And another year goes by. As we are in the busy midst
of 2007, the time has come to have a flash back at the
year 2006 to recollect the major achievements of BatMUD
in the past year and take a look back at what happened
then and what is about to happen.

Past year has been a productive year overall. The events
that are most worthy of mentioning are of course The Age
of Exiles or bringing new continents in action for
exploration and BatClient.

The Age of Exiles was a big project that required teamed
effort of many coders in BatMUD and in the end of it it
has really paid off, we have a new outer world to explore
and live in.

The Age of Exiles also introduced a new guild to
BatMUD - wanderers. Being a true masters of teleportation,
they provide you with abilities of intercontinental travels.

We should not forget another valuable and significant
improvement the Age of Exiles has brought - ships and
all that comes with them. Thanks to tremendous efforts
of Melemkor, the ships gained richness in content and
usability and nowadays are an essential part of BatMUD
life.

The new BatClient, a custom made client for BatMUD, that
has been developed in collaboration with Mythicscape.
Although not yet complete, the first versions were
released during VegasCon and later in the year it was
made publicly downloadable from our main website,
www.bat.org.

BatMUD machine was replaced by a brand new 2U-sized rack
server with Dual 3.8GHz Xeon, 8GB DDR2 memory and U320 RAID
controller with 6x 146GB 15K RPM U320 SCSIs, a remote access
controller, etc, etc giving us more power and less
machine lag.

Shinarae has provided us with a nice one-time April's Fools
event, and later on with an easter egg hunt event which was
a great fun for majority of players across the game. As well,
it has given us an impression that one-shot events are a valid
area of enjoyment and therefore should be done more often.

Several wizards have introduced new areas to the game, further
expanding our content available for your enjoyment.

Also, Ix'ixixiblat, the skeletal Greatwyrm was slain by a brave
party of 18 mortals for the first time in history of BatMUD.

B.A.T. ry held a Las Vegas convention in the fall of 2006, and
despite the fact that I wasn't attending it myself, from what I
have heard it was a great success, everyone enjoyed it and
had a lot of fun.

Also, year 2006 has brought us a new archwizard, yours truly
a.k.a. Favorit.

A new community service has been launched in 2006, namely BatMUD
forums. The plan is to further expand community side of our web,
and further integrate MUD information with the site, making it
more usable and information-rich.

Alongside the content changes, the city of Rilynttar has suffered
demolishing and has been rebuilt by a bunch of wooden golems
Jorgoses. Although still in betatest and crazed Jorgoses are still
running around pondering what to rebuild, the city has been made
publicly available for young and more experienced explorers
to sight see.

Of course it's worth to mention that last year has brought us
new coding forces. Six new wizards have joined our coders team
to help us furthering BatMUD and make it a nicer and more enjoyable
place for all of you to experience.

So, this partially sums up all the major events and happenings of
the past year. Now, let's take a short look ahead and see what we
can expect in the upcoming future. Being pressurized about spreading
classified information, I'll still take the liberty and shed some
light on the plans for 2007 and ahead.

There're a lot of changes that have been planned for 2007. Possibly
not all of them will meet the set deadlines, but some of the changes
include a new background (military) as well as background system revamp,
ranged combat in the form of archers guild. Several new guilds are
currently being in the planning and pre-approval phase, and some of
our wizards are beginning to work on those.

And of course many of our coders are working hard to bring you forth
some new content in the form of new areas, quests and other events to
experience. There are plans to work on BatMUD's PvP system, introducing
sort of battleground-type areas and events as well as PvP ranking system.

Other than that, ranger guild has already received a basic tasks system,
and this system is promised to expand, bringing you new tasks and
rewards. On the community side, as I have already mentioned, BatMUD
forums went live and there are plans to integrate forums with in-mud
reader, and possibly poster, as well as expanding community services
available from the web further, to provide a more pleasant environment
for players to share information and keep in touch with each other.

Also, B.A.T. ry is pursuing the further development of BatClient.
The latest in-testing versions already show such features as scripting
functionality, triggers and sophisticated liting options. There will be
several version releases before the so-called Phase 2 Release
(that has more graphical implementations.)

All in all, the time goes on, we will continue developing and expanding
BatMUD, keeping in mind what you have told us in news, in other feedback,
on the forums, etc. Please keep the feedback coming, and keep the new
players coming to enjoy our wonderful game. This game will be nowhere
without you, our dedicated and devoted players.

Sincerely yours,
Favorit.


^o^