Developer's Desk: Year End 2014 Edition

As another year draws to a close, it’s time to look back over the list of accomplishments from this year. I must say, I have quite a sense of pride in what we've done, as well as excitement for what's planned for 2015.

We started out the year the same way that 2013 finished up, with a celebration of our 10th Anniversary. We had many players return for this special event that brought special pets, new items to wear, and best of all, a whole month of bonus experience. It was such a hit at the start of 2014 that we thought we'd do the same and kick off 2015 with a month of bonus experience. Starting January 1st and for the whole month, we'll be doubling the experience players earn for monster kills and crafting items.

Our first major content update for 2014 brought some significant changes for new players. Militia Surplus Officers were restocked with lower tier equipment for tier one and two adventurers. These items, available on Lesser Aradoth and New Trismus, are the equivalent to basic crafted gear and allow players to better defeat mobs of their level. Though they won't fully replace a customized set of good player-crafted gear, they have made combat at the lower levels go smoother, so that the newly Gifted can complete quests offered to them as they gain levels.

And speaking of quests… We've added over one hundred new quests this year to players of all levels. The year started out with new quests for the Island of Ice. And the final update of the year expanded the island chain experience with quests on the Island of Fire. Combined, the two areas have over two dozen quests for players levels 80 and above. Many are repeatable daily for bonus experience and coin. Most recently, the island of New Trismus has undergone a revamp. New quests were added, and a new storyline for New Trismus has made things a lot more interesting. With all this fun focused on new players and elder players, you might think we’d forgotten about mid-level players. Don’t worry. We've got all sorts of design in the works and 2015 is going to be an exciting year.

The final patches of 2014 brought another major change for players with characters at the upper-most levels. The "Epic Loot Content" has changed both how players obtain epic items and what the final rewards are. We wanted to have a system where players would still be crafting the most powerful items in game, but sought to balance that with items collected by adventurers, and we think this new system has accomplished just that. Players have quests they can complete daily where they earn Epic Tokens and those tokens are then used to purchase formulas and crafting components. Further various components are found on the monsters themselves, so there is always a reason to help out those on the quests for the chance that the component you need will drop.

Since we’re talking about quests, another important addition to Istaria in 2014 was repeatable quests. This new feature has been used frequently in our updates and allows the developers to set a timer on quests, so that they can be repeated at regular intervals by players. As tiers and systems are revamped, players can expect to see hourly, daily, and even weekly quests that run on a timer, without having to wait to complete the quest as they had in the past. This timer runs while players are offline or in game. Other new features include streamlining network messages, and having more information stored locally. Now most things, such as item name, description, and quest information are stored client side. This has reduced the delay in sending network messages and improved network performance greatly for everyone, and it is a feature we intend to continue to make use of in 2015. Another big change in 2014 was the newly upgraded launcher. This new launcher has everything needed to create and manage characters and preferences with a lot of flexibility. One of the features we've received the most feedback on and many make use of often, is the ability to archive characters. This new option allows players to place a character they aren't intending to login for some time into "Archive" so that it no longer counts against their active character slots requirement. And restoring a character from the archive only requires players to log in to support and make the request.

Looking forward into the New Year, the first big project for 2015 will be to revamp the tier 3 content. This area of the world stretches all the way from the Tazoon region and the Barasavian Desert to Mahagra and beyond, so it will be a major undertaking for our whole staff. The early parts of this revamp are actually in the internal testing stages now and will be coming to Blight in the first part of the year, but due to the scope it will likely be year's end before this revamp is complete. Another focus for the team will be to update and revamp the crafting quests. Plans are in the works to bring back Resource Parcels to Istaria so that players can have something to craft and deliver to vendors for bonus experience, making crafter leveling a bit less tedious. And while this isn't all that's planned for 2015, that is all I can reveal right now. We want to save a few surprises for later in the year.

It is our hope here at Virtrium that this past year was a joyous and event filled one and that your "Year in Review" was as good as ours. And I personally plan to get a new character started to take full advantage of January's bonus experience. How about you?

For a complete look at what the Content Updates for 2014 have been and all the live updates, please visit the news section on the community site: community.istaria.com

From all of us at Virtrium, wishing you the best for 2015 and a Joyous New Year!

Istaria Development Team