Istaria . . . its still kicking . . .

[Bateluer]

Recent content update and plans for future stuff too. I'm pretty sure they've only got a handful of players, but the game had potential. Don't see it going anywhere significant now, but its got dedicated developers, no question there.

The hot summer days have been here for a while and on these days we find
Virtrium working hard at the next update. Its been a while since we had a
Developer's Desk so I thought we'd review a bit of what has been
accomplished and then what we plan on doing in the coming months.

The May Content Update contained some big changes and features.

- The Dragon ability quests were extended to level 100 and many of the
quests updated to have proper XP awards, monster requirements, and so on.

- Numerous changes were made to the new player experience on New Trismus to
reduce the "Barrier to entry", the things that drive players away by being
too Frustrating, Confusing or Difficult.

- New plot vault structures were added that are much improved visually and
also contain Pawnbrokers and Consigners at the higher tiers.

- Quite a few new plot tiles were added with many different textures.
Decorative ponds were also added for player plots.

- The portal system was entirely revamped to create a more consistent and
understandable network of portals. A second gate hub was added in Genevia
to assist in this.

- A new region known as the Winter Vale was added north of Old Rachival and
contains a series of quests for level 90+ players.

But, enough of what we have accomplished, lets move on to what we hope to
accomplish. We are hard at work on the Summer Update and as usual its full
of great stuff. Among the projects we're working on are:

- Revamp of the Ancient Rite of Passage to make use of the "Quest Bucket"
system.

- Improving the desirability and usability of food by lowering the recycle
rates (from 600 to 480 seconds) and the increasing the amount of DP
reduction (by a significant amount in every case).

- Helian's Tomb. I know this has been mentioned before and it seems like
it won't ever be added, but this time its for real! Work on the
mini-dungeon as well as the quest series to support it has been completed
and so finally we are bringing this fantastic creation to light.

- And last, but not least, the return of Seasonal Events! Yes, that’s
right. Players have asked for a while for something to that is put in
place seasonally to do, with special rewards available only during that
particular season. And so with the Summer Update, we’ve modified the
“resort” island of New Korelia to be the center of the Pax Istaria Summer
Festival. There players will find a few new quests to earn items for their
plots and special clothing, and a new maze to become lost in. Some content
from this new festival will repeat from year to year, but some may be
available only in 2011, so be sure to take the time to check out what Pax
Istaria is all about this year.

And it isn’t just the content team that has been hard at work. Our
programmers have released a new launcher for the game that is Java based
rather than the old .NET launcher. This new launcher will, in the future,
enable us to bring more features to the game’s launcher, but already
includes the ability to rename and delete characters right from the
launcher! The new launcher is also much easier for players to troubleshoot
connection problems with the game and reset preferences to make those times
when the game just doesn’t work right fewer and fewer.

On the game client side of things, there’s a number of bigger updates also
coming out. Some of the more major changes are optimizations related to
network message processing to smooth out loading and reduce hitching,
character loading speed so you see your friends and NPC faster, and clutter
performance so frame rate is consistently higher. There’s a number of other
small fixes and optimizations as well, so we’re expecting everyone will
notice a difference when loading and playing.

Those are just a highlight of some of the many changes that have been made
to Istaria with the last content updates. To experience everything that’s
happening in Istaria, we hope that you’ll take some time to join us in
Istaria to see for yourself what is happening and enjoy some time with
friends both old and new.

Amarie
- Istaria Community Manager