Revisiting. Some introspection.

[Kyrottimus]

I know the forums (English forums anyway) are not nearly as active as they once were, but here it goes.

I just recently came back about a week and a half ago and didn't realize there was a Haven realm shutdown with transfers to Ra and all that.

I missed the boat, I get it. No big deal, though it still kinda stings to have 3 Warmasters nuked to nothingness now with no chance of recovery/transferring. Had a lot of good times and memories with those toons. Oh well, been re-leveling a new char on Ra now and flying slow, casual like.

Speaking of memories, this game has come a long way. It's still getting a bit long in the tooth, but the changes have been consistent and fairly substantial.

For example, here's a cool video from Envy from back in 2009 when I first started. And here is a dumb video I made in 2013, not long before I sort of burned out on the game and moved on (apologies for the quality of mine, as I recall the encoding didn't quite work the way I wanted to and didn't feel like re-doing it--I'm not good at video editing). Treating the two videos as snapshots of the game at their time, on the surface, it's easy to see how much different the two eras are in terms of interface and gameplay speed.

But thinking about all the things that have changed.

Back then when I first started, forts were a simple single tower with a wall around them. There was no jumping. There was no fall damage. There were no Champions. There were no Warmasters. There was no auction house. There were no Lamai. The max level was 50. There was no dual wielding for barbarians. There was no fulminating. Knights had zero speed buffs and no means of slowing enemies beyond melee ranges. The Imperia penninsula was barren and had no trees. There was no crafting. There were no relics. There was no experience gained from killing enemy players in the warzone (you'd have to grind to 60 the old-fashioned way). Each realm's great wall was a simple door and had no flag or battlement. The dragons weren't involved in invasions. Magnanite weapons capped at level 45. There was only a single available spell bar (which was not lockable). The community and clans would use IRC for text chat and mumble for VOIP instead of Discord.

We'd see it go from Ra being the only server, and Horus coming a year or so after followed by various other region/language-based servers (Raven, Tyr, Nifhelm, Nemun, etc.) before one by one they'd get folded into each another and now there's just Ra (amun doesn't count--it's a test server).

Even when I had sort of shelved Regnum in 2013, so much had changed within that 4 year span I played. I would argue that Regnum today is closer to how it was in 2013 than to how 2013 was to 2009 (and granted the game came out in 2007).

I just wanted to express my thoughts on the game and how it has changed. I know there were gripes the players (myself included) may have had over the years, and while some were very warranted, let's give credit where it is due. The game has evolved quite a bit since it began 15 years ago, and the devs have made it far better than when it started.

Because of all the people I met, the fun we had and the crazy adventures and shenanigans we got up to, this game will always have a special place in my heart.

There still is a small yet profound sense of sadness laced with the realization that I can never revisit my old characters again, but the memory remains. I know I missed my chance to transfer them over. Oh well. RIP.

The nostalgia goggles for me keep the game something I'll probably still revisit from time to time. Right now I'm a bum mid-level knight who is aura-leeching and being a CC punk and dying a ton and I don't care--I'm having a blast!

Thanks to everyone for all the fun times we had back in the day, both players and devs. I'm mostly just a tourist now, casually sucking and accepting that I suck .

Maybe I'll see some of you around on my new toon(s), and I know I have already spoken with a few old players in game. In any case see you around!