Broken Lands is now live!
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: News & Announcements
Forum Name: News & Announcements
Forum Description: Changes, patch release dates, server launch dates, downtime notifications etc.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=5648
Printed Date: 18 Apr 2024 at 11:04
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Broken Lands is now live!
Posted By: GM Rikoo
Subject: Broken Lands is now live!
Date Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 21:54
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BROKEN LANDS LIVE! As you are aware, we have been working to open the gates to the Broken Lands, the new landmass directly to the south of Elgea, the current continent. Not only does this new landmass double the size of the map, but it introduces many new terrain types, NPCs and opportunities for expansion. The good news is that your wait is over! The Broken Lands are open for business. The bad news? The Broken Lands are no joke. You'll need to bring your best game to make it down there. As many of you have asked or as many of you might ask in the future: yes, we did away with the PvP-free zones. We can discuss it more in-depth in the future, but for now it's safe to say that we decided that the combat-free zones were not really worth the extended time it takes to create them, were broadly unnecessary, and did not fit within the free-for-all spirit of the rest of the game. We are also keeping the current account limits in place. That means 10 cities per account (and only 2 accounts per player!) which translates to the need for exodus, tenaril or settling a new city in the new land. If you want to get there, it might be tough on you to do so - but it may also be very worthwhile! We hope you enjoy the new area! We have been working very hard to get it to you in a proper way, and we can't wait to sit back and watch as all of your caravans make their way into the new land! Good luck. You'll need it, GM Rikoo ------------- Illyriad Community Manager / Public Relations / community@illyriad.co.uk |
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Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 21:54
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Hi everyone, As GM Rikoo has said - Broken Lands is now live! A bunch of Broken Lands (BL) updates and notes; please bear with a slightly longer post than usual. It might even be informative! Broken Lands Factions All the BL factions are now loaded in and merged onto the Factions page. You can see http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Alliance/Faction" rel="nofollow - the list of Factions here , and we've added a column indicating whether a Faction is BL-based, Elgea-based, or on both lists (in the case of the Windseekers and the Illyriad Trade Council), though there are, ofc, linkages between (eg Tal and the Tal Colonies). Whilst we were in the Faction page, we also tidied it up to include hub images, and an actual working Standing graph with number that shows you exactly where you and your alliance currently stand with a faction. Please bear in mind that the Factions in the Broken Lands aren't generally as friendly as the Factions in Elgea, as they are still largely recovering from The Sundering. I strongly recommend that players looking to settle in the Broken Lands check their nearby hubs to ensure that their default Racial Standing with the owning Faction isn't too low for them to (eg) trade at Standing -35 or below. Generally, I would recommend that players read the Faction Lore for the Broken Lands factions anyway. They're a great read, and they give many indications of not only what's happened and what the current situation is, but also the way future Faction interactions, quests and story arcs are likely to proceed. Please note that I have not yet loaded in the default (initial seed) BL inter-faction relationships (ie relationships between the Factions themselves) as this currently has no impact on players, and is still a work in progress in BL. As an aside, the Elgea faction "Keepers of the Golden Fields" has been renamed to the slightly more poetic "Keepers of Golden Fields". It also, happily, fits better within width limits.  Broken Lands Hubs All the Hubs are now on the map, with their Hub Description text, and Faction assignments. You can see their locations either on http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Alliance/Faction" rel="nofollow - the Factions page , or on http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/World/Strategic/" rel="nofollow - the Strategic Map if you enable the Options -> Factions On/Off toggle. As mentioned above, please do check your Racial Standing with the Faction Hub before you choose to settle near it. You might not be able to trade there initially, and there is currently no mechanism for altering default Racial Faction Standings. Seeding of Resources All resources have now been seeded on the Broken Lands map. That's all the Wood, Clay, Iron, Stone & Food; and all the herbs, minerals etc. We've also seeded the Lochs, Lakes & Tarns, as that's what we're moving onto (after counter-claiming sovereignty) post this release. Please note that the brackish coastline around Calumnex is Dead Water, and is intentionally incapable of supporting natural life. Yes, that's a deliberate use of spooky italics. Italics are clearly spooky by default. When used judiciously. 