The shard was first booted up on February 1st, 2006. For this our little project, our game, our community to have lasted all these years is a great accomplishment. Thank you all for supporting Excelsior, in so many ways.
We prepared something on-topic with the title above. New content that is mostly for those of you who have been with us for a long time.
Introducing a revamped Veteran Reward system.
To see all the possible rewards, open up the achievements menu. (type [achievements or [ach).
Basically, this is an almost completely new system, almost entirely coded from scratch. Rewards currently go up to 15th year (our oldest still active player will be 10 this year, so there's rewards in stock for a few more years
). The rewards differ in how much veteran points they cost. There are basically a few categories of rewards:
- ethereal mounts,
- decorations (banners and statues),
- titles
- decorative footsteps
- tubs from the old system, and a few new ones too.
Good to know:
You can get 1 reward point every month. The new system calculates your age correctly[1], to the exact date of the year (instead of 1 month being 30 days and a year being 360 days). But keep in mind, you will only get a point if you have been active within the last month. [2]
Special note regarding old-vs-new system. The old system started with 3pts after 1 month, and gave you one point per month until 6 months, and two points per month after that. Many of you may have spent those points on useless stuff, maybe even just to stop the gump from showing up. There was the idea for the buyback program, or everyone (depending on age) to start with some minimum amount of points on the new system... basically no perfect solution. So I've decided, since this is a pretty much a completely new system, that everyone gets completely fresh points (if your account is 3 years old, you now have 36 points to spend).
Notable changes from the old system:
- No more monster statuettes, they are planned to be available through stone crafting.
- No more robes/cloaks, maybe they'll be available in tailoring.
- A few mounts were moved around, for example the unicorn is now a 12-month reward. Sorry to those who might have just had a week or two until you'd reach it by the old rules... don't worry, time can run really fast so that 1 year anniversary is actually just around the corner
- The charger and polar bear, which used to be 0 slot, are now 1 slot. Mounts starting at the 5 year point are all 0 slot.
Things that didn't make it in yet, but are planned:
- preview area for the gumps - will likely be available in the next few days.
- A deed to make your own veteran ethereal mount zero-slot. (available at 5 years, probably 6 points) age.
- House with such addons placed could not be traded to a player who's too young.
- Tub to make an ethy pet opaque or transparent. Probably available on the token stone.
- Footsteps for pets. Same ones as for players, costing a bit less.
- (low priority) Addons to be tradeable, but could only be placed by a player with sufficient account
- nicer preview of the addons (would come in handy elsewhere on the shard too)
- Probably missed something here, we'll figure this out in the next few days and weeks.
With thanks to +Nyx for putting together all the ideas, and might I add in an organized and easy-to-read spreadsheet, as well as sacrificing some of the reserved graphics. And to +Arden, for coding most of it – the menus, footsteps, title system and I'm probably forgetting something.
[1] Same day of the next month, not 30 days later. Or same day next year, not 360 days later. Some more extreme cases: if you joined on Jan 31st at 3PM, your first point will be on Feb 28th at 3PM. If you joined on Feb 29th, your first point will be March 29th, first year will be Feb 28th, and 4th year will again be Feb 29th four years later.
[2] If you joined on March 17th, you would be eligible for the first point on April 17th. But if you don't login during that »first point window« which would be April 17th <-> May 17th, you would not get that point.
Leaving this topic open for comments, suggestions, etc. We'll likely do a few tweaks in the coming weeks & months.
I'm so excited to see folks with their new statues and banners and mounts, oh my!
