Best Wishes for 2023! Info - 2023-01-23 16:00

2022

 
Here we are. Ten years have gone by with the WAKFU MMO. And with them, too many worlds, adventures, items, dungeons, quests, secrets and more to count… What a long, thrilling ride it's been! Especially since some of the members of the current WAKFU team were there at the very birth of the project and others arrived recently and contributed to the work done this past year – their first and certainly not their last.

This year, we decided to make significant changes to in-game comfort:

• Improvements to trades with the "quick trades".
• Addition of the account entity to better manage cosmetic items with, for example, auras disassociated from relics or the "hide hat" option for costumes.
• Overhaul of tactical view, which can now be customized and comes with simplified display of resistances or the ability to place permanent markers on the field.
• Work on a large number of smaller interfaces, such as the machines, decks, and dungeon entry interface that dynamically displays bonuses and difficulty based on the chosen Stasis level.

The "New Horizons" update (1.76) and "Ereboria: The Cursed Island" (1.78), which you have been able to explore in the game since early December, were our two strongest versions of the year. Working on these two themes was very important for us and we were able to make our ideas into reality. In particular, the dungeon overhaul with update 1.76 was a very ambitious project that was a big success.

Adapting a game like this one after ten years of development is a very difficult task. It isn't enough to have good ideas or receive pertinent feedback; you also need to work within the project's technical constraints and the company's strategy.

In particular, in 2022, we had to handle more areas that were not initially our responsibility: issues with tools, issues with Mac or AMD, and other issues that we won't list but that took up a lot of time. However, we did our best to meet our goals and the visible enthusiasm around WAKFU is, for us, a priceless reward. Your presence, your messages on the forum, your feedback in Discord, your videos, your streams, and more fill our hearts every day. The year was exceptional when it comes to content in the community – Twitch Drops, Ankama Live episodes, encounters at Japan Expo, and the increasingly high quality community events such as the tenth anniversary WAKFU Warriors or the Miss and Mr. World of Twelve.
 

2023

After this beautiful symbolic tenth year, we're going forward with even more in 2023. As a reminder, here are the projects that we presented in the last KrosmoNote:
 

• WAKFU's in-game comfort is extremely important to us. We know that the team's strategy hasn't always been to make it a priority, and that's why there are many areas to address. Careful, though, we aren't talking about an interface overhaul. That would simply be too time-consuming for our team. We're trying to improve the game's ergonomics and attractiveness through specific, albeit ambitious, modifications.
• We recently published a devblog article on class balancing. If you missed it, you can read it here: Class Balancing.
  • In short, we are going to focus on Cras and Huppermages first.
• When it comes to onboarding, we'd like to improve the game tutorial and other "learning-the-game" content, notably Incarnam and a large portion of the Astrub experience. We are convinced that these areas need attention to make the game more understandable and accessible for new players and players that come back after long periods away. It's an area of work that requires considerable investment to be done well.
• Even before Ereboria was released, we were already laying the foundations for the next expansion. We hope you like it!
• 2023 will be a rather unique year because a new game server will be added – a single-character server. Keep an eye on game news for more information about that. We'll have more details to share soon! We still have a lot of things to clarify before launching this new server because our goal is to make the game much healthier and accessible before the server opens. This is also one of the reasons we established the account entity and are reviewing all the dungeons in the game little by little, either with a large update like Dungeons 2.0, or through more precise changes such as the ones to the Whisperers, Orroks and Polar Cracklers. Reviewing the tutorial and other "learning-the-game" content is also an important preparatory step to be done before opening the server.
• There will be lots more surprises, but we don't want to say too much yet…

 

Project Status Update

 
For the past few years, we've set ourselves the goal of rejuvenating WAKFU. Our goal is to make it more accessible and enjoyable. Several features needed new life and to be completed. We do our utmost to improve the game as much as possible with every update while also adding content, items, stories and challenges.

It isn't always easy, but moving in this direction has been somewhat successful because the player population is growing. It's a very rare phenomenon for an MMORPG, especially after so many years of maintenance and development. Our small team now has lots of experience and we have Ankama's full confidence to continue to fuel the game with updates for many years to come.

Finally, we couldn't end this post without mentioning the important and promising features such as the ecology, politics and PvP. We're aware of this; WAKFU is a remarkable and unique undertaking because of its historical promises. Of course, we want to tackle them sooner or later. But doing so won't be among our 2023 new year's resolutions. We still have a long ways to go before we can achieve our goals, particularly taking into account the size of our team and the day-to-day difficulties as a result. It isn't the most satisfying of situations, but by forging ahead and putting one foot in front of the other every day, we can hope to see a WAKFU that is closer to its original intent.
 

Thank You

 
We also want to thank you, the community of players, both occasional and longstanding. We've been seeing some nicknames for a long, long time, and we're seeing new ones arrive and make a name for themselves in the game legend. You are an integral part of Ankama's success. So, it is thanks to your support that WAKFU is still a very current undertaking. Thank you for everything. We hope you continue to follow the team.

We wish you and your loved ones an excellent 2023. Have fun and take care of yourselves.