30+ New Terrain Types There are a large number of new terrain types. Most are flavour graphics to add to the Broken Lands experience (for example, Lighthouses, Fisherman's Huts etc) that dot the coast as replacement NPC squares for Coastline.  A Fisherman's Hut, Tiki pole, and a Crumbling Lighthouse on the coast of http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/World/Map/951/-1935/5" rel="nofollow - Lapo A Lua There is also, however, a new Overall Terrain type (for combat purposes) that specifically occupies the area surrounding http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/World/Map/538/-2936/25" rel="nofollow - Omen in Calumnex, the epicenter of "The Sundering". This terrain type is basically Obsidian - Volcanic lava glass and magma plains; and it's nasty stuff. If it isn't razor sharp glass trying to cut your fingers to shreds, it's probably oozing lava beneath a thin crust, ready to melt your legs into sinuous slag.  You probably don't want to live too close to Omen, unless you really hate having units. Or towns. As one can imagine, this is highly inhospitable terrain, and all units - especially heavy units - are very substantially penalised on this terrain, and more so in attack than defense. On the plus side, there's not that much of it on the map. There are also 2 new biome types, both for the terrain around The Sundering: Dead Waters &Warped Lands. Warped Lands are the Obsidian/lava mountains. Dead Waters is the biome for the nearby grey, brackish, foul water. Don't expect to fish in these. In fact, don't expect to survive if you settle near this. The region is called Calumnex for a reason, and the Tower was http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2013/03/choosing-a-name-for-the-tower-of-evil/" rel="nofollow - named Omen for a reason. Repairing unsightly terrain calumnies We've repaired a number of BL weirdness from the original fractal generation. The few unsiegable spots (settlable spots surrounded on 8 sides by impassable terrain) have gone, and we've also done a substantial tidy-up of singleton water squares that have repaired the slightly jagged coastline. BEFORE  Unsightly pockets of fresh water cause your eyes to ironically weep salty tears of anguish AFTER  Beautifully smooth coastlines cause your eyes to weep slightly-less-ironic salty tears of joy Minimaps Water & Terrain minimaps have now been added to the main World map for Broken Lands. One addition/change from Elgea (where Volcanoes were distributed randomly) is that the slightly more seriously Volcanic areas have been labelled in Red on the BL Terrain minimap. Town-to-town trade cross-continent We're not showing or permitting town-to-town trades between Elgea and Broken Lands. By this, I mean fulfilling resource trade orders directly from your town, cross-continent. We don't think most players who are offering direct (non-hub) trades from their towns want their caravans to be tied up for (potentially) weeks. You can, of course, send goods directly between the continents. In the fullness of time, I think allowing town trades to set a maximum trade distance might be the more flexible answer. Worldmap datafile For you data-literate technorati out there, the available-for-download datafile of the world map now shows the Broken Lands terrain on it, and those of you who use the datafiles should also get new copies of the terrain files, which contain the data on:
The worldmap datafile now updates overnight, every night, to reflect (eg) terraforming changes if you're insane enough to want to track that level of detail, and don't yet work at Illy MegaCorp. Please bear in mind that the file is large, by personal data standards:
... and if you open the file directly in your browser, it will crash your browser. The reason I'm not linking directly to the file from here is simply because lemming-people will click on it and then their computer will melt, and I don't want the inevitable flood of "omgbbq illy melt my comp 11eleventy-one!! ktnxbai" petitions. If you currently use the data file, you know where to find it. If you don't currently use it, but are happily familiar with XML data, downloading once (and subsequently handling and processing large amounts of data offline), scheduling cron jobs (or whatever the cool kids call it these days, with their fancy "COBOL" and their new-fangled International Business Machines FORTRAN 1401)... then you are certainly capable of finding the other posts explaining how to use the datafeeds we supply - and where they reside. We might look at providing a "change only" overnight file in the future; but that doesn't take away the necessity for a snapshot for new entrants to the "I am an ALGOL deity and the syntax of Lisp no longer brings me night-terrors" school of illy third-party programming. Or whatever it is that my Pathe newsreel instructs me - once I've finished threading the celluloid through my magic lantern - is really the "hip-ho, daddy-o" instruction set for today's automata. Ah, there's the Pan-Atlantic dirigible delivering the newscast now, huzzah! Please also *do not* link any distributed third party applications directly to this file; it'll rapidly turn up on our bandwidth reports and we'll be apoplectically unhappy. If you're the kind of person that really knows their way around Excel and have even recorded a Macro or two in the past, then - despite your unswerving belief that PivotTables are the answer to all data analysis - this path is *NOT* for you. Turn back now. Exodus / Tenaril / Settlers We've changed the code for Exodus / Tenaril / Settlers so that it works how it should - it's first-come, first-served. No longer