Hello Warriors!
We are pleased to announce that Gloria Victis MMORPG is leaving the alpha state of the project today! It is an important and encouraging milestone for us, as we are looking in the past with pride and a sense of fulfillment. We would not be here and achieve everything without our awesome community, so, at the beginning of this update announcement, we would like to thank you all who helped us to create Gloria Victis MMORPG – a project that was made by players, for players, and with players.
We are the only MMORPG of such scale that achieved what we did with the great help of our community. We never had any investors and publishers and the original team worked for years without any budget. After the Steam release in 2016 – the only income that drives the project is from the game selling and ingame Supporter Shop. We cannot thank you enough for your assistance in this journey and you will be always the most important part of our team
Thank you for your trust, patience, help, and cheering for us!
The screenshot author has been awarded. Erikson – check your Ambers!
Gloria Victis MMORPG Beta:
The Beta state of the project just started. This is a time to focus even more on your feedback, focus on the game performance and stability, and polish the game as well as it is possible. Like we said in earlier announcements, new tools given to us by the engine upgrade are opening new possibilities and allowing us to make Gloria Victis even bigger, stable, and optimized.
So, the beta will last a few months and will prepare us to leave Early Access. Part of the team will work on bug fixes and new features, and we would like to address players' demands, and feedback. The other part will focus on optimization, performance, and technical updates. Do not be scared - the game is and will remain fully playable during the process, which is best proven by the players with thousands of hours in-game!
Gloria Victis is a project that should be understood as “Game as Service” – despite we already have a lot of features and systems, this is not an end. We will constantly update the game with the help of your feedback and introduce new systems and features like we did in alpha, as we will continue that in the beta state, and after the game release. We will not slow down and we will keep up the pace!
As a reward for your contribution, each character created till this morning will receive a unique ingame title – Alpha Player! We are glad to be here for you and with you and we will continue our work on this one of a kind MMO, that brings entertainment, a wide range of emotions and satisfies the needs of competition in our lives.
New Glory Season
Today is the last day of the Current Glory Season! It will not be possible to earn or lose the Nation Points today and the scoreboards of other season-based rankings (Glory and Arena) are frozen. However, it is the last chance to donate your NP to your guild as the Guild Points. When the new season starts, the Nation Points collected by a player will count from 0 as the new season will begin.
A little explanation for the new players: Glory is a season-based ranking which rewards you for activity in the faction v faction v faction PVP. The seasons last around 2 months (depending on the current updates schedule) and the top players are rewarded with unique titles and gold. Also, every Thursday night you’ll get Contribution Points – an in-game currency used to purchase special items from the Glory Quartermasters. The amount of earned CP depends on your position in the leaderboard, so climb up!
Screenshot from the most recent PVP event made by our community memeber - Kanath
We also have for you a weekly dose of quality of life changes, improvements, and fixes!
Quality of Life:
– Model and visual improvements for wooden corner tower and wooden gate
– Added animation to health and stamina bar showing the changes in those resources status changes
– Turning off the empty health bar of the visual target, if in a particular moment there is no information about its health status
Fixes:
Freebuilding:
– Fixed an issue causing freebuilding economical buildings could be placed on the edge or outside castle grid zone
– Fixed position of resource nodes and spawners in Leaktown mine and Lublin farm
– Fixed wooden gatehouse frontal gate model causing catapults and small rams not being able to go through new gatehouses wooden gates
– Fixed colliders of gatehouses internal gates that were not working properly after the destruction
Other:
– Fixed an issue causing Tectite nodes were not visible on the lowest graphic settings
– Fixed an issue causing wrong controller behavior and allowing jump with smaller collider, which led to the possibility of jumping through and to places that should not be available
– Fixed an issue causing flickering of siege engines health bar
– Fixed an issue causing health and stamina bar of character and mount could be not saved in some edge cases
And now, since we know where we are right now and what we are going to do, some of you, especially new players may be curious how the project started? What is the story behind Gloria Victis? Who are those people that stand behind it?
