Ilysia News

Greetings everyone, the time is finally here! Read up on when our Beta 1 will be going live, and what you can expect in this upcoming testing phase!

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[h3]MagePortal[/h3]

We have good news! We managed to upgrade what we needed to without requiring you to recreate your accounts. However, users will still need to make new passwords for your existing accounts to comply with our new security requirements and encryption. Outside of this, the back end issues for MagePortal have been resolved, and we are now ready to dive into Beta 1!


[h2]Beta 1 will begin on July 28th, 2023[/h2]

This testing phase will run between the dates of 07/28 - 07/30, followed shortly by Beta 2!

Characters will not carry over from Alpha 2, so you will need to create a new character at start.

Beta keys have been previously delivered to Pre-Kickstarter and Kickstarter backers as well as those who bought access after the end of our alpha 2 stage.. Those that do not have a key still have a chance to score one through our Discord, socials, and partnered streamers. If you’re not in our Discord yet, get in there!


[h3]Beta 1 will have bugs.[/h3]

As this is still a beta and the debut of the first fully server-authoritative MMORPG back-end for VR, there will be different bugs than in Alpha 2, but bugs nonetheless! We will continue to address them as they come up!

You'll also notice the foundations of things that were not present in Alpha 2 and are more central to what you'd expect from an MMORPG: a party system, instanced dungeons, improved combat AI, and more concise class development and skills. Additionally, more classes will be added in future updates!


[h3]Thank you! [/h3]

The extra time we've taken to address issues and refine gameplay has allowed us to create something we believe you will truly enjoy. Thank you to our community for your patience and support, and we look forward to seeing you in our Beta 1!

Hello Ilysians! We wanted to take this moment to thank you for your patience with the release of our dev blogs. Especially this one! We know how exciting and important it is for you, our community, to see our development and progress. Since our Alpha 2 testing phase, we’ve gone through many changes to Ilysia and also our studio! Bringing on board several new faces to the team, all of which have an extensive background in game development, environment design, character design, and narrative work. Over the past few months, we’ve been sharing a few snippets and write-ups about our graphical changes, dynamic weather systems, updates to our melee combat, and improved mob AI. We realize the time between our testing phases has been a bit longer than anticipated. Still, our goal is, has been, and always will be, creating a game and a world that looks and feels immersive, fun, challenging, social, and most importantly, secure.

Why have technical updates taken so long? The main reason is, that Ilysia has been updated from Client-Authoritative architecture to a Server-Authoritative Server architecture. While we will keep the details under wraps, this required a complete and total rebuild of the entire back end of Ilysia. This monumental series of tasks has taken a significant amount of effort and time, but it was a necessary change for a better, more secure MMO experience for our players. Along with this, several things on the front end needed to be re-written to leverage the new system and client server relationship. To put this into perspective, less than 1% of the code base from Alpha exists as it did last year. For all intents and purposes, the entire game has been re-written.



Additionally, as some of you might already know from previous posts, we’ve put in a lot of work updating our graphics. You’ll notice a significant difference between the zones and style from Alpha 2 to our upcoming Beta 1, along with graphical updates to our NPCs, player characters, and creatures.

We really can’t wait to share the new Ilysia with you, so with all of that technical speak about our road to get here out of the way, we'd like for everyone to tune in to our watch party, Today! Monday March 13th @ 2PM EST on YouTube to check out an important announcement!

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What can you expect from our team in the coming months?

As we mentioned earlier, we want to keep everyone in the loop and updated on development as much as possible. You can expect to see more updates from our team. These will be posted out to our community on Discord and our socials as their own posts and more regularly instead of the monthly or bi-monthly blogs that we have been doing in the past.



Thank you for giving this a read and for your continued support! If you haven't already, feel free to join our community on Discord! Its another great place to follow along with development and also chat with other community members about Ilysia, VR, and tons of other things!

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[h3]Hello Adventurers and season’s greetings! [/h3]

Winter has arrived, and we are excited to share with you what our team has been up to during the months of November and December. From more environmental effects, PCVR & Quest comparisons, combat and AI changes, and some community shenanigans, here's some more content you'll find in Beta 1!

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[h3]Things Are Looking Frosty! [/h3]

In our previous Dev Blog, we shared the rain effects you’ll see when adventuring through Ilysia. Today, we look at the snow you’ll also experience when exploring our colder zones. Snow will slowly fall from the sky and, over time, will accumulate on the ground and trees.

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[h3]PCVR & Meta Quest 2 - Comparison [/h3]

Mobile VR is an important platform, and we are taking care to get as much as possible out of the Quest while keeping it as analogous to PCVR as possible. We are striving to really push that envelope and are enjoying the challenges and results we are seeing!


The video below is a short walk through in one of the first instanced caves that players will come across on the new Faction starting quest line.

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[h3]New & Improved Interactions[/h3]

⚔️ Melee Combat
We have improved our melee combat to be more responsive and accurate to the swing. Players can use their swords to swipe, chop, stab or lunge during combat. We have also implemented advanced shield combat allowing players to block incoming attacks and use the shield to bash their enemies.

🧠 AI
We have improved our AI to be more performative and responsive. In addition, we have created new types of AI for different types of mobs. Mobs will react to the player more appropriately and assist or work with each other in combat, giving players a greater challenge!

🧩Dungeon Puzzles
We have added mechanics to create more interesting experiences during dungeons or encounters. Such as locked doors that require locating keys, levers, or solving a puzzle to open. Some puzzles may even require multiple players to participate in operating the mechanisms.