can two towns move to the same location (which ends in complete weirdness). If there are settlers heading there, or an exodus heading there... you won't be able to Tenaril. If there is an Exodus to a location, you won't be able to send settlers etc. Basically, the first person to actually send settlers, or a city towards a location is the person who gets the spot. We haven't implemented the "exodus to hostile terrain = city destruction" code yet, and - no - we won't implement it retrospectively when we do. So you can still exodus/settle in safety. As an aside, during testing we also found (and killed) an ancient bug in Tenaril that prohibited anyone and everyone from using Tenaril to any square where either X = 0 or Y = 0. So, no one's been able to Tenaril to the Centrum axis across the whole map, ever. Who knew? Now fixed :) We also discovered that (after using Tenaril), players were forwarded to an old version of the World Map on which to see their city; this has now been fixed. Other Things
We'll be getting onto these as we go (Nature as a priority) but the main priorities going forward are instating the new "counter-claiming sovereignty" system and releasing Lochs, Lakes & Tarns. We hope you enjoy this substantial update to the game world. Of course, there may be some unanticipated teething problems with an update of this size. We have tested as much as we can, but please don't hesitate to report anything that looks awry - via Petition please. Many thanks, SC
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Posted By: Aurordan
Date Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 22:16
| Looks cool. I'll be very exited in a month when my city gets down there... |
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 22:52
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So we should exodus now before they introduce the town-destroying thing ... Overall, a MAJOR effort and very exciting times. Thank you to our awesome developers!
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Posted By: GirlFromHell
Date Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 22:56
------------- ~Hell_Girl_Rei / -Nyx- Dovie'andi se tovya sagain. |
Posted By: jordigui
Date Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 23:55
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Congratulations! Are there new t2 resources in the Broken Lands or remain the ones in Elgea (i.e. trove, silversteel, toadcap fungus, sharproot)? When are we expecting NPCs to spwan? at 00:00? THanks |
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 00:23
| Same resource types as in Elgea. Stormcrow said in chat that they are working on NPCs. |
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 01:13
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Hi everyone, I've had some questions about whether some of the NPC terrain squares in Broken Lands are supposed to be barren (ie no Wood, Clay, Iron, Stone or Food). An example of a square like this would be here: http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/World/Map/961/-1598/4" rel="nofollow - http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/World/Map/961/-1598/4 I've looked into this, and the answer is "Yes" - the NPC squares in BL have the same overall distribution as Elgea. You get the same phenomena in Elgea, just more rarely outside of Arctic and Desert terrain. For example: http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/World/Map/-792/674/4" rel="nofollow - http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/World/Map/-792/674/4 So, yes, this is intentional. Many thanks, SC |
Posted By: geofrey
Date Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 02:05
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GM Stormcrow, can you finally squash the outrageous rumors that pathfinding and advanced ship speeds are not next on your list? ------------- http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/45534" rel="nofollow">  |
Posted By: Nesse
Date Posted: 06 Jun 2014 at 17:30
No, please let the rumors live! ------------- Nesse(Dwarven Druids) and Odd (Fairy Road Authority) |
geofrey wrote:Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 07 Jun 2014 at 03:16
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Nice to see Broken Lands arrive. I'm still confused about factions. SC, you spent a lot of effort talking about them here. Are they live? People are saying they aren't, or at least are just doing the same thing they've been doing for months. When will the AI go hot? |
Posted By: Timothy_
Date Posted: 07 Jun 2014 at 19:35
| Is there going to be a choice for new players to choose which continent they would like to start on? |
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 07 Jun 2014 at 21:52
| At least for now, everyone is starting on Elgea. |
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 09 Jun 2014 at 00:15
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Just an FYI - NPC (nature) will be going live in the Broken Lands later today (Monday); nature will be seeded as per regular Elgea distributions in terms of Biome and Terrain. This *may* involve a small pause in the regular Illyriad service; maybe 20-30 seconds of "freeze"; we'll let you know in GC before this happens. Regards, SC
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Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 09 Jun 2014 at 00:24
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Hooray! Thank you Stormcrow! I wonder if there will be elementals in Broken Lands ...
