Greetings, friends... and happy New Year's Eve for those celebrating. Today we would like to brief you on our work behind the scenes since the last beta, and our perspectives for 2025 and launching. Without further ado, let us begin!
I. New starting zones - Winterax Peaks and Perenolde Retreat
Many of you felt our lore for the Winterax Tribe joining the Horde to be lackluster, and because we are serious about your input, we have come up with a new starting experience for Ice Trolls that will explain their woes and reason for banding up with former enemies. Not far away, also in the peaks of Alterac, lies the former domain of the Alteraci kings of old, Perenolde Retreat. A small group of renegades and former Syndicate thieves have banded up to restore their nation's prestige and join the Alliance once again!
II. Expanding the classic world - new additions from Warcraft III and the RPG books
We have mentioned many times that the Warcraft RTS series, alongside the Roleplaying books have been our main source of inspiration for this project. As an ode to them, we have resolved to implement as many mentioned locations that are not in the base game as possible. This will benefit players with a greatly improved leveling experience up to 60 and bring back the feeling of exploration!
III. Custom Races, Blizzlike Standards
Let us be real, our races and subraces have been the greatest pillar of this project and one of our main selling points. However, as many of them were never intended to be playable races, they are missing important features: animations, item models, customization options. We have resolved to fix these issues, and improve these models within the bounds of our budget to get them as close as possible to an official standard!
IV. Class Changes and Necromancer
We promised to offer new ways to play old classes and their specializations, and make viable those of them that were categorized as "meme specs" back in the day. Class changes and balance are a delicate topic, so far we have had hits and misses, but we promise to try our best to improve and the experience and feedback gained from our betas have proven invaluable.
Some of you have criticized the fact that our new class, the Necromancer has been missing a specialization. Worry not, for we have heard you, and we will be happy to present you... our third Necromancer talent tree, Lichdom!
Furthermore, the two current specs will be totally reworked in the spirit of Warcraft III and using your input. Expect the unexpected, for you will not recognize this class on our next time together!
What can you expect from us in 2025?
We will start with the most important thing: due to political instability in certain countries in Europe, some of our team members, including the owner have been away for weeks doing humanitarian work. That set the project back a few good weeks, and we will be looking forward towards a mid 2025 release. Keep in mind that this is subject to change and the date may be changed to be earlier, or later.
During our last internal team meet, we estimated our project's progress to be around 75 to 80% of what we plan for release. Once again, without further ado, we will present you a brief to-do list for our release:
- Polishing base classes using your beta feedback, and removing inconsistencies in the trees. This also includes new itemization where needed.
- Balancing those classes within our capabilities.
- Implementing Lichdom and reworking the first two Necromancer specializations to an official standard.
- Implementing more new areas in zones that are lacking enough quests for a good leveling experience, such as Darkshore.
- Implementing around 40 new quests in our very own custom Gilneas.
- Bringing all of our races to high standards. Right now, the biggest hurdle will be Naga females as they need a total makeover of their animations which does not come cheap.
- Integrating our new races in the old world, via new questlines and npcs.
- At least one new leveling dungeon.
- A new murloc starting zone, with much better lore and explanations for joining the Horde, set in a Warcraft III area. More news of that will come as we progress!
- New flight paths for a smoother travelling experience.
- Implementing toys that transform you into various creatures for roleplaying purposes.
- Two new subraces on the Alliance side for race balance.
And with this list, we complete today's article. Thank you very much for your time, and we hope to have you play alongside us in 2025!
