Hey Guys, So, as you can tell - we've got some good news and some bad news. Good news - I'm here. You'll be in contact with the dev team. I'm not going anywhere. Neutral news - ownership/responsibility of the game is transferring from Red Level Games to Red Wyrm Studios. As I mentioned before, this should be pretty transparent, you won't notice much of a difference, but I wanted to mention that here first, because it'll be updated on the store page sometime next week. Bad news - patch won't be out for a week or two or three yet, unless like...everything that can go right goes right. Good news - big picture - we are taking actions to get the game back on course and start making steady progress again. Bad news - we are removing/changing some features from the game. I know this is upsetting. And I appreciate that when you say you are going to include something in your game as a developer, that is an implicit promise. So I do apologize, but we have decided it's what's best for the game. At the risk of taking away someone's "favorite thing," this was necessary to get the game back on course. This isn't a hard and fast list yet (I guess nothing is final until we start patching again) but you can expect the following: - removing "open world," but don't panic - more on that in a minute - removing multiplayer - we are going to focus on making it an enriching one-player RPG experience, and there is frankly enough on the plate. - we'll be upping the minimum system requirements a bit. This shouldn't be a massive shift - but in the interest of honesty/transparency, I'm letting you know. - Linux support is a long ways (TM) off. I know we have some users on Linux who this is not going to sit well with. I'm sorry, but if I'm committing to honesty with you all, it can't be good news all the time. The fact of the matter is there are bigger fires to put out right now. That's all off the top of my head - there might be something I've missed, if it comes up in the comments I'll address it. Moving on. I said I would expand on the "Open World" change. As you might have noticed - the current version of Dragon doesn't run well. At all. On like, anything. Let me explain a little bit about that situation. You may have not realized it (I hadn't), but Dragon's world map is actually massive. It doesn't run well enough to really practically go out and explore it so you'll have to take my word on it. But it is quite large. To put this in context: Skyrim: ~16 square miles Fallout 4: ~4 square miles Dayz: ~86 square miles Dragon: ...~400 square miles. *estimates from some google searches And I know what you are thinking - "lol you guys are NOT making Skyrim." I know. We aren't. But the technical challenge we are facing right now is one of scale, and it is a much differently sized-scale than the comparable "open world" games you are familiar with. I'll add - for a veteran team, this might not be as big of a problem; but for us, it has been a gordian knot. We spent money trying to fix the problem and it didn't go away. That sucked. So we're going to try a different approach - and that involves doing away with the massive single-world map. Our new strategy is to instead incorporate an overworld map with area nodes. The overworld map will be a zoomed-out look at the world and your dragon; the hope is we can still capture the sense of scale we are going for - you'll still be represented as a dragon on the map, after all - but we can do away with the very complicated matter of streaming in a map four times the size of DayZ's. As you fly over forests, caves, cities and various points of dragon-interest, you will be able to "fly down to them," which will load in a single static map of the area. Depending on the place, this might just be a big forest to do some quick hunting in, or it might be a fortress to capture. These will be smaller "action arenas" where you can do your fighting and eating. As you exit (either through the sky or the edges of the map, naturally) you will load back to the overworld map. There are a lot more details involved in this change - but that is the idea. It sucks to change course, but it should allow us to up the pace (or at least, allow us to tackle the next headache.) Short Term: The very first thing to do is get the game in a state where it is running smoothly. To do this, we are going to dispense with the massive world map entirely and for now, load you into what will be one of the "arena sized" maps mentioned above. From there - we are going to go over all the areas that are in need of attention but have been neglected and/or are still weird - UI, action, controls, and camera. The goal for next patch is going to be to deliver the first bit of this. At the minimum, it will be: a small map that runs smooth. Thrilling, I know - but I'd prefer to under-promise and over-deliver for a change. I'll post on Monday 4/10 and let you know how this plan is shaping up - I'll have an opportunity to check on development this Saturday 4/8. That's all for now guys. -Laersk