The beginning
Every good story starts with a glass of milk, an unexpected opportunity, and a brave goal. Every success is sustained with hard work, fighting the adversities, and continuous support of favorable people around.
No one really knew when the idea came, and if it will be successful or not. No one could predict how it will be shaped over time and if there will be enough will and power to make something big from it.
But the idea persisted. And it found its followers, its friends, and its defenders. And it grew in the hearts of people to be ready one day in 2014 to be introduced to Steam Greenlight – a new system that allowed independent developers and creators to introduce their projects to the world.
Gloria Victis MMORPG rushed to the first place of the top voted projects, leaving behind over 1500 other games in less than 48 hours, and according to our knowledge, it is still an unbeaten Steam and world record. Two years later, which the original team of seven people used to prepare for the EA release as well as it was possible without any budget and lack of manpower, Gloria Victis became available for players as one of the most unique and ambitious projects on Steam.
9th of June, 2016, the team grouped in the house of its members in Zabrze, Poland; sat down and started implementing the plan.
They knew well that they’ll either succeed on Steam or the project will collapse. Enough to say that at this point our boss just spent the last savings from his wedding to pay for the servers for the Headstart. Yet, his faith and dedication were a great motivation for us so we knew that we should celebrate this special moment – glorious or dramatic – together, finally in a complete squad in one place. And we knew that the launch will be exhausting – yet, we didn’t know how much it’ll be. We have a 2D art ninja who was working with us on this project and other stuff for more than 5 years – this was the first time when they saw him in real life.
Steam Early Access headstart with the original team of developers
Hour Zero, launch time! And half a minute later we realized that due to a simple human mistake – we were really exhausted at this point – instead of the logging menu, players were invited with our “admin panel” scene. Of course, it was completely useless for a player – it can’t be activated without special account permissions, proper IP address, randomized password, etc, yet the first half an hour after the launch was… quite scary.
This 1 day-long headstart lasted 3 days.
Who would think that a month later we have 30k copies sold on Steam and we’ll bring our dream to life – establish an office and work together in one place on a hyper unique project, against all odds.
So, with an all-out effort, we released the game on Steam! The players keep coming, the concurrent users counter grows at an alarming rate – we’re barely able to set new servers in time to hold all these people. Our servers are global, per region of the world – by the launch, there were 5, an hour later we had 10, and at some point we had 18 servers running.
The very first day after release Gloria Victis made it to #1 in the Early Access Topsellers and #14 in the Steam Bestellers.
Thanks to that, we could finally establish an office. The boss convinced us that we’ll achieve much more working in one place together than remotely, as it was for the last 3 years, or more. We were just 7 guys and we didn’t need anything huge – so our first HQ was set in… a former beauty studio. Of course, as we were hiring more people, it started becoming quite tight in there. But we dealt with it and expanded the office’s area by renting a next-door place, which used to be a language school and breaking a door hole in the wall. It’s a fairly comfy place now – we have medieval armor on a stall, swords on walls, a nice large fish tank with a pretty inner design, and some nice posters.
We just hang up that one, isn't that awesome? Point of view from Canthomas desk, who is an author of that photo
So, we already have an office, we’re finally not dirty poor and we know that we’ll finish the game – because we wanted to, we could do it and we’re determined as hell. It was the best time to start showcasing Gloria Victis somewhere.
So far we attended Digital Dragons a few times (the biggest game dev conference in Central Europe) and once, right before the Steam launch, we had a stand at Pyrkon – the largest fantasy con in Poland. But the best decision was to go to Poznan Game Arena 2016!
PGA is the biggest gaming event here, in Poland. It’s an amazing experience for devs. We were meant to showcase the game in the Indie Zone – it was quite large, I must admit, it’s impressive to see so many indie games in one place. In general, like 40.000 people came to PGA that year.
