Broken Lands is now live!

I wonder if there will be elementals in Broken Lands ...

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