Folks,

First, Happy New Year everybody, and welcome to the first update of 2015! I hope that all of our Backers had a safe and happy New Year’s Eve. We reopened the studio on Monday, and other than snow and some lingering illnesses, we’re back to work on the game. Secondly, we are getting very close to raising our overall Backer-based crowdfunding to 3M USD! So, a big “Welcome Aboard!” to all of our new Backers, and to our current Backers who have continued to support us, thank you so very much! Back when we launched our Kickstarter, many people were saying we wouldn’t be able to raise $2M for an RvR-focused MMORPG and here we are, about to pass 3M USD! Also, because we are nearing the end of this Stretch Goal, we’ve begun to interview sound engineers and a few composers, and that is all thanks to our fantastic Backer community.

As the year wrapped up, we weren’t able to have the P.A.T. that we wanted, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t busy. Simultaneously with this update, we are going to update our P.A.T. #3 checklist and changing 29 (21 updates, 8 adds) items on the checklist. Here’s a breakdown of those changes. The items that we are going to check off that were part of the checklist are:

1. Abilities – Create physics shape Cone.
2. Approve final edits to Lore Docs.
3. Begin work on social animations for later use.
4. Channeling abilities.
5. Final rewrites to additional stories based on Mark’s feedback.
6. First pass – Mage VFX and casting concept art.
7. First pass ability crafting UI design.
8. First pass armor system spatial layout.
9. First pass building system design.
10. First pass master cloak animations.
11. First pass new building system.
12. First pass rough sculpt and layout of worst case mage armor.
13. Improve duck pedestal collision in control game.
14. Integrate second pass Stromrider armor for parts system prototyping.
15. Preliminary VFX concepting for ability types. Determine tech needs moving forward.
16. Rewrites to the Dvergar Becoming story.
17. Rewrites to the Golems Becoming story.
18. Second pass sculpt, texture, rig, Stormrider armor parts.
19. Second pass Stormrider textures.
20. Update store with restoration of some of the limited quantity, but unsold, tiers from the KS+.
21. Update store with Lifetime pledge for Builders.

Besides all of those, we also added a few other items that we also knocked off our list.

1. Added “snow day”  properties to our environment shader.
2. Building blocks can now be placed in world using mouse clicks instead of keystrokes.
3. Building blocks can now use more than one material.
4. Final sculpt and low res of mage armor approved.
5. First Pass Crafting Vision document
6. Re-visit TDD heavy armor concept to work within new character art pipeline.
7. Spells that use ‘lob’ aiming can now track their targets.
8. Unify server and collision code.

Not bad, right? We’ve only been back in the office for two days, yet we’ve just checked off the majority of items left on our P.A.T. #3 checklist, and added a few more to boot! Personally, I’m excited that I was able to write the vision/early design document for crafting over the break. We’re getting ever closer to our next stage of P.A.T. The team is working to check off a few more key items, and Andrew is focusing on some performance improvements, and if things go well, we will reschedule the test for this week.

Other than all of that, as we get nearer and nearer to Alpha, we are still looking for more programmers to join our team, as well as an art intern or two. In more mundane news, we’re almost ready to pick our t-shirt manufacturing and fulfillment companies, so if you haven’t signaled your interest in ordering them, please take the survey that we sent out last month. No commitment is required right now, but because we want to save (both you and us) as much money as possible, we aren’t going to use Print on Demand services, which means we are going to have a limited print run. So, if you think you’ll want to order one, now is the time to let us know!

Later in the week, we will have some updated lore for you, along with another update. Again, a Happy New Year everyone, and I look forward to seeing some of you on our Forums and in IT testing!

-Mark