It is our collective delight, as the entire SOTF: Cyber staff team, to make this announcement for you all: our official version launch date. We know some of you have been waiting for this with bated breath, so we'd like to break our silence on the matter for good. With that in mind, it is our great pleasure to announce the official launch date for the first version of SOTF: Cyber.
SOTF: Cyber V1 will go live on November 25th, 2023 (11/25/2023).
On this day, several things will open for public viewing. We will reveal the SOTF: Cyber Prologue, detailing the initial events of the network attack; the SOTF: Cyber Student Roster will also go public, showing the terrorist evaluations of each profile as well as each student's assigned weapons; the SOTF: Cyber Armory will detail each weapon distributed throughout.
In addition, we have decided to hold an official Roll Call to ensure that everyone with a character approved for the version is available and present to participate. The Roll Call will become live two weeks before the version's launch, on November 11th, 2023 (11/11/2023). Everyone with an approved character must post there to receive a place on the roster.
Last but not least, as a result of the holiday season that takes place in the second half of December—something which often leads to a substantial decline in activity amongst handlers—we have elected to postpone our initial timetable for First Rolls until after the conclusion of the year 2023. The First Rolls will go live on January 1st, 2024 (1/1/2024).
Below is the timeline that SOTF: Cyber will be following henceforth:
November 11th, 2023 (11/11/2023):
The Official SOTF: Cyber V1 Roll Call thread will go live and will get posted from the Cyber_HELPline account. All handlers who wish to participate in SOTF: Cyber, regardless of their characters having previously gotten approved by staff, must make a post in the thread to confirm and affirm their continued participation.
November 20th, 2023 (11/20/2023) - November 25th, 2023 (11/25/2023:
All characters approved for SOTF: Cyber and confirmed at roll call will get rostered. In the process, they will be given an evaluation by the terrorists and receive a randomly assigned weapon from the list compiled by SOTF: Cyber staff members. We will also post the SOTF: Cyber Armory in this frame, containing details on the weapons assigned in the version.
November 25th, 2023 (11/25/2023):
The SOTF: Cyber Arena, SOTF: Cyber Prologue], and SOTF: Cyber Student Roster will go live for all handlers to view. The version will start on this date; all relevant locations will open for handlers to post threads within, and activity enforcement (requiring one post every fourteen days) will begin in earnest. It is the official launch date for SOTF: Cyber V1.
Furthermore, this is the date we expect all profiles to be submitted. After this, applications will be closed to new submissions; all handlers with character profiles submitted before November 25th, 2023, will have until January 1st, 2024, to complete all edits that the SOTF: Cyber staff team requests of them within their profile critiques.
December 10th, 2023 (12/10/2023):
Fourteen days will, by this date, have passed since the start of activity enforcement. We expect every character approved before the launch to have at least one post in the Arena by this point. However, every inactive handler will receive one official warning about their activity (as well as a fourteen-day grace period to post again afterward).
December 24th, 2023 (12/24/2023) - December 31st, 2023 (12/31/2023):
This timeframe will be our holiday break. During this timeframe, the activity clock will stop entirely; we will not expect any posting to occur within this week. Activity enforcement will continue before and after this period. That said, we will consider activity during this timeframe for all activity enforcement purposes after the end of this timeframe.
January 1st, 2024 (1/1/2024):
SOTF: Cyber V1's First Rolls will occur. All profiles not yet approved by SOTF: Cyber staff (barring circumstances outside of handler control, in which we will make exceptions) will get placed in the SOTF: Cyber Forfeited and Abandoned Characters section; any character denied this way is still eligible for resubmission for any future version.
From this point forward, activity enforcement will resume. In addition, every two weeks from this point, rolls will occur until the version's roster gets reduced to a total of ten characters still simultaneously alive and present. Two weeks after that, the Final Ten Rolls will determine the characters who will participate in SOTF: Cyber Endgame.
The future is now.