Shark Tale, in October 2004- This even had a separate Shark Tale studio. However, it wasn't very popular, all items obtained from there were then transferred to the main My Coke game when it closed down.
American Idol, April 2005
Batman Begins, June 2005
American Idol, 2006
FIFA, June 2006
NCAA March Madness, March 2007

Under all these sponsors new furniture was released for a limited time only. Now these items are classified as 'rares'. Shark Tale items are counted more rare than others, as they are less common, more popular and also have been around the longest.

New American Idol items get released annually (each year when American Idol is shown).

[edit] Changes

Mycoke has changed several times over the years. It started as Coke Studios with version 1.0. The total count of "V-Egos" in Coke Studios, at any given time, were around 5000-6000 people. Coke later developed a Shark Tale version of the game that co-existed with version 1; here the V-Egos wore flippers and a shark fin hat, and the Shark Tale rares were introduced. Later on Cokemusic decided to switch to a new version. They recreated the site and added many new world locations including Neptune, and New Mexico. After this switch some people quit playing Coke Studios for Habbo Hotel instead, and left because of all the glitches and lagging.

[edit] Gameplay issues

There are several gameplay issues with MyCoke:

Occasionally only the shadow of a player will be visible; or the player will not be seen at all.
A bug exists where players are unable to get a Coke bottle from a dispenser.
There is a maximum limit for concurrent players (once it's full you can't get in)
A bug known as "stage blocking", where a player can get on stage when another player is on and causes a block from being able to play music
A "filter" exists that allows users to trade fake "furni" to other users to scam them. This is by far the biggest issue MyCoke has.
Many people complain of the excess of lag which makes the game very hard to play. Many people have moved to different games such as Habbo Hotel.
For almost a year, a bug has existed where certain CDs made by the player will not work.

[edit] Exploits and Cheating

MyCoke, formerly Coke Music has seen many stages, uprising and falls of cheating and exploiting. Cheating started from as early as the introduction of Coke Studios v1.x. This first version was under the exact same codebase as an early version of Habbo Hotel. Many old exploits which had since been patched in Habbo Hotel could be used in Coke Studios without modification. Programmers most prominent in this version included hackers Blade101 (also known as Blad3101), AwayFromKeyboard (also known as Hail), EnglishNub (also known as Jordy), DoubleD (also known as DvDaf) and Shunned (also known as Poet).

After this time, the first instance of the new Coke Studios 2.x was introduced in the form of a Shark Tale promotion. Many prominent exploits and cheats were found which to this day plague the economy of Coke Studios. DoubleD had left soon after Coke Studios 2.x release and was suspected to take form on Habbo Hotel. Hail, Blad3101, and Shunned were still prominent in this period, also with several programmers making themselves known in the community, Some of these programmers included Takeshi, Vis (now known simply as Chris), Plnball, Dusty (also known as Bahb), and Mjmorrell. Mjmorrell founded the largest and longest lasting mycoke exploiting website to date. It is still around today. Exploits in this new version were vast, such as the availability of any furniture (including rares) in the game for free with a simple catalogue file edit. Coke Studios accounts could also be very easily compromised by simple encoding their v-ego name into base64. Also many atributary actions in Coke Studios could be performed due to the lack of encryption in the packets sent and received by the Coke Studios client. Many of these exploits followed into the official BETA release of Coke Studios 2.x.