Aruarose Developments: Worth Waiting!

Thanks to the AruaRose Makers because of their continuing efforts to make this game more enjoyable and worth staying.

These are the upcoming projects that Matt's team are currently working on:



Oro Remake

We've said numerous times in public that we'll be remaking Oro and giving it a proper use; this is exactly what we'll be doing. As you may be aware, Oro doesn't really have any real use at the moment, especially with just the one map.

All of the current monster spawns in Koto Polis will be removed and new ones will be added. We will also be adding the two Japan ROSE maps for Oro, Geb Desert and Paradise of Ra. Both of these maps will also be given real monster spawn areas.

Now, here's the interesting part. We will also be adding 6 other maps to Oro. These will be used primarily for features which you can read below.

In case you're not too hot on Maths, this remake of Oro will give us 9 maps (I posted a hint at what was coming, the hint being 9, so here's your answer!) in total for Oro and will extend the level cap (and possibily stat cap, this is to be discussed) to around Level 230.


Automated Events

We didn't want to just add more maps to Oro; we wanted to make it more exciting. For the 8 additional maps which we've added, we'll be adding two automated events. One will cover 4 maps, the other will cover 2. Read below.


Steal the Gold

This event will be aimed at Level 205 - 210 players. There are two sides: Protectors and Raiders. The objective for Protectors is to protect the gold of Oro; the Raiders to steal it. This will take place across two different maps.


Raids and Instances

This event will be aimed at Level 210 - 215 players. The aim is to defeat the Mother Zorg as quick as possible and will take place across four different maps.


Clan v Clan

One thing we currently lack is a Clan v Clan feature. What we'd like to do is add one, with a goal and a twist.

Everytime this war starts, a Clan Pet is spawned. The objective is to kill the opposing teams pet first. Clans can upgrade their pet for additional things such as HP, Defense, Attack Power. How this will be done is still up for discussion (as in, will you pay for these upgrades through zulie? clan quests? etc).

It's likely this will take place on Pedion, however, we may make a custom map (or just modify Pedion) if it is not suitable.


Player v Player Duel

This event is quite simple: two players sign up to duel at an NPC. Once the NPC is ready, the two players will be automatically teleported to our Dueling map.

The winning player will receive a reward -- again, the reward is still up for discussion. This event requires slightly more thinking to ensure that it can't be abused.

We could also extend this so it's not just Player v Player, but also, say, two teams of 5 Players. Quite a number of different possibilities here.


Custom Maps

I've had a spoiler in my signature for a few weeks now, but thankfully, no-one's spotted it. We're fully capable of making complete custom maps from scratch -- I think we're the only server who can do this and actually implement them.

Our first custom map is our Dueling map as I described above. There are plenty of screenshots to show about this map (it is complete), but the only one you're going to see this side of release is the one in my signature. You can also see it below:

(IMG:http://matt.aruarose.com/signature-1.jpg)

Don't expect this map to be too snazzy and feature-ridden. It's a map primarily for dueling so it has a large open space and a small area where controlling NPCs will be as well as some other decorative pieces. The image above is old and the map has slightly changed, but as you can only see that part, it isn't too much of a worry.


Lunar Episode Quest

With summer looming, it gives me (and many others in our Staff) a huge amount of time off from doing things where we'd normally be extremely busy. Our intentions are to have the Lunar Episode Quest complete and released over the summer.

Work on this was started sometime last year, but it was put to one side. It will involve new NPCs and visiting various locations which I bet you never knew existed.

The hardest part is writing a storyline. Implementing the quest won't be too much of a bother.


New Items and Animations

During February, our toolset for creating things such as armours, back items and even animations was complete; all integrated into a single 3Ds Max suite, so pretty fun to use! In the upcoming months, we'll be creating some new items and certainly with the level increase we'll probably role out some job armours for the higher levels also.

We'll be sure to make them decent and not just a re-colour in Microsoft Paint (yes, ROSE Online North America, I'm talking to you).


AruaMarket

I mentioned this last month; I'm currently in the process of creating AruaMarket. You can read about it here: http://market.aruarose.com

If you haven't heard of it before, it is basically an offline vending system -- and a fully automated one at that. You can put up your items on AruaMarket for others to bid on. You are able to set your own description and choose how long the listing should be on there for (3-10 days). Other players can then bid on an item and if you are the winner, the item is deposited straight to your account and the zulie is removed and given to the seller.

