RealmCast

We’re situated in our new offices, and we’re ready to start bringing you RealmCast episodes as often as we can muster. For this week’s episode, the usual RealmCast crew of TiffyTiff, Zbornox, Willem, and DashAhead is joined by our new General Manager, Mike Sellers. Join us as we welcome Mike to the Realm of the Mad God team, and dive headfirst into as many questions as we could squeeze into an hour and a half regarding duping, the Forums, and our grand plans for the game; all with fewer non sequiturs than ever before!

*Please note that we recorded this episode on Thursday afternoon, right as this newest build went live, so it features little discussion about any issues related to that. Look for next week’s episode to delve more deeply.

There was a lot of important topics going on in this one, and some very thorough answers (and i’m le tired). Therefore, while a lot of this is still in my own words I also copied quite a bit verbatim so as not to influence the answers with my own ideas. Sorry it’s quite a big longer than normal.

###Attendees

• DashAhead
• TiffyTiff
• Zbornox
• Willem
• Mike Sellers
• The Blue Angels, briefly

Mike’s the new General Manager (the other kind of GM). The boss man.

###Community News

Speed Run Challenge Event had lots of winners with very impressive times. But there were not as many entries as we had hoped. If anyone has suggestions to help increase participation please share them with us.

Oryxtoberfest, through October 11th
Beer God & Beer Slurp
Take a video with yourself or with your guild hanging out with the Beer God and Beer Slurp in the biergarten. Top 3 most creative guilds win six packs of prizes. Find us in-game or send us a tweet and we’ll join you.

Forum updates:
Rules are forthcoming. Some will be about unwelcome behavior.

Regarding Linkshot: won’t go into more details than we’ve already shared but his suspension is temporary. His account will be unbanned soon enough.

Willem: we’ve heard for a very long time that people don’t know what the rules are. What game mods/tools are allowed, what kind of trading is allowed, etc. We’ve been aware of these things but we’ve historically taken a hands-off approach to it. “Now that Realm’s growing as a game it’s time for us to take an official stance on some of these things.”

Mike: “The reason for this is not so that we can be “official”, because it’s not just about just being official. Really this is about everyone having a good a time as possible. So we want to make sure everyone feels welcome on the forum, everyone can have a good time, no one feels harassed or belittled or anything like that. And in the game as well, we want everyone having as good a time as possible, and not be dealing with scammers or things like that. So we’re really just trying to clean things up so that we have the best game we can and everyone can have the best time they can.”

###Game News
New build: New Ninja class, available on Kongregate for 60 days then publically available to everyone after that. It also has the Katana weapon and shurikin abilities, Beer God and Beer Slurp.

The gifting vault is a place for us to give you items when we need to.

We’re working on a bunch of Halloween stuff. It’s Willem’s personal favorite holiday so he’s going all out. Someone must make an Oryx costume!

We’re doing this deal with Kongregate because they wanted to do a special promotion where they’re going to have RotMG cards in GameStop stores and to do this they wanted some degree of exclusivity for a period of time. It is very important to us that this content is available to everyone so it will be completely open to everyone after a wait. And it is available today because RotMG is free to play on Kongregate and you can link your account to use the ninja class right now. We hope no one feels left out on this one.

Mike: we have a lot of stuff coming out for October, but we can’t discuss much but it’s coming along.

###Mike Sellers’ Q&A

Q. What is your job title and what do you do?
A. My title is General Manager. I have “product oversight” over RotMG and two other unreleased games. I’m really excited about being on RotMG, excited about the community and getting to know people in the community. My background is game design. I’ve run game companies in the past where there’s a lot of game design but also product design. Like what’s the long term roadmap, how do we take great ideas and grow those into the game. How do we take the game from where it is now to where it will be in the future.

Q. When do you start working on realm?
A. A week, I think? It’s been a wild week.

Q. What were you working on before realm?
A. I’ve worked on several internal products: Kings of Camelot, and those other things that haven’t been released yet. Most of my career has on “the next thing”. It’s refreshing to be working on Realm because it’s already here. Before Kabam, way back in the 80’s, I wrote a text RPG, then worked in software and eventually games, creating Meridian 59 with my brother. I’ve worked on some social games, was the lead designer on Sims 2, lots of other stuff. I teach AI and game design part time for a Swedish university.

Q. What’s your favorite class?
A. Today’s the ninja. I’m not as good a player as I want to be, but I’m practicing and going through the whole NPE. I noticed there wasn’t a Ranger class, which is always my favorite class in any RPG.

Q. What’s your non-professional game history?
A. RPGs first of all, builder games, and the occasional shooter. I’ve been playing lots of retro games on tablets, like Syd Myers Pirates on the iPad. Zeus on GOG.

Q. Do you have any tattoos.
A. No. I have no permanent tattoos. I’ve had some temps that I’m glad they wore off.

Zbornox has a star on her wrist. Tiffy has guitar with musical notes on her right shoulder blade. Dash and Willem are without.

###Realm Q&A

Thanks everyone for keeping the question thread civil!

BlackJam: Mike, were you required to play realm to get a sense of the game or do you do that on your own volition to make more informed decisions.
Mike: I wasn’t required to but of course I play. I enjoy games like realm anyway. I played a long time ago because I was introduced to it by my friends at SpryFox (!) but hadn’t had a chance to get back to it. In terms of decisions, that comes from experience and having a great team.

BlackJam: permadeath is arguably the defining design foundation of the game is now largely avoidable due to the price of amulets. What are your thoughts on permadeath and is it something that will be addressed?
Mike: there’s no question permadeath has been diluted. It is a key, unique part of the game that makes is stand out from other games. Permadeath needs to be more important to the game than it is today. We’re tracking the price of goods in game very closely and am taking that into consideration.

BlackJam: how much of your decision making is based on veteran player feedback?
Mike: some of it for sure. Veterans are in many ways the ones who hold the heart and soul of the game. But at the same time they don’t speak for the entire game. There are thousands of new players coming in daily so we can’t lose sight of them as well. We have to think about all players at all skill levels. New content has to be for new players, but also definitely for older players. I’ve been reading the forums and I hope to start becoming more active there.

BlackJam: what’s your vision for the future?
Mike: there’s lots I want to say but I can’t. Realm has an awesome gameplay and community and we only want to make these things better. We want to improve the social aspects of the game, we want to make it more welcome to new players, but we also want to preserve the special traits of the game, like the artwork and permadeath. I’m very happy to see all the awesome player made artwork and that’s the kind of thing we want to encourage going forward.

BlackJam: slappy hands, you game?
Mike: thanks to my brother I am unbeatable.

Frogboffin: Mike, how far have you progressed in playing?
Mike: not far enough.

Frogboffin: would having a controlled group of testers be a good idea?
Mike: That’s something we talk about a lot. There’s some things that benefit from big open test groups, sometimes controlled groups, and other times just doing it internally. It depends on the feature.

Frogboffin: how many pushups can you do?
Mike: I can do 100 on a regular basis but I’ve never maxed out. (doozer, Mike will take on your challenge)

Kopokid: infamous CEO quote, is this Kabam’s strategy for RotMG?
Mike: the context of the quote was him talking about another company and the benefit of having high quality users vs people who come and go. Our goal isn’t to squeeze everyone for money, but rather to make compelling games that make people want to spend their money on. We don’t approach designing the game asking ourselves how to make money, we first want to make something fun and the money will follow from that.

Marcos: ones source of tension I see is Kabam doesn’t seem to understand just what it has in Realm. What do you think makes realm special from other games by Kabam.
Mike: all the communities around our games are different, and I think Realm may be the most energetic. I wouldn’t say we don’t get it but Realm is a very fast paced community and game and it great to help keeping it going.

OSX: what is the realm team working on right now? It doesn’t seem like much but I suspect there’s more behind the scenes.
Mike: there’s a huge amount going on. We just finished the new build, we have that Halloween content coming up.

OSX: what do you think about RWT depriving some people of a way to spend money on the game?
Mike: this is a difficult area. We of course want people to play the game but we also don’t want people to have advantages over each other. I’m not against RWT on principal, I’m against it when it happens in an unregulated way where you can get scammed. (Tiffy: we get many support requests every day. Dash: it’s difficult to hear from parents and grandparents writing in about scams when there’s nothing we can do about it.) I think a lot of people aren’t aware of the scale of the fraud that happens.

OSX: thoughts the alternative forums being make in response to the recent actions against muledump/QS/RWT?
Mike: we’d like people to stay on the official forums. If someone wants to create another forum that’s terrific, we’re not going to try to control them, but we think the best forums will remain the official one. If someone wants to go elsewhere for things like this it’s their choice.

Maynard: are signatures coming back? What will be the new limits?
Dash & Tiff: sigs will be coming back early next week after things have a little while longer to cool off. We’ll be trying to put size restrictions on it then.
Zbornox: to protest the length it’s not a good idea to spam the forum with huge signatures. We know, we understand, but it’s really not helping at all.

Maynard: why do I see a GM spamming baby pets while doing nothing about spam bots?
Zbornox: I was the baby spammer. GMs cannot get rid bots. We’ve tried with the tools we have and it just had no impact.
Mike: this is a known issue. It’s frustrating but yes we know about it, no there isn’t a solution today, and yes there will be a solution.
Dash: we’ve been banning more than people think, it’s just not many people realize because we’re invisible while we’re watching everyone.
Zbornox: I’ve been on A LOT and have been banning people who were obviously breaking the rules. Even mention you’re duplicating and you’re banned.

