RotMG Spring Update!

Hello Realmers!

It's been a while since we last did one of these, December 16th 2013 to be exact.



A lot has happened since then.

As before, I want to talk about what we've been working on, what we've accomplished, and our updated plans moving forward.

Before we get into the fun stuff, I wanted to talk a little bit about cheating in Realm. Don't do it. You'll get caught. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but at some point in the future someone from the game team, or more likely the vast Realm community, will find you, record you, and eventually lead to an account ban. We are actively banning accounts for all varieties of "cheating", and since the beginning of 2014 we have banned hundreds of accounts. We'll continue to aggressively monitor the game to weed out as many of the offenders as possible. Finally, we couldn't do this without the help of the community - we can't be in all places at all times, and we are immensely grateful for your efforts.

Ok. Now that we're done with that...

This will be a bit of a long read so get some popcorn and your beverage of choice:

Realm Recap

You can see our previous update here.

A few more details from that update:
Lair of Draconis: This was on test this past weekend, and will be available on and off of test for the next several weeks. The dungeon is a 4 Gravestone difficulty, so it's not "crazy end game" but is meant to be for high level players with decent gear. Release date: 1st Half 2014 (April ~ June).

Pet Effects: We are planning to release the first Pet Effect with the Lair of Draconis dungeon. The effect will be from specific bullets, designed to give low damage, but applying an effect to your pet that will neutralize it for a period of time. Release date: 1st Half 2014 (April ~ June) with Lair of Draconis.

Dungeon Design Template: This has been officially released and is available for all players on the "Ideas" thread in the official forum. Release date: Released!

Ease of Use Features (Chat Filters and Health Bar Toggles): These are still on our roadmap but we don't have a release date yet. Stay tuned. Release date: TBD

"Using Fame for Good" will be re-examined in the 2nd half of this year and "Elder Realms" has been put on hold for the time being. We had started planning and designing for Elder Realms earlier this year, but as we were talking through it, it became clear that we needed to spend time elsewhere in the game. We need to invest more time into game balance, specifically around the classes. I'll let DrBearsworth go into a little more detail on that balancing effort - see below.

The balance work doesn't end with classes. We will also be doing more balancing overall. This will mean more balance updates: nerfing and buffing parts of the game, and then using testing and player feedback to see how it feels, before rolling it out to all servers. We've done very little of this in last 12 months, so we want to increase our efforts here, with the end goal being a more fun and balanced Realm. Again, classes first, and then we'll engage with the players and dive deeper into other systems like pets, weapons, items, dungeons, etc.

Looking Forward


Graveyard: Yes, we're bringing it back. I wanted to save this as a surprise, but we were pretty happy to get this back into the game and I couldn't wait to let you know! More details to come. Release date: 1st Half 2014 (April ~ June)

Mini-Dungeon update: More mini dungeons similar to Bella and Shaitan, as well as a way to get to them from inside the realm. More details on this once we're ready to start testing it. Release date: 1st Half 2014 (April ~ June) and Ongoing

Arena Update: This will be a major update and at first will be focused on the PvE aspect of The Arena. A lot of design work needs to be done here, but we're excited to make The Arena a fun and challenging place to play. Release date: 2nd Half 2014 (July ~ December)

Pet Skins: We'll provide a way for players to change their pet skins and get new skins for their pets. Release date: TBD

Gifting Items to other players: We're investigating this feature, but we really want to open up the ability for players, friends and guildmates to gift items to each other. Release date: TBD

As always, we have a number of other bug fixes, improvements, and surprises that we'll be addressing from time to time similar to the recently released "Stat Pots can't be consumed if at Max Base Stats" fix.

Thanks for sticking with us, and thanks for reading. Don't forget to check out DrBearsworth's Class Balance info below.

~ SGT_Sunshine
The RotMG Team


DrBearsworth Discusses Class Balance


Hey everyone. As was discussed during the Game Design Q&A some weeks back, part of my time and effort in design has been to evaluate different areas of the game that are in need of balancing. I want to posit first and foremost that everyone has an opinion when it comes to this subject. What we can all agree on is that there are parts of this game that have been neglected in the past that require a lens.

With so many options on where to start classes seemed the most logical. Initially, my first thought was to simply move to the classes I thought were rather unbalanced and begin working them down. When I presented this to folks in the community, I was surprised not only by the great ideas but also the alternatives on where to start and how. What does this mean? Overwhelmingly, what was suggested was to first bring other classes up — give them interesting new twists or more desirability. From there, once all classes were functional, interesting, or more powerful, begin tweaking and balancing down as necessary.

With that, my plan of action has been to take on three classes initially: Mystic, Priest, and Paladin. Without giving away too much, each of these classes could undergo as little of a balance as base / max stat change, or as drastic a change as a complete rework of their abilities. My goal is to have something workable for each class by June for the community to try out and to give feedback. I do not assume that they will be perfect, but I do think they will be different and potentially interesting enough for the overall community to try them out.

tl;dr: You're all beautiful snowflakes, and you broke us with ideas that were like WHAAAAT. So we're going to make classes algebraic, but we're going to start with some rando ones first and work on them being boss. Bearsworth out.