Many a mortal has wondered: just what are the gods/admins doing up
there? Lounging around sipping champagne, amusing themselves by lighting
up the sky with blue bolts of lightning, being fed peeled grapes by
Celani, and perhaps deigning to fix a few small misweaves every once in
a while?

O curious ones, allow me to draw back the veil to some measure.

First, the day-to-day "maintenance":

Bugs. Hundreds of new bug reports are filed every month that must be
sorted through, verified, checked for duplicates or related bugs,
prioritised, and fixed or filed away for fixing when there's more
information. The sorting and verification and duplicate-checking are
mostly done by the volunteer gods and Celani. One god last month
processed almost 300 new bugs alone. The Weaver and I tend to handle
most of the fixing, as volunteers do not have access to most of
Achaea's code.

Then there's issues. We get an average of 12 issues a day, around 350 a
month. Some are very simple, and some are very complicated, requiring a
great deal of research and sensitive handling. We don't get as many PK
issues as you probably think we do; there's a lot of customer service
and answering of tough questions. For a long time, I handled the majority
of issues personally. Nowadays, there are several very wonderful and
very patient (and quite possibly masochistic) volunteer admins who
handle the majority, though the Weaver and I still must deal with
anything they cannot.

Our building team is composed of both Garden dwellers and mortal
builders. We currently have 8 new areas under development, meaning they
have been completely designed and are being fleshed in with room
descriptions, NPC creation, coding, et cetera. We have around 9 other
areas currently in the design stage. Many of these are islands that
we're building so that you have somewhere to sail to once ships are
coded, so you won't see them till then. We have extremely high standards
for the quality of our areas, so every area is proofread and playtested
extensively by admins before release, though of course we don't always
catch everything. Along with me, one volunteer God oversees all new
building, organising and managing the team with dedication and finesse.

Let me tell you more about the mortal builder program. Three years ago,
we had no mortal builder program at all. It's only been in the last year
or so that the program has gained velocity, and overall, Achaea's
building team has never been stronger nor more prolific, ever. Currently
we have around 25 active mortal builders, with over a third of those new
as of the last couple of weeks, and I am truly looking forward to seeing
what they can do.

Then there's the monthly artisanal/bardic judging (handled by a panel of
volunteer gods), the crafting approvals (which range around 200-300
every month, handled by a single tireless volunteer god),
customisations, pets, spontaneously animating denizens at opportune
moments, running worldgames and Delos arena games and riddles, dealing
with various requests from cities and Houses and other organisations,
monitoring channels, forums management, helpfile and website updates,
support email, guides management, et cetera. Not to mention, for the
volunteer in-role Gods, dealing with their Divine Orders, patroned cities
and Houses, and roleplaying in their in-role selves, and for me, managing
the volunteer team.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of what it is the gods
and Celani do all day. And in the time we have left over, we do new
stuff. What's the new stuff? Well, for the volunteer immortals, that can
mean anything from designing a new temple to running an event for their
Order to writing untold histories. I will touch now only on the present
concerns of the Weaver and I.

Of late, Clementius has been busy rearchitecting a substantial part of
the existing codebase behind skills and abilities. You see, in Achaea's
early days, skills were coded in such a way that made it impossible to
have more than 20 skills in the game. (By skills I mean Vodun, Chivalry,
Groves, etc.) We are at the 20 skill maximum now, and that certainly
won't do. Part of the design for ships includes a new skill to
complement ships, so we can't get started on coding that until the
skills code is rewritten completely for extensibility. Not to mention we
do want to add more classes and other new skills to Achaea eventually!
The Weaver is diligently working on making this happen. It is a complex
and time-taking task, and there's little glory in it since the fruits of
his labours will be largely invisible to you, but it's something that
needs to be done for Achaea to grow.

Aside from labouring on completing the design for ships and the
aforementioned skill, I have also returned focus to combat balancing, as
noted in the last IRE newsletter. I spent a good portion of the past
week hammering out some substantial updates with the excellent
assistance of the players of the Combat Council. I won't say exactly
what these updates are right now, but you will see them soon enough!
Also, house expansions are truly coming soon.

Something else that is coming soon: a "Friends and Rivals" system, which
is a system based on the premise of mutual consent (unlike allies and
enemies) with separate implications. Mutual friends will get a number of
perks such as being able to set up an alert to see when a friend enters
the realms. The basic concept of rivals is taken from an idea on the
forums by a player, involving free PK between formally declared rivals.
Rivalries will be indefinite or within a time limit, with restrictions
on premature removal, mutual truce-calling, et cetera. I am quite
curious to see how Rivalries work out!

We know that it can be discouraging for you to not hear about our
progress or plans for long periods of time, especially when we're
working on things that take some time to implement. We do get busy, and
sometimes we forget that you can't know how busy we are. While we cannot
tell you in advance about everything we're planning, here's a pledge: we
will do our best to keep you better informed about what's in the works.

Penned by my hand on the 3rd of Aeguary, in the year 431 AF.