Liam: what was your emotional response to the forum? Can you shake it off or did it affect your mood and motivation?
Dash: yes, it affected my mood and motivation. When people are spamming insults at us it is hard to say positive.
Mike: it doesn’t affect my mood personally because I’ve seen this all before in the industry.

RubeII: “Have you any plans for a balancing subforum, complementing the idea subforum?”
Mike: the support tickets are really the best way. My take on this is to leave it as it is and have it go through support tickets. If there’s an issue where we’re not sure exactly what players are seeing then we may make an official sub forum or IRC channel but these things can become disused and not be useful for what it was created for in the first place.
Willem: there’s good ways to convey your ideas and there’s bad ways to do it. To be honest walls of text, while it’s great that you’re passionate, are very hard for us to find the time to read though. Being concise as possible is much better. Also, if the community can focus on specific issues, either through polls the GMs can make for you or something else, make it way more likely we’ll see it.
Dash: forum moderators are good, too. Bring your ideas to them and they will pass it along to us.

(Doc here: RubeII stated his question very well, I thought, but I think the question was misinterpreted somewhat. What RubeII and the users on IRC was looking for was a discussion on balancing, not a method to pitch ideas. Sending a submission to support is largely seen as a black hole when it comes to things that aren’t necessarily “support”. Having more voices is beneficial to complex subjects such as balancing, hence the reason it’s been suggested something be made specifically for this rather than having us talk at a wall, so to speak. They’re looking for engagement, not an outlet.)

ulosen: would you consider adding performance enhancing options commonly found in hack clients to the official game?
Mike: performance and convenience increases are things we’re working on. They’re getting mixed in with all the other priorities. With so much in the pipeline what it comes down to is if we add this thing, for example, then what other things are we going to have to put off, and how does that effect the longer term plans? It’s always a very difficult decision, even among ourselves, choosing what gets done when.

Piggah: when you’re discussion ideas, how do you determine priorities? What are your current priorities?
Mike: Usually what it comes down to is what will create the most fun and most stable for the most amount of people? We consider the veterans on the forum and also the 1000’s of new players, so we really try to balance these things when planning. And we also have to think of things like duplication, spam bots, etc and what it takes to address those things. It all goes into the decision making process.
Willem: we look at what we’re putting in and who we’re serving. If its new content now, then we try to make the next thing for veteran players, but also time factors matter. Bigger content takes longer and we sometimes don’t have room to fit it in.

Somebody: when you setup the Account in Use disconnect dupe fix it didn’t work out. Why not just make that work when leaving the vault?
Mike: there are deep technical issues and we are working on solutions to get rid of as much of it as possible. Every game I’ve ever worked on has had duplication issues: players always figure out a way to do it. So we’re working on ways to make it as hard and as inconvenient as possible. Regarding the vault idea, it would actually be difficult to do, and could also cause problems with other parts of the game.
Willem: while we appreciate everyone’s suggesting fixes for duplication, our engineers are very good. I’ve suggested similar things before and they’ve laughed at me because it wouldn’t work at all. They’ve put a lot of thought and effort into how to fix this.
Mike: I’ve had some of these same thoughts playing as a noob and really none of them will work. If simple solutions worked then they would have already been done.

Trustee/Doc (woot!): what’s a GM day look like?
Zbornox: I get up at 5:30am, walk the doggie, get some coffee, take the train, get to work around 8 and jump right into support tickets. Sometimes I have food at the office, but no breakfast tacos (alas). From there every day is different, it all depends on what Twitter looks like, what’s going on with the forum, how many support issues we have to tackle.
Tiffy: we also compile metrics. Recording and categorizing issues so we know which are the most important. We send these out as weekly reports. She’s the spreadsheet goddess. (heh, I’ll be the judge of that! stares at my report logs showing my own spreadsheets and related tools have been used over 400,000 times in my company over the last 4 years )
Zbornox: we all come and go at different times so we’re usually around.
Dash: We have other projects, too. Podcast prep takes almost a whole day. Will and I have started putting together videos and we’re going to be doing more of them. We spent a lot of time on the forums this past week.
Tiffy: we also do QA testing on new builds sometimes.
Dash: brain storming for community events, too. Monday and Friday there’s only two of us, and only one over the weekend. So some days are a bit harder than others.

Trustee: how about them peoples outside the USA?
Mike: we actually have a number of ideas for our international audience. I love the idea of celebratory loot and events that go outside the US borders, exposing everyone to the traditions of other countries. We also have some plans we’ll discuss later about reaching out to international players beyond events and items.

Mankay: will there be more katana classes like a samurai?
Willem: Perhaps. Our players have some pretty good deduction skills.

R3i11y: it seems the purpose of the testing server has changed. What’s the plans for testing?
Willem: Your perspective depends on when you started playing on test. Before Kabam it was pretty typical to bring test on and offline every couple weeks. After Kabam we did leave it up for a long time so now that it’s been down it is a change from the last few months. But again it’s a tool for us and it’s fulfilling its purpose for us.

Kraehe: Masamune > Muramasa? I would like to know why they are in this order. As from myth and legends, I would say the other way.
Willem: That’s not true. In the legends surrounding these swordcrafters they would hold contests for who makes the better sword. Muramasa is traditionally the evil sword, while Masamune makes good swords. Generally it’s agreed the Masamnue was the greater sword maker of the two.

Lnkd: any class balancing soon?
Willem: I’m sure the ninja will be getting tweaks because it’s new, but there’s always possibilities for balancing.

Lnkd: will Dr Terrible get a nerf to healing? He’s a battle of attrition.
Willem: we’re working on balancing a number of things for the whole game. We’re working on the zero def bug for our next release and we’re rebalancing across the board to keep the game feeling correct because the bug has been around a long time. The Lab and Dr Terrible will be part of that, too.

ZucchiniZe: Will there be community appearances in realmcast?
Mike: it’s a great idea and hopefully we’ll be doing something like that in the near future.
Willem: realmcast is young so as it grows we’ll work more things into it.

Amitp: have you considered 100% soulbound loot drops?
Mike: it’s interesting but I think it may be a little extreme. We may consider it but it may not be the most elegant solution.

Amitp: could you share a breakdown on user experience?
Mike: I don’t have the numbers today. But I think it is worth mentioning that there are 10’s of 1000’s of players who don’t log into the forum.

Amitp: Source Sans for player name legibility?
Willem: we can investigate if it’s a persistent issue. I personally like the font but again if players come together on issues like this and bring it to the GMs we get a sense of how big these things are.
Mike: this is salt, as the metaphor goes. But it does speak to the social aspect of the game, namely the security of knowing who people are, who you’re dealing with, etc. Things like this are definitely part of our mid to long term goals.

Averthorn: mystic is kinda underwhelming vs other staff classes. Any changes planned?
Willem: while we’re always considering balance it’s a big task with a lot of thought and work going into those small number changes. For now we want to focus on other important items on our to-do lists before going back to class balancing. Maybe around the time the next class comes out.

Averthorn: new untiered equipment has been uninspiring. Any thoughts to spice them up?

and

Mquery: lots of UT class sets from dungeons. Will we go back to more unique UTs?
Willem: I don’t think UT have to cause huge gameplay differences. We’ll keep adding a variety of UTs of all kinds.

Kable: any plans to add Quickspeech or muledump directly to the game?
Mike: there’s clearly some features in things like QS that are really useful, no question. The task for us is to get it into our plans. But also look beyond what these programs do and add features that improve on them.

Kable: how about adding more vault space?
Willem: we don’t have plans to just throw out more vaults but rather the entire vault system is something we’re thinking about.

Dash: we’ll probably be doing another Realmcast next week so be on the lookout for that. Thanks for joining us!

Fin.

For this week’s episode, the RealmCast crew of TiffyTiff, Zbornox, Willem, and DashAhead is joined by one of our awesome Front End Lead Developers, Indigo! Join us as we talk about Oryxtoberfest, Pirate Week, as well as some spooky and sweet Halloween fun! We interrogate Indigo with pressing questions such as “Do you have any tattoos?” and end with answering some of the great questions that you submitted for this week’s RealmCast.

###Attendees

• DashAhead
• Zbornox
• TiffyTiff
• Willem
• Indigo

###Community News

Oryxtoberfest
Three winners, but really everyone’s a winner!
BlueMarble with CyberSnips – Adventures of the Beer Slurp
CraftTable – A boy and his Slurp
Piggah & Monocle Alliance – Quest for the Beer Slurp

Realm Pirate Week
Talk like a pirate in realm and the GMs will spawn pirate-y stuff around you.

Lag & loading issues… fixing these issues has been the devs primary focus all week. There’s a constant stream of improvements coming instead of a big release to fix it.

Halloween is coming! The events may last up to an entire month since everyone on the RotMG team loves Halloween, maybe as soon as next week.

###Indigo Q&A
(time index: 9:00)

Q. What is your job title and what do you do?
A. Lead ActionScript dev, ie Front-End, ie the game client.

Q. When did you start working on RotMG.
A. Pretty much from the beginning right after Kabam bought the game.

Q. How long have you been with Kabam.
A. About 3 months before RotMG.

Q. What did you do before Kabam.
A. Working with another game dev working on a vampire style empire building mmo.

Q. Would you recommend starting in the game industry using ActionScript or something else?
A. I think AS will be around for a long time, it’s used in so many places, and it’s an easy language to learn. It also has tons of documentation.

