Hello! You may have heard somewhere that Oryx 3 will be releasing next week on July 22. Because of this, combined with some extra important news about Exalt, we’ll be taking the opportunity to turn this week’s blog into a mini producer’s letter! Not as long as last time, we promise!
Oryx’s Sanctuary
Status updates regarding Oryx 3 have been a staple of this blog since we started these back in March. Oryx’s Sanctuary has been a monumental project for the whole team, starting pre-production way back in December. We’ve been happy to give updates almost every week, big or small, and hope this has given some general insight on how dungeon development flows.
This is the final blog before its release, so as a final teaser, we want to show off an important part of any dungeon that we haven’t shown much of yet. The loot, of course! We confirmed a while back that brand new T14 weapons, T7 abilities, and T15 armors will drop (as well as the Angelic Bard ST set) but have said precious little about the heaviest hitters: The UTs!
Without further ado, here is a look at the items you’ll be able to get your hands on in less than a week! Bear in mind that these are still subject to some change and are not strictly final.
Oryx’s Sanctuary will only be available on Exalt. On that note…
Exalt Disconnections
With the release of Oryx 3, Exalt will become the default option on both Steam and the web and enter its official release stage. Playing on Flash will still be possible for now to allow time to transition, and we will keep everyone fully informed on our plan and schedule for Flash’s departure.
As of the latest update a few days ago, our recent changes were a vast improvement for the Unity client. We resisted the urge to fill the patch notes with triumphant statements of “DC’S ARE FIXED!” just to be extra safe and ensure our improvements were working as expected in a production environment, but the difference has been extremely noticeable. Specifically, we have already seen an overall drop in disconnections by 60% on Exalt.
A very important milestone was also achieved with this update. With these changes, the Unity client officially became more stable than Flash, with 30% less disconnections on Exalt and more reductions to come. There are still many things we want to continue improving in terms of stability, but with this threshold reached, we now feel it is appropriate to make Exalt our default option as it provides a more stable experience than the alternative.
Many of the things we wish to improve are a consequence of the backend code being built for Flash’s architecture over 10 years ago. We are changing these things now to modernize and adjust them to the Unity platform, and have hired additional developers to help with this task. When Flash is fully killed, this will further unshackle us to make more improvements (as mentioned in more detail in the last producer’s letter).
No online game can eliminate 100% of DC’s due to their very nature, but by the time Flash is shut down, we aim to greatly minimize them, even more so than they are after the latest fixes in which we saw huge improvement.
Like many other games (despite what some people have suggested), we are using AWS (Amazon Web Services) servers in regions all around the world. We are aware that many people play the game by jumping between servers in different regions, but this is not optimal and is the cause of many DC’s. We recommend playing on the “Best Server” option when possible, especially if you experience significant issues when jumping between major region distances, such as flipping between US and EU servers.
As more players start to play on Exalt, we will continue to gather even more data on remaining stability problems. We have invested a lot into systems to track everything and it should be much easier for us to fix all issues as data rolls in.
Upcoming Content
Going back to Oryx for a moment! We delayed it several times compared to our original goals, as we felt this was necessary to put out a complete experience without needing to rush or cut corners. We are pleased that this exciting project is releasing at last, and believe it is in a very good place right now. Nevertheless, we will still be looking into balance changes a few weeks after release (both the fights and the items) to polish out any potential imbalances.
Very soon you should also see some quality of life improvements regarding visibility, as well as a better display of boss health bars. And prepare for Ancient August, as it will be… Sturifick!