2023 Roadmap

Our over-promising in roadmaps is a little infamous at this point. So we'd just like to talk through the 3 big things that we have locked-in to be released this year.

2023 is going to be an exciting year for Phobos. Our over-promising in roadmaps is a little infamous at this point. So I won't dwell on the small features that we're hoping to get done in 2023, except to say that you can expect the (already teased) quest log, new hotkeys, better ability descriptions, and an overhaul of equipment stats and availability.

Instead, what I'd like to do here is take a few minutes to talk about 3 big things that we have locked in to be released this year.

1. NORTHERN DAWN

It's been a long, LONG time since the last content update. Northern Dawn will provide that much needed new content: a huge new area, new monsters, items, quests; all that good stuff. A few older areas of the map will also be getting changes (some minor, some major), but we'll let you discover those on your own.

We now have more people working on content (more than one, that is!). Thor is focused mostly on Tâgileim city, whilst Lans and me (Rob) are spending most of our time on the other surrounding areas. Here is a sneak peek at some of what is to come:

The entrance to the great dwarven city of Tâgileim

The ancient temple of Tâgileim

The Waker's Rift in the mines of Tâgileim

Misty Tor, home to frost wyverns and golems

2. MULTIPLE SERVERS

No online RPG can be successful when more than half its playerbase is connecting to a server over 5000 km away. Adding a server in North America was on the roadmap way back when we released Phobos on Steam. We're delighted to announce that in the last few months we have finally made real progress here.

Phobos wouldn't be much without a community. So, for the betterment of the game, our priority must be to avoid splitting up our small community as much as possible. This means that those players who have been holding out for a fresh start will be disappointed here. We understand that there have been concerns in the past about exploited/cheated player wealth. We do have tools to help us find suspicious accounts, and these have been used to delete almost 30 accounts in the last year. But we know the work isn't done here, and we'll continue to keep one eye on this. And of course, if future player numbers are ever enough to support a third server, then we will be happy to seriously consider making it isolated.

So, what will it actually be like? Well, the system we're building will rely on partly synchronising the new and old servers with one another. The most obvious place this will be done is in towns. So when you visit a town, you will be able to meet with players on the other server, as well as your own. But as soon as you leave the town, the world will collapse back into your single region 'instance' of the server. Noble account users will be able to transfer between servers at temples, and some other special locations. But other users will be effectively locked to the region they chose on avatar creation. Some chat channels will also be synchronised between servers, again to limit how much we split the community.

3. CLASS SHAKEUP & EARLY/MID-GAME RESTRUCTURING

When our class