When I began Achaea many years ago, I thought that I'd consider it
successful if it ever got 100 players online at once. I thought that
even if that did happen, we'd never ever have more than 250 players
online at once. But here we are, having broken 200 last month, and
regularly getting over 180. Clearly we're headed for that 250 mark
sometime this year.

The upshot is that we've gotten large enough where we can try something
we've long wanted to try. We're going to open another Achaea. Yes
indeedy, we'll be workin' the Divine Mojo overtime up here in the
Garden.

Consider this an official announcement of the future introduction of
Aetolia. Initially, Aetolia will not be hugely different from Achaea.
There will be differences at the start, but we're not ready to announce
those yet. Aetolia will then be developed separately from Achaea. Again,
we're not ready yet to announce how, and it will, of course, depend
partly on what Aetolia's players want, but it will definitely develop on
a divergent path from Achaea.

Now, before anyone starts wondering whether this will slow down Achaea's
development, let me assure you that the answer is 'No.' We're hiring a
person named Josh Olson to run Aetolia. Josh brings some good experience
with him. He built the 800+ person volunteer force for Verant/Sony on
Everquest, for instance. Josh is also an excellent coder, and will be
developing Aetolia on a separate path from Achaea.

So not only will Achaea's development not be slowed down, but it may
actually benefit because a) Achaea will make money off Aetolia, and so
will be able to afford to spend more on development once Aetolia is
successful, and b) Some code will be able to be shared between Achaea
and Aetolia.

I'm sure you all have a huge number of questions about Aetolia. The only
thing I can answer right now is 'When will Aetolia be open?' The answer
to that we THINK, in about 4 months. We can't be certain though.


Penned by my hand on the 3rd of Miraman, in the year 279 AF.