Hello dear players, some of you have already gotten to know us both – Shiva DEV & Kaori DEV – over the past half year. We joined the team last summer to continue shaping the story of Althea in exciting ways, with the additional intention of also responding to player feedback and contributing to the community. After all, we have both been on Althea for a very long time and can assure you that some of your problems are also ours, and we will certainly keep an eye on things just as the team has done before. So we are here because we want to make a difference and to complement and support the team where we can, as far as our personal time management allows.
Now, every beginning is difficult, and besides the ideas we’ve been tinkering with, Tayat EM dropped out on the server and Feixel took on Kaori as an intern so she could jump in where help was needed.
So, what have we been up to over the past half year? Well, due to Shiva being initially limited by personal reasons and Kaori helping out on the server, we can’t show off a fancy island or present epic references.
After all, we too have a family, a job, and a hamster that needs to go to ballet. But after work, we tried to fill the current gaps as best we could. Starting from co-developing NPCs, consumable RP items and brainstorming, all the way to wedding decorations, event co-design and support, or simply being there to lend an ear or provide assistance at the guard station.
But that’s how it is when you work in a team. One gear must mesh with the other, and when one fails, you have to rethink things so the mill keeps running. So you may also have to deal with Kaori for the time being, and feel free to stand by the fountain for a bath, while Shiva hands you the bubble bath.
At that point, it was and is important to us that you get a bit of an event for Christmas, that we can help you, and that you notice that we as a team truly value you players.
To everyone’s delight, Cepheus has also returned to our team – we all know he simply missed us too much – and is doing everything in his power to make your and our gaming experience as pleasant as possible, while Feixel keeps coming up with great new ideas for what we can offer you in the future.
Now, whoever has a broken character may want to raise an objection. But as Xaradon already described in Discord, not all of us have the ability to conjure solutions for such massive problems out of thin air. We can only try to shorten the wait for you and perhaps make it a little less painful.
So. That was quite a lot of text, but we first wanted to let you know who we are and where we come from, and also express our appreciation to the team for integrating, training and including us so wonderfully.
If you still haven’t had enough, perhaps you’d like to hear what it’s like to sit behind the curtain and how we spent the last few days before and since the server went down. It’s certainly very exciting, but now and then – just like as a player – somewhat frustrating.
The last days before the decision to give the server an update were not easy for us, because we too as an entire team had to fight on several fronts.
After a normal work day and everyday life matters, we too find ourselves on the server. Sometimes as a player character, but usually as an official. We’re just setting up decorations for a wedding, while another person checks items or the accessibility of new islands, when we too are suddenly struck by the red plug.
Now, the wedding was actually supposed to start in 15 minutes. And now what? Everything from the start again. Sure, we had already prepared some things in advance through no less tedious and meticulous fine work, so that it would be just the push of a button, but the small finishing touches are missing.
We look at Discord and see the first person is already back in the game, and we look at the clock and think ‘Yeah, we got this’. But while we start D4O, another notification pops up. The next disconnect, and a player’s character has been corrupted. So much for good intentions, and slowly we realize that this certainly won’t be such a nice evening where we can go to bed with a good feeling, as we had hoped.
While part of us consults and puzzles over what the trigger might have been, we ourselves try to somehow get online to process the reports at the guard station and hopefully still let the wedding take place, etc.
Well, we manage to get online 20 minutes later overall, and besides the wedding and planned test runs, additional problems come our way. Problems that we ourselves, if at all, can only minimally influence until we’ve found the exact error in detail.
When it was determined that among other things there was a problem with the guilds, it was still questionable what we should do to avoid even more problems and errors without restricting you too much. So we first looked for a completely unbureaucratic solution that not only we apparently found nostalgic and saw as a good compromise. But not everything is easy and simple to decide or resolve in the end. We can assure you of that!
It took less than 24 hours before Xaradon’s decision was made that we would do the update and the server would go offline until approximately 10.03.2020.
Well, we too were facing a challenge. Because neither Shiva nor Kaori could say what exactly would come next, but we certainly had our ideas and it was clear to us that it would surely be quite a lot. The question was just how we could most effectively support Xaradon, Cepheus & Feixel, since each of them is already a master in their field.
So the two of us have been looking at the areas step by step since Monday. We check blockings, meaning where you can walk around or not. We have also played through the primary quests for testing purposes so far. That means we checked texts, reported NPCs as missing, tried out shop items, and seized world domination to some extent.
The current status is that some of the newly conceived things, like the Whispering Tavern, Nils Pohr, etc., are not there yet. But all the important things, like the island quests, the rebirth and the like, work. Well, one would think. Maybe something went wrong with the rebirth…
On a side note, the Life Stone quest works! We just want to mention that. We tested it!!
But basically, what we’re doing here doesn’t really have much to do with playing. Rather, much of it revolves around trying out functions, testing new mechanics, searching for bugs and paying attention to all possible details in the game.
Just one example. Do you have any idea how many texts the NPCs sometimes have? We can tell you, if you take the time for it, it’s more than enough to fill an evening. A lot gets forgotten through quick questing and the desire to progress rapidly. It’s an MMORPG and there is a story – a story to which many inhabitants can also contribute. Of course, that’s not for everyone, but that too needs to be tested, because there are also players who still listen to the story.
We ourselves are looking forward to the server launch just as much as you are. Finally, colors for the channels again, new graphics, new possibilities for us for new adventure ideas, and the most important thing right now… we hope that the legendary plug monster will stay in its cave.