2023 Q3 Developer Update

It’s been an incredible year for this game. When I sit back and look at what the hell has been created here after so much work it is amazing. Going forward it is time to start building out the content for Aakrana. It is time to start bringing people into the community that are interested in seeing what can be done by a handful of passionate people. Thanks for being a part of this journey. I hope this update answers any questions and as always hop into Discord if you want to chat.

Where is the development at?
The servers are up again on a new host. The last three months saw a lot of big quality improvements in the game. Things like new audio effects for monsters and players, the re-introduction of the class system, expansion of the village of Haggenville, the goblin camp and the orc village… It really has been amazing.

We have now tied in the account management system to the Aakrana website. This will handle all of the Registration and Password Reset situations auto-magically and allow for proper control of players over their accounts. This may not sound like a big deal but trust me. It is. As an often one man crew, I can’t be a single point of contact for every single lost email/password etc. One of the reasons I havent been pushing this project much is, as I have always said, it has to be sustainable. I know I cant do hours of development work while trying to support an active player base. By automating as much of the account management systems etc as possible I can now confidently support more people in the game.

What’s coming – Visual Effects:

• Spell effects
• Melee attack effects
• Buff effects
• Debuff effects

Effects bring life into a game. Currently I have no VFX person to assist so I basically build what I can with store assets and implement as I can. I’ll be making a push in the next month to address as many VFX as I can for the next patch. This is something that anyone can do but I simply do not have the creative flair for it that some do. If you are an effects person who wants to see your work in a game, reach out. I would love to put them out there.

What’s coming – Quests:

• Building out the storyline for the New Player Experience (NPE) and the associated NPCs. assets and quests
• Re-Working existing quests and new quests to allow for selectable rewards
• Investigate a way to allow community quest development

Currently the questing system and faction tie ins are pretty basic classic MMO mechanics. That being said, the quests are a key part of building that immersion and ambiance into the world. Allowing the NPCs to tell their stories through quests and give the player the opportunity to make choices that affect the game world are key to that fun factor we are looking to achieve. We aren’t currently ready to open the floodgates for people to write stories for Aakrana but once we get some tooling in place to allow for community quest submission I can’t wait to start fleshing that content out.

What’s coming – Classes:

• Fighter
• Arcanist

This was a bit of a pill to swallow, however it is all for the better. For years I tried to design a “balanced” classless system for a fantasy MMO. The systems always came up short. In the end it was a simple Min/Max calculation and all serious players were going to roll with the same critical skills. On top of that, the bloating in the player object to account for All possible skill trees and abilities was the final straw. Currently I have the classes to a max level of 10. The intention is to allow players to play through to level 10 in the Haggenville zone. The content for Haggenville will be created for sub level 10. Although not fully fleshed out, the current concept is to allow players to choose sub-classes at level 10 that unlock specialized combat trees. Our intent is to finish developing the current class trees and keep the cap at ten until the world is more fully fleshed out and then add new content.

Want to help?:
An MMO take a team of people to operate. It’s an incredibly complex integration of many systems to manage, content to build and a community to foster. We need a real website, new animations, new effects, massive storylines and I can only so so much. If this kind of thing lights a passion in you and you can actually deliver outputs that are usable, jump into our discord and lets chat!

Folks I am very excited to be at this stage of the game development. I recovered from a full server loss in July, I’m working sixty+ hours a week at my day job and it’s incredible to see the outcomes for every bit of time I can squeeze into development. I’ll try and get better at this blogging thing but really it’s the lowest priority when it comes to development. I think we have slain a few dragons recently on the roadmap to release but we still need more time. Expect more focus on the NPE as the next month or two unfolds. I am hoping that Q4 will be a massive NPE content push to really finalize the foundations of what I hope will be a great game. Thanks for staying a part of this journey and I do hope you will join us. In game and on Discord. Thanks everyone.

Your support means the world.

Mark