We're thrilled to announce the release of cross-faction Player vs Player (PvP) on Written Realms. This is a very large feature set that both facilitates PvP and provides structure and incentives around it. Our flagship multiplayer world, Edeus, has undergone a significant update to showcase all of the changes, detailed below.
Orcs are now selectable as a Core Faction at character creation time on Edeus. It is a PvP-oriented race where you can quickly gain levels and start contributing to that side's raison d'être: killing humans. With 4 new joinable minor factions and over 20 new quests, the people of Arkosh await your aid, should you be up to the task.
Members of opposing factions are now very easy to identify, with their names appearing in *red* to onlookers in their room. They can also easily be targeted: invoking the kill command with no arguments provided (k for short) will target cross-faction players automatically, unless a different focus is specified.
The communication channels have been reworked so that you can only chat with and send tells to players of the same core faction as your own. Saying or yelling something cross-faction makes the text come out as garbled.
Glory is gained by killing players of opposing core factions, in the case of Edeus for humans killing orcs and vice-versa. The killing player gains 1/5 of their victim's Glory or 50, which ever is greater. The victim loses 1/5 of their own Glory. In order for the killer to gain glory, the victim must be of a different core faction and be at least level 15.
At the start of each week, the player of each class with the most Glory is awarded a unique weapon, each with a special skill modifier and a stat budget around twice that of an imbued item:
Also at the start of each week, Glory is converted into Medals, at the rate of 1 Medal for every 100 Glory gained. After the conversion, 90% of all players' Glory is decayed.
Medals can be used to purchase rewards at your minor faction clan head:
PvP used to be allowed everywhere, sometimes to the detriment of newbies getting attacked in the starting zones. A new 'PvP' mode configuration flag now exists at the world level, where PvP can either be allowed everywhere, disallowed always, or only selectively allowed in PvP zones. Edeus has been configured to the latter, with four zones enabling PvP:
Though Written Realms was largely inspired in its basic design by DikuMUDs, one important distinction is that being attacked does not immediately prevent you from moving to the next room. Only once the victim gets their own attack in do their state changes to 'combat' and they can no longer move through.
This makes preventing someone running to safety through your room impossible, and to offer a way to deal with that we've implemented the ambush command, a 1 second cast skill that takes a target as an argument and costs 30 stamina. Once in the ambushing state the ambusher no longer regenerates health, but the instant their target walks into their room they are placed into combat, allowing a 'blocking' action that prevents the victim from escaping without using the flee command.
The Finham Warzone is a PvP zone with a constant back-and-forth mechanic between humans and orcs. To the north and south of the zone, two lanes are patrolled by mobs that battle each other to try and flip the control of the lane. Players can speed up what is otherwise a very slow process and gain glory when one the generals of the opposing core faction dies. When a faction gains control of both lanes, extra glory is gained and the Warzone pauses for 20 minutes.
Though PvP is also enabled in the areas immediately east and west of it, the Warzone is meant to be where it is concentrated. Enter it at your own peril, and reap the rewards should you emerge victorious.