SIMU-WYROM at 14:30, 31 January 2022

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	For 2022, was have the following plans:		For 2022, was have the following plans:

	* New Kraken ~~Fall~~'s Hunting Ground, featuring upper leveled creatures.		* New Kraken's Fall Hunting Ground, featuring upper leveled creatures.
	* New Mentalist spells to debut on scrolls and magical items: Comprehend Languages (1315), Clarity of Thought (1319), Astral Spear (1408), Displace (1409), Mana Burst (1414), Astral Vault (1417), and Convoke (1435)		* New Mentalist spells to debut on scrolls and magical items: Comprehend Languages (1315), Clarity of Thought (1319), Astral Spear (1408), Displace (1409), Mana Burst (1414), Astral Vault (1417), and Convoke (1435)
	* Sheer Fear update to offer more agency and potentially less lethal		* Sheer Fear update to offer more agency and potentially less lethal

SIMU-WYROM: Protected "Creating Adventure - January 2022" ([Edit=Allow only administrators] (indefinite) [Move=Allow only administrators] (indefinite))

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Protected "Creating Adventure - January 2022" ([Edit=Allow only administrators] (indefinite) [Move=Allow only administrators] (indefinite))

← Older revision	Revision as of 01:42, 31 January 2022
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SIMU-WYROM at 04:45, 31 January 2022

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	\| SimuCoin Temp Monthly Space \|\|+30\|\|+50		\| SimuCoin Temp Monthly Space \|\|+30\|\|+50
	\|-		\|-
	\| SimuCoin ~~Permeant~~ Expansion\|\|+600\|\|+750		\| SimuCoin Permanent Expansion\|\|+600\|\|+750
	\|}		\|}

SIMU-WYROM at 04:15, 31 January 2022

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	\|[[CHE\|House]] Member \|\|+30\|\|+50		\|[[CHE\|House]] Member \|\|+30\|\|+50
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	\|[[House Arcane]] Member \|\|+20\|\|~~-20~~		\|[[House Arcane]] Member \|\|+20\|\|0
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	\| SimuCoin Temp Monthly Space \|\|+30\|\|+50		\| SimuCoin Temp Monthly Space \|\|+30\|\|+50

SIMU-WYROM: Created page with " 700px NOTOC NOEDITSECTION == Words of Wyrom == The WyromAnothe..."

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[[File:Creating Adventure Banner.jpg|center|700px]]

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== Words of Wyrom ==

[[File:Wyrom.png|thumb|left|90px|<center>The Wyrom</center>]]Another year in the books! We hit some amazing milestones in 2021. Our daily active users for the months of August, September, and October were some of the highest since GemStone III. November 2021 was also our all time highest Premium subscription count. Truly amazing stuff.

That's not to say 2021 wasn't a difficult year. We had some staffing changes that delayed some projects. We lost some employees that oversaw our marketing. We've shuffled our GameMaster teams around a tad bit. We've had staff out due to illness, and making sure we prioritize the health and safety of our families is important to us, but it also left some gaps at times in GameMaster availability. We did our best with delivering content throughout the year, and I feel we're still bringing a great text-based experience to all of our players.

I just want to take a moment to thank the community as a whole for everything you do to make GemStone IV the best MUD out there. Without all of you breathing life into Elanthia, we'd not be where we are today. From the darkest corners of the catacombs to the Eye of the World on Mount Aenatumgana, all of you are responsible for the high fantasy adventure of GemStone IV!

== Road Ahead ==

We've been cycling through communication platforms for quite a few years. We make use of Twitter for merchants and special events. I feel that is going strong. We display our monthly artwork as a banner on Facebook and do some announcements there. We've tried using Facebook a bit more, but the way it distributes posts is troubling to make sure everyone gets information as it is posted. I've wanted to get more involved with Reddit, but I worry I've been spreading communication between too many platforms. My hope for 2022 is that we can start doing something quarterly or bi-annually to make use of our staging area on Discord. Something between a mini State of Elanthia and AMA (about GS). We'll see how it goes!

=== Website and Front End ===

I'm really excited to announce that we brought on a new web developer who is tasked to modernize our website experience. I don't have any dates on when we'll see this go live, but I know he's already hard at work reviewing what we have and working on plans moving forward.

