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A bright ‘Hello’ to everyone in Taborea!
With 2023 coming to a close, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself briefly, give you some insights into what’s happening behind the curtain, as well as provide an outlook of what’s to come.
2023 has been an interesting year for all of us – the hard work of the last couple of years has finally borne fruit, and we’ve managed to bring you new content to enjoy in Runes of Magic!
New Product Manager
I joined the RoM Team in the summer of 2022, and have been responsible for the direction our beloved game is to take ever since. Before I go on though, I want to clarify and give credit to my predecessor – many of the exciting things that have happened in 2023 and are to take place next year have been long in the making and would not have made it without their hard work and planning.
Soooo hi! My name is Patrick, I am an avid fan of smileys in communication (where possible) and play MMOs as well as Action Adventure and Music Rhythm games. Back in... 2009(?) with the release of Chapter 2 and the Elves, was when I first started playing RoM myself as a Druid-Mage combo on a German server. I have stuck with that combination throughout my time in Taborea – even when the Druid-Scout combo seemed to drastically take up in favor :’(
As I was playing RoM, I also knew about the company “Frogster” behind it at the time – and when an opportunity arose in 2012, I joined the company – and have stayed here through the transitions to this day. But that’s enough ‘blurb’ about my path – you’re really here for the juicy insights and plans moving forward, so let’s get to that!
The Happenings in 2023
Timeless Instance I
Our biggest success this year is clearly the – what we call internally – Timeless Instance I. It’s the new endgame version of the Necropolis of Mirrors that we released at the end of October, to great community reaction. Thanks a lot for your many positive & encouraging posts and comments – it was genuinely heartwarming for the team to have their hard work and effort see such recognition!
And that’s exactly where I want to dig into a little more, as we’ve gotten various amazing questions about the making of this new content. In short – yes, the new mechanics and game design for everything around the endgame Necropolis were done by people in our internal team. Our collaboration with Runewaker remains strong, and they fully support this additional “cool content” that Gameforge wishes to add to the game – both in its technical implementation as well as with the necessary knowledge and tools.
Side-note: we’re aware that there are still some pending issues and have some fixes being verified internally to address them moving forward. Given that this is all done by our team, we’re working with some time constraints of course, so please bear with us.
Public World Bosses
Helveta was yet another project we realized in-house and were able to release as new content for you. We plan to keep bringing out new world bosses between dungeon-related content, and will also iterate a little on item acquisition, so that it’s possible to get stats & items from more sources and/or from the new sources we introduce.
And just a few days ago, Lakishna joined the battlefield too!
Siege War Fixes
We’re aware there’s still some way to go on this front, and unfortunately not everything is easily addressable – but this year we’ve made some good changes and improvements to the Siege Wars, removing some of the more frequently encountered issues.
We do have hopes that – given some additional attention and checks with Runewaker – we can (maybe?) finally remove the ‘Beta’ tag from it. It has been there since when I was playing in 2010…
Sooo yeah, I’m aware that we as a company have already stated this in the past only to be faced with many roadblocks. I’m hopeful that we can do better in the future, and it’s this “looking forward and trying again” that I’m committing to here.
Some Quick-Fire Topics
Peak EXP – we’re aware it’s a topic in the community and have made changes earlier this year to address it somewhat. With the modified peak hunt missions, it should already help in the lower peak levels to catch up a little bit better. We’ll keep looking at this, though it is intended to be a longer-term goal, so we’ll proceed with caution here.
The team also wanted me to pre-emptively address some questions that could come up regarding further content – as you’ll see in the next section of the letter, we have some stuff planned – so here’s a quick rundown for currently unplanned topics:
- New maps? Not for the time-being. We’d love to work on these too, but the scope is of course quite a lot bigger, and for now we’re still getting experience by doing dungeons, world bosses & other necessary improvements.
- Re-using assets? Our capabilities are currently limited to what already exists visually. I believe this shouldn’t detract from the fun provided – with the new mechanics and gameplay we add to each boss, it might look the same, but plays completely differently.
- Class balancing? To be honest, even the thought of tackling balancing is daunting. With the “2 class combo” system we have, the complexity is obviously very high. We might want to look into outliers like we did with the Knight’s “Threaten” skill, which was seriously breaking dungeon design and would have continued to strongly bias tanks towards this class.
Plans Moving Forward
15th Anniversary
As you may be aware, 2024 marks the 15th anniversary of Runes of Magic in our region! I don’t want to hype this up too much – we’ll of course have the Anniversary Festival (for 5 weeks!), and I do hope we can manage to get my plans for Timeless Instance II realized by then.
What I really wanted to highlight with this is that RoM has been successful for 15 years already – and that, as you’ve hopefully been able to see this year, we’re dedicated to continuing building upon this success by bringing new ideas and content to play!
We’re very thankful to you, our community, for staying loyal to the world of Taborea for so many years, through fun as well as trying periods, and are looking forward to many more years!
Timeless Instance II & Beyond
As I alluded to before – yes, more dungeons are planned to be released! Timeless Instance II is tentatively scheduled for the middle of March, and we’re doing our utmost to manage this.
However, to also manage expectations, Timeless Instance I was initially scheduled for early summer 2023 (release: October) and Helveta was planned for early spring (release: July). The Helveta schedule also bit us a little in the behind, as it was too close to the Pantheon Revamp, and resulted in the ring stats disparity for PvE and PvP-related content.
We’ve learned a lot over the last months and are getting more confident in communicating about this. I would really love to have this out for you all for the anniversary – so wish us luck!
Outside of the scheduling – the dungeon we’re adjusting for endgame this time around will be the Mystic Altar (current level ~45ish). There are 6 bosses to come up with engaging new mechanics for, and the target level is Peak 15!
Minigames
We have a variety of minigames (Hunted Manor, Dasein’s, etc) that were initially created to cover for missing new content – and they have seen much use over recent years. However, now that we have new content available & in the pipeline, we’re retiring these minigames, or will run them less frequently.
During recent internal reviews, we’ve identified key aspects that we’d need to adjust & recode, and it would come close to becoming a complete revamp of these minigames. I’m not saying we won’t ever see any of them again, but they’re being shelved for now, to be checked back on in the future.
Closing Words
So, you’ve reached the end of my first PM Letter – thank you for your interest and patience with my rambling. The whole team is very excitedly looking forward to 2024, and I hope that with this glimpse into our plans and thoughts, you can share this excitement with us!
As we’re quickly approaching the end of the year, I’d like to already thank you all for a great 2023 and wish you an early Happy New Year 2024. :tada:
Patrick & The RoM Team
Note
All schedules mentioned in this letter are tentative – we’re doing our best to reach our targets, but please be aware that we might not manage. We want to be as transparent as possible, and hope that this won’t turn to disappointment for you later ☹