Events are extremely motivating in general, we could finally see how players consider the effect of our hard work. Of course, we knew that there must be someone who likes our game – there are not so many MMORPGs there without steel bikinis, where swords don’t drop from wolves but are forged by blacksmiths, and the combat relies on the player’s own skill, not the sequences of abilities shortcuts pressing. Anyway, it’s priceless to see the people’s reaction on your own – I can’t recommend it enough. We’re learning so much in such moments!
In the meantime, we started working on the new combat animations and luckily we got a deal with an animator, who was working on Geralt’s animations in The Witcher 3. He made a really nice teaser for us, so obviously we wanted to show it off, along with the game's main theme created by Marcin Przybyłowicz.
Early Access can be amazing for both developers and gamers. It brings to life many projects which wouldn't have a chance any other way – and it was the same with our game. Players, on the other hand, can actively contribute to the development and actually shape the final product.
Going to launch on Early Access we knew that we have to work hard to earn the players’ trust. However, we were determined as hell to continue the Gloria Victis development. So we took a rather radical way to let the customers know about it – by releasing regular updates. What does it mean in our case? At least one update weekly. Let’s say that it’s not an easy ratio to keep up with, and we’re often losing breath, but it’s worth it. We keep an eye on our competitors and some of them failed just because of a lack of updates. And not everyone can say that they released 50 updates in the first 9 months! Today, we can tell that we presented 250 updates, and made over 500 server-side ones in 229 weeks!
Our dedication pays back in the players’ trust and their reception of the game. It’s nice to read in a review that someone appreciates our stubbornness and all the hard work we put in here. Working with the Community, in general, is one of the most fascinating parts of the MMORPG development process. Our players actively contribute to it, i.e. they are translating GV to their native languages. Though we officially support only English and Polish versions – the ones that the game is being made in – it’s already translated to 16 languages in total.
Moreover, I can’t express enough how important transparency is when working on an MMORPG which is evolving all the time. That’s why we’re discussing important topics and planned changes with players daily, both on our Steam forums and on our official Discord.
We received a pack of goodies from the Steam team one day!
You must gather your party before venturing forth
We found many amazing people in our community who contributed to the creation of such a unique project. Including forums and game moderators, testers, text editors, a programmer, and 3 designers. Many of them became full-time team members and are working in the Black Eye Games office till today!
When the very first castle was to be added there was a little contest, where participants could win a game key by writing a siege-themed short story. Soon after one of the winners joined the team, becoming our writer-screenwriter, and later also a game designer and PR guy. Bartold is now one of the most valuable assets of the team.
Another Community “recruit” came just a few months later. We had no in-game map back then yet, so the guy drew it manually in graphics software, just traveling around the world and… counting steps. He joined us as a programmer and guess what was Konrad’s first task in GV? A map system.
Months before the Steam launch we had a hardcore player in our Community. Not only would he defeat everyone in 1v1, often in a crappy starting gear, he also would coordinate their entire nation so well to the point where another faction close to extinction And that’s how we got a full-time system/combat designer – Warrpirek.
There’s hell a lot of testing to be done when you are releasing updates weekly. We do our best to let as many people as possible play Gloria Victis in their native languages, so we hired a student from Turkey who came to study in Poland. Canthomas not only translates GV to his language, but he’s also a damned good tester!
There are even more team members that were recruited from the community, and today 18 people are working on the game, in the office or remotely, but we are still one of the smallest teams in the world that are developing a living and playable MMO of such scale!
Pillars of the game
MMORPGs by their nature are social games, so they gather a variety of player types. Each player has their own expectations of the gameplay and finds fun in different aspects of the game. There are various classifications of the player types which help the developer to understand the needs of their customers. It’s important to tailor the game’s features in such a way that every vital part of the community will remain entertained, and engaged in creating an online society.
