Hello.

It's been a while since my last devblog and that is partly because there has been a lot of things to do. I'll try to break the radio silence by telling about this project I've been working on for the last months: Houses.

What, really? "But we have houses in our player cities", you might wonder. Well, not that kind of houses! Wow. Nice segway. I should write more of these blogs as the text no longer flows naturally.

Anyway. This new House System, that's hopefully going to be introduced this month (now is May), will be a new kind of community system. Already we have guilds whose primary function is to give you miscellaneous ways to spend your experience but apart from that we have guild channels and some of them are relatively active and offer friendly advice for new players or even seasoned players who are new to the guild. I think it's fair to say that the most active communities in BatMUD occur in secret societies. Many secret societies are just places to seek for vivid conversation be it a society dedicated for music, movies, sports or you name it. We also have some secret societies that's mainly concentrated on organizing parties and have their own websites for sharing monster loot for example. I think it's fair to say that if you're not member of any society, you might be missing a lot.

Now if you put yourself in the shoes of a new player who doesn't yet know anyone, you can imagine that it's not necessarily an easy task to make new friends in BatMUD. Keeping that in mind, I'm hoping this the House System will make some difference. So, what is the house system?

The idea of houses is that all players of BatMUD will be divided into two groups. The first group is the older players who have played a long time. The second group is the new players who are just learning the ropes and hoping to take the first steps in the game. Technically this is going to mean that any player who has reached level 50 even once will be regarded as an "old player" and the rest are considered to be new players.

The Houses that are founded by players have a specific amount of slots available. Player may have invitations to more than one house but may be member of only one house at the time. Each house has some full member slots for "old players" and even more slots for the newer players. To run a succesful house you will be needing the effort of both old players and new players. This will hopefully give the new players a good chance to find players within their own house to ask advice and make friends.

Houses gain points for the accomplishments of its members; be it an old player or a new player. These old players will be referred as "full members" and new players will be referred as "commoners" in the house system. The houses can be listed and houses may have friendly rivalry to see who has the most accomplished house of the realm. Depending on the influence of the house, the house may choose to purchase additional bonuses for its house members.

There's going to be a little bit more information when this system will be brought into the game, but for now i'll just say this: In this rivalry, there isn't player killing involved and houses are going to be open for everyone.