Goodbye~
Hello everyone, Perrito here~!
Have you all been enjoying the release of the new continent? Did you get the chance to complete the opening event quest yet? This region is one of our favorites and we've had lots of fun working on it, so today I want to talk a little bit about our development process.
The part I usually tackle is NPCs, their quests and all other game data. For this update I actually began working on the quests back in December and added all the new maps, monsters and items soon after. A lot of the new maps already looked great in HD, but there were a couple that I spent a lot of time on, particularly the weapon shop and skin-care maps. I have plans to give maps from earlier releases the care and attention they deserve too!
Having a progressive server means we aim to follow the release cycle of the original game in order to evoke nostalgia and capture the experiences you all had while anticipating updates and exploring new content way back in the day. We have taken some liberties but have kept the core gameplay as faithful as possible.
So which version of the original game are we following? The simple answer is the "Global" version. That's what our server is based on after all. But in truth the staff is constantly discussing the best order to release content in; not just for balancing reasons but so the workload for each update is evenly distributed among the staff. For weeks before v10, we actually had numerous debates about whether to include the higher-level area in this update. This is why we were ambiguous about it in the last GM blog and in the newsletter.
In the original version of the game, the toy castle as well as the land below the tower were released simultaneously, and the high-level area below the clocktower didn't get added to the game for another 5 months! Taking the level distribution of our active players into account, some of us felt the best approach would be to do the same: focusing more on the content aimed at the lower-level crowd. But we had to consider how this decision would affect our players' expectations, and the potential it had to alienate the high-level crowd. It was a very tough decision... In the end, we decided to squeeze it in no less than 24 hours before patch time so there would be new content for everyone. That was pretty risky!
Fortunately this upcoming update is a little less controversial. You all read the subtitle for v11, and that's right, in this update we'll finally be releasing pets! But that's not all. We have been making some big changes to improve the Cash Shop overall. You'll just have to check it out when v11 drops on March 27th.
There are some other exciting additions to come in v11: new quests, new events and some changes to simplify gameplay. Don't forget, there's only a week left to enter the Opening Sweepstakes! For now, this is Perrito signing off. =)