It’s with extreme satisfaction that today we release a new version of our forum system (please press Ctrl+F5 to clear your browser’s cache and solve any problems you may experience derived from that). Aside a new and improved design and some added features, this version should also be a lot faster than the old one. Please use the Bugs forum to report any problems you may find, and the Suggestions forum if you have any idea on how to improve the new forum system any further. We’ll be keeping a close eye on both! During the next few days we’ll also be correcting all the links connecting you to the old forum system.

Enjoy!

After a lot of consideration we are finally ready to announce all the details regarding the way users will retire their players. During our long discussions about this subject we have concluded that we really needed to make some compromises regarding realism and game balance to get to some solid decisions.

In order to continue playing Footstar after your player retires you’ll need to have a son (you can also reset but these feature will provide you some extra perks). Right after you’re 30 years old you’ll have the ability to use this feature. There are only two ways to have a son: the "normal" way, where you meet a girl and try to develop the relation until you’re both finally ready to have a son. Or you try the "other" way where you just adopt a child.

Either way, you will have the possibility to play with a second character (your player), for free, right after you have a son. And you can later retire your main player whenever you want. Once you retire your player all of his historical data will be kept at the player page. We also intend to let you use your retired player for a manager role: you can manage a team with your retired player while you play with your son in another team.

Now, let’s go right into the details of this new game mode.

Have a Son
As said, you’ll need first to meet a girl. After that point you’ll have to develop your relationship until you reach a point where you can ask her to have a Child. If that happens you’ll be presented with some options:
- In the first place, your son will inherit your nationality. And that will always be his main nationality.
- If the girl has a different nationality your son will also inherit her nationality as a double nationality.
- You can pick the first name of your child (must be a valid name from the father’s / mother’s nationality, using the FS names database). The last name will be inherited from the father’s name.
- The son will inherit the father’s adaptability to other countries. However it will be be made in the proportion of the mother’s intelligence skill. For example: you are 90% adapted to Brazil. If you have a son from a relationship with a girl that has 30% in her intelligence skill, your son will automatically inherit 27% of that adaptability.

Adopt a Child
- You’ll avoid all the troubles that interacting with girls usually require.
- Your adotped son will inherit your nationality. And that will always be his main nationality.
- The player will inherit one of the father’s double nationalities also as double nationality (you’ll have the possibility to pick it yourself).
- You cannot pick the child’s first name. The last name will be inherited from the father’s name.

Some other details:
- (Paid) Second characters cannot have sons. However, in 13 seasons, your child can have a son himself as him will be your main char at that time.
- You can only have one child max. with your main/active player.
- Either you adopt or have a child, these players will always start with 17 years old and 0 skills.
- A child can inherit the father’s money.
- As we all know it’s very hard to get girls with high levels of intelligence (and looks). Mainly due to the low lifestyle level every player has. During the next couple of weeks, we will introduce a small feature that will allow you to invest up to 10000€ on a weekly basis to improve your lifestyle.
- Fame will also take part on the formula to get girls.

This feature will kick in next season with the lifestyle exception, mentioned above.

The third World Cup in Footstar’s history is going to be played in Italy! The Italian organization has already its website, which is located at
http://italyworldcup.altervista.org/. Take a look as I’m sure the guys behind this project have some exciting features to present you in the next couple of days/weeks.

The World Cup draw for the final group stage has already been made as well. Please check it at Competitions >> National Teams and then at the right menu: Group stage. The direct link is here though.

We will end this announcement by listing the official World Cup rules:
- All matches will be played in Italian stadiums.
- Group stage with 32 National Teams in which the top 2 will qualify to the final phase. Three matches per group only.
- Groups were formed by creating 4 pots (1, 2, 3 and 4). Pot 1 contained the top 8 national teams, pot 2 with the next 8 best national teams, pot 3 the next 8 and pot 4 with the last 8 (using rankings). A group is formed by drawing one team from each pot. World Cup groups cannot contain national teams that played in the same qualifying group.
- For the first (group) phase NT managers will be able to call 3 different squads. Only one squad is allowed for the final phase.
- There is an order to the final phase draw: the first placed from group A will play against the second from group B; second from group A vs first from group B, first from group C against second from group D, etc (using the same method and order for all the other groups).
- The quarter finals (second round of the final phase) will be played using the following order: winner from match 1 (1st group A vs 2nd group B) versus winner from match 8 (2nd group G vs 1st group H); winner from match 2 vs winner from match 7, etc. There will be 4 matches on this phase that will be called match 9, 10, 11 and 12.
- Semi finals: winner from match 9 vs winner from match 12 and winner from match 10 vs winner from match 11.
- If you find all this confusing, please check the following image.

The first World Cup matches will be played on 16/08/2010 (next Monday). Good luck for all the participants!

The migration took a bit more than expected but is now completed and everything went as planned.
Due to the complexity of this task you may find some problems during the first hours, please use the Bugs forum to report any issue that you find. In case you’re having difficulties to login at Footstar use our Facebook page to reports us the problem. Trainings occurred, as usual, at 16h (server time).

We’ll be monitoring this first hours/days very closely.

Thanks for your patient and understanding!