Developers' Desk April 2009
Developer's Desk April
Can you believe a third of 2009 has passed already?! The year seems to be going by faster than a bank executive can spend bail out money! But time flying by hasn't stopped the Virtrium team from continuing to work hard to give Istaria a much needed stimulus package itself. Here's a peek at what has been happening this past month.
Istaria has gone environmentally friendly! That's right. In March we sent out a press release about our new "Green Program" and took the first steps toward making Istaria more environmentally friendly. We released a new method for downloading the game on our website that is considerably more efficient, and more user friendly. This download will allow players who have to install the game to save on their electric bills as well, which of course will help the economy. We feel that everyone needs to do their part to help, and this is Virtrium's way of putting some of that desire to help into action. http://www.virtrium.com/2009.04.01pressrelease
As many of you know, the whole team has been working diligently for months on the Blighted Labyrinth end game content. This past month has been a challenging one for the design team as they add this new content. For those who have been waiting for the project, I'm afraid you will have to wait a bit longer than originally planned. You see, the team has decided to place the project on temporary hold. They've come to realize that placing dragons and bipeds together in such a tightly enclosed space as caves would prove to be a "bad thing" for everyone. Under consideration currently is a plan to create two different systems of caves, one for dragons and one for naka. While no one wants to encourage segregation in Istaria, we feel that it is in the best interests of all to keep dragons and naka as far apart as possible, and this is the most viable solution. In addition, providing content that challenges both dragons and bipeds in the same environment has proven difficult. The design team has carefully considered why this is and decided to make some changes to the post-100 naka advancement before releasing the Labyrinth.
Previously those who played one of the non-dragon races, commonly referred to as a naka-duskael, were able to pick from dozens of different schools, and could essentially be any school they wished to be at a moment's notice. The Virtirum team has determined that this is bad for dragons, the superior race in Istaria, and will be taking steps to both prevent this from happening in the future as well as bringing current naka-duskael characters in line where they should be. With that said, all naka characters will find that they will be limited to choosing just three schools to pull abilities from. Existing naka will be provided an opportunity to choose from their full list of schools which three they want to keep, and all others will be removed. Initially this will apply just to adventure schools, but the possibility exists that at some point in the future crafting schools will be limited as well. Once this content change goes live, dragons will find that they are given new abilities automatically based on their current level which should balance out the changes to the naka characters. In addition to receiving a significant increase in both armor and hit points, dragons will soon have access to all spells that were previously restricted to just naka only. This change makes sense from a lore standpoint, as dragons are both the superior race and the masters of all things magical.
Further changes which will occur prior to the new dual-labyrinth will be the introduction of new dragon-equippable weapons. To date, dragons have been limited to only placing specially designed claws over their existing claws. With this new plan, dragons will be able to equip any existing weapon in game and have full use of that weapon as though they were a skilled warrior, and will also have a special line of weapons created just for them to ensure their continued superiority over the lesser naka races. Please see the preview gallery for an example: http://community.istaria.com/gallery/pic.php?id=924
The team will also be spending the next few months focused on introducing dragon versus naka combat for players. After careful analysis of character data, we discovered that the naka population has grown significantly in recent months, to the point where the ratio of dragon to naka is much too high. In order to correct this issue, a new type of death will be introduced in the game called Death by Dragon. This death will be permanent for any naka suffering from it unless a kindly dragon takes pity on the naka and casts a special revive spell on them. Once so revived, a naka will be required to consume specially created food items in order to regain any levels they had attained. Details are yet to be fully determined, but for now this special form of combat will most likely be limited to dragons and naka with an adventure rating of at least 10 less than the dragons. The system will be designed with a Darwinian "Survival of the Fittest" goal in mind so that in the future only the strongest of naka-duskael will reach the top levels of the game.
The final item from this month is one that has been on the mind of many players both current and future, and that is Vista compatibility. After years of work, the team has decided that rather than continuing to attempt to support Vista, we will be taking steps to make Istaria the first "Mac only" MMORPG on the market. We're sure that our current customers will agree that supporting any form of a Microsoft based operating system in the future will prove to be a "bad thing", and that making a move to support Apple will be a "good thing". As the market for an alternative to the "Microsoft Monopoly" grows, we feel that it is in the best interests of all our customers to make the change and "Go Mac" with us! Please see our gallery from a sneak peak of the new client: http://community.istaria.com/gallery/pic.php?id=925
From everyone here at Virtrium we would like to wish you all a Happy April 1st!
Until tomorrow (when the real Developer's Desk will be published),
Amarie
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