Hi folks! Last time we talked I was just about ready to roll the Progression Update out to everyone. I said that it just needed to go through a phase of player testing, expecting that there would just be a few bugs to fix and then it'd be ready to go. Welp. While overall tester feedback for the Progression Update was extremely positive, several testers felt that the new requirements specifically around making new game releases were too rigid and could even become difficult to satisfy at all, later in the game. And after giving it some thought and further testing, I had to agree with them. But worse, I realized that the system I had designed was running counter to what I wanted MMORPG Tycoon 2 to feel like to play; instead of empowering players to run their game as they like and to feel like they were engaging with and exciting (or enraging!) their subscriber base, I had set up what was effectively just a series of hoops for them to mechanically jump through every time. I didn't want to release the update with that small but important part of the game feeling like that. So instead, I've spent the last week cooking up a new - better! - design for how new game releases could be planned and deployed. I'm now most of the way through patching a first implementation of this new design into the Progression Update. Once this implementation is complete, we'll be putting it up for another round of public player testing and feedback. (It will show up as Preview 4 on our public "test" beta branch, once it's ready for testing) I'm hoping that I've nailed the design for the "New Game Release" portion of the update, and that the next time we talk I'll be announcing the full finished Progression Update release. But if not, I'll be back here in two weeks to give another development update to let you all know where we stand at that point! Talk more soon, -T

• Craft the terrain, lay out scenery to make your world beautiful, raise new land from the seafloor; the world is yours to craft!
  
• Design the appearance and the combat abilities of your game's player classes, monsters, and more. Buff and nerf classes at your whim!
  
• Lay out villages and towns, roads, questing areas, and even individual quests with quest chains to keep your subscribers busy!

• Catch cheaters and ban them (or don't; as long as they keep paying their subscription fees, do you really care what they do?)
  
• Issue warnings to misbehaving subscribers to keep them from bothering other players
  
• Assist subscribers who become stuck, or hire game masters do it it for you!

• Be a traditional boxed product with subscription fees, or go for a Free-to-Play strategy and instead set microtransactions on potions, weapons, or other goods and services!

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalentMemory: 4 GB RAM
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Discrete graphics card. support for OpenGL 3.3
• Storage: 300 MB available space

• Processor: Intel Core i5 or i7 or equivalentMemory: 8 GB RAM
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Discrete graphics card. support for OpenGL 3.3
• Storage: 300 MB available space