There are three main pillars of Gloria Victis which we had established at the beginning of the project: open PVP, territory control, and player-driven economy. Open PVP includes epic sieges over player-controlled locations, massive battles in the open and smaller, random encounters of the opposite faction members. This part of the gameplay mainly attracts so-called “killers”, players who are proud of their superior skill or how well they co-operate with the group, but also “explorers” – people who dedicate their effort to invent new ways to overcome the enemy, developing new tactics, metas and so on, giving the fighters new possibilities. Important note – the victory tastes much better if it was achieved with a risk and a proper reward was gained, so there is a partial-loot system in Gloria Victis, where a defeated player can be robbed of a limited amount of items by the opponent. Not much enough to discourage fighting, but enough to keep you considering the consequences of your actions, evaluating your strategy, and promote the second layer, which is…
Player-driven economy. Wars are done by warriors, and they need a variety of things: weapons and armors, camp equipment, food, bandages… Everything that one would need to bring the war to the enemy lands. In Gloria Victis, these things don’t drop from wolves but are crafted by players, then distributed to the customers either by them or specialized merchants, or contributed for a guild to supply the fighting forces. Crafters need resources and access to decent workshops and strongly benefit from any buff they can get to the crafting efficiency. On the other hand, fighters need to replace the looted or destroyed gear and fill their supplies of consumables. In effect, it engages players to co-operate, to create relations naturally appearing in society. This is where the third pillar comes:
Territory control – it gives the reason and importance to the PVP layer. The key part of Gloria Victis is the 3-way conflict of nations. This never-ending war gives birth to fierce fights in the front lines all the time, since most of the locations are ruled by the nations. By capturing territories, players grant the entire nation various benefits, which help all players – access to the resources nodes, crafting workshops and vendors, as well as several buffs. There are also guilds and alliances, which can claim one of several guild provinces for them, to take even more benefits, including personal respawn. This layer engages many types of players – “killers” fight and loot, “achievers” climb up the ranking and create their legends by standing the overwhelming forces, and “socializers” both take care of their community’s needs and benefit from fulfilling them.
These main layers naturally overlap, adding to the overall depth of the game and immersion, and are the ground for every activity you can do in Gloria Victis MMORPG, and for every new one that will come in the future.
What we achieved?
During all those years, the game has changed its shape many times. Ingame world grew over three times, we created new lands, locations, and flags. We added the new nation to the game, Sangmarians, that have evolved from Azebs and created new frontlines closing the world in a circle, to improve game balance. Treasure chests have been scattered across the map to awaken your adventurer instinct.
We made a full rework of combat and movement animations, changed the character models, and added playable female characters. World of Gloria Victis has been filled with countless enemies, NPC’s, questlines, and events. Skill trees have been reworked and expanded, to create even better possibilities to fill in your role on the battlefield.
We added a lot of interesting and entertaining crafting systems, like items reinforcement or disassembling, added new crafting professions, a hunger system.
We created Glory rankings, introduced guilds and alliances systems, construction, and territory control for nations and guilds, including the recently reworked freebuilding for guild castles.
The game received a dedicated Market system that absolutely changed the game economy, a brand new farming system, and a lot of improvements in gathering. You received the castle management system with the opportunity to earn money, skill, and help your nation or guild even more.
We made an overhaul of the models of the ingame items and created skins which you can use to customize the look of your ingame character, and support the game’s development at the same time!
Mounts have been added to the game, greatly reducing the distance between PVP opportunities and adding another layer to the PVP contest. We introduced siege and defensive engines to extend the siege mechanics.
We also have to notice countless Quality of Life, performance, and stability upgrades, which allowed us to extend the player’s cap on the servers and allowed us to be part of huge three-way battles over the locations and territories where even hundreds of players can participate!
Check the current graph of activities of Gloria Victis MMORPG!
We are extremely happy to see what Gloria Victis MMO has become and we are looking into the future with continuous hope for fruitful cooperation between our team and you – our community, as we mentioned at the beginning – this game is made by players, for players, and with players.
Thank you for your continuous support, see you in battle, welcome to the new era!