I've been planning this update post since the summer, pushing it back
till I had more tangible and definite information to share with you all.
Alas, life finds a way to mess even with the best laid plans, and here
we are. So rather than post a detailed roadmap, we'll deviate a bit this
time and focus on the state of things. A post in the hand is worth two
in WIP hell, or something like that. So let's have a look at this year
in a quasi Year in Review post.

Roadmap Woes
------------

Putting together a roadmap is difficult for a number of reasons I'd like
to talk about first. While I certainly like to have a roadmap, and they
sure are exciting, experience has taught me that announcing one can
complicate things fast. Priorities can shift and volunteers can have
life events crop up. So when they can't deliver, the project inevitably
ends up in my backlog. It's there, adding to my already significant
pile, because it is still expected to happen eventually. Sometimes it
involves time and effort from the playerbase too (feedback, report
cycle), so not following through on that would break the compact made
when said effort was asked for.

That's just the way things are in any environment that largely relies on
volunteers, and now even more so as we are all volunteers equally. You
all may well know and understand these facts already but it bears
repeating every so often. Like the fact that volunteer-driven
development cannot always immediately focus on what the game needs. By
which I mean that even if there is a bug or something that needs to be
addressed, sometimes other things will supersede that because the
well-being of the staff demands that it does. As an example, I have a
project nearing completion that I coded in September when I could not
rally brain power for anything else. It was the only thing that sparked
joy, so better that than nothing. As a result, I'd much rather announce
things when they are almost done or announce small-scale projects and
goals. Then refresh the roadmap as those are completed. At least for the
time being, until I am fully caught up on the bulk of the backlog and
our admin team is fully reinvigorated. And speaking of...

State of the Team
------------------

My absence this year impacted the admin team too. While we have other
people around who can make all manner of things happen, that does not
negate the need for a producer on the team. Beyond rubber-stamping
projects, it's about collaboration, advice, ideas, support, and all
manner of rallying, coordinating, and planning. Everything's easier and
more fun when we're working together and have someone in the big picture
role to steer the course.

So onto the team itself then. Everyone listed as active in HELP GODS
(the 'commonly seen within Lusternia' section) is still part of the
team. You may not have seen or heard from a few people on that list in a
while, but they are still with us. They are dealing with life and will
become active as and when they are able to. Even while not active, they
can still be leaned on for their specific lore knowledge or skills,
which is tremendously helpful. You might notice that Darvellan is
missing from the list but he's still with us, having transitioned to a
fully behind-the-scenes role as Velzyium. That is sure to sadden
Darvellan fans, but it's better for Lusternia and him. With a new job
and a demanding schedule, he gets very little time to work on things and
when he does, he's most productive when building awesome things at his
own pace.

We still have four Ephemerals on the team too but the 'life sucks' curse
has gotten to them as well. They've been with us for a while and they
are all not that far from full admin roles. However, before that happens
they do all need to find time to recommit and wrap up their training.
Nothing would be gained from nudging them into divine roles that they
disappear from in two weeks because life continues to leave little room
for them to be here. Next year I hope to open a call for Ephemerals
again but given the fact that few prefer to be admins to being players,
and as we have received zero applications last call, I am wary of being
optimistic. Maybe we'll be surprised!

On the coding end, we have Ais, Orael, and me. Ais has mainly been able
to be here in an advisory capacity this year - which is worth a lot in
and of itself as Ais' knowledge of Rapture (the game's engine) is
legendary. Our coders have test servers primarily because of the Docker
solution Ais has put together for us, and whenever we need a new admin
tool coded, Ais is there. Orael has made a comeback this year as well
and has put together a new feature over the summer - more on that later.
We also have four 'mortal coders' - players who code for us - but only
two of them are currently active. Those two are our veterans and have
helped implement complex reports in the past so the code's in good
hands.

Projects
--------

"The last 2 percent is the hardest to get, that's why they leave it in
the milk." - Brooklyn Nine-Nine

While the quote is obviously pure nonsense, it always makes me laugh.
Sometimes it does feel like the last 2% is the hardest to get. We're in
the final stages of a few projects right now, and have been since the
summer. The amount of time a final stage takes differs from project to
project and often depends on the availability of specific people. I'd
like to list a few of them but please keep in mind that it may be a
while before it's all done and that this is far from a complete list of
things we're working on:

- Custom Beast Submission System - that's the project Orael has been
working on and which is finished on his end. It will make it possible to
request custom beasts through an in-game request system rather than
e-mail and significantly cut down on the work required to make those
beasts once approved. Having this in-game means we can have all admins
easily help review things and then make the beast with just a few
clicks. We could even rope in mortal reviewers into it if necessary. The
system has options for all manner of flags to request on the beast too
and room to submit lines for staple features like delivery and
retriever. Once it's up and running, we can expand it to dwellers as
well. This project is the closest to completion as it has gone through a
few phases of testing on our end already, and now only requires my final
tests, the writing of new help files, and staging of all the changes.
And the hardest 2% - my and Orael's availability to release and patch up
any issues.

