osu!weekly #40

Hello everyone! It's the penultimate osu!weekly of 2015, and the last post before Christmas! The holiday cheer has been spread like the gifts under the tree. What kinds of festive happenings are taking place in the community? Read on to find out!

As you may have noticed, the osu! client has been updated with a festive theme! Cycling through the background images are entrants from last year's holiday fanart contest, and we have the osu! Christmas theme making a return courtesy of nekodex. As mentioned previously, osu! is taking big steps towards having our own creative content. You can expect to hear much more of osu! original music from here on out!

This year's OWC was our most exciting one yet, but there are no brakes on the World Cup train! The registration deadline for osu!mania 7K World Cup has passed! Be sure to stay tuned for more information. If you would like to discuss the tournament or just want to be a part of the excitement, head over to the discussion thread! Check out the wiki article for any additional information you may need.

It would seem one of the prizes the OWC champions will receive was missed in last week's news post. All members on the top 3 teams of OWC will also be receiving a limited edition osu! mug. If you want to have your own fabulous osu! labeled drinking device, worry not! These mugs are rolling out into the osu! store next year!

IamKwaN has thrown together a neat video showcasing all the skins used by the players on the winning team of the recently concluded OWC, the United States! She has also compiled a list of them for convenient archiving. If you're interested in knowing how it feels to play like a world champion, hop over and check it out!

Two taiko players have broken the 10000 pp barrier for the first time this week! tasuke912 was the first to reach the mountainous milestone, followed quickly by _yu68. With that, all game modes now have 5 digit pp players! The performance system as we know it was introduced almost 2 years ago. Tom94, who had created his own ranking metric previously, built upon ppv2 with his ideas seeking to create a compound skill-based ranking system. The game and its community has come a long way since then!

Players and mappers alike are showing their holiday spirit by switching to Christmas themed avatars. Monko2k has even created Christmas themed avatars for the entire development team! Please show your gratitude to those who make outstanding efforts in spreading the joys of presents and family. But mostly presents.

On the topic of holiday avatars, are you looking for help with getting a Christmas themed map ranked in time for Christmas? Lust's holiday modding queue is looking to aid mappers who want to spread the Christmas cheer, and all you have to do is sport a Christmas themed avatar to get in on the festivities. There is a little less than 4 days left before the big day, so if you want to make it in time, get in there now!

Bad news for people who wanted to sneak in some really late holiday shopping. The osu!store is now closed for the holidays and will not return until 2016. Did you give someone the gift of osu! this year? Let us know in the comments!

It appears that peppy is taking a well deserved break for the rest of the year. Make sure to drop by with your holiday wishes over at his blog!

Finally, the staff of osu!news wants to wish you a happy and safe week of celebrations. As usual, send me your suggestions for future issues of osu!weekly at news@ppy.sh. Special thanks to Tasha and Deadbeat for helping me through my first week! Watch out for the mistletoe!

—Nyquill