Q. What is your favorite RotMG class?
A. I love tanking, so I’m all about the Knight. Rogues are good for loot, too.

Q. What kind of games are you playing now?
A. I actually try NOT to play games because when I do I get obsessed and my life crumbles. Back in the day the Ultima series was the ultimate game for me.

Q. Do you have any tattoos.
A. I’ve got so many tattoos, too many to count especially now that they’ve kinda all run together. My first one was a chaos star on my back.

Q. What’s your in-game-name?
A. Moistened

###Realm Q&A
(time index: 19:35)

MrBunk: Are there any plans to add functions to pets?
Willem: we’ve been thinking about adding some function to them for a while. There’s something we’ve wanted for a while but ended up putting in something new that’s coming soon instead of pets.

MrBunk: Mr Penguin pet is all goofy, what’s up?
Willem: all that funkiness are flippers.
Indigo: they’re dancing enthusiastically.

MrBunk: will the pixel editor be upgraded to allow for more animations?
Willem: that’s something our artists would love to have themselves. If we end up making upgrades for ourselves we’d make them public, but the engineers have their hands full right now.

BlackJam: is it possible to unlink Kongregate accounts from the Web and/or Steam? I don’t want to keep a Kong account after starting a Ninja.
Willem: you shouldn’t have to do that. There’s no harm keeping the accounts linked plus you’ll need to go back to Kongregate if your ninja dies and you want to make another. Indigo: we’re not aware of any issues for having accounts linked but if there are we’ll definitely look into any Support requests.

Dalla: do you feel lack of skill hampers development of new content, and your perception of the difficulty of said content? Do you believe if you were more skilled you could make better content?
Willem: if you feel the difficulty rating is inaccurate we can reconsider that if a discussion is made about it. In terms of new content I don’t think it hinders that much. I was making dungeons before I knew how to play well and the test server gave me the feedback necessary to identify areas that needed improvement.
Indigo: as our own skills develop of course we’ll have more insight than when we’re brand new but observing the community is a great way for us to judge these things today.

Dalla: what’s the status of upcoming end-game content?
Willem: since Mike Seller’s arrival we’ve been redoing all our roadmaps. The end-game stuff is still there, we just need to fit them into the development schedule. It’s not happened yet, but I’m pushing to have this end-game stuff given higher priority.

Indigo: we’re doing a lot of tactical changes. The long term strategy is essential for the survival of the game. We also recognize old players are just as important as new players when it comes to the long term survival of the game so we’re definitely going to keep our focus on end-game content as well.

Willem: You may have noticed we’re really starting hitting our stride in development with making changes and releasing new changes.
Indigo: October and November will be really great months for the players.

Dalla: do you plan on fixing Fame?
Willem: we think the fame system today is a little strange and almost completely imbalanced. It’s really just a matter of when we can get around to it.
Dash: if people want to create a forum thread to do that work for us please go for it.

Willem: if we have any foreign players who want to do this, please upload you saying something with an American accent. We hear fake accents all the time, so we want to hear authentic accents!

Bandreus: what do you think of the nexus-or-die difficulty of some parts of the game? Do you think they’re unfair?
Willem: on one hand we have people telling us they cannot handle dungeons like the Tomb, but on the other hand we also have people asking for Tomb level or harder difficulty. Also, some harder content is really meant for groups so soloing, while possible, isn’t the focus.

Band-ray-yous: how do you think UTs linked to specific content effects gameplay? Do you think choosing to run or skip dungeons based on the loot is fun gameplay?
Willem & Dash: that’s kinda the way loot-based games are played.
Indigo: it’s also a matter of personal choice. Some people may play just for the content and not so much for the loot rewards, but some may be the reverse. One of the great things about RotMG is the amount of variation one can have depending on what kind of game they want to play.
Willem: I’ve not been a loot hunter myself in the past so exploring is more fun for me, and it’s something that’s driving my direction of development for the game.

Bandreus: could you elaborate on RWT systems you may be developing?
Willem: we’ve thought and discussed these things but we haven’t done any actual work or plans made for things like this.
Indigo: I want to make the distinction between “ideas” and “plans”. Player run economies are dangerous and fragile things to mess with so if we did start planning enhancements that effect the economy a LOT of thought would have to go into it to avoid destroying it.
Willem: There’s so many way to approach RWT or auction house trading that we haven’t even begun looking into all the possibilities.
Indigo: this is a very major decision, if we do it, and it’s something we’d be very careful to not bungle it.

ClassyMe: why does a shurikin shoot after using the speed boost?
Willem: I really wanted the Ninja to be a real skill class that takes a long time to master. I’d love players to really utilize the speed to dodge, get in close, do big damage, and get out without having to use a tank class.

(time index: 45:00)
remm: what was wrong with the old offensive word filter?
Indigo: blame the federal government. There’s regulations regarding what underage players are allowed to be exposed to and we decided to err on the side of caution initially. We are going to review this to give players them the game they want while also satisfying COPPA regulations.
Willem: I hope to bring back the #&$% profanity filters.

Sporks: Can Mike Sellers sit in on the RealmCasts?
Dash: Mike’s a busy guy who also has more games than just RotMG on his plate. We will try to bring him in as much as possible.

Sporks: can you start making video trailers for upcoming content?
Dash: yes. We’ve been planning this for a while. We want to.
Zbornox: as soon as we get through the 5000 support tickets we’ll get on it.

White people rapping a haiku commences.

Everyone in the bay area dies.

Sporks: in regards to the new godland area, what’s planned?
Willem: I don’t remember anything about new godlands. If it’s about the new end-game content, as I said earlier I’m really into exploration and discovery so all of the new content I have planned centers around all new things. I’d rather expand the game than add onto godlands.

Sporks: what do you think about expanding the nexus and tackling spam?
Willem: I think you should wait like a week. (or the day the realmcast is published, amirite?)
Indigo: there’s some big changes coming very soon that addresses a number of nexus problems.

EnergyKillz: will the beer god be removed?
Willem: I have no intention to do that. He’s not bothering anyone by sticking around. You may not see the beer slurps all the time, but the Beer God isn’t going anywhere.

Jiwoos: will you bring back the ability to take items straight out of soulbound bags to drop it on the ground.
Willem: that’s a bug. We’ll get it on our to-do list.

Jiwoos: did you make katanas and shurkins public loot on purpose?
Willem: that was an accident. Soulbounding higher tier ninja loot, and adding fame to higher tier items, has been fixed already.

(time index: 57:10)
Jiwoos: can anyone of you do pushups for 24 hours straight? Three of my teachers can.
Willem: that’s non-sense. Nobody but robots can do that.
Dash: I don’t believe it but I’ll have to check out this Pushups for Patriots thing.
Indigo: your school frightens me.

Fauxhawkdan: if you were a walrus, would you be a pretty one?
Indigo: I’d be fancy walrus.
Willem: it’s not anything that’s ever crossed my mind, but I’d be a battle walrus.
Dash: me too
Indigo: I kinda want to upgrade to a giant robot walrus now.
Zbornox: I’d be the gassy walrus.

Have you ever been on the legends?
Willem: I’ve done it on accident before.
Indigo: it’s always great having to ask Steven (back end guy) to take you off again.

Where’s everyone from?
Willem: Mass for growing up & Baltimore for school
Indigo: born in SC, live in Oakland right now.
Zbornox: I’m from Wisconsin, lived in Chicago till a couple years ago when I moved to San Fran.
TiffyTiff: born and raised bay area
Dash: I’m from the bay area too.

Kable: nexus expans…
All: answered
Kable: lag fix soo…
All: answered
Kable: beer go…
All: answered
Kable: how do you pick questions for realmcast?
Dash: apparently we don’t?
Doc: darts, while drunk, blindfolded, and after being spun for 10 seconds.
Kable: boo at people stealing my questions.
Indigo: that’s raw, ya’ll.
Dash: all previous questions are now dedicated to Kable.

Carpocolapse: do you think you’re going in a good direction right now? Do you think you could do better? Would you take our feedback for events ‘n such?
Tiffy: we do.
Dash: Sadly many of the ideas are not easily implemented for the entire community.
Zbornox: for example, the speed runs.
Dash: we knew everyone wanted to do it, but it ended up not having nearly as many submissions as we had hoped.

Carpocolapse: tea or teeth for teams (huh?) or any new plans coming up?
Willem: a lot of the stuff coming up has gone from just ideas to solid plans, it’s just a matter of getting them done.
Indigo: I think when it comes to T13 or T14 (oh!) gear it would be a lot better to have a content to back it up instead of just throwing it out randomly.
Willem: I have no intention to drop new tiers of equipment into the game as it is today. I’d rather have it go in the new content and new environments coming up.

Carpocolapse: what’s up the armor shop?
Willem: I have no idea where you heard about that. We don’t have any player auction house plans, if that’s what you mean.
Indigo: we also don’t have any equipment stores or things like that planned.

(FYI kabam peeps: people are regularly surfing the testing pixel editor, where there was some recent additions of new “doors” labeled armor shop, etc etc. People seem to believe any art not tagged with a player’s name means it was made by Kabam and therefore an upcoming feature.)