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[h3]Out With The Old, In With The New! [/h3]

We’ve updated our logo for Ilysia and to celebrate, we’ve put together a few wallpapers for you to use!







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[h3]Community Spotlight[/h3]

Recently, our community met up in Discord for a game night and played some Gartic Phone! To no one's surprise, the mysterious can of beans returned and somehow became… sentient?!

Beans are a long-running joke in the community and even made their way into our Alpha 2 as an easter egg. Only the bravest of adventurers could take on the challenge of finding their hidden location.

If you’d like to join in for a game night with us, jump into Discord and grab the Events role so you can get notified for our next event! Check out our community-made bean art below!


"Bean Man" by Kitteh#5965


"Bean Man" by Cxntrxl#1000



"Bean Man" by Kitteh#5965



Ilysia Fanart by nymph#7178

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[h3]Happy Holidays! [/h3]

We hope you enjoyed reading our monthly blog! Don't forget to wishlist us here on Steam!

From everyone here at Team 21 Studio, we want to wish you a happy holiday and hope you enjoy your time with family and loved ones. We are so grateful for everyone’s support through our development of Ilysia and we can’t wait to share even more with you in the coming weeks.

Be safe out there, and stay warm! ☃️

- Team 21 Studio, Inc

[h2]Greetings, adventurer! [/h2]

As October comes to a close and with some of you gearing up for some Halloween festivities today, we’d like to share with you what we’ve been up to this past month!

It's time to start talking about Beta. With your biggest question, where are the Beta updates?

Our team has been hard at work the past 6 months rewriting our graphical pipeline and network backend to provide a more rewarding gameplay experience while also creating a secure user experience for years to come. We are ready to start sharing with you the new content that you'll see in our Beta 1, starting with today's blog.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming blogs as it will be entirely focused around Beta content.

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[h2]It All Starts With A Concept[/h2]

We’ve mentioned in a previous blog that some of our more notable creatures were being reworked. Our Toka’s being just one of many that you’ll discover during your time spent in Ilysia. These changes begin with some simple concept art where we explore their overall design and color variations that would fit well in various locations within the world. With the addition of our Igara, which we showcased in a previous blog, these revised Toka now take on a new underling role.







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[h2]A Fresh New Look[/h2]

For those that had the opportunity to play through our previous Alpha, you might remember some NPCs, such as Lora (Pictured below). Our art team since then has been retexturing the faces of these characters to breathe life into their design!

You’ll also find that we’ve shifted gears to a more hand-painted art style. Focusing on adding more detail to characters and creatures throughout Ilysia. Creatures like the boar (Pictured below) have been updated with this new style.





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[h2]Breathing Life Into The World Of Ilysia[/h2]

And speaking about the changes of our graphical pipeline, we are extremely excited to show you a first look at our PCVR changes that you'll see in our Beta 1.

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This video highlights the technological advancements we've made in the last several months. This is a comparison walkthrough in the town of Weskellet between our previous graphics in Alpha 2 and our current build of Beta 1. With some extra surprises such as real time dynamic weather that responds to the different seasons.

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[h2]Steam Overhaul[/h2]

B-B-B-BONUS ROUND! We’ve cleaned up our Steam Page! We went ahead and added a breakdown of key features, new screenshots, and updated our trailer. If you find yourself on our Steam forums, we’ve also added an in-depth FAQ to help answer some of those burning questions asked by our community!

Check out our key features of Ilysia below:

• In-Depth Character Customization. Choose from a selection of races and customize your character to detail!
  
• FreeForge Class System. Choose from a myriad of classes and customize it to your own playstyle through specialized skill-trees!
  
• Rewarding Exploration. Explore a world with a variety of different regions and find hidden caves, lost treasure and world bosses!
  
• Weather System. Experience a variety of weather types that change depending on the season, as you scout each distinct biome!
  
• Climbing & Gliding. Dangle from cliff edges and jump from ledge to ledge, or use your glider to traverse wide chasms as you travel the world of Ilysia! Climb trees, rocks, vines, ropes and buildings.
  
• Swimming. Dive into deep lagoons and swim underwater to find treasure, hidden caves and aquatic enemies!
  
• Titans & Guardians. Encounter gigantic creatures you can climb to find moving dungeons, exploration zones or even fight them!
  
• Dungeons & Raids. Party up, or not if you’re brave enough, and fight your way through countless dungeons, taking on a myriad of enemies and bosses!
  
• Combat. Swing a sword at your foes, strike them from afar with a bow or burn them to ashes with powerful magic!
  
• Opt-in PvP. Fight other adventurers anywhere in the world who have also enabled PvP!
  
• Rideable Mounts. Collect and ride a plethora of terrestrial and flying mounts to traverse the lands at higher speed!
  
• Player Housing. Decorate, customize and invite friends to your own personal living space.
  
• Caravan System. Customize and travel the world of Ilysia with your own personal caravan.
  
• Crafting & Professions. Open your own business! Be a blacksmith, fisherman, traveling merchant, innkeeper or run your own tavern! Gather and craft items for other adventurers or give them a place to rest after a long journey.
  
• Pets & Pet Battles. Capture and tame small creatures and have them fight alongside you or partake in pet battles with other adventurers!
  
• Fast Travel. Take an airship or set sail on a boat to safely navigate in-between towns.

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[h2]Thank You For Reading![/h2]

We hope you enjoyed reading our monthly blog! Don't forget to wishlist us here on Steam as we are so excited to share more juicy content in the upcoming months!

A week ago we had an interview with Playstation Universe. Give the article a read if you wouldn't mind.

https://www.psu.com/news/exclusive-interview-team-21-mmo-ilysia/