State of the Game - November 2013

[dayrinni]

Hello everyone,

We wanted to give you all an update on the State of the Game.

The four months of A Tempest Season has been very positive! All of us, both staff and players, have worked hard in making a better game.

We want to take a special moment to say that we have found our small player-base to be amazing. You have all contributed in different ways for the betterment of the game. Your help cannot be understated! Many of you have asked the staff what you could to help and we replied to be patient with us. You all have done so and that means so much! While we are a very productive staff, we are small and some aspects take longer than others.

Code
The game has progressed extremely well over the past few months from a code perspective. A whole legion of bugs and balancing issues have been squashed! We've implemented major systems ranging from a new Explorer Class, a Dragon Race, to an Account Based system. We've expanded other classes such as Rogues to make much needed improvements.

We have some plans for the long term code wise and here are some:
-Continue with combat improvements: spacial system, missile weapons, and so on.
-Finish the specializations for the other classes.
-Improve the Ordained Cleric focus skills.
-Begin work on the Ranger class.



Areas
We have also made some great progress in opening new areas. Some of the new ones opened are: the Wretch Caves, the Ice Caves, the Seaside Cliff and the Seaside Pirate Hideout. We have many more in the works, and we will always be expanding the world. Recently, we have reached a great milestone: we broke the 5,000 room number. This is very important as it means our world has grown greatly!

Role Play
I know many of us play this game for the RP. As mentioned in August, the staff has continued with the limited Role Play. What has transpired such far is not an indicator of how RP will be in the future when we have more players. The staff is working hard to complete the needed systems and areas so we can begin advertising.

With that said, we want to thank you all for being patient with the RP. Things will ramp up greatly after we 'open' – in fact, RP will be a prime focus.

We do want to take a moment to encourage all players to make RP on their own, without staff intervention. This is a great way to have fun (even if we were open and had many staff ran RP events). Here are some examples from the previous game that occurred:
-Players adventured in the Silent Wood and held secret rituals in soul binding.
-A player was collecting reaper parts to construct some sort of mechanical ally.
-A religious player was manipulating others to do their bidding.

We will be wrapping up the Zanosria quest line soon and will get onto the next(which will progress much faster). Actinate and Dayrinni have made exciting plans for the future of Tralisia and the world. It is something that we have never seen in a MUD before. We are so excited.

Opening
We originally planned to open at the start of October. This did not happen – the game was not ready. It is still not ready, but it's getting close. We're hoping to reach it sometime by January 2014. There needs to be some major tasks completed though:
1. Finish the combat updates and implement missile weapons.
2. Improve the Ordained Cleric skills.
3. Finish the specializations for the Rogue, Fighter and Cleric classes.
4. The most important are the areas. At least 7 new areas need to be written in order for players to successfully reach level 100. Right now, the majority of the highest level areas do not exist(there are several gaps). We have plans for them, but they need to be completed.
5. We need to improve the quests in Tralisia.

If you want to help with task 4, please send Dayrinni a PM. This task entails writing room descriptions and PMing them to me.

Thank you for all you've done since we've opened – it means a lot and has had a huge impact on the game. I know that together we can build a game that will be really fun to play and be around for years to come. The game is nothing without you – just Dobson collecting wooden coins. Thanks for reading!
-Actinate, Dayrinni and Azrael