Remember to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Le End

After a brief hiatus, RealmCast is back in action with Episode 7! This time around, your usual gang of misfits is joined by Mike Sellers and a very special guest, our own Forum moderator, Doc. Join the whole crew as we take your questions, hear direct from Doc his ideas for the game, and talk about food way more than we should.

(11/15/12) - WIP; transcribed up to 21:32. Feel free to contribute transcribed audio if you please.

###Attendees

• DashAhead
• TiffyTiff
• Zbornox (Gloria )
• Willem
• Mike Sellers

With Special Guest:

• Doc (Trustee)

###Community News

Design your own UT set event
Dash: "We want to see what you think would be an awesome set of UT weapons for your favorite class."
Check out the Official Thread on forums for more info.
Thanksgiving is coming!

Fall themed color, animals, and possibly more.
Tiff: "Gobble Gobble"
Hacking Issue

Fixed the exploit and banned players who took advantage of it.
Working on a direct line of communication between Forums Mods and Kabam in the event of another serious issue.
Zbornox: "If you feel like your account was been banned incorrectly then let us know through a support ticket."
Support Tickets

Been working though a whole bunch of tickets. If you still have an issue, just respond to the ticket and it will be read again.
Zbornox: "But this also means that we received a really fantastic ticket and we just had to read it on the air because it’s so fantastic."
Fantastic Ticket #1: "Your game is now horse -bleep-! I broke 2 2 ammies and got zombified both times! 5% my -bleep- you -bleep- -bleep- -bleep-! You sold the game and lives to Kabam and you should quit now. This game sucks -bleep-! As does the support and all of your -bleep- staff"
Dash(?): "Another happy customer."
Game News

New Dungeon: Cemetery
Arena format; 4 stages consisting of 5 waves each.
Cemetery themed Pet.

Backpacks
Doubles inventory when applied to a single character.

Bug Fixes
Huzzah

###Doc’s Q&A

Q) So before we begin with the questions that are on here. I just kind wanna know, what’s up with your names? I know Doc, but what’s Trustee?
A) Ahhh, there’s a couple of little stories behind that. First doc has been my name for a long time, you guys know why, but doc just always been my nickname since I was a kid; it’s just what I brought forward in all my games. When I started playing there was actually another Doc register on the forums about a month before me. So I couldn’t register on the forum but he and I both played the game simultaneously. I don’t know if you guys know, but early in realm before there were registered accounts, multiple people could just share the same name in the same realm. So there could be 5 "Doc"s floating around and there were. When they started having registered names, the way Alex did it was, whoever had the most fame at the time-cause you couldn’t spend fame you just collected it-whoever had the most fame could register first. And then every couple days the amount of fame to register went down, so I happened to have the most fame of all the "Doc"s.

But although I don’t trade anymore, when I first registered was when the nexus first came out; before nexuses it was just a menu. Once we had a nexus to trade in everybody would drop trade and people got scammed all the time. There’s loot ninjas all over the place taking your stat pots when you drop it. So my idea was to be a middleman, so I chose the name Trustee as a middleman service; that was my first post (on forums). About a month later I swore against ever trading again and I haven’t ever since. But I’ve kept the name and that’s where it comes from. [So what do you go by most?] Doc. [So now our goal is to get you to trade again, to make conditions so that you would want to trade again.] I trade on Karma so I’ll trade WC tops for wines and kinda really worthless things. But as long as somebody who I’m trading with pays it forwards then that fine.

Q) What brings you down here to SF?
A) My sister in law lives here and my Father-in-law is here to visit so we thought it appropriate to get the family together in SF. She’s like 15 minutes from here so I’m like, ‘Hey, why not swing over to KABAM’s office and say hello?’.

Q) When did you start help on forums for ROTMG? It sounds like a long time ago.
A) Well I got my modship back in June shortly after KABAM purchased (ROTMG). It was kinda all working at the same time. I got asked to be a mod I think like a day or two before the KABAM announcement came, so it all kinda hit at the same time. But before that I’d just been poking around a year and a half. My 2 year anniversary was a few days ago, I completely missed the 2.0 year. [You didn’t have a WC party or anything like that?] No. I’ve actually been playing for about a month longer than my forum account’s been registered. And I had some WC back in September just with some friends.

Q) Before you became a forum mod or actually aside from being a forum moderator what else do you do in your spare time?
A) Not a whole lot I mean I know you guys… hmmmm, I don’t know I pretty much exclusively play ROTMG I’m not a huge gamer otherwise. I was when I was a kid and I kinda just drifted away from it. But then I discovered realm on Reddit 2 years ago and I kinda got stuck with it. I know that once I get stuck on a game I’m stuck forever, so I’ve purposely avoided WOW and EU(?) and those other things that’ll just sap your life away. But Realm is easy enough to hop in, play a while, and drop off where you were without any … it’s, I hate the word casual, but it’s more casual and I’m kind of a casual player.

Q) What is it about realm that first hooked you?
A) It was simple; I don’t know I really like the retro graphics and the simple game play, especially that it is in flash. I mean I wouldn’t have played it if it wasn’t in flash. There’s other free games that I’ve looked at like on Kongregate, but they require an install and there’s cumbersome things. At the time it was even easier to play because you started the game and hit play and then boom you’re right in the realm. There’s a couple more steps now but it’s still really easy. But I don’t know what hooked me about it really.

Q) What is your favorite realm class, your favorite dungeon, and your favortie god?
A) Well, Medusa rules all; she’s definitely the favorite. I did a pumpkin of Medusa last year, I posted it on the social forums it’s there(?) a year ago but it turned out pretty good. It’s fun getting all the little pixels in the pumpkin.

I actually started, I was a necro-exclusive player for a long time and I never really got anywhere. I got like forty-thousand fame and never maxed a class never maxed a stat, so I really did suck for a long time. Then I started playing on test and, I’m kinda ashamed to say but, took advantage of the cheap amulets there. And just by being able to survive death enough to actually start maxing stats I got a lot better. [With a Necro?] I switched to priest and I’ve pretty much been… I main a priest all the time. I’m branching out to other classes.[So are you a nice priest?] Oh yeah, I heal everybody. All these arguments about … yeah… it’s a cheap ability, you have enough wisdom to regenerate a full use of your tome in about 14 seconds, it’s really no harm to you to heal other people. I always reserve the last use for myself, so if there’s everyone else around getting damaged to pieces and I have one use left I’m gonna, sorry, save it for me. But everyone else I share.

[And what dungeon do you like the best?]
Probably the abyss. It’s fast paced; those brutes will cut you down no time if you’re not paying attention. [You like how aggresive the enemies are in this?] It’s not just the damage quantity. It’s small rooms, low maneuverability cause of the lava, and there’s a lot more, I mean as much strategy as this game can get, just going around corners trying to figure out how the next room is configured so you don’t get attacked from 5 different entrances. I find it takes a lot more thinking than other dungeons.

Q) How do you feel other Lord Ruthven?
A) He killed my assassin last Friday, I’m pissed off with him(?). [Was that a Zbornox spawn?] No, that was his little ferus. They stack up and I don’t know if there’s a maximum number, but if you’re not constantly going back into the room and cleaning them out there can be hundreds in there.

(11/15/12) - WIP; transcribed up to 21:32. Feel free to contribute transcribed audio if you please.

It’s been far too long, but we are back once again with another episode of RealmCast. This time, it’s just your core group of TiffyTiff, Zbornox, Willem and DashAhead, but that doesn’t mean we stayed away from the hard questions. Tune in as we announce the winner of our UT Item Set Event, discuss the Fame redesign, and put Willem’s Adventure Time knowledge to the test.

Intro: Wierd music

###Attendants

• DashAHead
• Tiffytiff
• Zbornox
• Willem

Realmcast every week!

###Community news

Screwed up. Running through cast again. Fail.

Winner for UT set, Tons of submissions, they are thankful for submissions.

Winner is: Diacleses(Not sure if spelled right) Great art, looks awesome, creative, they enjoyed it. Great job.

Honorable mention. Earth warrior set,(Speechless willem) Bobetto’s necro set. Lastly, Blade of unslate. Dash, is a fan. Don’t expect any to be put into the game, but they do influence them.

Next event! Tomb-versary

Zbornox: One year anniversary. Two entrys, Tomb raiders: 8:50 seconds and another group(not named) 9:50s Tiffy wins third place.

Thankful for tomb raiders, met their expectations. They want them beaten.

New release soon, they want it stable for the next release. Maybe monday, latest on Wed.

New event…Melt oryx’s heart.(Da fuq) Involves lava. They give good lucks, valentine to the winner.

Adventures pack has been released, info on the forums.

Ticket of the week: Good evening, I’ve been thinking to ask it or not. I’ve recently got unbanned, and I think to ask a very brasingly, that friends motivate me to do so. (Onward) I ask you to restore my characters, that were deleted on a wipe before unbanned. I would be very grateful I’m sure 80 percent of this letter reads zbornox, and on the advice of my good friend, I write the two halves luxury Shits (BEEEP) well if this letter is read by someone else, then I am a failure. (Lol whut)

Challenged them to do a tomb run, without admin powers. (THEY CAN’T DO IT) we want to see them killed. Won’t be soon, because they suck, lol. Death means nothing to them. Because their gm’s. Hurr durr. Coming after holidays. (They’re scared from what willem said)

###Game news

Fame redesign is coming, new skins coming, all classes will get a skin.

new winter nexus incoming, new winter content, winter themed items. (May be falling slow) <–Sarcastic will.

