Facets coding - The coding for the facets is not even close to done. The 3 month coding binge that happened back in the fall ended without being finished - there are a number of bugs that didn't get fixed and things that didn't get coded. I was waiting on various things at the end of that coding period, and then I got sick. To my knowledge no other coding has been done for Elysium in that time other than to fix bugs that were affecting the live shard from things previously added for Elysium. Even if the rest of the things from that coding period were fixed up, there was still a lot of coding that would have had to get done before the facet could open, and it was planned that we would do another coding period sometime in 2018. The 3-month-coding-binge ended up taking a lot more time to do each thing and iron out the bugs properly than the coders originally expected, so we did not finish a lot of what we had hoped to finish in that time, meaning more time would need to be spent on it later on.
Health wise - In the past 6-ish months, I have been extremely ill. As some of you may remember, I've been quite sick off and on for 2.5 years now. I've been to every type of doctor and specialist we could think of, had dozens upon dozens of tests done, and only now are we finally starting to get close to a diagnosis. Unfortunately, with the current working theory, there isn't any treatment. It isn't terminal, nor do we think at this juncture that it is degenerative which is FANTASTIC, but it is also something that they simply can't treat. This means that lifestyle changes and symptom management at home are the only options for any hope of improvement for me. Which also means that a lot of my time is going to be spent working on getting my health into some semblance of balance and visiting various physical therapists and specialists, potentially forever. It's been difficult to squeeze in shard time because of all of this, and I don't know when that will become feasible again. On top of that, as Melkor mentioned, +V and I just got married barely a month ago. Things around House Awesome were utterly insane in terms of RL due to wedding planning and having family visiting. Things are settling down on that front, finally, but now we're coming up on other RL stuff post-wedding.
Octavius, please take this in the friendly spirit in which it is meant, because you're one of those fun players I genuinely like to talk to - I am not angry at you or "yelling" at you in any of this, I just want to give some perspective here. Compared to the most successful beta testers, you didn't put that many hours into the beta (which is totally okay, but it leads me to the next point). You put in a fair bit of time, so that means that the folks who were most successful in the beta put in dozens more hours than *that*. Read: a metric crap-ton of hours. Most of the people who signed up for the beta dropped out almost immediately, or their activity quickly declined in the first 3 weeks until they had to be removed for failing to participate. Others tapered off about halfway through. By the end, I had only about 4 (out of the original 20+) beta testers who were still active. People get excited about the idea of being a beta tester, because they think it'll be big fun, or they want the inside info and status they think it brings. Then they get into the beta and realize it's actual work, it's usually not even all that fun, and they lose interest. I can't blame them, that crap is boring. I don't enjoy doing those betas any more than those folks did.
But then sometimes those same folks somehow expect me to create this entire mini world from scratch on their timeline, not stopping to think that those few hours they contributed to a beta that they then got bored of and couldn't stick with for the 3 months is only the smallest fraction of the hours it takes to create one single quest at my standard of quality and creativity, let alone the entire facet. And that it's just as tedious, uninteresting, and dull for me throughout 90% of the development process.I wasn't sure what you meant by the "all or nothing" approach to the facets. I am guessing that you meant that Elysium is planned to open all at once, so until it is all done, there's no opening. Assuming that's the case, I wanna touch briefly on that - Touria, which is meant for endgame, is designed to open in pieces. V designed Touria to work a bit like you'd see in a bigger MMO, in phases. So area 1 is the beginning of the invasion, and as players work toward completing area 1, he works on area 2, and then players move into the next phase of the invasion. It's a cool idea, and it will work beautifully for V's storyline. For my own, Elysium was designed to be an open-world. Once you guys "discover" Elysium, and earn entry, then it is all there for you to explore. My entire outline for the facet is based on this, and I have long resisted opening it in pieces because that would mean rewriting a ton of the main story. Now that I have been sick for so long, and coding is still so incomplete (even after 3 months of literally non stop coding!), I have begun to rethink some of that aspect of the facet. I still intend to open the whole map at once, however I have begun to think on the possibility of having some of the factions not be present at the beginning. I might rewrite it so that a handful of the faction cities are empty upon facet opening, and then they come and discover the land themselves later on, and set up shop. I can't definitively say that I will do this, but I am considering it in order to get the facet open a little faster if/when I am able to work on it again and if/when the coding is finished.
The remark earlier in the thread that there are these existing areas (Sgail/wrong/etc) that could be tweaked for end game, I get what you're saying, and you're right that they could. But please take into account that doing those tweaks takes a *lot* of time, it isn't fun, and it isn't necessarily easy at all. We are all volunteer staff. I am ONLY still here on this shard because I love the awesome players here, I love making content, and I love UO. Many a time I have wanted to quit when things went full retard around here, but I stayed because at the time it was worth it. Someday it won't be worth it, but as I approach my 7 year staffing anniversary I find that I hope it continues to be worth it for a long time, because like I said- this is a volunteer gig. It is just a hobby. A hobby I love, but a hobby nonetheless. It can't be my #1 life priority, particularly with so much going on. The same goes for most of the staff, we can't prioritize the shard above RL stuff, even if we wanted to. That means that development stuff gets done based on our own free time, motivation, and interest. When a staffer has only a finite, relatively small number of hours to spend on the shard in a given week, then it's usually pretty hard to want to work on something that isn't interesting or fun. Just as y'all players like new, fresh, fun things - so do we. We usually wanna be working on new stuff, rather than fiddling with the older stuff that we consider finished according to our original plan. That's a big part of why things like sgail aren't likely to get an overhaul. There's always new stuff to be done, onward and upward.
As much as I want to make all of you guys happy and bust my butt to get Elysium ready right away, I just can't do that. It isn't entirely up to me, since I still need a lot coded, but I also have to deal with my regular life first. I *HATE* that it has taken this long, that for so many years no coding was done and so we could not proceed with development. I really, really hate it. It bothers me on a personal level not to keep up with timetables, but in this case it was out of my control for a very long time and to an extent still is. Right now it's on hold mainly because of me, yes, but believe me when I tell you I understand your frustration, because for all the years before this point, I was in the same boat with you players, being frustrated at waiting for things.
I know it seems like there's nothing new and exciting going on for you guys on the new-content topic, the vets especially, and I sympathize. It's difficult since V and I are usually the only ones actively making new events/quests/areas, so when we have to go away from you guys for awhile, then y'all have this noticeable gap of nothing-doing on that front. I know that the other staff are all actively working on new stuff lately, but I don't know what specifically, so I can't say whether you guys can be looking forward to events/quests/areas from them. Hopefully so! For myself I will say that I am hoping to get a handle on that whole health-management thing in the next few months, and provided nothing goes full retard on the shard in the interim, then I plan to be back and actively working on things for you guys. I wish that my health concerns weren't affecting y'all so much, it's even more depressing for me to know that y'all are depending on me for your funtimes and I'm not able to satisfy that because of all this health crap. I am doing everything I can, I promise
Also - Thanks for the well wishes, Melkor
balance out the imps, and some other pets. But those "features" are what makes Excelsior fun, in a way, and maybe removing them wouldn't fare well. But yeah, right now anything that's supposed to be challenging has to insta-kill you. There is however room for mobs with cool mechanics, where you have to think a bit, connect the dots and use actual gaming skill to figure it out and defeat it(not clicking an icon or pressing Play on a macro).
