2013 in Retrospect (oh and it is my birthday too)

Today, December 20th 2013 is my 9th birthday in Entropia Universe and like the last few years I wanted to write about my experiences in the past year and possibly a bit further back, but we'll see where this leads.

2013 has been an interesting year IRL to say the least, not only for me personally, but for the world in general. I will go into some interesting things about my personal life, but for the other interesting IRL stuff in the past year I want to point you www.cnn.com or any other news site.

I have not been playing that much in 2013 and it seems I play less each year and there have been times where I could really understand the people that just quit because they got fed up with the game, but some how I hung on and logged in once in a while and even played for a few hours at a time, hunting some stuff for a mission.

I also did my first instance this year, both on Arkadia and on Calypso, which was more fun then I thought it should be and something I will be doing again, I'm sure.

I spend most of my time on Arkadia, which I consider my home from the day it launched, but have been to Calypso for a while, exploring some of the new stuff there and as mentioned doing some instances.

So, 2013, the year we finally got back taming, which is something many of us have been waiting for for years. We also got 2 new planets, Theryon Wars and Toulan, the cost to play went down a lot and MindArk got in contact with their players in order to improve the game ... oh ... wait, stretch that.

So what DID happen in 2013?

First of all it was the TEN year, marking the tenth anniversary of Project Entropia. This TEN year brought us various special items and events on all planets.​

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MindArk also boosted up the loot for a while at the beginning of the year. In their own words: "No one can be sure when this insanity will end so be sure to grab your share of these ‘Modified Loots’!"

Moon Auction
Of course there was a big sale of property this year as well, like every year. This time there was however something different. Instead of a Land Area type property where all the winner could do was manager the property, this time the winner got the opportunity to 'create' the property and work closely with MindArk to make that happen. The income from the property was not only in tax, but also a % of revenue MindArk got and a % of the money new players brought in by the moon. A couple of months later, in April, when the auction happened, Akoz because the proud owner of the first Entropia Moon for 1.500.000 PED, which was the starting bid for the auction. The moon was said to be launched in Q2 or Q3 of 2013, but I'm sure nobody was to surprised that it turned out to be Q4.

What else did happen
One thing that is for sure a biggy for MindArk is that they sold their yellow castle, which they bought as office/hotel during the Leipzig game show, which was canceled right after they bought it. So that brought in a few bucks (less then they payed for it though).

We have yet another way of getting our money to MindArk, using PayPal, which a lot of people have been asking about. There was also the new avatar system, with all the bug that come with it, we do look a bit better these days, which is nice, if only we could sit or lie down already !

A pretty big one for me is the condition limit of UL SIB weapons has gone from 50% to 3%, which let me use my LR41 a lot longer then I thought I would before needing to repair it. With all the things MindArk does to lower the value of those weapons, this was a positive thing.

There have been more things that happened which I do not want to go into right now, but here is a small list:

• new ATH
• healer loots in team
• weapons/ammo don't decay when firing in thin air/dead mobs
• 64 bit client

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November 5th 2013 this Moon was launched with a horror theme based on the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft. Like I said above the 'deal' Akoz has with MindArk is a bit between a normal Land Area owner and a Planet Partner, which means he has to bring in new players to get payed (there is more to it, but that is basically it). This is why there are mostly low lever creatures and a few higher ones in the caves you can do with a team of low level players.

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What to say about Next Island? Well, for a lack of a better word that planet is dead, or maybe in a coma is better, I don't know. Either way it is none responsive and if still alive is being kept that way by machines. It is a shame really, as I really like the look of the planet, as I have written in one of my articles and I think a dedicated group of people and a couple of months would get it back up to speed with missions, new creatures and instances. But although David Post had a nice story, it seems he has no clue about video games and about making them and especially when it comes to RCE ones. So, what will happen with Next Island in 2014, will it stay like it is right now indefinitely will MindArk pick it up and introduce more bugs to it, will it disappear or will there be some company that picks up the pieces and makes it into a playable planet again., or maybe David Posts has a trick up his sleeve ? I guess only time will tell.

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The rumors were already there in 2012, but at that time they were all denied (by MindArk at least) so we still had some hope. But with COO Jorge Ordaz leaving the company (or was he fired, we don't know) and CEO Rafael Espinosa starting a new company (Fluzo entertainment) again the conclusion was that Theryon Wars was not going to happen. Big difference this time is that MindArk did not come in to deny it, so form your own conclusions with that.

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Toulan, the most mysterious one of the bunch so far. Next to 2 or 3 images, the name of some people that work for them and a launch date set by MindArk for the end of 2013, which is now set by Beladcom in a tweet to the beginning of 2014, we have nothing. Middle eastern themed with the stories and myths that come with that ... and that really it. I hear different stories among the players of Entropia, some think the planet is as dead as Theryon Wars because there is nothing shown to us players about the planet. But them being at the Jordan Gaming Summit right at the end of this year makes me believe the planet is till alive and being worked hard on for a launch in 2014 (beginning or not). If this is indeed the case I think not knowing anything about the planet could be a really good thing and a chance for us players to really explore and discover stuff. But with the way people play games these days I'm not sure if the majority of the players feel like I do about not knowing anything when I set foot on a planet.