No more game news

###Q/A

Piecake: Any future changes for classes(Pally): Will will possibly look at the classes. If you’re a true adventure time fan answer these questions…(Not translating. Childish)They agree he’s a true adventure time fan.

Offdarailz: Trade window fix soon? They know,bothers Willem, will happen eventually. They are trying to get alot in. It will come soon. Don’t panic.(Low on the list -_-)

HGking(Fabulous): Any more top killer graphics in realm? Willem will do it, he wants to do more.

Any data, so we can keep track of things? Possibly,(Grandma texts) Question for brandon…Jewish deli food. Da fuq.

Epicbulla: Where is bitfox? He was on the second episode. Hes on another team, making other things. He’s there. Hangin’ round. Wierd handshake. Bitfox arrived. (Description of handshake)

Nubbers: Will we see hats? Top hats? Not a hat guy, they are taking skins route, not clothes route. Limited hat spacing…(Skins with hats possible)

Brogdor: Now the duping is fixed, lagging still is in the game(Trying to fix) will a new amulet be made? This question(Rolls eyes). He’s playing around with the idea. Not in the immediate horizon. Not anytime soon. Won’t be an item…Whut.

Crawdiddy: Hints on fame system? Shoot for something, that allows players to purchase all items with Fame.(Water everywhere…) Also function as a leaderboards, achievments reworked, no more bonuses. New leaderboards. Etc.

Current priority? Fame system is a current priority.

Houses coming in stages, Immediate interest after fame redesign, hopefully out buy february, or january…

Maxcast: Robobuddy, will he be added? Yes. Will seasonal nexus be added…Obviously yes.

Phoenixofshadow: Will there be a UT ninja star that makes you cloak…No. Hes not a rogue.

Dumb questions…Cake. Christmas spirit. Blah blah blah.

Two different versions of white star? No changes, really.

What would something cost in 100 gold, in fame. Not to sure, no set prices.

(Taking a break will add more if wanted.)
Continuing

Guild upgrades with benefits? Yes, it is planned.

Some classes are not cut out for specific gameplay. Want it to be more balanced. Etc.

Thought about ghostly prism useful? Make it to be a taco, IT IS GETTING A BUFF ON MONDAY OR WED. PRAISE ORYX.

How’s your day? Pretty swell, it’s friday. Friday. Etc.

Not much else guys. Sorry. Lots of jibberish.

We told you we’d be getting these out more often, and so far we are gonna keep the Realm love coming. This week, our intrepid gang of four dives into more questions that ever before, answering your queries about upcoming changes to the game, talking food yet again, and putting our artistic skills to the test. Join TiffyTiffy, Zbornox, Willem, and DashAhead once again on our aural adventure through the Realm.

EDIT: Forgot our lovely drawings of the Lord of the Lost Lands. Can you guess who drew each of them?

The holiday break is behind us and 2013 is well underway. To celebrate our return to the Realm, we put together another episode of ReamCast just for you! Tune in to hear the usual crew (TiffyTiff, Zbornox, Willem, and DashAhead) discuss the upcoming Fame redesign, Willem’s artistic influences, the winners of our recent community events, Digimon, and plenty of other nerdy topics close to our hearts. We also managed to find enough time to draw some renditions of tacos. See if you can discern who drew which one.

We’ve also seen fit to include the winners of our various events here for you to peruse:

Naughty 'N Nice Ninjas Unite:

1st: KickKaster
2nd: Crapadap
3rd: GeeroTwo

End the World

Written: Sir Obsidian
Visual: Frogboffin
Video: GeeroTwo

Thanks for listening and as always, let us know what you think here and on the SoundCloud!

EDIT * willem

Hey guys,
gogoasafur had a great question that I wanted to adress. The answer is written below as well but I thought it was worth sticking up here for you all to see more easily:

He asks:(paraphrased)
I’m not dead and NOT planning on dying- this means that I can’t utilize the new fame system, and punishes people who stay alive.

Answer:
I have a multipart answer to this subject. (Questions like this are perfect for podcasts, as I can really get in depth)

Firstly, even though staying alive for a great deal of time is a testament to your skill and a great feat in the wold or RotMG, we really want to provide goals that extend beyond your character’s life. Ideally, I’d like to hit a middle-ground where great, long living players are well rewarded, but have other goals in realm that they are working towards beyond that ‘life’. We want to promote a life cycle for a player character- a beginning, middle and end. There are several benefits to death, such as fame and the option to try out a new class. I’d like to add even more to this list so that players try to hit a sweet spot- making their characters have long and full lives and also appropriate and meaningful deaths. Currently, we don’t really provide anything else to focus on, but this is something that we will be working to change through housing and guilds, eventually.

Second, it has been discussed to allow in some way for players to ‘extract’ fame from a living character - should they not wish to kill them off for their fame. This will likely come with some sort of diminishing returns or detriment (maybe the fame you extract is slightly less that what you would have earned if you died in battle). This likely will not be a feature at launch of the fame re-design, but could be soon to follow.

Thanks for the great question, and I’ll try to answer more if I see any others of note!
-Willem

P.S. Please ignore grammer and spelling errors- im certainly NOT perfect and make them plenty.

Note: as always this is a quick transcription, and doesn’t include every word they said. For more detail listen to it. I’ve put time indexes here and there to help you find certain parts.

###Attendees

• DashAhead
• Zbornox
• TiffyTiff
• Willem

###Community News
0:00:55

Naughty 'N Nice Ninjas Unite winners:
1st place - KickKaster
2nd place - Crapadap
3rd place – GeeroTwo

End the World
Visual - Frogboffin
Written - Sir Obsidian
Video – GeeroTwo

Next event: make a RotMG animated GIF. Details to come.

New package: Play More is back with two backpacks added to the mix.

New forum moderators. Current mods are staying, just adding some new ones. Not sure how many, but if you’re outside of the USA throw in your application.

###Q&A
0:07:00

Anuke: when will MMC dungeon be released?
Willem: there’s been a lot of technical difficulties slowing things down. We’re hoping 2 weeks but we’ll see how it goes.

billowillo: is there any ninja buff in the future?
Willem: currently we have our eyes on other things. Feel free to keep commenting on this on the forum and I’ll take a look.

TehKarrot: when will the fame update and houses come?
Willem: fame redesign we want on test next week. Housing is much further goal. We want to start laying the foundation in the next month but it will be a while till we start putting up the walls.

The Ood: guilds were to get some attention in previous realmcasts, but it hasn’t happened. What’s going on there?
Willem: after houses. All of our engineers but one are working on Project @#$%^&, so everything else is kinda at a standstill till that gets done.
DashAhead: are there any plans we can share regarding future guild upgrades?
Willem: we want to increase the ability for guilds to compete against eachother. Maybe something like a leaderboard. It’s all conceptual at this point.

The Ood: have you thought about letting guilds increase the size of their roster?
Willem: yes

FrozenFire: how do you manage your love lives?
TiffyTiff: very carefully
Zbornox: I write myself poetry every day and resite it
DashAhead: I don’t do the job of managing my love life
Willem: I just make sure there’s room for video games and eating.

0:13:35
TiffyTiff: I witnessed a marriage proposal the other day in the realm, in AsiaEast. (listen for more, too much to copy)

Eternally: why am I slowly being drawn into Social?
DashAhead: I think you’re the only one who can answer this, but maybe it’s addicting, maybe it’s because mods make it so sweet.
Zbornox: I’m actually going on Social more and more now.
DashAhead: I didn’t realize there are so many AMA’s. That’s like all it is right now.

Piply: I’m not rude!
DashAhead: we know you’re not rude.
Piply: if I was going to send you something do you have a Kabam address or should I use your home ones?
DashAhead: PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO FIND OUR HOME ADDRESSES.
Willem: we do have a Kabam address, on Kabam.com. It’s the San Francisco office.
DashAhead: we’ve actually only gotten one thing, a postcard from jooster. Someone promised us a taco postcard but no taco postcard have we!

Piply: is there any way to make the red-bag special sale icon more accurate? I missed out because I thought I had more time.
Willem: that’s something I’d like get that fixed. It will probably be a while till we can get that changed to something more like hours or minutes, so I suggest that if you see something you like buy it right away and don’t hesitate.

gogoasafur: will you ever add siege type content?
Willem: that’s a possibility but we don’t have any plans right now. The castle seems to be exactly that, but I would like to mix up the realm encounters a little bit. That may come someday.

gogoasafur: regarding fame changes and it possibly being less valuable, will it be easier to gain?
Willem: I feel like every podcast we’re getting people saying fame won’t be as valuable. It will be much more valuable when you can use it to buy things.

gogoasafur: right now we use fame to judge other players and how well they’ve played to reach high fame. Will the changes mean players after the fame redesign will be able to quickly surpass people who have high fame now?
Willem: we’re splitting the leaderboard, for one. The current leaderboard will be saved but retired, and the new leaderboard will be made so as to judge only players who die after the fame changes.

TehNyanKat: does doing overdamage cause your chances of getting a drop to go down? Put an end to this controversy!
Willem: it is a myth. You can’t put an end to myths so people will still believe it’s true, but it’s all superstition. It’s bologna.

AceMatt: when are you planning to turn the test server back on?
Willem: meh, I dunno.

Nazu: I heard Lil Oryx will return to the store. Is this real?
Willem: it’s unlikely Lil’ Oryx will return.

