Greetings Friends! Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• The Making of The Obsidian Trials
• The Atavists of Purity
• Layoffs/Company Status

The Making of The Obsidian Trials

Devs are polishing various aspects of the combat and PVP systems in preparation for the upcoming Castle Defense Scenarios feature. This includes making areas of PVP engagement where no ransom items drop, where grouping rules can be controlled (on/off), having death remove you from the scene until the scene restarts, new currencies/merchants/rewards for PVP scenarios, and better overall physical spaces for PVP. To that end devs have created a combat area where they can iterate on these systems over the next several releases called The Obsidian Trials. It will be where they implement, test, and polish various systems to improve and enhance our combat and PVP systems so that they can be expanded to support Castle Defense. In Release 55 devs have built the space and implemented new death mechanics, blocked grouping, and removed ransoms. In the next few releases they will be adding boundaries that change the size of the play space, win/loss conditions, timer resets, and a new PVP currency that can be spent on rewards like titles, components, consumables, emotes, and patterns.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]

Here are some early screenshots of the new Obsidian Trial zone. A subterranean pit of sheer obsidian hosts a deadly, 32-player PVP free for all!

Thanks for following our progress!

The Atavists of Purity

We all knew this was coming. It was obvious the devs were going to have some residents of Novia being displeased with the sudden and voluminous influx of Outlander immigrants. The Atavists of Purity have vowed to rid Novia of the Outlander scourge. “Their houses crowd our fair towns! Their wares compete with those of native Novian merchants!” yells their leader, the Luminous Atavist. He and his lieutenants, the Knight Purifiers, have been known to ambush unwary Outlanders on the road. They are even swelling their ranks with common folks who call themselves Unifiers.

You will find these unwelcoming Novians in Release 55 in the Grunvald region.

Layoffs/Company Status

Now WTF Dragon did a post about this last week, but I wanted to make sure to cover it again as it is important.  One thing that I will say is while the devs claim they are now focusing on “making a stronger new user experience, fixing bugs, reworking the quest system, performance improvements, user interface polish, and more” (see link and context below), we really should have had this all BEFORE RELEASE… At release we had significant content that didnt exist, as well as other things that were incomplete to the point where Release at best could be called a “Beta”..  One team member i saw mentioned in the forum who was leaving was, Lum. With his departure, I sadly see a UI upgrade to the dialogue system not happening for a long time.  Lum’s work with writing, dialogue system, and NPCs will be missed… His personality too was one that I know many appreciated.  I know I will not miss at least one of the staff who is no longer there due to these layoffs.  I also still question the financial situation of Portalarium, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t even get an Episode 2.  This would open up the issue of a fair number of accounts that were promised all the episodes but wouldn’t be delivered upon, which under Kickstarter should be eligible for a refund.  Time will tell. I do know this, the Telethons play a major role in keeping the game afloat.

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

Now that we are almost complete fulfilling our Kickstarter promises (brewing coming online in R55, physical rewards shipping very soon, progress being made on castle defense, etc.), we are adjusting our team size to better match our current monthly revenue. This will give us the balance we need to begin work on Episode 2 while ensuring we can support the online service. To do that means having, at least for now, a smaller team.

Right now we will shift our focus from creating new content to polishing our existing systems. This means making a stronger new user experience, fixing bugs, reworking the quest system, performance improvements, user interface polish, and more. At the same time we will continue the Tier adjustments in progress which will rework our existing scenes to more appropriate difficulty levels based on our current player population.

You will be a big part of our preparations for Episode 2 as we relaunch the Stretch Goal Store! You will get to vote on some of the Episode 2 features by purchasing rare items related to Mounts, Flexible Lot Placement, the Elven Playable Race, and Pack Animals. Stay tuned for more information soon!

Darkstarr & Lord British