Greetings!

Welcome back to another edition of our ongoing Tale of Two Towns! It is now Day 24, and a lot has changed since our last post.

Unfortunately, our player concurrency has dropped off in the intermediate weeks, leaving us with no other option but to remove the whitelist in order to lower the barrier to entry towards everyone already in our Discord to give us a shot.

On the flip side, it did allow us to focus that much more on the collaboration between both factions, in turn strengthening our mutual bonds. Our road network is now connected to each other, with various bridges popping up to bridge the oceans!

A snapshot from Day 18, when Sharbhund was not as developed yet

The Khazad-dûm-Sharbhund bridge in progress, connecting Opulentia and our industry with our carpenters and one step towards uniting with the Elven road system

The Sharbhund-Zirak bridge, which is but a short distance away from crossing over into Elven lands

The view when entering Mingyang as of Day 18

A different view of Mingyang, with the palace in an in-progress state

Lo and behold, the interior of the Mingyang Palace!

The Mingyang Palace exterior in its completed state

Meanwhile, I’ve finally finished the design phase of Opulentia, of which you may view the full building down below. Until next time!

A frontal view of the entirety of Opulentia in all its glory

A slightly elevated view, with the Burgerzaal domed roof in the middle

Greetings!

As of the moment of writing, it’s Day 2 of our new map dubbed “A Tale of Two Towns”, marking our first foray into a whitelist-only setting. Despite a slight delay launching due to various collaboration issues popping up, we launched to our familiar 16 concurrent players, with an additional 12 players popping in to say “hi” since, out of a total of 48 people accepted to the whitelist.

While I understand real life happens to all of us, it is a bit sobering to realize that we seem unable to grow past our regular concurrency numbers, with our stable core of players returning, but not a lot of other people.

A bit of a shame, considering how the lifeblood of Eco lies in the interaction with other people, and collaborating despite some real differences in how government should be run or how a stable economy might be ran.

To that end, I sought to give both sides of the equation a voice in the form of the Dwarf capital (representing those who wanted a change from the traditional setup we’ve had for the vast majority of the time the server has been up) and the Elf city (representing those who wanted to stick to our history and traditions).

In spite of all that, neither appears to truly ‘stick’ with newer players unfamiliar with the degree of organization we typically exhibit. A shame, yet it also means there’s both plenty of work to be done to lower the barrier to entry , as well as enterprising players to form a less daunting way to organize themselves under!

Below I have included several pictures kindly provided by NNMike and Sevatar, to give an impression of our early colonization efforts.

Part of our world map on the Dwarf’s side of things, showing the West desert (with the palace site in gold) and the eastern grasslands

Our initial efforts to cover the ocean dividing the palatial Khazad-dûm desert province with the Sharbhund grasslands province, where the vast majority of our residential area is to form.

Tucked in the mountain is the start of Sevatar’s efforts to become one with the ancient Dwarven ways of hiding in caves, before we all Surfaced to showcase our architecture to the world.

Behold, a secret dwarf who (maybe?) wishes he was an Elf instead!

The initial Dwarven efforts to industrialize

Magana in his natural habitat, scaring off all the animals

The humble beginnings of Inistaras’s mansion in the customary Renaissance style of the Dwarves

Lastly, a sign of things to come once we get to endgame with Ashlar and Composites..

The famous Burgerzaal, leaving room for a couple of one-off map plates items to more accurately reflect how the palace looks in IRL. This is what the Dwarves will come to see the moment they enter the main hallway of the palace.