Launch international 2

01/11/2010

In 3 hours, the new international "stable" server (normal speed) will launch. We will closely monitor the activity and balance and we'll try to fix any inbalances as soon as possible. This new server is based on the rules from speed and includes many new features.

As announced earlier, the current international "stable" server will keep running until January, but this new server will become the "main" server.

Please put all your feedback in the forum.

Good luck in this new game and may the best one win!

What's going on?

13/10/2010

Hello everyone,

This post is directed to all of you who have been playing Dolumar for a very long time. I want to thank you for all your support and all your encouragment that you've given me for all these years.

As you all have noticed, it has been a while since Dolumar has seen some proper progress. I know some of you think I have turned my back on you guys and that I have left you with a dead game. Dolumar is bleeding out.

That's not fair to you guys. You have all spent a lot of time in the game (and some even a lot of money). But let me explain you what's going on.

When I started working on Dolumar I was a simple student with nothing on his hands. I had a lot of time to work on the features you see now. Me and Milan spent weeks and weeks thinking of game systems and developing both code and artwork for the game. In the last few years, however, there was more pressure: I've had to spent a lot more time at university and also had to make some money doing both freelance and hired jobs. (In contrary to popular believes, Dolumar is not making huge amounts of money, but we're happy that we can still pay for the servers each month).

But enough excuses, I believe Dolumar has a lot of potential that is currently untapped. I want to resurect this game and make it the blooming, thriving world it once was. I have not forgotten about you guys, I just have to think about other things as well.

I've tried to figure out what's going wrong at the moment. I came up with these main problems:

• The old stable server is hopelessly outdated and has also been running for way too long. We have always targeted a server age of about 1 year, stable is running double shifts at the moment.
• I believe the island test server was a nice concept, so I want to give that one another try. However, we first need to implement a few fixes (that should have been implemented months ago). The portal spell for example requires some updates.
• Bugs! Bugs are quite a heavy burden on the current speed server. Those need to be resolved A.S.A.P.

So time for a plan of action:

• Launch the new stable server, running the latest Dolumar source (based on Speed) at the first of November.
• Current stable server ends at the end of January.
• Launch of a new islands server at the first of January, running 3 months (instead of 1 month).
• Gather all feature tips and feedback in the forum and see what is easily implemented for the November release.

On the longer run:

• Implement the very secret "underworld" feature on testing by the end of the first quarter of 2011. (More information to be announced). The underworld should be released with the launch of the second "island server".

As for you guys, what would be great is if I could get feedback on what features / bugs are most urgent. I know I haven't been very active on the forum, but I still try to read everything that's being posted.

Let's get this game rocking again.

Greetings,
Thijs Van der Schaeghe

Resource trouble

03/08/2010

Because of the problems yesterday a lot of players lost resources on stable. That's why we've given everyone maximal capacity resources.

We've also pushed some updates on the payment gateway. We have added reward based free credits and it's also now possible to order credits for someone else.