Hello my minions!

Recently I was surprised to find some people wondering if Tales of Maj'Eyal was dead (as in not developed anymore). I was like "WTF??" because I knew it was not, quite the opposite in fact, but then I pondered some more and realized that I'm utterly bad at regularly communicating that fact! So let's try to improve on that with a Grand List Of What Is To Come (Possibly).

As usual I never give dates unless I'm sure. So always take this kind of things with a grain of salt, they may come in two days or two years :)

Release of patch 1.6 with huge changes

1.6 is the next free big (huge) patch for Tales of Maj'Eyal. I have already delayed it far too much as such it has grown into such a monster patch that I likely won't be able to list everything going in without forgetting many others. Still, here are a few of them:

• Deep rework of early game balance, main goal being to reduce startup tediousness. This includes changes to difficulty, scaling, shops, drowning, items, ...
• A ton of cosmetic options for all playable races (including the expansion ones). From many shades of skin colors, to haircuts, beards, tattoos, ...
• Hugely improved NPC AI, smarter, better pathing, and so on. For MOAR GLORIOUS DEATHS!
• Update of Doomed, Cursed, Wyrmics, Antimagic, Shadowblades, Prodigies, Corruptors, Reavers
• Update to many randart powers and ego powers
• A complete revision of runes, inscriptions and charms
• Fixed bosses can now levelup in specific classes to keep the challenge up at higher levels/high difficulties
• Revision of many debuffs
• Melee weapon scaling revision to reign in on late game ultra high damage stupidity and buff early game low damage stupidity
• A ton of misc changes, updates, revisions, ...
• And the usual slew of bugfixes (and NEW bugs :) )

Embers of Rage free update with a new class: Annihilator

So you thought that when an expansion is released it's the end of its life? THINK AGAIN!
After 1.6, Embers of Rage will get an update with a whole new class for you to slaughter poor creatures with: The Annihilator! As its name suggests this is a class for peace-loving orcs!

Annihilators use steamguns and new heavy weapons (flamethrower, shockstaff and boltgun) to destroy their foes all while deploying automated steam turrets and even riding around in a mecharachnid suit!
A force to be reckoned with for sure!

Note to be clear: this is NOT the very next update to Embers of Rage, that one will be released at the same time as patch 1.6 along with an update to all expansions, just to update their systems for 1.6. Annihilators will come a little afterwards.

DarkGod turns evil: Microtransactions, but the good kind!

Don't go screaming bloody murder just yet please ;)
So let's say it upfront: no pay2win to be seen in there!

Now that this is said let's get into more fun details. So if there is no pay2win, what will there be?
Many things! Mostly fun and/or cosmetic stuff as could be expected:

• Additional Online Item's Vault space. Any purchase of the game, expansions, donations, ... already provides vault space, but this is for even MOAR!
• Various cosmetic themed packs. These will include shimmer appearances for most items, plus sometimes/usually additional cosmetic options for playable races. "But DarkGod, I want to have racial cosmetic options without giving you more money!" Well, fear not for 1.6 does bring in a ton of those for free anyway. The more, the merrier!
• Community events! Now for something a little different. In Tales of Maj'Eyal community events are temporary stuff that are sent by the server to any currently playing character. The server randomly sends two of those, called the Bearscape and the Lost Land of Poosh, to players automatically. There are many more, like seasonal ones, or ones only I can push when I feel like it. Now players will be able to acquire the ability to trigger either the Bearscape or Poosh themselves, in addition to the random server pushes that are not changing. But wait there is more! They are still community events, so whenever somebody buys and triggers one, all players currently online will benefit!
• I don't like pay2win. I really really don't. So instead of doing pay2win, I've decided to add a pay2die system instead! If you think your character is too strong, that nothing can kill you as you stride effortlessly through the toughest of foes, just buy this option and get a few level 500 god-level horrors randbosses summoned on you! Death is guaranteed! You can even boast online by showing off what horrible horrible creatures are about to kill you!

As for why I'm adding this now; well this is less fun but I prefer to be honest as for why I'm doing it so...
In last October Steam had a glitch in their algorithm, which effect lasted for months and for many can still be felt today. Basically the algorithm suggesting games had gone bonkers and unless your game was an AAA or super indie it sank to the bottomless depths of hell. Many indie devs, including me, had their revenue cut by like 50+% (sometimes much more).
Valve told us this was not intentional and I truly believe them; they've always been very nice people when I needed them so I have no reason to doubt their word. But still, it made me realize that I am so dependent on Steam. This kind of made me enter panic mode, I was mentally unwell for some time I must admit. Maybe I'm too fearful, a scared little boy or whatever but still that's how I feel/felt.
So I've pondered about additional revenue streams and I remembered about some players that kept asking to be able to buy more vault space and cosmetics. So finally after many years I caved in and the rest is (future) history!

