Development Roadmap for the first stage of the year (from January to June, 2009)

[Adrian]

Hi Community,

After this new stage in Regnum Online development started, we would like to describe in what we will be working during the first half of the year. This stage will be centered in polishing the game and enhancing various aspects of game quality.

We’ve gathered a lot of useful information from the forum, mails and the general game monitoring, which is highly relevant to face this coming changes. We will be focused in the following subjects under an exhaustive analysis (among others):

Fatigue Removal:

Invasions and their dynamic generate that those who are gaining levels must leave their activity in an unexpected way to defend their realm. This has completely broken the Fatigue system dynamic, due to the reason that users can’t decide when to fight or level up. On the other hand, one of Fatigue’s objectives was to encourage the users that play a lot not to have other choice than fighting in the War Zone. This forced incentive is no longer needed in the presence of Invasions.

Fatigue has been removed completely (experience reduction), but its most important part will be maintained through in-game reminders of how long you’ve been playing and advising about the responsibility to rest from time to time.

About character progress

Although the game is focused in realm confrontations, to be able to participate in them, as in every roleplay game, players get stronger by obtaining experience fighting against creatures and completing quests. To complement this and generate more diversity, a series of alternative offers to realize different tasks simultaneously with the leveling process that at the same time result in an economical relief (lack of gold).

Among short term plans, we will be designing a Crafting system (item creation) and Professions to enhance the leveling time usefulness. Also, to channel the economic flow, new commerce methods and personal chests will be provided for a better organization of the items, either to be sold or to be stored.

Finally, the progress curve will be adjusted in the lower levels allowing new users to have a sooner participation in war.

Early leaving users

Realm versus realm and Invasions are a gameplay attraction that can’t be totally perceived in the first levels of the game. A lot of new players are leaving the game ahead of time without having the possibility to see what the game can provide them in the future.

Given this reason, visual changes will be applied to the Initiation Zones and new features will be added that will allow the new player to experiment what Regnum has to offer them such as low level PvP through Duels and a new type of Invasions that will take place in the initial zones which will complement the ones in the War Zone.

Horus

Since the new server has been launched, our principal objective is to increment its population and at the same time have it balanced. Certain factors have interfered in this task, mostly unexpected, but new decisions will change this trend.

Bonuses to under populated realms will be enhanced and the formula that calculates the population difference and user activity will be changed, providing these bonuses to the realm that most needs it. To accelerate the balance process, we will be working on agreements with MMORPG communities to bring new players to Horus.

Invasions and RvR

Since we added Invasions, the game has improved considerably in the realm confrontation matter, where strategy and organization become the most important factors to come out victorious.

We know that there’s still a lot to be improved so that they take the same effort without depending on the quantity of users that are participating. Also, RvR dynamics will be enhanced by providing anti-camping features and several fixes to the behavior of War Zone objects. Finally, there are a series of planned systems to significantly improve realm organization, key factor when preparing battles to invade.

Commercial aspects

NGD has finished the development of a new game (not yet announced) for a foreign campaign. This project allowed us to invest a lot of money to Regnum during 2008 to enhance both quality and monetization level of the game. Nowadays we are very close to Regnum being an auto sustainable product that allows the company to invest even more on it, making the development team grow so that new features and better services can be added to the game.

To achieve this, new payment methods will be added and there will be more options to the purchase of Ximerin such as giving it as a gift for other user. This way, Premium content will be closer to the users who want to have it. Also, Premium content offer will continue varying and growing.

It is worthwhile remembering that we’ll go on with routine tasks such as:
- Actual content enhancement.
- Class balance.
- Client and server performance.
- Special events.

It is important to have in mind that everything that has been mentioned in this Roadmap will not be fulfilled in the exact stated order. This stage will be held from January to June.

We hope that this first stage in our development plan is of your liking and that you continue with us stage by stage making Regnum reach higher than it already has.

Kindest regards,
NGD Studios team