For about a month, I’ve been planning this upcoming update to World of Magic that will completely change the game and revamp its most flawed systems, while keeping some of the game the same. This post will dive into the details about the major changes being done in this update, and explain my reasoning for changing each one.
The Map
Ever since I started designing World of Magic’s map, I sort of knew it was going to create problems in the future, but I kept making it anyway. These are all problems that are going to be fixed, and I’ll explain how later on in the post. I’m sure most people already know what problems I’m talking about, but I’ll name a few:
- There’s no method of transportation besides Flight Spells which are unlocked at a high level, which is easily the biggest issue about the current map. The game is a borderline walking simulator, as every single quest and task requires you to run through 500m+ of wilderness and trees while annoyingly attracting the attention of random NPCs.
- Building each area takes MUCH more time, even with the help of builders, so at most there can only be one new area or town per update, which makes the map progression feel really slow coupled with the other massive feature(s) added every update. And because of the issue above, the more areas that get added, the further players have to walk to get from point A to point B.
- Due to the way cultures and player spawning is structured, every area of the map would have felt the same, just a different design. Since players can spawn in any town on the map, and quests can spawn anything anywhere, no area feels truly unique.
Most of these problems can’t really be fixed without a complete overhaul of the game, and these issues were the primary motivation for this update idea. One day I was in the shower, thinking about these issues and reminiscing about the great features of the game’s prequel, Arcane Adventures, when I suddenly thought “why DON’T I just make the game be islands?” After this, the entire idea for the overhaul was sparked, and over the next few weeks I added more and more ideas to it with the help of techlevel80.
So yes, as guessed by most people on the forums due to my many hints, the map will be changed into islands. This doesn’t mean splitting the existing map into pieces or anything, I will be starting from complete scratch with new lore, areas, unique characters, and more. Islands will vary in size, importance, and biome, just like they did in Arcane Adventures, but with even more polish and detail.
Changing the map to islands will make expanding the map easier, improve the sense of exploration, add much more variety in areas, and also allow me to add things such as NPC ships, ghost ships, whirlpools, and more. This also solves a lot of the issues mentioned above, because boats will now be the main form of transportation, which I’ll give more info about below.
The timeline of the game in the Arcane Universe’s lore is also being changed, which will be explained later on in the post.
Boats
Of course due to the map being changed to islands, there can’t NOT be boats and ships to go along with it. There will be multiple types of boats just like in Arcane Adventures, each with varying stats and weapons. I also plan on making a Ship section of the inventory that allows you to equip different things to your boat. My goal is to make the ship system be similar to Arcane’s, but with added features, improvements, and details.
Due to these being added as the main form of transportation, Flight Spells will be removed, since players would have no reason to use boats after unlocking flight.
Lore and Time Period Changes
Since the entire lore of current World of Magic is that it was a continent formed by the Peacekeeper, it doesn’t really make sense that it would be islands created by the Peacekeeper instead, and even then, the ruined Seven Seas would have been too small an area for the game’s new story. This is why me and tech have decided to change the game’s location in the world and where it takes place on the timeline, so that it can more properly suit the atmosphere we are trying to create.
The new storyline and game will take place in an area of the world called the War Seas, which is on the opposite side of the world compared to the Seven Seas. This is an area full of warring kingdoms, and also the area where Mount Olympus fell thousands of years ago. The game will take place about a month after the Peacekeeper defeated Durza on the other side of the world, right as Chaos was ravaging the Seven Seas.
The Magic Council will also be changed to something that better fits the area and new lore, but will mostly remain the same.
Due to these changes, the existing storylines will be completely removed, along with the Exiled and Minotaur bosses. I’m not really sure what will happen to their item drops at the moment, but IF they are deleted, players will receive the compensation of equal if not greater value as they deserve for adapting to these sudden changes. I can’t really give up much more info on the new story without spoiling it, so this is all I will reveal about it at the moment.
(If this section confused you, give the universe’s lore a read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/120q6IC_SZoKjPRf0NMAxgZunDYLhV5r5_-kxcV8BcFw/edit?usp=sharing This doc will be revamped with the new TGR details soon)
Storyline Focus
I’m sure many of you have felt the same way about World of Magic’s storyline: it’s TERRIBLE. Since this game is a sequel to Arcane Adventures, you’d think it would start out with some special NPC and such straight away, instead of forcing the player to basically roam around for the first 90 levels.
This is an issue that will be fixed. The new game will be somewhat storyline focused like Arcane Adventures was, and players will spawn on islands relative to their place in the story, rather than spawning in random towns and wandering around from there. My goal of this game’s story is to be at the same grand scale that AA’s was, but even better and more grand.
Cultures
Cultures have always been a sort of flawed system in this game, as they were meant to be something that made your character feel unique, yet at the same time, all it gave you was reskins of the same weapons that other cultures had. Also, since the lore, location, and timeline of the game are changing, I’ve decided to remove cultures all together.
Starting when this update releases, players will choose a first AND last name when creating their character, and all cultural items will be removed. If you have a character already, you will get to reselect a new last name when you join on that file in this update. (Existing last names will PROBABLY be in the list as well)
An alternative to cultural weapons will also be added, which are island-specific weapons. Each island you visit with civilization on it will have their own set of armors and weapons that you can buy.
