Hello, everyone!
First of all, I know this is going to be long before I post it so a bit of a TL;DR here: I'm creating a new server and messing around with ideas for a few new mechanics. I will need help ranging from feedback to full on volunteer designers and moderators. The server will start relatively vanilla, but I'm open for more radical changes later as far as the engine allows. Read below for further details:
As Dredge is fairly inactive and not actively maintained, I've been working on setting up a V3 server for the last few weeks. I've named the server "Eden" for now, although as it's a bit cheesy for my taste I might end up renaming it later.
The server is already up and running, but currently only available for testers. With the current plan, the server would be live sometime in June, although I'm playing it a bit by ear depending on what kind of feedback I might be getting here.
To give you a bit of background, I'm a fairly capable software developer and system administrator so the technological side of this project won't be a problem. However, I've been out of loop from RPGWO for over 10 years, so I'm unfamiliar with some of the changes done since then. Therefore, I'm looking for people to discuss the server before I lock things down and go live. I need opinions, suggestions and feedback on the server and the changes I've done and will do.
I know some of you use a Facebook group for RPGWO related discussion, but I find Facebook rather distasteful and would rather not make an account even for a project such as this. As such, I've just created a new discord server just minutes ago, which you can join via the discord app or your browser. Feel free to spread the discord link and news about the new server via Facebook, if you're so inclined. Please find the link for Discord below:
https://discord.gg/thKqQuFeel free to join and have a chat. I can give you a tour of the current test server, talk about the plans for it and listen to any suggestions you might have. In addition, if anyone is interested in volunteering to help with this project, I'd be interested in the following:
- Artists: People who can create original art to update legacy graphics and/or create new assets for quests and dungeons. You might also be able to contribute by gathering and packaging open assets from websites such as
https://opengameart.org, if you're at least loosely familiar with shopping sprites and whatnot. Keep in mind the licenses for the art need to be available for me to use for a server such as this.
- Testers: RPGWO players who are familiar with the game and willing to spend some time on the beta version of the server to find bugs, test quests, and just in general play around to see if things work as they should. The server is currently running on elevated XP rates and I will boost skills and stats to help you test and mess around with the server. Characters and the map will be wiped clean at go-live and the server will have a new map generated with the quests and such plugged in afterwards.
- Quest/map designers: Never enough treasure to seek or dungeons to crawl. If you're familiar with the map editor for RPGWO and have a creative mind to design interesting adventures for players, I'd be more than happy to work with you to add new sights and adventures to the world. The map editor is easy to learn, so you can do some things here even if you haven't used it before.
- Moderators/Admins/Etc: Particularly looking for the old, trusted members of the community here. While I'm happy to keep things in check on the server, I can't be around 24/7.
As for the server itself, here's what we currently have:
- 2000x2000x6 world. I'm a bit worried about the 6 depth. Although the server is performing admirably right now, performance issues may arise later on. I'm also unsure if this will cause gameplay balance issues with mining/smithing. Feedback welcome on this!
- Custom quests and dungeons built from scratch. At release we're currently looking at 2 or 3 dungeons available for low/mid level players, with more added roughly once a month or two. No procedurally generated random caves. I'd appreciate if testers could refrain from posting screenshots of these before the release, though
- No more damon meteorites. Hate running around aimlessly at the mercy of RNGesus? This concept has boss monsters in dungeons and events drop damonite fragments which can be combined to make a full damonite bar. The shards are tradeable, which allow people to sell the shards and guilds to work together to create damon equipment. Boss monsters have long spawn timers, so you won't need to endlessly grind the same mob all day, but rather work with others and hunt them down as they pop up around the world. I'm hoping this will spark a bit of pvp (even guild wars?) as people compete for damonite, and at the same time make quests/dungeons more than just a grindfest. Lots of feedback and balancing needed here.
- Forced PvP from level 6-10ish (just before the first boss monsters become available), but no stealing. This may change to cover only quest areas to allow you to stop people from stealing critical monster spawns, but we will see how this will play out. I think this won't be an issue, but let me know what you think.
And I think that's about it. I'll keep you guys updated on this. Feel free to pop on discord or reply on this post if you have any questions.