SlugKing: do you like slugs?
DashAhead: I grew up in the forest and I hate the things. They’re all over!
TiffyTiff: I’m part of the slug club, where you had to kiss one to get in.
DashAhead: that can kill them!
Willem: banana slugs are the best slugs.

0:27:02
SlugKing: will only the winners from the dungeon art contest make it into the game, or could any participants work potentially appear.
Willem: boosh is in charge of that one. I think he’s choosing art from all over, not just from the winners of that contest. We’ve been looking at a lot of art for the Elder Realms, too.

Linkshot: how much of your work has been influenced by EarthBound?
Willem: a lot of my work is. EarthBound’s my favorite. I’ve played all the games in the series. Mother 2’s the best of the series.
DashAhead: I like Mother 3 more. It’s more emotional.
Willem: everything I do is a little influenced by EarthBound. The Jungle is more influenced by the Deep Darkness. The Ocean Trench, however, was not.

Walorus: Why are “limited edition” pets and skins sold again at a later date?
Willem: I think the only things that were said were supposed to be limited edition were the skins.
DashAhead: there’s a difference between being a limited edition item and an item available for a limited time. Things that are only for a limited time could re-appear. Seasonal items will stay seasonal.

ilikefoosv2: will be seeing April Fools or Valentines stuff?
Willem: I really want to bring back the Heart Pet. I also want to do something for April Fools again, but whether or not it will be new depends on the dev schedule.

iamop: how will you be dealing with RWT and autoloot bots?
DashAhead: we’ve been kicking around a lot of ideas. Whatever will be the harshest on the will probably be the one implemented. We HATE the spambots.
Willem: the biggest thing to remember is that getting rid of them isn’t the hardest part. The hardest part is getting rid of them without negatively affecting everyone else.

iamop: do any of you watch Gundam?
DashAhead: my favorite was Gundam Wing, despite it’s unpopularity. Mobile Suit Gundam is boring, G Gundam is worst thing in the world. Gundam Seed is dumb and Gundam Seed Destiny is uber dumb. Sorry if I’m offending anyone.
Willem: if anyone’s as into OnePiece as much as I am hit me up and we’ll be BFF’s.

SomeTurtle: has much thought has been put into new pet functions?
Willem: there’s been a lot of thought into it, and it’s actually been something I’ve personally be working on for a couple weeks.
SomeTurtle: what about pet dyes, and selling all dyes all the time?
Willem: Haven’t thought about pet dyes, but we are working on a system that, basically, makes all the dyes available. We’ve got something like 450 dyes now.

Crapadap: there hasn’t been a RealmCast in like 3 weeks. We’re lacking in sanity without them!
Zbornox: you could listen to the old ones, there’s something.
All: we’re going to be doing them weekly. Christmas broke it up a bit.

Crapadap: we have so much gold but nothing to spend it on. Will there be an extension to the vault?
Willem: going to forever regret saying that people bought the right to mule. It’s very possible we’ll be expanding the vault, but it’s all tied up with the housing idea so it will probably wait till then.
Zbornox: just want to remind everyone we don’t support mules. If you have them, and something happens, we can’t do anything about it. We get support requests with people asking to recover some mules password because it had a bogus email address, or got hacked, or etc etc. We can’t support that since the ToS says you can’t have multiple accounts.

Eozu: when we can expect packages that include gold instead of just items?
Willem: we don’t have that functionality with the package system yet. It will happen when it’s possible.
0:43:45

Eozu: anything more you can share about the Elder Realms?
Willem: I got back into that over the Christmas break. I’ve thought about it a lot and have started write up documentation on it this week. We’re starting to really look into it. There are some key questions and issues on an engineering front which we’ll get addressed, but it’s mainly going to be content creation when doesn’t involve them so much. We have started on it.

Eatfrenchfries: when will we know when GM’s are online doing fun stuffs?
DashAhead: follow us on Twitter! We always post it there. @RotMG_News

Lakabaus: Do you have a lot of friends?
TiffyTiff: What’s a lot?
Willem: not really
TiffyTiff: I have a few very good friends.
Willem: I’m good friends with my roommates and some people at work.

Lakabaus: What do you do in your free time?
DashAhead: I have lots of magic cards and board games. I’ve been playing FarCry 3 and I love it and hate it at the same time. I do my missions all stealthy and a dog, or a lizard, or some freakin tiger always finds me and ruins everything.
TiffyTiff: I play some music. I bake and make food.
Zbornox: I hike cats a lot.
Willem: I spend great deals of time thinking about what to eat, then less time to eat.

Lakabaus: Do you play realm a lot yourselves?
Zbornox and TiffyTiff: we’re picking it back up again, kinda took a break over the holidays.
DashAhead: we used to play a lot but we just got too busy.
Willem: I always play a lot when we release new content. But it’s been a while so I haven’t played in ages. I’m getting fed up waiting so I’ve played a bit lately.

Lakabaus: Will we see our deaths again?
Willem: I’ve mentioned graveyards with housing, but I want to add it back to the main menu as something like a tab. I don’t know when we have that scheduled. It was supposed to be in the last menu re-design but there was a bug so it had to be put off.

Gwhat: have you ever sat in a cockpit?
TiffyTiff: I have.
Willem: I remember when I was a kid I may have. Vaguely.

Gwhat: have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Zbornox: let me just remind you where we are. We’re in San Franscisco.
DashAhead: pretty much anything around here that invites people to gather in public there are naked men.
Zbornox: I’m surprised how desensitized I’ve become to it.

1:02:45
Secert: since it’s called Elder Realms, can you give us any hints on what to expect?
Willem: in it’s simplest form, the Elder Realm is a completely separate realm that’s much more dangerous and existing than the current realms.

Secert: Will it have restrictions?
Willem: it won’t have restrictions but it will be much harder. You’ll just get murdered if you’re not strong enough to make it.

Secert: Will it be unlockable in the nexus with something like an incantation?
Willem: we’re considering a number of things but our leading idea is something like that.

carsanity: I’ll make you a taco.
DashAhead: we’ll hold you to that.
Car: will the pally buff be coming in the next build?
Willem: we’re not concentrating on that right now.
Car: are you going to make a taco room or taco items?
Willem: it was not one of my plans but it sounds good! No promises.

Sorry for the slight delay, but the gang is back in action with your latest episode of RealmCast. This time, Zbornox, TiffyTiff, Willem, and DashAhead dive straight into your questions, and only come up for air when distracted by which anime characters would win in a fight. Join us as we delve into these important topics along with plenty Taco talk and some hints about the Elder Realms.

DashAhead: Welcome blah blah blah

###Community news
Not much community news

Zbornox: Moderator application status

Thursday, have 300 applications, looked through them yesterday, narrowed down to 40, waiting for dashahead and tiffytiff to review

First cut list will be sent to the mods

Decisions based on mods and GMs, hopefully made late next week

DashAhead: Animated GIF event

Disco priest, dancing oryx are notable.

Shipping: rooting for relationship to succeed

Next week is inauguration, there will be an inauguration event, details next week. There will be a package.

New YouTube channel, one video with Zbornox and Willem trolling everyone, Alex dancing, Dashahead’s beard (live action)
More videos will come, tours of studio

Name of channel: RTMG Videos

Flosion is having celebration for 400th YouTube subscriber, shout out to him

Willem is working on tiny low level dungeons to improve new player experiences by himself

###Q&A
(10:00 min mark)

Monkeyball21: Can we expect the fame changes to be before February?

Willem: I think so, we’re trying to do a release today. Hopefully, it’ll be on testing soon, but closed to public. It’ll be up by the end of January or the beginning of February.

Nubbers: (Nubbers or Noobers?) When will you implement the ultimate flawless solution? How will the spam bots be destroyed?
The ways to stop this is to make only players rank 3 or up be able to talk and force new accounts to run tutorial.
Zbornox: We have thought of some of these
DashAhead: There is no flawless solution, exploring
Willem: We thought of those, some they’re very anti-new player. MMOs where you can’t talk for the first few days are harsh.
Zbornox: We’re thinking
DashAhead: Ultimate solution may be combination of those, but we’re not there yet.

JuliusJudo: Sup?!

What action is being taken about hacked clients? I know good evidence is hard to come by.
Willem: Send a support ticket. If there’s definitive proof, we ban them.
DashAhead: But definitive proof is hard to come by. What we need to do is to limit those hacked clients from our side. Reports are tricky and can be inaccurate. Photoshop can be used to fake proof. We don’t want to wrongly ban someone.

Seriously, DashAhead, are you in fact Paul Rud, or at least a relative of his? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have a serious bromance on your voice, platonically.

(16:00)
Willem: Well you did have that vocal cord switching surgery
DashAhead: Yeah, Paul Rud might have been a doner
He is also Jewish.

Zbornox knows a lot about Paul Rud from the wiki
DashAhead thinks his voice doesn’t sound like Paul Rud

DashAhead doesn’t mind a bromance crush on his voice.
Zbornox: DashAhead looks more like Lord Ruthvan, with the cape

Greedkils: When the Elder Realms are released, will the normal realms get changed? What’s the progress on Elder Realms?

Willem: No, they’ll be completely separate. Designs for the Elder Realms are drawn by Willem. He wants to do something above the level of realm, something new and epic, but the technology’s not up to scratch. An engineer will be conscripted to work on them, changing the mapping software. They’ll know capabilities in a week. Several enemies are made. Basically waiting for engineers to finish their current project (fame changes?)

