It hasn't been a year since the last post like this, but as you rightfully
mentioned we should give you a more frequent update on what we're doing, where
we're heading to, what our goals and ambitions are and what you are to expect
from your fellow development team.

THE HISTORY

Let's start as usual with a short glance on the past period. What have we
achieved so far. All in all, the period was full with work for coders,
although most of the changes had to do with MUDLib internals and therefore
were not too visible to the fellow players, but nevertheless we made a pile of
small tunes, fixes and fixed a gazillion of bugreports to further provide and
improved gameplay feeling. A special attention has been given to the "newbie"
part of the game, where we tried to improve our character creation processes,
make them more appealing to newbie players, tried to fish out possible bugs in
the newbie content, concentratred on giving a warm and pleasant feeling to
those of us who just start to play.

On the content side, Kyo has released a "Small meadow" area, which most of you
prolly know by now. Kudos to him on the marvellous work done. Following that
"Faerie forest" has made it into the wilderness, courtesy of Heidel. And of
course, the wanderers guild has opened its doors to fellow players who have
mastered the art of exploring and travelling. Further on, our local TuneMaster
Juggelo has made some rebalancing on the side of the races. Hate it or love
it, we believe you'll see the benefits of it later on. If not, beware, another
tunepole might come As a "minor" change, it's worth also mentioning that
Renardy is now a separate continent on the map. And at last, but certainly not
least, E'siris was introduced. Although under strong supervision at this
moment and despite the fact that not all of you have completely understood the
benefits and the possibilities it might open to you, we strongly believe that
this new City will sooner or later become "the place to be".

On the staffing side, we've had an addition amongst the team of the
ArchWizards as Juggelo has ascended to ArchWizardhood. B.A.T. Ry has expanded
its members this year as well, adding Juggelo and Favorit as full B.A.T. Ry
members. Nine (9) new wizards have joined our development team since the
moment of last post. We wish them all the best in their ambitions and we hope
they'll have an enjoyable and productive time with us all.

ADVERTISING THE MUD

In the past, we haven't "Really advertised". In the previous years, BatMUD was
already considered as something truly unique - until the arrival of the
MMORPG. This basically changed everything regarding Internet gaming. Of
course, one could argue that the average text-based gamers have grown up and
don't play anymore...but can you, really? BatMUD is still here.

We have launched a couple of smaller campaigns on sites such as Mpogd.com and
Mudconnector.com a couple of years ago, but they're not on the same scale as
our efforts today. Then again, if an influential body would review BatMUD
(such as to what the Pelit-magazine did back in the 90's), it would be more
than welcome. The small coverage we received by the small and un-official
press-release of BatMUD: The Age of Exiles and the Game Client was a small
showcase to what's hopefully going to come, yet.

The B.A.T. ry board effectively tripled the marketing budget suggested by our
treasurer for 2007 in the last board meeting. Currently, our marketing effort
is directed towards the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia. Ads run mostly
during the Finnish night (in order to sort out the variation in the player
numbers day/night). New banners have been ordered from our graphics artists.

We also have a small slot reserved on a site which has 450.000 Finns
registered, probably needless to say what site is in question...

The Bat website has received over 35.000 absolutely unique visitors with an
average time on site of over 6 minutes since the campaigning started 1st of
June, 2007. The only thing to do that still remains is to turn these guys into
Players... At the current rate, we receive about 15+ new characters/players
each day.

THE GAME CLIENT

We have already seen excellent progress with the BatClient, as many newbies
have taken it as the "weapon of choice" when starting to play BatMUD. Thus,
the B.A.T. ry board has sanctioned the continuation of BatClient development.

What you'll be seeing in the Client in the very near future is more
enhancements to the Realm map functions, such as player positioning. A live
graphical HP/SP/EP screen (automatically updating, somewhat of a default in
RPGs) will debut. A more advanced, BatMUD specific party status/placement view
(combined, mouse guidable) will surface. Alongside, many many feature requests
and bug reports suggested to be added/fixed by You on the BatMUD website Forum
will get implemented. If there's something You know would be a dream to get
included, feel free to participate!

We feel that we are quite in balance on the so-called bug hunt vs. new
features scale. However, further optimizations will always have a priority, in
order to make the Client even more usable.

As previously announced, BatClient is aimed towards newbies, but as of
recently, tools such as Era's trigger converter have surfaced to support a
smooth transition from Zmud/Tf/etc. based clients for the older Players.

With the Game Client, our intention is NEVER to reduce or remove the
possibility of playing without your current choice, be it raw telnet or any
other way you use to connect to BatMUD. Be assured of this.

THE MILITARY BACKGROUND AND THE BACKGROUND SPLIT

Hopefully coming in early 2008, the military background will introduce a new
level of distinction between types of tanks in BatMUD. Focusing on tactics and
strategy over strength and ferocity. The background will introduce some new
guilds, archers (who sacrifice melee damage for "ranged" skills and evasion)
and officers (who specialize in party unit tactics).

The most notable division this will make is the separation of barbarians and
crimsons, making it much harder to be a top-quality offtank and top-quality
deftank at the same time, just like it is harder to be a top-quality blaster
and top-quality healer at the same time. But many new options will open up at
the same time. Most notably, several guilds will become multi-background,
allowing some combinations that were not possible before, such as druids going
good_relig/nomad and crimsons going military/good_religious. Some things will
need to be worked out (barbarians have suck sps and wis, for example) but
we'll get to those details.

More details about the military background and the background split as they
develop.

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Neth has promised us an addition to newbie content in the upcoming period. A
group of wizards, whose names are classified have promised us something
totally MAJOR and DEVASTATING to be released by the end of the year. More info
on that as stuff will be developed.

With this update we'd like to express our thanks to you, our dedicated players
who have been with us throughout all the years of BatMUD's existence. Without
you we would be nowhere.

And of course, as promised we'll try to keep in touch in the manner of
releasing such update posts more often.

On behalf of the development and administration team of BatMUD,
Favorit, with the help of Amarth and Shinarae.

^o^