A new year is upon us and it is time for another "State of the Game" letters. We have lots of good stuff coming up in the next three months and here's a sneak peak. Folks, Well, a new year is upon us and we are off to a great start here at Mythic. First, the 4rth quarter was a very good one for Mythic as both the original game and the Shrouded Isles expansion sold (and continues to sell) very well. We have already exceeded all our initial projections, by surpassing 100K registrations of the expansion pack. As sales to our overseas players continue to rise, our numbers will climb even higher. The number of concurrent players of DAoC continue their rise and we are reaching toward an all-time high in active monthly subscribers, active accounts and paid accounts. Second, this month finds our entire DAoC team intact, expanding and ready to roll on some pretty neat stuff for this upcoming quarter. We continue to add more staff to DAoC’s development team and we plan on taking full advantage of their efforts to bring more subscription-based content to our player base. You will all be interested to know that we are hot on the design trail for our next expansion pack and we have a few interesting ideas percolating around here. Time is on our side and given the successful launch of DAoC and the even more successful launch of Shrouded Isles, we have no intention of our next expansion pack being anything less than another home-run for Mythic. So, enough with the recap, now on to the reason for this letter: what comes next for DAoC? This next quarter for Mythic is going to be a very busy one. We have a number of items on our plate and I believe that our community is going to love where our winding road leads to this time. So, here’s our “Leap into Spring” action plan for DAoC. The cornerstone of this plan is our desire to spend a lot of resources on the RvR aspects of DAoC. So for those who were concerned that Gaheris represents a change in direction for DAoC/Mythic, I’m here to say “Nah!” As usual and as promised before, all of the content mentioned here is part of the subscription service and will not require an SI activated account or anything other than your active account. 1) Implementation of a complete housing system. This is by far the largest of any of the items. This is our number one priority and all of Mythic’s resources than could work on the housing system are working on the housing system. The scope of the system far exceeds what we originally planned on and is quite ambitious. However, it is only the jumping off point for a even more far-reaching system. 2) Better Bounty Point Rewards. This could include a variety of things: more skills/spells, horses, pre-built siege equipment, money, etc. which, of course, leads us to a nagging (sorry) item. 3) Player controlled horses. Be a “neigh-sayer” if you want but these pesky mammals are on our list for implementation this season. 4) Siege warcraft overhaul. This is basically an adjustment of damage/ranges that we started late last year to make siege engines more useful and affordable. 5) RvR keep changes, which includes frontier guard/monster/PvE changes. This is to facilitate more PvE in the frontier zones so there is more of a sense of "community" and not just huge armies of players running around. Keep taking will be analyzed to make it more consistent across the three Realms. 6) Players who have reached level 50 can create new characters at level 20. This is still on our list but is not as high of a priority as the housing system. 7) Ongoing work on ensuring that all zones of DAoC are useful and fun for the players. Dead zones are a waste of resources and we will be spending some of our own to work/rework them. 8) As we did with the Albion spell-casters, we will be combing through the databases, working with our Team Leads looking for classes that aren’t all that they could be in DAoC. This is an ongoing process and we will continue to make sure that none of our classes are left behind. In another, and no less important note, we have promoted Walt “Copper” Yarbrough to Content Producer for DaoC, where he will work under Camelot Producer Matt Firor. As an active, avid and avowed player (Hey, he’s a triple-A kind of guy for a triple-A title!) of DAoC, Walt will ensure that this year brings even more goodness for our players by working closely with Matt on the above items and much, much more.. As required by lawyers everywhere, the usual disclaimer that this letter is a guide as to what we hope to have in during this period and not as a guarantee of any kind. And also as usual, this list does not encompass the only things we are working on. We will be working on lots of other things – including ongoing bug fixes and balance adjustments - and my letters, as always, are just some of the newer (and sometimes bigger) things that are part of this update. As always we thank the community for its continued support and patronage of DAoC and we will continue to work to improve and add to DAoC during this year (and we hope) every other year. We have lots more content/features/abilities in the pipeline that I’ll share with the community another time. Mark