10 Year Anniversary Retrospective - Part I

February 4, 2001. That, my friends, is the day that Wyvern was opened up for public testing. I would like to be posting this in the cabochon.com news right now, where I could maybe say something about how far we've come now that we're at the eleven year mark. Unfortunately, that can't happen, but it does make you wonder the progress we would have made in the last year had things gone differently.

When planning the big celebration to mark our 10 year anniversary, I tried to not only to create a single, fun day long event, but to make something that would move the game forward again. Without getting into a whole long backstory, we had spent the previous year and a half working on balance and bug fixes, which provided, shall we say... challenges for our loyal players to adapt to. But as we got the major issues worked out, we had begun to slow down, leaving only some "tweaks" here and there and large scale projects (like enchanting and random dungeons) on our list before we could move forward entirely.

Now, when I say "large scale projects," I mean extremely time intensive things. Therefore, it would've been a little longer before we could get on with the fun stuff. But you guys had been so loyal to the game throughout all that that you deserved a a break. Thus, the event I created was centered around permanent content that you could enjoy long after the day was over. Below, I'll review that content and give you some behind the scenes information to go along with it.

Costumes

Ah, costumes. Such a simple concept and yet, such a Salkand (Har. Har. Har.). Originally coded and introduced to the game by Janica as a wedding dress and tuxedo these little things have been a pain since day one.

First, they were rather buggy. Not only did they hork the images of our poor giant and naga friends, but they set your gender to match whoever the costume was intended for. While it may have led to some amusing moments, such as the time Airick shook his fist at whatever anonymous tricky wizard setpropped him as "female" (before we figured out costumes were the actual cause), it also made it pointless to ever create gender specific content.

Second, Avalon's introduction of a plethora of Halloween costumes actually created quite a controversy. It had become so easy to change your image and you had so many options that players began to complain that it devalued the work they put in to attain their HOF image.

As a result of all that (and some other things), costumes disappeared from the game for quite awhile. But they can be a lot of fun for players, so I thought that if we could get a bug free version up and running and devise some way to limit their use, we could bring them back. Thus, I asked Contrare if he could code something that limited its use to only one day of the year (and fix the bugs). This request almost got shoved to the "not enough time" pile, but he pulled it together at the very last minute and I do believe they were quite the hit.

They also would have led to some fun times ahead. I always wanted to have automated holidays in Wyvern. Every year, on a certain day, new content would become accessible. You walk into Stensele and a celebration is going on or you walk into New Verden and a portal through time appears that takes you to our old style New Verden. We didn't yet have the code to do that with areas, but once a year costumes were the first step. Next we could have created the above mentioned content and filled it up with special items like obtainable costumes, so although it may seem sad to only get to be a little Wyvern once every February, you could've had the chance to be who knows what in {insert month}.

One other thing I had in mind for future additions to this concept were costume rooms. I don't know how feasible this would have been or if other wizards would have agreed that this would have been a good idea, but it was on my list to see if we could set a map to allow you to wear your costume all year round. That way you could create parties to show off the various costumes you collected, and perhaps it would create a greater incentive to create parties in the first place (something that doesn't happen much since auction houses replaced emote rooms as the place to hang out).

Minath Monster Arena

Above is a video Vesrayech created of himself trying to conquer the redesigned arena. It was nice of him to put the work into getting it together and uploading it as I really wanted people to able to see what the changes entailed after all the work that went into it. You can compare it with the old arena by viewing the following videos:

MMA by Kohora
Minath Monster Arena by Irano (currently not available due to Google Videos shutting down)

I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out. It had some bugs, sure, but Contrare was working up until right before the anniversary and the bugs were hard to spot with one wizard testing it at a time. (Who would've thought you'd all end up in the same arena maps? lol). Overall, though, I think players enjoyed it and most of the bugs were fixed by the time the game went down. I think there were one or two left on the list, and we still hadn't been able to settle the player statue issue (bummer!).

For me, this was the most time consuming thing I worked on. (Although making the old New Verden come alive was by far the most tedious.) In fact, it sucked up so much of my time  (I spent the better half of January consumed with it) that there were a number of other things that I wasn't able to get around to or complete.

Contrare and I had previously discussed his plans for redoing the arena and I offered to help him with the map aspect at the time, but it was put on hold since our focus was still on bugs/balance. So it was nice to have a break to work on things like this and all the work allowed Contrare to redo the code in such a way where other wizards could use it in creating their own arenas. With that, who knows, you might have one day seen an Alaria Monster Arena or a Havisfel Monster Arena... okay, probably not, but the possibility would have been there moving forward.

As for the Minath Monster Arena, Contrare wanted two main things out of the redone maps: he asked that they be rounder and bigger in order to give players more room to run around, cast spells, and avoid their foes. Based on that, I came up with the design seen in the above video and I incorporated rotating barriers in all but the boss levels, which have just two obelisks. (Fun fact: if you "look" at the obelisks, the description reads "a strangely water-soaked, granite obelisk" in reference to a certain monster that rises from the sea).

I also decided to create a unique map for every level, which upped the count from 32 to 50 maps (some were reused in the previous design). Further, I instituted themes (forest, town, caves, grave, abyss, and underwater) that each lasted between 8 and 15 levels and culminated in a boss type fight that was designed to be a little harder than the level that precedes and follows it. Originally, I wanted to create a swamp theme, but we didn't have enough monsters to fill that out, so the Abyss got extended a bit. Had I done this, I probably would've made level 50 the demon boss level and had the chicken and actual boss be bonus levels. I also considered adding things like a dinosaur bonus level (Rhialto originally talked about including them in the previous redo) but ultimately rejected the idea.

It may seem like no big thing, but the real killer was matching themes with the objective of creating an ever increasing degree of danger. I had to swap themes around (e.g. I thought placing the underwater levels right before the final boss would create the idea of him being woken up from under the sea and rising out of the ocean, but the demons were just too powerful not to appear last) scrap/redo levels, and create whole new monsters to specifically fit certain levels. Some monster images I had been saving up and others I finally got around to watering down from their First Day of Summer appearance. It worked out nicely, though, as I not only got to use them for the arena, but I was able to introduce them into the random lists at the same time so you guys were able to encounter new enemies throughout the game.

Additionally, I worked to eliminate problem monsters that appeared in the previous design. Meaning, no more air elementals, diamond golems, or will 'o wisps. They were just too hard for certain classes and/or races to beat, which is fine in the general game, where you can group, avoid them, or wait for a summon to kill them for you without a clock ticking, but they don't work so well within the competitive nature of the arena. Of course, the arena is by no means balanced to give each class and race a truly equal opportunity, but it is better.

Before I move on, I'd like to end this discussion of the arena with the below image of the entrance. Out of all the maps I designed for the arena, this is my favorite - I've said it before and I'll say it again... I LOVE those tiles of Binyamin's!

To Be Continued

Check back "soon" for part II of the anniversary retrospective. Coming up, I'll dissect such additions as the fae Wyston graveyard, the suggested playing time system, the original New Verden design, and more. I'll also be posting player comments/screenshots and I'll give some details on the things I wanted to have ready in time for the anniversary but wasn't able to complete in time.