And to be perfectly clear: this is just a way for people who want to support the game to do so while getting a few cosmetic/fun stuff out of it. The game itself is free/cheap and will keep on being so because making my game accessible to more people is something I truly believe in. Also I'm an evil god of darkness, thus I want to reach as many minions as possible; you know to eat their souls and stuff... :)

Next expansion announcement: The Lost Land

And last but certainly not least... A new expansion! And not a small one at that. For a long time now I've only announced expansions when they were very nearly finished. This time I'm trying another way and instead I'm teasing it early on. As you can see on the teaser, no ingame art exists yet but many sketches. The lore, zones, foes, stories, ... are all roughly defined and being implemented. The new races and classes are already half-way done.
Still it'll be a long way until release, which will obviously happen in exactly 1DGTU!

"But DarkGod, you didn't tell us what it is ABOUT!" Fear not my brave minion, I'm coming to that!
I can not yet reveal too much about it, and keep in mind anything can change, but here are some key facts for your pleasure:

• It is set on the continent of Tar'Eyal, to the south of Maj'Eyal, which you can already glimpse at the shores on the southern point of Shaloren lands ingame.
• Two prominent forces on the continent: the Great and Bountiful Undeath Empire and the Saupur Imperium
• The continent has been shielded from the outside by a mysterious shield for millennia
• It features a "half-campaign". It happens at the same time as Age of Ascendancy, the player starts on Tar'Eyal and it replaces the first half of the normal game.
• About 15ish zones planned, perhaps more
• At least two new classes: Dust Mages and Gravelords. It is very likely at least a third one will be added.
• At least six new races: Risens, Vessels, Vampires, Exarchs, Saurpurs (two kinds, reptilian and draconic). And possibly more!
• The usual tons of new lore, artifacts, npcs, achievements, quests, ...

To be on trend

So it seems like every single content creator is on Patreon but me. Well, I suppose I need to fix that then!
Joking aside, I've been asked many times if I could provide alternatives to Paypal for donations because well, some (many?) people are not fond of it at all. Lately Patreon announced they'd change their fees, except for people that got on before May, so I thought "Hey, I suppose it's as good as time as ever".
Now this is a bit of a different Patreon page than people are used to. In the spirit of always trying to keep things fair for every players, no matter where they buy the game/donate, I've decided that all the different pledge tiers would never entail players to anything special. Instead the system will simply count all the money that has been received from a pledge and add it to the voratun coins on te4.org. Just like any other donations. Patreon pledgers will get a blue name in the chat like any other recurring donation setups.
I know this is likely to lose me some pledges, but I think being fair to everybody is more important.
You can find the Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/darkgodone

The Future: new rendering engine

For a very long time now I've had a side project: upgrading the display code used by T-Engine4.
When I started making the game it was my very first OpenGL project, so as you can imagine the code sucked royally.
It has gotten better over time but it still follows the same principles I first implemented, and frankly, they suck.

Some time ago I spoke about porting the game to tablets & phones, this presents a lot of UI challenges as Tales of Maj'Eyal is just a wee bit more complex than your usual phone game. But it also presents code problems as the current way of doing OpenGL just does not cut it.

The new rendering code is meant to alleviate this problem. It's a very long project because it means rewriting so much code and because the new code is not the same even in concept. The worst part about this project is that, on the surface, the user will see very little change from all of this. Apart from a somewhat better font handling and some smoother animations, the primary changes will be a new particle system, and a visual editor to implement them.

Still it's a lot of thankless invisible work, but it is needed to ensure the future of the game :)

The Other Future: translation?

This is even more hypothetical but something I've also worked on a bit, adding a translation layer to the engine to make it available in multiple languages. This is a huge undertaking and unlikely to come fast, if at all, but it would be so nice, wouldn't it?

Final Words: the DarkGod has spoken!

And there you go, you know of some of the projects being worked on/thought about. Do note that those are only the relative short-term stuff, ideas are certainly not something I lack ;) As I have said many times, Tales of Maj'Eyal is my baby, I love it and I do not plan on stopping as long as the community supports me with love (and sadly, money too as this is the real world :/ ).

Thanks to all of you and I hope you'll love what comes next, and then what comes afterwards and ... and ... well you get the idea :)