Neocron Expansion Pack Announced

Our Priorities for the Neocron Retail Version Okay, Neocron is out in Germany for 4 weeks now. The game received very good reviews so far (average is 84.2%) and the number subscribers is climbing up every day. But (again) it's too early to lean back and sip champagne... The game is still in its childhood and there's still plenty of work for us. We've been asked many times, what our priorities in the current polishing of the retail version are and I'd like to take this oportunity to give a brief answer to that question. 1st Priority: Server Stability and Sync Related Problems Well, while the stability of NC on the retail servers is pretty satisfying, we still have some complaints about the infamous sync bug. As I pointed out in one of my earlier plan files, this bug is a tough bastard. It happens when players get ported between servers of a world server cluster. To many players it occurs like once per hour of gameplay. On rare occasions it also happens that players get kicked out into some random place after syncing (e.g. places they've never seen or even heard of before and suddenly find themselves surrounded by angry WarBots. Well, in most cases these Warbots are the last thing they will see, before they get killed). This is the number one bad ass we have to get rid off. 2nd Priority: Get Rid of Exploits (and Potential Exploits) We had a bug with the Stock-X system, which allowed some people to make too much money too quickly. While this of course may happen at a stock exchange (even in real life), it appeared way too simple to make money with the current system. The Stock-X has now been taken down and will be reactivated after some modifications. The stock depots will not be affected by this. There are some other known exploits and we are currently working on getting rid off them. If you know of any exploits, please send them to exploits@neocron.com. Btw.: The infamous dupe exploit that people can make use of in Beta 4 does not exist in the retail version. 3rd priority: General Bugs During the past couple of weeks, the amount of bugs has been heavily cut back to maybe ten critical things. They include minor vehicle related bugs, wrong apartments (for runners and for clans), GenRep bugs, wrong skill caps, NavRay sometimes not working right, missing or wrong dialouges and stuff like that. These are being worked on. 4th Priority: Game Balance A major issue. We are constantly working on the optimization of the overall game balance. Hopefully we got rid of the worst imbalancings already, but there are still (and will always be?) complaints about e.g. the Psi Monks being too strong, some mob loot being too valuable etc. Actually this is something that will accompany the entire lifecycle of the game. Whenever we turn a knob, there will be people flaming us for doing it and other who are happy with the changes. However, we did not only do nerfings. In many cases damage values were set back up again. However after every change, we were closely listening to the player base and their experiences with the changes. Thus the player base's votum always had an impact on the next patch. This is a policy we will definetly stick to. 5th Priority: Storyline and Epic Runs While the global storyline does not affect individual gameplay immediately, the epic runs will (more about the epic runs later). The global storyline will lead on the story towards the first expansion pack, which is now officially named 'Beyond Dome of York' (to be released in Q1/2003). 6th Priority: New Features We did not forget about HackNet or the CombatMechs. However, since our programmers are still busy with the above named priorities, these two things have been slightly pushed back (mostly in favor of the epic runs). HackNet is a very complex thing for itself. We only want to implement it once we got a solid base for the current systems. Otherwise they would just open the door for a new flood of bugs and exploits. I will give you an ETA for these two features in one of my next plan files. Global NC Storyline The storyline is about to launch on the 1st of November 2002. As stated above, the story will lead to the 'Beyond Dome of York' expansion pack. It will most likely start with the city of Dome of York blasting an entrance to the north of the Wastelands. The storyline will consist of telling you the political background of actual ongoings, several GM events, storyline related quests and also epic events (such as ongoing battles between the parties of the storyline). Server Distribution Server Neptune (No LE chip), English, One Character, Launch on the 7th of November Server Pluto, English, One Character, Launch on the 15th of October Server Uranus, International, Four Characters, Launched on the 6th of September Server Saturn, International, Four Characters, Launched on the 6th of September Server Jupiter, German, One Character, Launched on the 6th of September Epic Runs The Epic Runs will bring a huge boost to the overall content of Neocron and they might also change gameplay (especially for newbies to the MMORPG genre) quite drastically. Each and every of the 13 factions will get its own complex storyline. These storylines consist of several quests that will explain a lot about the faction the player is associated with. Let's see how this affects gameplay in practice: If a new player enters the game, the first thing he should do is go and pay his faction's HQ a visit. Being at the HQ, one of the 'Human Resources Officers' (HRO) will check the player for his loyalty towards that faction. If the player's loyalty is high enough, the HRO will give him a so called 'Special Run' (SR). This first SR will be a fairly simple mission, which will lead the player into a complex story and into the background of the faction. After completion of the first SR, the player will have to reach a certain rank before he can pick up the next SR. Each Epic Run consists of atleast 6 Special Runs. Each SR is again divided into several smaller missions. This way, the player will become a part of the game's story and will identify himself much stronger with the faction he's bound to. After completing the whole Epic Run, the player will get a rare item from his faction, which is only given to players who complete this specific Epic Run. From this moment on, gameplay will divide into two optional ways: A) Open a clan bound to this faction and receive 'Clan Missions', like e.g. warfare against other factions (completing an epic run will be a req for opening a clan in the future) or B) The player may choose to change the faction, by raising his loyalty towards another faction. The possibility to actually switch factions will allow a player to do the Epic Runs for all 13 factions. A player who collects all 13 rare Epic Run items, will be granted the title 'Neocron Paladin', which will be visible to all other players. You may ask yourself, why we are going to implement linear missions to Neocron as an optional way to play the game. Well, the answer is quite simple. The most important reason is the fact that we saw many players who are new to the MMORPG genre, who often did not know 'what to do next'. The Epic Runs will give these players a red line and an exciting story they can follow. While they follow this story, they will level up their character within a storyline. We feel that this is much better than just going into the sewers and bashing rats without knowing why or without having a true goal. Another reason is that we want to bring more life to the factions and their backgrounds, porting more of the detailled background stories and political in-game situations into the game. The entire faction and loyalty situation will also have a more heavy impact on the game in the future. This means that you may not enter a territory, that is occupied by a hostile faction, without having to fear that you get shot by a NPC of that hostile faction. You will also no longer be able to simply walk into the HQs of hostile factions. The first six epic runs (for the most popular factions) will be implemented into the game with the start of the storyline (actually within the first week of November to be precise). The next 7 Epic runs will follow during November. Let me add that I've seen the storylines of the Epic Runs and I think that they bring a truely believable scenario of political corruption, conspiracy and crime into the game's atmosphere. Another cool thing about the Epic Runs is, that the various storylines are sometimes cross connected. That means that when you play a run for a specific faction and meet a NPC, you may get a certain impression of that NPC. However, when you play an Epic Run for another faction you may find out that this particular NPC has a completely different personality than what you thought about him during your first run. Again, I've already seen some of the storylines and I was truely blown away by their thrilling plots. Well, that's it for today. I will release another plan file with the introduction of the Epic Runs. Stay tuned Martin J. Schwiezer CEO and Founder of REAKKTOR.COM