Downtime has been veritably *forever* and we sincerely apologize. As such we do and don’t ask a few things:
We Do Ask:
-You know Drasil is still in development.
-You check up on us every now and then.
We Don’t Ask:
-That you have to visit and post daily.
-That you forgive us for our lack of updating you, and Drasil.
We’ve been re-evaluating where we’re going. The BETA was fun, but design-wise, that was really all the game was going to be until we got a little farther with mechanics. So fret not, that was the first BETA of many. It shows you all where we got to, and where we’re going.
Remember that most of the content in the BETA was thrown together in about a month’s time. The rest of the time was spend on developmental, coding and graphical aspects of the game.
We always post about how we’re adding "Politics, Religion and Economy." As fun and easy as these features are to you all, they are quite difficult for all of us! We have to stat, balance and code each design function and formula. Bug-fixing and shipping the features is taking longer than we thought.
Drasil is heavily designed to be a community-oriented game, after release the entire game will veritably be controlled by players, and new items will be created by players as well in addition to patch content updates. They will create new weapons, wage wars and stabilize economies. But creating a world with this much depth is no easy feat, and as such, we just had the very base of Drasil completed in the prior BETA.
The next BETA test will be a test of merit for us, as it will showcase in function (But perhaps not form :mrgreen:) the beginning of player-controlled dominance of the game. Please remember that all BETA characters are wiped after the BETA is closed.
The next BETA, Drasil Age 2, will have Drasil Age 1’s features and areas polished and complete. We will be interjecting major game play elements. Namely, Athena, the capital and major political city of Drasil as well as Dungeons for level ranges 11-21 and 21-31. Drasil Age 2 will be testing the game’s balance for game content. It will last three weeks.
The beta following Drasil Age 2 is, you guessed it, Drasil Age 3. DA3 will feature minor additions to game areas, with no great enhancements to game areas. It will be a test of the game’s community features. DA3 will include Religion and Politics for player testing, as well as the new content. This will show us how to tweak the community features. As with Drasil Age 2, it will last for three weeks.
Drasil Age 4 will include new areas, polished politics and religion, as well as the framework for player economy, item creation, distribution, jobs and taxes. Drasil Age 4 will be the final Drasil BETA before release. We will test the game play thoroughly, fix glitches and errors and add voice acting to NPC’s. DA4 will last for three weeks.
After DA4, Drasil will be officially released and tested, as well as thoroughly advertised, as oppose to DA1’s advertisement, which was to gather testers.
We apologize for our lack of updating. As such, we don’t blame our forum members for their recent anger with Drasil. We are aware that Drasil has literally taken *forever* to get going. It’s really not our intention, we’re just all busy people. 😡 We will try hard to update you from now on with our progress.
As for recent progress, we have completed a soundtrack for Drasil’s wilderness that can be heard here: http://www.brandonabley.com/Music/Drasil/Wasteland.mp3
We’re Still Here.
~Sandopan