NPC Changes
NPCs are another huge flaw of the game. Yes, the fact that every NPC can run around, be killed, and talked to is nice and immersive, but gameplay-wise, it’s a HUGE hit to performance for most players. On average, the current map has about 330 NPCs on it at all times.
Due to this problem, and in order to make the game less annoying, all NPCs besides enemies will now be stationary models that can’t be killed. This fixes the issue mentioned above, and also 2 other major issues that the current game has:
- Shop owners having sleep patterns and being killable makes it a chore to sell, upgrade, and enchant.
- Sleeping NPCs can’t give quests, and are essentially just dead space performance wise.
- Adding to the storyline would have been excruciatingly annoying later on when there are more special NPCs. If you think about it, imagine having to talk to a powerful magic user as part of the Hero Storyline. The bad rep storyline would have to have been able to fight them, or it wouldn’t have been consistent with the rest of the game. This means that every time a special NPC is added to either storyline, it is essentially adding a new boss or miniboss, which would have taken much more time overall.
It will be sad to see this feature go since its a staple of World of Magic, however, if it means that overall gameplay and performance is improved, it’s for the best, and I hope you understand.
Hostile NPCs will now also only spawn in pre-set locations, but there will also probably be a random “event” system where groups of NPCs can appear on islands.
Quests
The quest system was a nice idea on paper, but not when actually executed. Eventually there would have been lots of types of quests, but even then, the fact that they’re random, and from random NPCs, just made the game feel “soul-less” in a way. Quests don’t actually contribute to anything besides your own level and XP, and that same NPC that lost his hat will probably lose it again within a day.
As part of this update, side quests be manually added, meaning each one will be unique. Some of these will probably be repeatable daily, but overall, the main form of leveling up will be defeating enemies and advancing in the storyline from now on. Some of these side quests will also give unique rewards and items to incentivize doing them.
Other
Other smaller features that will be added this update, to name a few:
- Huge performance increase due to the changes listed above
- Sharks that attack players and smaller boats
- Whirlpools
- Complete UI revamp
- Revamped lighting and skies
- Temperature, since island biome variation will be heavy
- Mobile compatibility (This one may surprise a lot of people since in the past, I said I was really against mobile due to how cluttered it would make the screen. I’ve since thought more on it and realized “this isn’t a real reason, just an excuse not to do it”, and mobile players SHOULD be allowed to play the game still. Even if their combat will be a bit janky and hard to do, it will be nice to get on mobile and fish or collect a few chests)
- The addition of the first Lost Spell Scrolls, which are rarely obtained items that allow you to unlock a new spell type for the magic it is assigned to.
- +MUCH more which will be added to the Trello over the next few days. (Trello link: https://trello.com/b/Mv99bZYP/world-of-magic )
Changed Update Schedule
World of Magic’s first few updates have been very bad from a community stand-point, as I was really caught up with finishing the shops added in towns (which was why the first update was a Fishing Update). Instead, I should have been adding the features that players want the most, such as magic weapons, fighting styles, higher level caps, and more story.
After the Total Game Revamp update releases, I’m going to start a new update schedule where I will update the game every 2 weeks, consistently. These updates will add new items, side quests, islands, boats, storyline, and other small features, while I also work on bigger features in the background. Once I finish the smaller content additions of each of these 2 week updates, I will work on the bigger feature, for example fighting styles and the strength route. The “bigger features” of these updates won’t come out every 2 weeks, and instead be disabled before each update, and then added in one of the 2 week updates when they are fully complete.
This new schedule will keep the game fresh, add lots of new content to it, and also add the bigger features eventually as well, without the dead space of 1-2 months in between updates. I’m unsure if this schedule will go on indefinitely, or if I will go back to this current schedule, but I will do it for a few months after TGR and see how it goes.
ALL EXISTING DATA FROM WORLD OF MAGIC WILL BE KEPT AS A PART OF THIS UPDATE
Since the foundations of the game such as levels, magic, etc. are staying the same, there is no reason for me to delete everyone’s data.
Conclusion
You may be thinking that based on all these changes “He is just turning the game into an Arcane clone”, and you are sort of right. Arcane Adventures, in my mind, was a near perfect game for what it was trying to be, with a few flaws here and there. Since this is a sequel to that game, its only right that it is similar, and improves upon the foundation that its predecessor built. I’m going to try my best to keep the game feeling as fresh as possible, and not just copying storyline concepts from Arcane at every turn.
This update is going to be a complete change to the game, so naturally it will take a few months. Until then, I’m glad that I was able to fix the memory leaks in the current game and make it a bit more bearable to play. Even if the current game completely dies out before TGR is completed, I will still work tirelessly on it until it can eventually be released. The goal of this update is to bring the old players and fans back, while appealing to new players, current players, and also giving them a new adventure in the same universe.
So, allow me to welcome you to Arcane Odyssey, the TRUE sequel to Arcane Adventures
oh well, it is what it is