I have a date in mind when I'd like to release this and I'm still on target to hit it. I won't speculate when that'll be as the last thing I want to start giving out is false hope and broken promises.


Advertising

We've always been the only server that's taken advertising seriously; we don't rely on 'top sites' to get exposure (we stopped using these a few months after we opened our doors back in 2007), we advertise on real websites. We haven't done any real advertising for a while (we haven't had a need to, really), but over the next few months I'll be investing large sums of money into a very direct advertising scheme.

I'll be approaching MMORPG and Anime websites for advertising spots -- as I've done in the past -- but this time on a larger scale. What we want is players who've never heard or played R.O.S.E. Online before. We want to introduce this (awesome) game to a new audience.


Website Re-Design

Our current one is pretty nice as it is, but I've talked to one or two of our Staff over the past few weeks about ideas on how to re-design the website so that it's much more user friendly and looks as professional as can be.

The new website will incorporate some features which I'd like to have on the current but can't without mixing things around. Features such as the top clans, where you can sort by our three servers, and the hottest items in our Point Mall (read more about Point Mall changes below).


Point Mall and AruaPoints

AruaPoints have been a pretty huge thing for us. The possibilities for giving them out are endless -- contests, AruaLottery, etc. Right now, there's only a handful of quests where you can get AruaPoints from. The next patch (after Easter) will introduce Eldeon's AruaPoint quests and once our Oro remake is ready to be released, we'll cook up some Oro ones also.

Some of you may remember that sometime last year we had users submit their own AruaPoint quests -- there were about 25 quests that I kept. Depending on how each of these are, we'll be implementing them all.

Due to the success of our Referral Contest, we will also be holding monthly Referral Contests where we'll dish out some AruaPoints to the winners. This was suggested by one of our Staff members a while ago so people still have at least one reason to keep referring their friends over our way.

We'll also be adding AruaPoint Coupons into the game. You can get these from doing various things such as quests or taking part in events (or perhaps as a rare drop from monsters). If you have one, you would speak to an NPC to trade in your coupon and receive the points on your account; you'd then be free to purchase any item you want to on our Point Mall.


Ticket System

We currently use a plugin for our forums to handle tickets. This is fine, however, it causes a lot of problems for our Staff to do their job (and also has a lot of limitations).

One of our Staff members has been coding up our very own, custom made, Ticket System. It will be partially integrated into your normal AruaROSE in-game account, but require a different password -- obviously, if you forget your account password, you wouldn't be able to make a ticket!

We'll also be making information such as character name, what server / channel the problem you're having was on and various other things mandatory as a lot of our time is currently chasing up people who didn't submit their ticket correctly.

This will make [GM]ing a whole lot easier!


Evolution Server

Finally, there's been various discussion on this, both internally between our Staff and externally on the forum and in-game. We are considering opening up an Evolution server. As a base, we would make it identical to ROSENA then modify it as we see fit.

One thing I must make clear, as I always do, is that the iROSE servers will remain online and will still receive the love and attention they get now.

There is a lack of a decent Evolution server and a huge niche for one. Official Evolution servers had thousands of players but the numbers have dwindled down because of how poor official servers are -- I believe we can do much better. The server would be bug free and not running off publically available servers.

Certainly, I'm not saying this will come out in the next few months, but it's worth knowing that it is being considered. I've typed up a very large post regarding this in our User Input forum, but for now it remains viewable to Staff only.

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Hope this post was insightful to see what exactly we're working on. As you can see, we may not make a lot of things public, but behind the scenes, we sure do have ideas that we're in the process of putting into motion.

Please bare in mind that many of these things will take time to implement and perfect. We won't keep it all back to a single patch -- I did say we won't be doing 'big' patches anymore -- so expect it to be released in stages. I think the main thing we will be doing is prioritising what we'd like to roll out first and last.

Some of the things above may change slightly before release so the descriptions I've given may not be accurate.

I was quite reluctant to make a post like this public -- after all, we don't want other servers nabbing our ideas -- but I think it's better to be upfront about what we're working on to generate some interest rather than keep quiet all the time.

You're more than welcome (and it'd be great if you do) to comment on what you've read here: http://forum.aruarose.com/index.php?showtopic=78312. If you like what you read, let us know. If you have a suggestion for something you've read, let us know. Don't like what we're doing? Let us know!

Happy Gaming!