My dear Wizards,
So, the Firecat is out of the bag! (You’ll have to excuse me... I never tire of that expression.) Celestia is on the test server! If you're not in the know, right before we went to test, we automatically copied your characters from the live realm. So if you were level 48 and have completed the “Final Countdown” quest to defeat Malistaire, you can just hop on and start exploring! I've talked a bit about the hard work to get there, but I'd like to elaborate a little more on behalf of the fantastic team I work with.
We borrowed a few people from other departments that don't work directly on the game, so I'd definitely like to thank everyone here at KI for being excited and flexible enough to work on whatever we threw their way. Our team truly is an adaptive one... ready for anything! We brought on a myriad of new artists to get Celestia done quicker, while still keeping the awesome visual quality and diversity. While it's not especially noteworthy that we took one afternoon off to celebrate our second anniversary of Wizard with BBQ on Lake Travis, it is important to note that some folks skipped the party to get work done, or even came back to work after the party was over. People routinely helped with tasks way outside their job descriptions. For example, when art was finished, we had our artists work as additional testing resources and spend time on playability. The team spent many extra hours, away from our families, beyond our normal workdays, to bring Celestia together. I want to make sure everyone out there knows how hard the team worked for this update, and to publicly thank everyone involved.
Now that we've taken care of that business... on a lighter note
CELESTIA IS ON THE TEST SERVER!!! Woo-hoo!
We can now discuss a lot more now, and I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite things about this new update:
- Rank 8 Spells These have been some of our favorite things to create, and we're glad that you're just as excited about them as we are. Our aim with these was to really make them look and feel epic. Quite a few of them went through multiple revisions, as we just felt they HAD to be right. I can't really pick a favorite. I love them all. Watch the video here and see for yourself
- Celestia Visually We received comments about players walking into Celestia and getting their breath taken away (no pun intended). I felt the same way when I first saw zones as they were completed by the artists, and it only got better as things got connected and we added underwater fog, caustics (the way light reflects in water), and other polish and touch-ups to the zones. Our worlds are lush, expansive, and beautiful, but Celestia really takes it to a whole new level.
- Creatures and Story The quest dialogue has a ton of humor and the voice-overs are HILARIOUS. We spent a lot more time on this world making unique creatures instead of a few types with a lot of variations of them. We had to, as there are 5 factions trying to lay claim to the underwater realms. This gave us not only have the most diverse types of zones to play in, but most diverse roster of creatures to aid or battle!
We are still on the test server, though, and there are some things that we're working on:
- Difficulty We are still working on tweaking and balancing the play experience and flow. That's one of the things that we do initially internally, but balance issues always become much more apparent once players (who haven’t been looking at this stuff for months and months) jump on and play. We've gotten feedback that Celestia is both too easy and too hard, so we’re continuing to monitor and make adjustments as we get feedback rolling in. If you wish to have your voice heard about Celestia, please comment here on our message boards.
- Polishing Minor Issues On playthrough, we felt that a few zones are a little sparse, content-wise, so we're beefing them up. Some quests were fine with a few players at a time, but haven't functioned as well as they should with tons of players playing through them. So those are getting tweaked. If you run into anything that isn't working properly on the test server, please submit a bug.
Beyond the world of Celestia, we are also releasing a gift card available at Gamestop (November 1st) that contains a ton of cool stuff! You'll get a gigantic and super cool castle (with secret passages and a duel circle in the courtyard) complete with another housing slot, and a housing item that lets you play one of the mini games... I kid you not! This thing is awesome. You’ll also get a set of epic clothing, a new powerful staff, a new pet, new Griffon mount, and 5000 Crowns or a month of game time.
We are also looking towards what comes next after Celestia. Don't worry, though... 99.99% of our attention is focused on making Celestia great. We’re just doing a little bit of scheming and plotting. I can't wait to introduce what we’re cooking up here. While Celestia is very focused on our most accomplished and powerful Wizards, this will appeal to Grandmasters and Novices alike.
On a more personal note, if you use Facebook and want to keep in touch, feel free to friend me on my
Professor Falmea page. We've been a little busy here making Celestia so I haven't put all that much into it yet, but I plan to update soon with fun pictures from around the KingsIsle office, and I'll occasionally give little tidbits of what's hot around the Spiral. (Oh, the puns never cease...)
In other news, I spoke with the Friendly Necromancer at the Austin Game Developer Conference!
Check out his blog for a tour around the office! During that visit, I was lucky enough to take part in a round table with a bunch of other folks here at KingsIsle. That round table will be featured as an article in Massive Online Gamer Magazine in November! Exciting stuff!
In closing, I hope that you all enjoy Celestia, and if you're on test, take a few minutes away from playing and please let us know what you think.
See you in Celestia,
Leah "Professor Falmea" Ruben
Producer, Wizard101
