Monthly Development Update - December 2012

This holiday season is fast approaching, and this letter follows quite quickly on the heels of the previous entry so as to dive in before folk start disappearing for the holidays. Hopefully as you read this you are already enjoying the winter update event, and have partaken in some of the great loyalty rewards and campaign offers that have gone live this week! It also brings with it news on the launch of the Secrets of the Dragon's Spine content that we are really excited for.

Dragon's Spine Launch!

Let's not beat around the bush! The Secrets of the Dragon's Spine free expansion series will start on the 10th of January! As we have covered before, this content come in several different main sweeps of updates (and, as usual, all the usual disclaimers apply, the order of appearance still might change pending the final testing on the test server).

The first stage will include the main outdoor area, complete with all the new quests and stories, and the first dungeon encounter. This part is fairly set now, and is in the very last stages of testing, and is what will arrive on the live servers in the update on the 10th of January.

Then we have separate updates for the remaining system and content additions. The largest of which will bring with it the new trade-skill system revamp, and then we also have all the content additions, the remaining dungeon instances, the new raid instance, and the new PVP arena. The exact order of these may vary a little depending on the testing.

The art team have done an amazing job on creating an atmospheric and amazing location for your latest adventures in Hyboria, and with the finish lines closing in they took some time this week to produce some great art shots from the new playfields to whet your appetite in advance of the releases. They really have outdone themselves this time. We can't wait for you all to get to experience it for yourselves, and get to play through the fantastic stories and encounters that the content teams have been crafting in order to populate this mysterious and dangerous locale.

Help out with the testing!

The main outdoor area for the Dragon's Spine content is already live on the test servers and being put through its paces by the faithful test community and the devs alike. It really is a very helpful part of the process and the feedback given drives the final proverbial 'spit and polish' that goes into the updates in these final stages. If you want to help out yourself, and get a preview of the new content, feel free to drop by the test servers and check things out for yourself!

A Challenging year

This is also the time of year for reflection and there is no doubt that it hasn't been the easiest of years, however we prefer to look upon those challenges as what teaches us the value of what we have achieved. The team have come together with dedication and inspiration to craft these new content updates despite all the bumps in the road that have come this year. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of you out there for your continued support. The game community itself has been incredibly stable throughout this year, and been a great bedrock of encouragement for all of us.

The coming updates are for all of you out there, and are in large part a huge thank you for the continued support you show the game.

The beauty of the genre is that you get to evolve your own game over time. Getting to do major revamps like the new crafting systems, and continue to get to deploy the advantages of the Dreamworld engine is a great experience.  There are a lot of exciting updates still to come as well as we start to switch focus next year to the single server technology and what we can do with that. There are still boundaries to be pushed and horizons to expand, and we hope you are all along for the ride!

You also get to see a community of passionate gamers develop around these titles. We are very proud of the game, of this Hyboria, the Hyboria we share with all of you, and we look forward to getting to continue that over the coming years!

As we welcome more new players to the game, and continue to tweak and improve the games Free to Play offering, we hope you will join us in welcoming those who are experiencing life in Hyboria for the first time! We are committed to keeping the game as current and competitive in the market as we can, which is no small task in this day and age. Getting new players to try the game is an important element of that, and we will continue to evolve how we run the game to try and make sure we are always welcoming new players.

Thankfully, much like a good wine, the game is also maturing nicely, and runs on an engine we are extremely proud of, that allows us to craft one of the best looking games in the genre. Even now, some five years on, few games can match the splendour of wandering this visceral incarnation of the lands first described by Robert E Howard.

With a new Conan movie in the works the license is going strong, and we are looking forward to crafting many new adventures for you all to enjoy in this Hyboria we share with you all!

Wrapping up

That is it for this month, we hope you enjoy whatever festivities you celebrate at this time of year, and you enjoy some time with family, friends, or comrades in arms. Enjoy your seasonal gifts, and we will look forward to the new year, and with it the new adventures, challenges, and battles to come!

See you on the battlefield!