Thank you for sticking with us for so long, It’s not going unnoticed.

unfortunately Atlas will be a long time coming yet, it is not anyone’s fault just bad timing etc.. most developers busy with personal life which I’m afraid comes before Atlas

but the good news is I have decided to release one of the Atlas gui’s, it’s my favorite and the most well done. If you have any problems post them here.

see the forums for the download

Thanx again

Sorry guys I’ve been busy with classes and midterms coming up. I’ve got a lot of deadlines to meet. I’m waiting on a response from Rena, she seems to have disappeared for awhile. Britty is still working on new maps though. I’ll try to provide more updates as soon as I can.

Alright first off I’m working very hard to add everything that needs to be added before the alpha test. I’ve been a bit busy with homework and actual work, but I’ll try to get things finished and up this weekend. Next I’m excited to announce somewhat of a brand new feature to Atlas. It’s not new in the sense that you are familiar with the basics of the system, but new in the sense that it’s actually being use.

The karma system. Yes it was in Endless, but what was the fun of click on the wiseman to change your karma and it effecting absolutely nothing. With the new quest system I intend to give basic quests to every npcs. Now before you jump the gun and say that’s a lot of quests, were using quests in a different manor that usual. Most npcs will have quests that may simply be dialogue options, a story about history, or an npc telling you some valuable information. These quests will have several responses that players will be able to choose. The response you choose could get you some good or bad karma.

Now were getting somewhere! As you progress further through the game certain quests, items, and even areas will be unlocked to you based on your karma. Some npcs might not even talk to you if you have the wrong karma. Now the question do you have to be absolute good or absolute evil? No, more than plenty neutral quests for players to do and if you feel like making a greedy decision every once in awhile, it won’t kill your reputation as a good guy.

Now before I announce the next feature that ties directly in with the karma system I’m going to tell you about our racial system. There will be four races to choose from: Human, Half-Orc, Atlanteans, and Pandarens. These races won’t effect your stats, but might in the future. What they will effect is dialogue options, racial quests, and racial items. One great thing that is lacking in most mmorpg’s is history or a story line. One way we will tie this in is with racial elements. No I don’t mean pools closed… I mean back stories, helping your people, learning the culture of your in-game race. Now continuing where we left off….

Embracing the Dark Side, Luke! Yes the last feature I’m going to announce is not a light saber! There will be a special tier of upper level DEATH Classes. What does this exactly mean? Well for those players that completely embrace the dark side and choose all the greedy, evil, dark options they will have a chance to embrace death and become part of the dark side forever. These death classes won’t have any second chances of redemption after they go through with the final process, because they will be forever turned into Undead! Yes the fifth race, skeletons will be a special karma race. It’s not just about being a skeleton though there will be several classes you will be able to choose from such as Black Knight, Necromancer, Blood Mage, Berserker, and Warlock. If players decide to go this path they will lose the option to ever become good again, but these classes will of course have some exciting game play aspects.

So now you guys kind of got an idea what going on in my head. At the very beginning of Atlas I spun some ideas around with titles and actual town positions. I do intend to include these and I’ll hopefully have more on that later. The same goes for jobs, we don’t have a system implemented yet, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have one. As for pets, we do have a pet system. However not ever Harry Warrior, Dick Rogue, and Jane Mage will have these. Rangers and Summoners will be the only ones with pets. I may also decide to include some vanity pets that just follow players around, but have no actual game-play advantage. Alright that’s everything on my mind at the moment. These features that I announced today won’t be seen right away in-game, but they’re the foundation that we will build upon. So leave a comment and give me some feedback on everything you’ve heard today. I’ll try to answer any questions you guys have, but if I don’t reply don’t hate because I’m a busy guy. Oh and right now we have 28 custom maps, you guys are going to love getting lost in the new sewer, which actually looks like an underground part of Aeven, not some lame mummy infested tomb.

Well it’s getting close, so I would like to inform everyone it’s going to be in the next few days. Development tests start now which for now is just me, Reuben, Britty, and Rena. When we launch the alpha it will be open public. I want to do a stress test to see how much my server can handle, and I also want to get a wide variety of people interested. You will be limited access to only 10 maps, which are all part of Nouveau or better known as tutorial island. The first couple quests will give you some clothes, exp, and a weapon respectively. If you end up finishing all the quests you will receive the title: Alpha Tester.

Mainly I’ll be on helping people with any bugs or glitches and also listening for feedback. This will be just the first installment and we will slowly build on it making progress. I’ll try to release updates in areas since we don’t have an auto updater yet. So an update will probably add a decent amount of maps, quests, and corresponding items.

The open test will end when I decide. Then we will switch to the closed alpha where everyone signed up get’s exclusive play. As for the forums I’ll try to get a decent permanent board up soon, hopefully by launch hour. Oh and I’m really tempted to post screenshots, but I would much rather let you guys experiance everything at once. Reuben, Rena, and Britty all worked very hard making Atlas stand out, I don’t want to spoil that.

I have to give a big hand to Reuben! He has been piecing together the client bit by bit and let me tell you, that’s no easy job. He has also pixeled and finished a brand new GUI. This is amazing progress. Rena has also completed the quest engine which is very exciting news. I’m not going to promise anything, but watch the website, because we might just have a test any day now.

Well i know that Atlas has moved quite slowly since it’s announcement over a year ago, but I can say that I have recently stepped up my game and pixeled quite a few new items and added over 1,500 bitmaps to the resource files, Rena has been adding alot of unique features to EoSep, and Knight has received that latest EoSep version. So development is moving at a nice steady pace.

I can see a release early Feburary, but i could just be a little too hopeful

–Reuben

Well it’s a new year and no alpha guys. So I’ve decided to completely change the project. The reason for this is because the lack of time I have to concentrate on the project and also the lack of a full staff. Does this mean I’m giving up on Atlas? In short terms, No.

First off I’m going to completely rework the idea of Project Atlas. It’s no longer simply just a new endless. The great thing I realized is how unique of a community the original eo forums were and even with the atlas forums we had some great times. I know you guys enjoy the forums and I do to. That’s why the first new part of Project Atlas will be a completely new and final forum. One big thing I need every ones help is to decide what forum software to use. I personally liked phpbb, but simple machine was still pretty good. So please vote in the poll and help me decide.

What does this mean for the actual game? Well a lot actually. Development will be a lot more slow for the moment. I’m going to concentrate on college and wait for Rena to further develop the emulator. Maybe even do small side projects or play WoW.

What will happen to this blog? I think I’ll give actual blogging a chance. Everything from reviews, nerd junk, to the latest greatest website.

Well I have no idea why the forums aren’t working at the moment. I don’t have the time to get them working at the moment, I’m very sorry everyone. Also there won’t be an alpha test this month, my internet connection is way to low at my house to host a server. The connection at my dorm is literally 30 times faster, so there is just no way I could host a server. Also I’ve been far to busy to work on the server at all. Rena has sent me an update and apparently she fixed a lot of bug and got a pet system working. Reuben made some incredible Christmas creations, unfortunately we won’t be using these until next year. That just gives us more time to make a better event. Thanks for the support and have a good Christmas break.

Hopefully I didn’t screw everything up.

Alright since the Quest system hasn’t been finished we are going to do spells differently for the alpha test. There is a total of three spell trees or schools of magic, with a neutral healing spell anyone can learn. It’s advised to only use one school of magic, since they are exactly balanced and going into two would probably weaken your character if anything. Hit the jump for a list of spells.