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Posted By: Timothy_
Date Posted: 09 Jun 2014 at 04:17
| Oh ok thanks Rill. I'll just wait to create a second account until the GMs include that option. |
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 09 Jun 2014 at 05:02
| Sorry if I gave an incorrect impression, Timothy, the developers haven't indicated that they are planning to change the spawning to give you an option -- it was originally part of the plan, but since they changed the way they did the continents, they have said people will spawn in Elgea. |
Posted By: Nesse
Date Posted: 09 Jun 2014 at 07:42
No Dronts or quaggas, skeletons or hogglos, pink elephants or aardwarks? I am an bit disappointed. ------------- Nesse(Dwarven Druids) and Odd (Fairy Road Authority) |
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 10 Jun 2014 at 01:01
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As players may have noticed we've begun seeding creatures (nature mostly; some monstrous) onto The Broken Lands. It is an ongoing process, and there may be some over- or under-populations as well as some groups of animals that get added or removed from the map over the next few days. The system underpinning nature in Illy is an Emergent Behaviour model. This basically means that rather than giving specific instructions to groups of creatures, we instead use mathematical models to describe their behaviours, propensities, preferences and traits. These range from preferred biome and terrain type to their relative sociability, fear, aggression, hunger, their propensity to pack together and the extent to which pack mentality changes as the pack grows, to their tendency to split when certain herding propensity thresholds are breached, to their procreation rates, their territorialty, their likelihood, frequency and distance to roam, their movement speed etc etc. Using these numbers we map out the functional differences between a pride of lions, a pack of wild dogs and a pair of mammoths. It's a system that requires some careful releasing of groups of animals onto the map in batches, so we can allow them to get established and avoid the possibility that initially seeded packs of predators might cause an extinction of their prey (and therefore, most likely, themselves as well). Whilst these models have been shown to work on Elgea, it takes additional time afresh because of the as-yet-untested ecology of biome and terrain in different parts of The Broken Lands. There is also currently much less human impact on these animals due to the much lower player population on the Broken Lands, and so we also have to ensure that creature populations don't equally spiral out of balance in the way they did on Elgea's "Island of Poisonous Crawlers" (essentially our own little, unintended "Galapagos", that ultimately required nuking by mages from the Circle of Five). So it's a work in progress, basically, and will take some time to complete. Once nature is fully on the map and appears stable, I will start adding humanoid faction behaviours. Just wanted to let you all know in case you suddenly see animals get removed or added out of the blue! Regards, SC
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Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 10 Jun 2014 at 02:46
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Thank you GM Stormcrow. So far the dogs, wolves and bears in the High Hills seem to be behaving normally, based on my experience in Elgea. I see giant rats are also beginning to appear. I hope you give some warning before you release the scuttlers, since I have found that human skinners seem to be their preferred prey.  |
Posted By: LadyLifeGrows
Date Posted: 10 Jun 2014 at 05:19
You can see REAL life Quaggas again in South Africa. They turned out to be a subspecies, not a species. Their genes are preserved among the Southern or Burchell's zebras. The scientists whofound out bred the most quagga-like stallions to the most quagga-like foals. By the fourth generation, the results were very quagga, indeed. By now, the 5th generation has started arriving. |
Posted By: EristaMae
Date Posted: 11 Jun 2014 at 13:37
I would love to know why there appears to be no way of inter-continent trading between BL and Elgea?? And why the Factions appear to be so aggressive towards humans?? ha ha |
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 11 Jun 2014 at 18:00
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We can send caravans between the continents but each continent can't see the city to city orders placed on the other continent. You CAN put a trader from a city in one continent into a hub on the other continent. (Some people have already done so.) I think the limitation on city to city trading from Elgea to Broken Lands is a good idea, at least partly because of the distance involved. Most people would hate to see someone accept an order that would tie up their caravans for 10 days total (5 days in each direction). It also gives Broken Lands some sense of "pioneering" in that it is a little more difficult to acquire resources and we have to make them ourselves, make do or do without.
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Posted By: Chaos Armor
Date Posted: 11 Jun 2014 at 22:04
| You know, the StA finally has an advantage in trading distances! |
Posted By: Jajusha
Date Posted: 12 Jun 2014 at 08:29
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I'm a bit dismayed really. A new landmass, full of new opportunities, but already with towns over 30k pop? Should have only allowed new towns over there, not magically teleport a full metropolis for the old powerblocks to monopolize the resources (again). |
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 13 Jun 2014 at 02:04
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The few large cities in Broken Lands will not substantially influence the balance of power in the entire continent. It's just not possible given the distances. Perhaps someone is put out about a particular location being taken, but it's a really big landmass. What's done is done, but it would have been interesting if only settling had been allowed, or if there had been a delay; that is, that only settling was allowed for the first x days and then after that Tenariling was permitted. Given the distances, not a huge need to delay Exodus -- the slow travel time is a built-in delay. Something to think about should they ever introduce another continent, in another few years.
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