Developer's Desk April: The Real Edition

So yesterday we sent an email that, thankfully our faithful customers quickly realized was my version of an April prank. To all who have posted on our forum thread with their responses, or submitted a support ticket sharing their laughter, I want to thank you. Your expressions of joy made this particular "April's Fool" grateful once again to be working for such a wonderful community.

With yesterday behind us all, though, it is time to focus on what really happened in March and what is coming in April.

Our single biggest "we have an update" from March is that a Vista compatible client has been released to those willing to help test the stability and compatibility of this build on various Vista OS machines. For any who are interested and willing to help, we have a forum thread to visit and download this early build from as well as provide your feedback. (http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=20541) Thus far the feedback we've received has been positive and these brave early testers all respond back saying the new client works. There have been a few "hiccups", but that's to be expected and our programmers are working on fixing these problems before we release this client to Blight for official testing. But for those who have been waiting for Vista and Istaria to "play nice" with one another, the day is very near.

In addition to this test Vista client, we released a brand new launcher in March that will make creating new characters and starting the game much easier. Players will no longer have to use the website to start the game! This will solve many of the blockers that new players experience when installing and starting Istaria. Speaking of installing the game, the Resumable Installer has had such positive feedback that it is now our official method for new players to download the game. We'll continue to leave other download options available on the download page, but expect those options to be phased out in the near future. We'll be releasing an updated setup shortly that will create desktop icons for the launcher, but you should be able to see the new launcher in your Istaria install folder. It's called launcher.exe - just double click it to use it.

News from the design department is less this month, but expected because the Labyrinth project is close enough that they've locked me out! A moratorium has been placed on further previews of the Blighted Labyrinth, I was told, so they can focus on wrapping up loose ends and have everything ready for release day. The team has made some changes this month to how plots are reclaimed in anticipation of the return of more players to Istaria that I wanted to make sure everyone was aware of. In previous plot reclaims, items and structures on the plot were lost to the owner of the plot. This left many players who had to leave Istaria for a few months feeling there was less of a reason to return because they were left with a feeling of having lost everything when their plot was reclaimed. In light of this, the plot reclaim procedure for all plots has been changed to provide novian resources and a best attempt to return items to owners for anything stored on the plot. Customers who have had their subscription expire will still receive email notices alerting them that their plot will be reclaimed, and owners of a "master guild plot" will receive an email warning when a sub-plot in one of their community is up for reclaim. Moving forward, plots that are reclaimed will be empty because the structures and items stored on the plot will be returned to the owner.

This month has been a busy one for our community management team as well. Earlier this month we provided details about our new "The Chronicles of Istaria Newspaper". (http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=20513) The content of this newsletter will be completely player generated. We hope that once the paper gets "off the ground" it will become something that is sent out monthly and is used by players to share what is happening in their community on all the shards. If you have a news item that you would like to see in the next newspaper, send your submission to: [email protected].

It isn't just the creativity of our players who enjoy writing that we are looking for, though. We want to see your view of Istaria in picture form as well. And we want to hear from the people behind the characters. I mentioned a few months ago that I've set up a Facebook page and group, and since then we've had more than 50 new people join. But I know there are more of you out there who both love Istaria and enjoy "Facebooking", so I want to hear from you as well. The Istaria Facebook group can be found either by searching for Istaria, or following this link: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...5437612&ref=mf From there those who are curious can find my Facebook page as well as those of many of Istaria's Gifted. In the coming months I'll be making a better effort to update that site with special notes on what's happening in Istaria, but I'd like to see you come write on Istaria's Facebook wall. And we want to hear from you if you have your own website dedicated to Istaria as well, be it one where you display Istaria related art or just blog about what is happening. Send me a link to your Istaria related website to [email protected].

Until next month, enjoy Istaria
- Amarie
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