Coat: You said marriage is out of the question, which is understandable. But will you go out on a date with me? I will buy you tacos, and pie, and candy, accompany by the movie of your choice, Everyone knows you won’t say no!

Zbornox: Well I’m sorry, Coat. I’d love your food, but I have a boyfriend. He’ll have to come along and supervise. I also made DashAhead and TiffyTiff a little envious with tacos, so they want to come as well. Dash doesn’t like the ocean.

Dash: Everyone is going. Let us know when that will happen.

MerchantCo: Shall the nexus crier ever return to our loving arms?
Willem: Yes he probably will return. He was part of an emergency situation. So, in order to out him in, we’ll need a full push. We can spawn him, but what he says is preprogrammed. You’ll likely only see him when there’s a big emergency right next to an update.
DashAhead: Someone asked if the Nexus Crier could announce that the lag in the game is due to the Chrome updates, but we don’t want to blame others. Don’t use Chrome for now.
Willem: We might change him later.

You guys made fun of him blah blah blah

GTM: I’ve seen you guys post and Tweet at the most weird times. Do you guys work odd hours?
DashAhead: Maybe you live in a different time zone than we do, but we post from 9-5. We tweet when we feel like though. Zbornoz scheduals her tweets.

DashAhead works Sundays, Zbornox works Saturdays.

Singing, random chatter

Crassword:

To Tiffy: DO you love me, as much as I love you?
Zbornox: The answer is no, because Tiffy’s love is infinite.

(26:00)
Tacos. The end. Please make the rest of the cast about Taco dungeons. I want a super awesome taco set
They thought he meant Taco Dung.

Willem: The reason you don’t want to see a taco dungeon is the player population’s fault. There was a backlash after Mad Lab. It doesn’t fit in with the High Fantasy scheme of Realm.

We canceled a whole awesome dungeon because we thought players would dislike the theme. If you guys want a wider range of content, be careful what you say. Be receptive. We’re going to edge into sillier content.

(27:50)
Piply: (female skins) Burr! It looks cold outside in the Nexus! Can the bun buns come inside to warm up sometimes? Also, I’ve seen the new Steath Assassin pack and the skin looks curvy. Does that mean it’s a female skin? Will there be a female priest skin? If so, I’d definitely buy it.

PS: How many people work on RTS Kabam?

Willem: The Assassin is in full stealth gear. It may be any gender. He/she is pretty curvy. For the priest skin, I would love more female skins. (Nuns) More female skins will come out.

2 designers + Mike + 7 Engineers + Brandon + Q&A

(15 of us or so)

Happy Birthday Betty White! Happy 91st. All of the Golden Gods of the Realm wish you a happy birthday.

Willem: We care

Give her chocolate blah blah blah

(31:00)
Padmei: So many questions so little time

Have you seen Blackjam’s King’s Chest idea? Are you thinking about it?
DashAhead: We are thinking about it. I didn’t see it until you posted this question. Zbornox hasn’t seen the actually post. Kabam doesn’t know about it for the most part. Tell us about it.

Castlevania shirt blah blah blah Simon Belmont blah blah blah ugly Chrismas sweater

Should I write more songs/poems
Everyone: Yes.

Aurorious: First off, hearty hello to you all. Are you planning on adding addition music? The current theme is getting boring. You said composers are boring. Myself and others are decent composers. Can we make music for the game?
Dash: Send us music and we’ll play it on the Realm cast. We’d love to play it if it’s original and you give us the permissions. Willem is working on music. We have inhouse composers. They have samples.
Willem: Reviewing styles. Is currently choosing interesting and good tracks. He agrees the main song is getting grating. Still in the process of chosing. If you have samples, feel free to send it to us. Willem will consider.
Dash: Send your stuff our way and we’ll definitely listen to it
Zbornox: We might make a contest out of it. Give us a month and a half. Start composing now!
Dash: We might not do a contest.
Zbornox: There’s always an open submission.

Adventure time blah blah

Jufda: How much books do you read? Favorites?
Dash: phrasing funny blah blah.
Tiff: Murakami
Zbornox: I’ve read Norwiegen Woods
Dash: I’ve just been reading the Neuromancer.
I’ve wanted to read the trilogy. Cyberpunk.

CGIs in trailers suck blah blah

Zbornox: I read a lot, mostly auto-biographies. Elliot Aronson’s Not By Chance, Social Psychologist. I’m always reading a book
Dash: I read a lot more comics then prose. I don’t read nonfiction.
Willem: I don’t read very much. I’m dyslexic, so I’m slow. I listen to lots of audiobooks. I play too many video games.

Marvel > DC (DashAhead) blah blah blah

(42:00)

Gogoasafur:
As you know by now, I am an avid member of the I REFUSE TO DIE foundation. Will we see any changes that will let us display our living character’s awesomeness? Badges? Tooltip?
Willem: No immediate plans. Maybe someday
Dash: It’s a good idea

Will we see any social RP elements in the game? Marriage?
Dash: We don’t stop in game marriage, but there’s no chapel for it.

Sante: Did Google Chrome update cause the glitches recently? Did the Peptide plugin cause it?
Everyone: Yes. Play your game in a different browser.

Zbornox: Who will !@#$ curse or !@%$ reveal his name in the Realm cast?

(45:00)

Crapadap: What are you looking for in a forum mod applicant?
Zbornox: We need someone trustworthy. Isn’t judgemental. Will do things for the greater good.
Willem: Need to be responsible. Need to understand the frustrations of the community are frustrating for everyone. Be mature to respect the issues we’re having.

BobPenguin: Do you like my story? (Oryx’s Origin)
Dash: Only Tiff read it so far. She likes it.

LootBeard: Zbornox, do you go to Taco Bell (no), Taco Bueno (no)?
Zbornox: I like a soft shell taco from Taco John’s.

If I made an animated taco sprite for you, would you add it to your signature?
TiffyTiff: Yes I would.

Who’s beard do you like the most?
(Lootbeard hasn’t posted his beard, so they can’t judge.)
Dash: Post a picture of your beard!

DashAhead and Zbornox would make a great couple.
Dash: They both have significant others. But we would make a great chimera!

Archon: What would you do for a ?condite? bar?
Willem: I’d pay $1.5, or do a short dance, or recite a poem or joke.

Someone stole all of them blah blah

GWhut: For the Anime nerds, who would win a fight? Vash the Stampede (Trigon), or Spike Spiegal.
Willem knows little about them.
Dash: Spike is clever, but he would kill someone. Vash doesn’t kill people. Vash is more western cowboy style.

Overall, Vash would win.

Out of the other three people in the room, who would you kill?
Tiff: We can’t answer that (violation).
Dash: We can talk about kiling fictional things though.

Iamop: (We can change your name to I am wig or I am Mop)

What Gundam do you like the best?
Dash: Deathscythe Custom. Shenlong is second.

What about dat lag?
Everyone: Yeah, it’s terrible

What about tacos:
Zbornox is craving them

Dash: They’re just a lot of good things stuffed together. Who doesn’t like tacos?

Zbornox texts her boyfriend for tacos

KidsTonio: First off, thanks for reading. Third, what did you guys do in your free time when you were 5-10 year old.
Everyone: We played outside because we didn’t have as much technology.
Dash grew up in the mountains.
Willem made lego mazes for insects.
Willem trapped caterpillars in his toy chest. They pooped and died.

XXXsBoyXX: Can I be DashAhead’s friend, since he seems to not have any?
Dash: yaaaahhhhh. I appreciate it.

Hi Tiffytiff, I caught you playing tag in nexus
Dash: Well you win. You better be happy!

DruidSpell: Anyway, can you give us one detail about an enemy of the Elder Realms?
Willem: I just made an enemy called the Crystal guardian, which teleports and uses magic.
Everyone: Ohhhhhh Realm cast exclusive about the elder realms.

(1:02:00)

PieCake (Adventure time quiz)

Yuchiku: While the Ghostly Prism change was indeed a change, any chance it and the totally macaroni/total balony robe (Mixcoatl’s Tlaolani Robe) might get an improvement?
Dash: It does do more damage now, for longer period of time.
Everyone: what does he mean by Macaroni robe?

Why limit packages to a few days? I missed a pack because I was out for a few days/
Willem: We pull packs down to put new ones up. Right now, we can only have one package up at a time. The Holiday ones are one time only, but ones like the Play More packs will come up again and again.

End of Q&A

(1:07:00)

I got bored after finishing school work, so I decided to save Trustee some work and transcript! Sorry to anyone’s name I misspelt.

Is it really already RealmCast Episode 12? Indeed! Listen in as DashAhead, TiffyTiff, Zbornox and Willem answer player questions and discuss the newest dungeon, the Lair of Draconis! You’ll also get to meet our new GMs, SirRacha and BuffSoulja! You gotta listen to find out!

*Apologies about DashAhead’s mic, we fix it about 10 min in.

First, a new fancy feature for transcriptions: TACO TOTALS. I’m keeping track of every time someone says “taco” (except if they’re reading a player question) and will give the totals at the end. Stay tuned!