- Plaxios Lowlands Revamp - Remember Plaxios? We do! The currently
flooded area has been receiving all kinds of fixes, updates, and tweaks.
Once we got into it, it turned out a lot more was wrong there than just
a few issues with the epic quests. While the brunt of the rewrites has
already happened, there are still some issues left to figure out and a
lot of testing that needs to happen. It will be ready when it's ready.
After Plaxios I really hope to return to Amberni.

- Uilani's Secret Project - I wouldn't call this almost ready but it's
closer to done than not. Perhaps 60% done overall. The coding is about
80% done as only a few features are missing, but we still need to do
thorough testing, some building to complement the release, and of course
write the help files. You'll need to let me keep the details of this one
under wraps for now as it's my first coding project of this size and
half the fun is the surprise.

- Mystery Pocket - This is not an actual pocket in your robes. A pocket
is what we call a quest added to an existing area which comes with its
own rooms and story. There's one that's almost done. The final steps are
a walkthrough (that's when I test and review something),
post-walkthrough tweaks, release prep, and the release itself. This will
likely be released in January.

- Arowin's Sketchartist Academy - Freshmen, are you ready to advance to
Sophomores? I would not call the next stage of development for the
academy close to done, but it is in progress. Collecting all the
information necessary for the next stage is quite tedious so it's been
broken down into smaller tasks that are being knocked out as inspiration
strikes. The system itself is ready for the next level to be added, was
built that way to begin with, in fact, so now we're just gathering the
pieces.

Plans
-----

Here's what I am hoping to get done in the near future: a general list
in lieu of a roadmap.

I think we'll let the rest of December revolve just around Solstice
because that's enough work as it is, especially on the heels of the
Creatrix Festival and the Haunting. Time permitting, we'll try to
release the Custom Beast Request System too. In addition to that, I'll
continue to work on Iron Realms-wide things, such as this cross-realm
Solstice event. More on IRE work a bit later. There's also ongoing
'invisible work' that pushes various projects forward, gets bugs fixed,
issues resolved, and so on.

When we come back from all the merriment in the new year there are a few
things that will be high on my list of priorities. In no particular
order: report decisions, support queue, some timequake and commodity
tweaks, vastly overdue event posts, goop craftables, and resumption of
artbards. At some point, sooner than later, we will also need to start
improving our newbie experience considerably. That's just the tip of the
backlog iceberg but we've got to start somewhere. Keep in mind this list
refers to me specifically, others will be working on other things too.

IRE Projects
------------

This may surprise you, but even though Lusternia is in legacy mode, I am
still participating in producer meetings. After we switched to legacy
mode, I usually just kept up to date through meeting notes. But since
this summer IRE has been pursuing broader projects that can benefit and
involve all the games, including legacy ones, and by choice I have been
a part of that (as has Starmourn). You've now seen the Solstice
cross-realm event that we've been working on together, but a lot of
other work has happened too. We've been working on the websites (plugin
reviews, SEO, new content), social media, player retention (including
newbies) - to name a few of the projects. I cannot elaborate on all of
it as it's ongoing work but it benefits Lusternia so I will continue to
participate.

One of the great things that has come out of it for us is that we got a
new metrics system. I should probably say -a- metrics system, period, as
we didn't really have one beyond some newbie statistics that have not
been updated to track the current newbie intro. This new one offers a
wealth of data, not just on newbies but on orgs and guilds too. For
example, we can now check when a specific org is the most active,
specific times and days on average. You'd think we should have had
access to such data already, right? We didn't. There are a few metrics,
mainly related to newbies, that still need to be hooked into our system
but what we already have is great too.

Statistics
----------

I mentioned we have some newbie metrics but how about some stats from
all across the game in addition to that? Here you go!

- Online time is up since the summer - both in terms of players online
and how long they are online.
- 197 newbies were created in the last 90 days - while the vast majority
of those are alts (often returnees) and end up deleted, there are new
players among this count who have stuck around too. Hi, newcomers!
- 75 issues have been resolved in the issues system, and I expect that
count to get to around 100 before the year's out.
- 411 designs have been approved through the amazing work of our mortal
reviewers and the Charites team.
- 15 library books have been written by players - Gaudiguch was the most
active here.
- 7 stage performances have been produced by players - Magnagora was the
most active here.
- 86 pieces of gossip made it into the pilgrim camp. Be sure to config
gossipalert on if you like to be in the loop.
- 54 pieces of player-added gossip has been spread by the pilgrims,
scholars, and bards of the Basin of Life.
- 97 entirely new objects were created this year for story/gameplay
purposes.
- 11 story events took place. Bit hard to count those precisely but
that's a fair estimate.
- 426 bugs have been filed and 569 bugs have been resolved. 323 of those
were resolved by Orael alone.
- 120 typos have been filed and 125 typos have been resolved.
- There are 868 bugs and 47 typos outstanding in the system.

Not too shabby for a year during which I was mostly absent. To wish us
all a great 2026 risks jinxing it so instead: let's keep on keeping on!

Penned by My hand on the 17th of Vestian, in the year 725 CE.