Working on this plan now. But none will be opened till all these zones are complete. Jumping around content to finish this and that is confusing and not very efficient.
I love all of the ideas brought forth here.. I'd love to start an iky necro day one and still progress in hue hero old world . I know I'm going to love this place.. I'm so happy to be a part of the " sunrise " of this community
I think a re-write of the FAQ is in order, I answered a lot of questions yesterday from a new player who was confused about all of these key points about server development. Speedz makes the main point we should all be focused on during the current state of server development. Test what we got. The more throughly we test the current state of development and the more tester feedback we can get at this phase, the better our server will perform. The tighter the code here at the base level, the better the development of further expansions will perform. I spent many years doing Alpha game development, and the main thing I took away from the experience is that great games need great testers who know the game and care about it's development. Devs retreat into their caves to write and rewrite the code, but us testers need to hang in there and bang on code we know has issues and will break at all the wrong times, often right when you start having fun. Hang in there, keep track of your bugs, do searches on the forum to see if you can confirm any bugs already open, but most importantly play the game just the way you would play if this was a release server. Sure there will be bugs and glitches, but don't let that stop you. You'll be frustrated and your corpses will disappear at times, but keep playing. We're lucky enough to have a fancy server that is available 24/7 for the most part, so log in and PLAY. The server needs to be able to stand up to the abuse we lavish on it.
I am a bit wrapped up in testing a gnome cleric (the combination of two things, neither of which I'm fond of playing) and all the newbie armor that entails at the moment. But I wanted to clarify things. I am all in favor of POK as a hub and/or opening up zones in more of a batch state more by level and playability. I personally think being able to test something more like a main when you are of age is a better way to both debug and enjoy what you are doing. But, to be honest, it could violate the logic of the server and need to make one thing to accommodate that then has to be undone later. That is extra work. Moving the starting point on two new races would be a change. But not to how anything works currently. I know the code can be a challenge, I have tried working with it. This might not be too hard. Opening up the beast could be just as hard or not. But Halas, for example, is not complete as a zone without the NPCs who sell items for beasts for example nor with the trainer. Maybe some are in. I know we has ports added that are not yet in game. Seems inconsistent not to have all NPCs in for a zone regardless of whether they belong to classic or not. Same amount of work now or later and, for me, it'd be nice to know I'd not have to re-visit a zone later to re-do tables. A beast trainer who is in Halas would just be a dead end until there were some ability to use it. But no harm, no foul to the game and nothing to be undone later. If beasts could be added easily then so much the better. But in the meantime, the vah shir warrior or the Iksar who cares what (detestable creatures) could exist for those who wanted with a change to bind/starting points.
a beastlord will automatically be open when Vah Shir is made available. They are fully functional as they can be. There's really no option to avoiding that since it's all part of the hard coded expansion.
