It has been a long while since you've heard much from me! I wanted to share with you what has been happening at Realm of Empires over the last year or so because, well, we've been busy!
As you already know, we released the Realm of Empires Mobile App in 2013. We are happy to see so many people enjoy playing it! So one could say, year 2013 was the year of Mobile.
Year 2014, shall be the year of the desktop! Our desktop interface was born in 2008, when browsers were much less powerful. It is an old school interface, slow, and well, the gray background could have been nicer! Things that can be done now were literally unimaginable six years ago.
This year, we had the opportunity to create an amazing new interface for our desktop players! From this, Realm of Empires: Warlords Rising has been born. It is now being tested with a small group of beta players, but we hope to open it for everyone very soon.
Realm of Empires: Warlords Rising is a product of over a year of intense development. Our goal with this major update was not to implement new game changes, or to throw in eye candy. Warlords Rising has been designed from the beginning specifically to make managing larger empires easier, to make waging larger wars easier. It is a result of literally watching many of you play, hearing your concerns and your feedback.
The current desktop interface facilitates more of a village-based play, with the map being secondary. However, we've found that once you capture a few villages (and even more so when you have dozens!), players start playing mostly off the map. Wars are planned and fought on the map. Troops are recruited, villages are built geographically. While you interact with the village at first almost exclusively, soon you treat each village as an army on a field. This of course make total sense. Realm of Empires is not a village building game, but an empire building game.
Based on those observations, we have designed Realm of Empires: Warlords Rising to be more map-central, to facilitate empire-based play from the beginning.
We know the new UI will be different - at first
We will do all in our power to make the transition as easy as possible, but some difficulty with change is inevitable. It is not easy to move from one user interface (UI) to another.
With one village the new UI, although prettier and faster, can seem more like a nuisance in some ways! At first it seems more like a scavenger hunt - lets look for familiar buttons on a new UI. But we believe that as you grow used to things you will find they are at least as good, and often better than the original UI.
To help you master the new UI, we've put together a reference card and a handy FAQ to assist you. Check them out!
The power of the new UI becomes apparent as you expand your empire
The really cool stuff in the new UI becomes evident as you grow your empire. The incoming and outgoing troops refresh on their own. Attacks come in and update without the need to refresh the screen (so do reports, mail etc). The war room allows you to attack from many villages quickly (like one-click attack but better). Visualizing a war, and your entire empire is much easier on a dynamic map, as you will no doubt find out!
So it is a new UI? But we wanted archers!
As silly as this may sound at first, we are proud that this is just a new UI! In fact, it is a new UI precisely because we listened to you guys. While adding flaming archers,races and other game play changes is exciting (and so hard for us to resist!), you've frequently told us that the game gets too time consuming or difficult to play with time. With this UI, and other changes, we are trying to address those concerns. We wanted to first give you a great UI, then work on game changes within a great framework. Our main focus right now, is to make playing the current game easier and less time consuming. Super cool game play changes are coming, but after we have a solid base on stand on.
But I like things the way they are! Stop changing things!
Do not worry! You can continue to play within the interface you are familiar with - the new interface is optional. You can go back to the original desktop interface and back to the new one, back and forth with one button click.
Of course not all is yet completed!
Not even close! But with the core of the new UI in place, the possibilities are amazing. You will see frequent releases with significant improvements in 2015! We will work closely with you guys, to prioritize these improvements and changes.
Let me leave you with just this one image. Here is an actual screen shot of the map in the new UI, of the beta realm. This is the real map, interactive and all! It is not yet fully "the mapper", but it is certainly getting there!
Did I say one image? I meant two. Here is the map, dual screen version, from an old prototype that I've posted on my facebook long ago
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| (click the image for full size version) |
Did I say one image? I meant two. Here is the map, dual screen version, from an old prototype that I've posted on my facebook long ago