We're also rebranding our front end to '''Wrayth'''. This change is tentatively rolling out Monday afternoon. The initial launch will be an update to our installer, the Simutronics' Game Entry (SGE), and naming to Wrayth, with the goal of incorporating future QoL updates down the road to improve the gaming experience. The front end should look and act exactly as it did, but it's the first step in a series of milestones we have. A big thank you to our early alpha testers on this project.

To obtain this update, you simply have to launch the game via the SGE to prompt the install or launch Stormfront from the play.net website.
* There is a known issue with using a skin that is not the default. You will see an error popup and will have to reselect your skin by navigating to it in the Wrayth folder and reselecting it.
* There is a known issue with the install process reporting an error of being unable to find a Wise Uninstall file (part of the Stormfront uninstall process). Just click OK. The installation continues normally.

=== Game Development ===

Lots of big plans for the coming year. We do know we missed delivering some content that we had in our last [[Creating Adventure - February 2021 | Creating Adventure]] article. To recap on what is still to come from 2021:

* Hinterwilds release (we're nearing the finish)
* Sorcerer Spell Review
* Redesigned Ranger profession service: Resist Nature (620)

For 2022, was have the following plans:

* New Kraken Fall's Hunting Ground, featuring upper leveled creatures.
* New Mentalist spells to debut on scrolls and magical items: Comprehend Languages (1315), Clarity of Thought (1319), Astral Spear (1408), Displace (1409), Mana Burst (1414), Astral Vault (1417), and Convoke (1435)
* Sheer Fear update to offer more agency and potentially less lethal
* New Isle of Four Winds Hunting Ground, featuring high leveled undead.

We have plenty more outside this short list, but this is just a sneak preview to what is to come.

=== Inventory Management Updates ===

We've added many new functions to inventory management, but we still want to add more. Coming ''Real Soon Now'', we'll be updating lockers to store even more!

{| {{prettytable}}
|- bgcolor=lightblue
!Status !!Current Capacity!!New Capacity
|-
|Prime Account ||50||50
|-
|[[Premium subscription]] ||+30||+50
|-
|[[CHE|House]] Member ||+30||+50
|-
|[[House Arcane]] Member ||+20||-20
|-
| SimuCoin Temp Monthly Space ||+30||+50
|-
| SimuCoin Permeant Expansion||+600||+750
|}

As you'll note, we are retiring the House Arcane bonus. There are a few reasons for this. Locker space is a very finite number we can offer. When increasing locker space, we have to assume that ever character can (and will) hit the theoretical cap of items. Going over the number cap will cause unrecoverable character corruption. We aren't trying to take anything away from House Arcane, we just want to make the space available to everyone going forward, since it is forever locked away.

We are also going to be introducing Family Vaults! Family Vaults will be storage that can be accessed by any of your characters on the same account. The amount you can store will be 25 items per Basic subscriptions or 50 items per Premium subscriptions. More on this in the coming months!

Lastly, I have a project I'm working on that will allow you to put exact copies of the SimuCoin Store items into storage that will not consume inventory space. Think of it like '''BOOST''', but for '''SIMUCOIN'''. It's still being worked on, but my goal is to have this live in 2022. As a disclaimer, this doesn't have anything to do with '''SIMUCOIN DELIVER''', which is a completely separate system.

=== Finnia and the New Player Experience ===

Finnia is still coming, it's just slowly progressing in the background as other projects are going on. Finnia is a continent to the southeast of Elanith. The main focus for this project is '''Phyon''', a city floating over an unusual expanse of a glacier. The area will come with two beginning hunting grounds on the glacier. This is also the location of some ruins that we will be talking about later this year!

== Year in Review ==

We finally have our [[:Category:Changelog|Changelog]] in working order. It's still a work in progress as we get all of staff on board with updating it, but we plan to continue to improve on the process. Check out (most of) our updates in [[2021_Changelog | 2021]]!
{{#section:2021 Changelog|table}}

==Spotlight on Staff==
{{Staffprofile
| name = GameMaster Tivvy
| image = [[File:Unknown_creature.jpg|200px]]
| caption = "WE MUST NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN!"
| rank = ASGM
| team = Admin and Training
| guru = GameHost Manager
}}
'''GameMaster Tivvy'''

'''''Assistant Senior GameMaster on Admin and Training'''''

I met with Tivvy so you all could get to know her a little better!