And if anyone from Beladcom is reading this, PLEASE leave out vehicles as well as they take away so much from exploring !!

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The first thing I would like to mention about Arkadia from the last 12 months is the fact that Cyrus left. I my eyes he was the best community manager out there and during some of the communications I had with him, I know he is a rather nice guy too.

Then there are the sponsorship deals they had with both Skullcandy and Gunnar, both of which had Real Life items that could be looted. Next to the AlienWare deal they had before this is one of the few times that a real life item could be looted or found (I remember a Nvidia graphics card).

Another big change was the renaming of the weapons on Arkadia, so the represent the skills needed and all gaps were removed. This makes the Arkadia weapons the easiest to understand in my book.

Last but not least there was the Arkoin Broker, we were able to gather Arkoins for a long time already, but had no means of exchanging them for anything and this year we got the Arkoin Broker to get exciting tools, armor and weapons from. One other very nice thing you could get from the Broker was a Land Area, this is a very new way of getting a Land Area but by no means it is cheap. There were 2 island up for grabs with a cost of 15.000.000 Arkoins, one of which has been sold this year.

As Arkadia is pretty new still, we have seen numerous new items, missions and other stuff arrive over the last year some of which are:

• Mining Amps
• DNA
• Golden Instance Live
• Global Ad system
• Event areas incl PvP
• New Herman Weapons

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Ahhhh the Egg, perhaps the most spoken words in the Entropia Universe and something that has been used in a way to mock MindArk in a way. Well that story has been finished as well in a way, but for me not really in a way that was to satisfying for me. Going on my memory of the event, it was stolen from Deathifiers castle by some strange looking guys, found back, gone missing again, found back again and eventually hatched and out can the Wistrox ... uh ... Feffox which must be one of the ugliest creatures to walk on the planets (well the Monria ones, might top that these days). To be honest I have not been tracking what was happening on Calypso to well (still very confused with all those new weapons), but there were of course a few server redesigns, which made those look pretty, I'm sure there was another Robot War as well, which we probably won, but they will be back anyway next year. There was of course also the annual Eomon migration.​

The return on CLD's has dropped a bit, but prices still seem to go up and up for some reason, making the ROI pretty bad if you ask me (around 12% right now).

We got a few new instances, from the Cyclops Depths to the new 'beacon missions' to the Halloween Mayhem instances and Merry Mayhem about to start today..

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Don't think I have been to Cyrene in 2013, so there is not much from my own experience I can talk about here, but let me mention some stuff anyway.

Cyrene is the planet we do not hear from much, but in the background is developing pretty well each VU. I still have good hopes for this planet for the future.

There have of course been various Cyrene Citizens of the Month, which is a nice title to have in my opinion and something anyone can win, without the need of a big bankroll and by just doing something for the community.

There is the M.A.R.I.O.V.S. which to be honest I have no idea about, but I'm guessing it is some sort of instance and I'm sure I'll check that out when I'm there.

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One thing that comes to mind about the past year of ROCKtropia is that Neverdie removed his name from some of the creatures on the planet after people complained about his 'presence' everywhere, which of course lead to people complaining about him doing so, that's Entropia Universe for ya :).

Possibly the biggest thing that has happened to Rocktropia is the downsizing of the servers in the past month, which seems to be reverted again, or at least the Hell server. This is most likely to reduce operating cost for Rocktropia and rumors have been going around that the development of Rocktropia will halt if there will not be more people in the planet soon. Even though the theme of the planet is not one I like to much, lets hope it will not come that far.

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Entropia Planets, well a lot has changed here. The one thing that will be most visible to all of you is the new logo and the new theme of the forum (don't you love the background changer !) One other thing, that we have not 'advertised' that much is the fact that Narfi, Tass and myself all bought a share of Entropia Planets, which means we are part owners now and hope to relieve Peter a bit from all the work he's doing in here, which I think has been visible over the past few months. We have been starting to use the social media much more which seems to be paying off with a lot of people following and like-ing us. We also started to use Twitch a bit and stream our game-play and got a few people on board of this project that use the Entropia Planets channel to steam their game-play, which is something we very much appreciate.

I think, or know even, that 2014 will be another interesting year for Entropia Planets with a lot more in store for the users in here, so be sure to stay tuned !

This concludes my view of 2013 and I'm sure I missed a lot here, but I'm not getting younger and my mind is letting me down sometimes (can be the alcohol too though) anyway ... what was I saying. Oh, I want to wish everyone some very nice holidays and a very good 2014 and I hope to run into you guys a lot in 2014 !

This is a post I made from the top of my head and something I did not research. It does reflect what I think about some of the planets and what 'events' stood out for me. If I have not written much about a planet, that is probably because I have not been there or have not seen much news about that planet. This also does not reflect the opinion as Entropia Planets, only my own.

 

thanx all, lets hope more stuff will be happening in 2014 for me to write about in about a year :)

 

Gratz to you too then !