Game Design for April

Our top priority in April is The Next Chapter of Meridian 59. Right now, this is tentatively being called Konima's Legacy. The goal is to make a concentrated effort to make a large-scale marketing splash. We feel that concentrating our resources on expanding one part of the world will help retain current customers,build the Meridian name into a franchise, and promise newbies continued support and change for Meridian 59.

To do some of the more large-scale changes, we are going to have members of the development team start work on the April release now.  This way, they can do larger changes without worrying about affecting the stability of the February release.

New Features and Areas

• Orc Warrens - An extremely difficult maze, more like a standard dungeon than our typical areas. Parts of the orc warrens may not open until after the release. A couple of puzzles. If a player tries hard enough, he will eventually find the passage which leads back to Konima's Island. Click here for the backstory linking the Orc Warrens and Konima's Island to the rest of Meridian 59.
• Konima's Island - A tropical-feeling island, with a small outpost of human civilization. Konima's Island is populated almost wholly by monsters unique to the island. (Island to be renamed).
• Jixa, city of Konima - This outpost has evolved separately from the rest of Meridian, and therefore has different clothing, technology and spells available than the rest of the land. It's economy also is different from the mainland's economy, allowing some players to profit by carrying the unique Jixan items from the island through to the mainland.
• Lava Area - to show off our new palette (which will have luminence), a lava area with extremely difficult lava beasts floating around. This is also an excellent time to show off another cool feature: sloped floors!
• Orc Raids - As part of the Konima theme, orcs will occasionally raid the city of Tos.
• The game will automatically run the event (No actor intervention necessary).
• It will also redistribute the orcs out to keep server load down (if one area gets too crowded).
• Orcs will be reprogrammed to look for high-level characters first (so newbies don't get slaughtered).
• If the orcs manage to take Tos, they plunder the stores.  As a result, the prices in the stores go way up, the shopkeepers lack the money to buy anything from NPCs and the bank gets partially looted.

New Spells

• An entire spell school (Riija), dedicated solely to illusion and deception, has it's main monastery on the island. A full gamut of ~14 spells will be added.
• Shadow Form (1) - turns your character's lighting black.
• Anonymity (1) - changes a person's name to 'someone', and hides their description.
• Flash (1) - Causes a bright flash to go off in the room. Any trances in the room are lost.
• Distract (2)- Causes all the monsters to chase the spellcaster.
• Foresight (2) - Gets a list of the spells and skills that the target player has.
• Illusionary Wounds (2) - An enchantment. When initially cast, player loses 10 HP of life. They get that back when the enchantment wears off.
• Apparition (3)- creates a 1 HP version of a common monster.
• Illusionary Form (3) - Player holds the appearance of a common monster until they lose their trance.
• Illusionary Token (3) - Creates a fake Duke/Princess token, which will fool an average player but does nothing to fool a councilor.
• Forget (4) - Causes the target player to forget a spell for a short period of time. The spell forgotten is chosen at random.
• Denial (4) - The player gets healed up to full health.  When the enchantment wears off, he loses as much health as he had originally gained.
• Mirror Image (4)- Creates a mirror image of yourself with 1 HP. That mirror image attacks whatever monster attacks you.
• Personal Apparition (5) - Creates a monster that only the target player can see. That player must defeat that monster.
• Morph (5) - Player holds the appearance of a common monster, and gains some limited powers of that monster.

New Monsters

How many of these we get done depends on the number and quality of the artists we get.  Therefore, these are listed in order of preference.

• Avars - (Konima's Island) flightless bird humanoids, good in karma. Extremely short arms wielding a spear.
• Orc Shamans - (Orc Warrens) magic slinging orcs which are much tougher than their mundane counterparts.
• Ghoul - (Orc Warrens) evil, hugely powerful nasty things that create another ghoul if they kill someone.
• DragonFly - (Konima's Island) a pint-sized dragon with dragonfly wings instead of reptilian wings.
• Lava Beast - (Volcano) Glowy, nasty thing, troll-level in difficulty.
• Shadowbeast - (Orc Warrens) a monster that makes whatever room it's in darker. Very tough.
• Avar Chief - (Konima's Island) Lord of the flightless bird humanoids.
• Cave Orc - (Orc Warrens) Tougher, nastier orc.
• Whip Vine - (Konima's Island) Not too tough but extremely tricky. Drops from the canopy to attack it's prey.
• Lava Lord - (Volcano) Extremely big and ugly Lava area supermonster.
• Orc Chieftain - (Orc Warrens) Orc Supermonster.

Missile weapons

• Finally, non-magicians will be able to shoot each other over a distance. There will be one bow object added, as well as two types of ammo for that bow.
• Some anti-missile weapon spells and magical items will also be added.
• The economy needs to be tweaked, as does the weapon damage and range. This needs to be tested to be accurate.

Quest Engine Revamping

• New quest engine possibilities, forever giving players new things to do. The details are still being worked out, but a brief synopsis of ideas thus far is here: Quest Engine Brainstorm.
• Moods. Don't tick off Frisconar, or he might yell at you, and then ignore you. Adding significant more test (responses and triggers) will also help greatly.