It's a new year, and a new year means new content!
There are big things coming friends, trust me. Nick and I have met to plan out the next expansion and subsequent patches, and I must say, I'm excited!
So what's coming up? I want to say, oh how I want to say! But alas, I wish to keep what is coming up a surprise. For the most part.
New Stuff? Finally![]
It was a content drought to end all content droughts! Honestly, I have no idea why Nick and I never updated, we have all the time in the world to do so!
But now we have a plan! So here's what I'm willing to tell you:
- The first big raid you'll venture into is Glaecon, located on Glaecings. Now this isn't a secret, the beginnings have already been posted! But once everything is out will you realize the true might of this raid!
- We're slowly unveiling more of the story of the expansion coming up. Some people may have noticed my new addition of the Iluvanaar University. This will be a starting point for the stuff more related to my stories, though anything can happen there, and Nick is welcome to add whatever he wishes to it.
- Diodrasith; what is it? Good question. Diodrasith is just a city lost to time. However, much like our real life Library of Alexandria, great wealths of knowledge are held within, hence the great interest in finding it. Unlike the Library of Alexandria, this one wasn't fully destroyed, and some artifacts have found their way to the university, and many collectors.
My Plans![]
I've said this before, but I'll say it again; I'm actually going to be more active here. Previously, I got overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff we added per patch. I mean, 20-something bosses in X-5 was ridiculous.
My plan is to create smaller, more fleshed out and story driven raids, with more interesting boss mechanics. I want players to feel invested in the raid, I want them to genuinely care about who they are helping and why. Some people don't care for story, and as much as I disagree, I've been trying to avoid cliche gimmicks and fights to make it fun for them. Look at Glaecon, what do you notice about the bosses? The first fight is a council and not a gate-keeper! We've used the gate-keeper trope so much it got tired and boring. "Oh, another big armoured thing blocking our entrance. How original."
Second for me is questlines. I love creating characters and worlds and stories, and questlines are a great way to bring forth my visions. To this end, I've decided to make questlines a bit different; the volume of quests will decrease, but the challenge and goals of each quest will increase. I don't want a massive story arc to have "collect 10 bear asses" as a quest unless needed and as part of a bigger quest. I want long spanning goals not related solely to farming kills and items. I want people to explore masive ruins and great fortresses, I want people to use their skills they've leveled to their advantage; sneaking past a patrol, or sneaking their way through an entire keep as to not alert the lord within. I want to play to their strengths and weaknesses and have the quests branch out in multiple paths, but end at the same goal. Do you have low sneak but good cooking? Maybe you can distract guards and enemies with the aroma of food instead of sneaking. Maybe you assassinate the watchman so as to not raise an alarm, maybe you set fire to a tower to allow yourself a window of entry.
The world of Legend's Legacy is great and vast, there is much to see and do, and upcoming is possibly the greatest we've come up with. The world makes sense, all the zones flow story wise and in terms of landscape, there are secrets and mysterys to find and solve, keeping things interesting. Simply leaving the path and walking through the forest to your destination will have differences. Stay on the path and you may get ambushed by bandits or venture upon a wrecked caravan, while in the woods you can kill those bandits, making it safe for others, or possibly saving the caravan from their destruction. There may be a camp in the forest offering a mini-quest you'd miss on the roads. Nick and I spend a long time writing these stories and these worlds, and our goal is to make them fun to explore!
Finally, we come to some of my creations; specifically the Outer Old Ones and Tylious. Let's start with Tylious; he was my first contribution to this place, for those who don't know about it, here you go. Since then, Tylious has been a part of almost everything I've created. Yes, he is one of the most important people in the story, countless world changing events have happened because of his actions, but that's just it, I've used him so much. Now I won't be killing him off any time soon, but I'm going to be using him less. Now is not his time to shine, he did so much in TWR, that if I kept using him it would get stale. He appears only slightly in the coming expansion, and never helps at all in a raid. Now the Outer Old Ones. I love these guys; their twisted views of reality and life are why I love writing them, but it's become to easy for me to fall back to them on a boss fight. "Oh, I can't think of a boss. He's an Outer Old God, he uses void magic, bam done." That's not exciting anymore! They were perfect for X-12 and a few others, but they were in things they had no business being in! Oh there's one in Rise of the Godforged? Why? What purpose does he serve? How did he get there? Is he relevant to the story? All I can say is that I will use them again, but only when it is suitable for them to be there.
Conclusion![]
This is a long post, but I feel it is important. I have done some major overhauling of my design philosophy, and it's only fair people know about it. Some major changes are coming to LL, and I believe Nick agrees with most of what I posted.
Things will be shorter, but things will be better!
Cheers!
The R.B.