'''Wyrom: So, let's kick this off with the basics! Tell us a little bit about you.'''

Tivvy: I'm originally from Long Island, NY but I've been an Arizona girl for the last couple of decades. I have 3 tiny humans. They're 10, 8, and 6.

'''W: How long have you been on staff?'''

T: Since June of 2017 if we include hosting time.

'''W: How was your time with the GameHost Program?'''

T: I loved it. I used to do something similar when I worked for AOL a million years ago, and I always have tended to gravitate toward peopley/customer service-related jobs, so GameHosting was right in my wheelhouse. Even after I came on as a GameMaster, I stayed involved in one capacity or another with the Host program and now I'm the manager of the program and it is one of my favorite GM responsibilities. They are the best!

'''W: That's great! Would you say being a GameHost is what drove you to become a GameMaster?'''

T: Absolutely. While hosting I got to interact with GameMasters during training and they provided assistance when I was working shifts, and I realized GMing wasn't quite what I had thought it was. (I was thinking I'd never have the technical chops for it). I really loved getting to help players and see a bit of the behind the scenes of what went into Gemstone. And also, the people were uniformly supportive, friendly, and encouraging and seemed like they really enjoyed GMing, which made it a lot more appealing to me.

'''W: What aspects of being a GameMaster would you say are the most challenging?'''

T: For me it's the rare times when I can't help someone with an issue that comes up, like something that was unregistered that gets lost or misplaced and even after searching there's just no resolution. I know how disappointing that can be as a player and always try to go the extra mile to track things down or find answers, so it's just difficult when there isn't anything I can do.

W: Yeah, that can be tough.

T: It can also be difficult sometimes when you work hard on something and it just misses the mark with players and isn't received well. Luckily, we have great players and there is usually at least a handful of people that enjoy it anyway so I try to focus on the hits rather than the misses.

'''W: What is the most rewarding part of being a GameMaster for you?'''

T: Hands down it's getting to spend time with our players, whether that means answering referrals, providing support during events, or just joking around with people on Discord. Especially that last one, people crack me up on the regular. It makes a lot of the "work" of GMing much more fun.

'''W: Aww, the good feels! Now onto the controversial stuff! What is the best profession in Elanthia?'''

T: Duh, sorcerers. Tormenting peop... I mean creatures, is my jam.

'''W: Hah! What about Arkati. Who is your top pick?'''

T: Nerdy grandpa, Fash'lo'nae. It's hard to imagine a better god for people who like magic and perfecting their talents than the guy who pursues knowledge at any cost.

'''W: So switching gears just a moment, what sort of hobbies do you have outside of GemStone IV?'''

T: I have three kids and Gemstone, who has time for hobbies?! I'm kidding.. I play a LOT of video games, anything that's co-op I burn through with the boy, especially sandbox/survival stuff but I also like tower defense and puzzle games. And I'm a bookworm, so whenever I'm alone, I generally have my nose in a book.

'''W: Have a favorite book or series you want to share?'''

T: Lately I've been a little obsessed with the Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valente. There's just something about the way she writes that is almost lyrical and she makes some observations that stop me in my tracks and make me think. They're YA novels but they're just so well done I recommend them to anyone who likes fantasy.

'''W: It's been great learning more about you, but one last question! What is your favorite item in GemStone IV right now?'''

T: I'm obsessed with GM Avaluka's werepuppies. I'm an animal lover and she made their actions so authentic and descriptive that they seem almost real. They're amazing, and the way they interact with people (and their toys!) is just fun to watch. I'd clone her brain if I could, she makes such cool stuff.

[[Category:Creating Adventure]]

Creating Adventure - January 2022 - Revision history

SIMU-WYROM at 14:30, 31 January 2022

SIMU-WYROM: Protected "Creating Adventure - January 2022" ([Edit=Allow only administrators] (indefinite) [Move=Allow only administrators] (indefinite))

SIMU-WYROM at 04:45, 31 January 2022

SIMU-WYROM at 04:15, 31 January 2022

SIMU-WYROM: Created page with " 700px __NOTOC__ __NOEDITSECTION__ == Words of Wyrom == The WyromAnothe..."

SIMU-WYROM: Created page with " 700px NOTOC NOEDITSECTION == Words of Wyrom == The WyromAnothe..."