###Attendees:

• TiffyTiff
• Willem
• DashAhead
• Zbornox
• SirRacha
• BuffSoulja

Announcements / Community News:

zomg the world is ending! DashAhead and TiffyTiff are leaving! They’re moving on to be GM’s in another Kabam game called Kingdoms of Camelot. Zbornox is not going to be lonely, though. SirRacha and BuffSoulja are going to joining her as new GM’s for RotMG. Welcome them here! [link not archived]

New Moderators

Make a GIF contest winners:

McGansta hand drawn
ManKay’s Nyanoryx
PotatoT (Zbornox’s personal favorite)

###Game News
(6:45)

New dungeon is on test, when it’s online. The new event that drops this dungeon is pretty much finished but the dungeon itself is going to get some tweaks over the next week. (Surprise announcement: Travis aka boosh is moving onto another Kabam game, too!)

###New GM questions:
(8:30)

What are your GM names?

SirRacha: I looked around my desk thinking of a name and I was inspired by the spicy love that is sriracha
BuffSoulja: I went to the University of Colorado where the mascot is the Buffalo. I wanted to be the Buffalo Soldier but because of the 10 character limit so I picked BuffSoulja.

Where are you guys from?

Both are born and raised in San Francisco.

When did you start working at Kabam?

SirRacha: I started in August 2011, same as DashAhead.
BuffSoulja: April 2012, same as Zbornox.

What games were you working on before?

SirRacha: a couple. I started on Glory of Rome, then Dragons of Atlantis, then Knights of Camelot, and now RotMG.
BuffSoulja: a bunch. Glory of Rome, Global Warfare, (something I can’t find), KoC: battle of the north, KoC: Vanilla, and now RotMG.

What’s your impression of RotMG?

SirRacha: I think it’s tight. Favorite class? Necromancer.
BuffSoulja: I’m a big fan of MMOs so I’m already addicted to the game. So far I’m on the Huntress.

What did you do before coming to Kabam?

SirRacha: I was working at Starbucks for like 5 or 6 years. ‘n stuff.
BuffSoulja: basically right out of college.

(15:55)

How long have you been playing games?

SirRacha: since the day I was born.
BuffSoulja: since I was like 3.

Do you have any tatoos?
SirRacha: one on my side but it’s not done yet.
BuffSoulja: two. An anatomically correct heart on my one arm and on my other arm the state of California with other stuff.

(18:35)

###Player Q&A

Willem: I’m in a broken chair so I’ve got my mic sitting on my belly so please excuse any gastrointestinal noises.

MrCognac: Do you like beards.
DashAhead: why, yes. Yes I do.

MrCognac: any new news about the new dungeon?
Willem: it’s getting polish. You’ll probably see it on test again in a week or so. The thing with this dungeon is there have been three different people working on it so the code is a nightmare.

MrCognac: any hints about what the heck treasures are for?
Willem: well, erm, yeah. Um… well, I will say there will be one more UT thing, and some other things.

Crapadap: will we ever get to hear the engineers?
DashAhead: Alec and Indigo are both engineers who has been on realmcasts before. We’ll have Tom on here in a future. Watch the question thread and we’ll let you know so you can ask your questions for them.

Bacainc: have you ever thought about making RotMG into something else like a comic or something?
DashAhead: we were just talking about something but we won’t go into it. Short answer: yes.

Bacainc: what is your take on mass suicides?
Willem: don’t kill your character out of protest. We won’t even notice, and if we do it won’t affect us at all.
DashAhead: I like to see them because the game is really all about death anyway.
Willem: about protests. We do listen to everyone about bugs and other problems. Don’t kill your character or start a protest. Find a more constructive way to tell us what’s bothering you and make your case why you think it’s in the game’s best interest that we fix it. We’re much more likely to fix something if we understand your position, not because you committed suicide as if we’re supposed to know exactly why you’re doing it.

Arisraya: now that there’s an official RotMG youtube channel, will we get video podcast as well as realmcasts?
DashAhead: there’s a lot of considerations but I was going to be doing them so if it’s going to happen someone else on the GM team will have to pick it up.
Zbornox: hopefully we’ll do more videos in the future.

Dmike: is there any special twist to the dungeon after killing the 4 dragons?
Willem: I’m thinking about adding something like that. The idea behind it is the battle changes depending on the order in which you kill the dragons. So for now we’re going to work on enhancing that system and bringing the dragons more equal in terms of variety. Depending on what time there is left after that we may add something else.
DashAhead: I thought the black dragon was the hardest.
Willem: he’s supposed to be harder. I like the red dragon the best. That one will probably stay much as it is.

RotMG iObsidian: why aren’t you showing your faces?
Zbornox: there’s a potential to have a group picture of the 3 “old” GM’s soon.
TiffyTiff: I’ve been sick lately so I’ve lost some weight. You’ll have to imagine me 5 pounds heavier.

(29:40)

gogoasafur: do you plan on bringing the new fame system to test before whatever the treasures are for?
Willem: the fame change will go to testing first, I think. The only reason it wouldn’t is if there’s no more data we could gain by putting it on test. But most likely it will hit test.

Nubbers: any spambot news?
DashAhead: we’ve had some work done. We’ll see what happens in the near future.

Diokles: would you start offering all the new skins? And more than one offer at a time?
Willem: all the skins released so far, except the limited time ones, are available right now on the character select screen. Right now we’re only capable of doing one package deal at a time. We may do one big package with all skins released to date?

Diokles: what about Canada day specials?
Willem: if it’s this month it’s not going to happen.
Zbornox: if you have ideas for special days please let us know.
Willem: We need to know at least 2 weeks in advance, and a whole month would be even better.

Willem: did we get any music from the players?
DashAhead: no! We want music!
Zbornox: I’ve been rehearsing my own theme music on my iPhone, but you guys don’t want to hear it.

gwhat: what was the thinking behind removing godland pot drops?
Willem: The idea was originally make the dungeons a better place for high level players rather than sitting in godlands all day. But there was a big outcry and I can understand the arguments. A lot of it was there was not enough new to compensate. And it was unbalanced in a few ways with something like ATT pots being harder to find.

gwhat: Deadpool or Batman. Who would win?
DashAhead: I’ve got some feelings about this. Any comic comparison anyone says batman always wins. He always beats everyone in the DC universe because he outthinks them. But in the new Weapon X program all those guys are basically immortal so I’m going to say Deadpool would win.
Willem: there’s a possible stalemate system. I think batman would somehow trap Deadpool to neutralize him but not actually kill him.

(37:45)

(Tiffy’s last moments in RealmCast)

Piply: thanks for coming to my birthday WC!
Zbornox: thanks, sorry I died.

Piply: will you bless my marriage to Henez?
Zbornox: I will.

Piply: what is your beard routine?
DashAhead: I don’t have a grooming regimen. I trim it with a weed whacker like once every 2 months and wash it daily with face wash. It’s a product of my laziness, not my vanity.

ImToby: the dungeon is easy if you know what order to kill the dragons. What other purpose will the dungeon have?
Willem: I’m going to be adding drops in the next version of testing.

Eozu: extra mashed or fried potatoes?
Willem: What’s extra mashed?
DashAhead: if it’s like puree then I’ll go with fried.
Willem: I’ll go with puree since that usually comes with fancy sauce and filet minion.

Neroxe: will there be a forum update?
Zbornox: I’m taking some online classes on Drupal now so I can do what I can. There’s a lot of functions we just can’t implement. We’re not going to take the forums off Drupal right now, there are no plans at all yet.
DashAhead: on KoC they use vBulletin and it’s awesome compared to stupid Drupal.
Zbornox: if you have anything specific feel free to ask but chances are low we can do much.

MerchantCo: do you want to read some of my erotica?
DashAhead: I REALLY want to read some but I want it to be RotMG related!

StolenMojoz: will there be new pets or player custom made dyes?
Willem: maybe someday we could have enemy pets but that’s a while off. As for custom made dyes we still have the dick problem. If we allow you to draw things there will be obscenity. We are talking about more things players can customize but those ideas are way down the road.

(45:05)

Stormpegy: what’s up with the godland pot drop rates?
Willem: I think you’re imaging things. We put them back.

Stormpegy: what’s up with the lag?
Willem: what browser are you using? Chrome is basically broken right now. Use anything else.

Stormpegy: can you tell us the white bag drop rate?
Willem: it varies by dungeon and I’m not going to through all of them.

KARASSWORD: will the UT drop rate be important?
DashAhead: yes they’re important, that’s how you get UT’s.

KARASSWORD: do treasure sets perform some kind of function?
DashAhead: we’re not going to get into those details.

KARASSWORD: will I ever meet TiffyTiff in the game?
DashAhead: well, not anymore.

KARASSWORD: will we get Kabam office tour part 2?
DashAhead: we hope so, and we’ll film it landscape this time.

KARASSWORD: where are the nexus bunnies?
Willem: they’re supposed to be there!

CheeseHead: treas…
Willem: no, can’t tell you.

CheeseHead: how much fame will things cost?
Willem: the amount of fame will be related to the amount of gold. It may be a straight conversion but we can set it however we want.

TheDuat: when’s the next big update coming out?
Willem: we have that new dragon dungeon coming out, hopefully in the next two weeks. Then we have another low level dungeon that’s basically done.

TheDuat: can tiffy work on a new in-game taco item?
DashAhead: well, no, but we can make Zbornox do that.

(55:10)

Wawawa: will the death screens come back soon?
Willem: that was supposed to be in ages ago. It’s on our list of things and will eventually get done.

Wawawa: will the buy pop-up go away?
Willem: you can turn that off in Options I think.

Wawawa: will trickster decoys be able to push Tomb buttons again?
Willem: there was some exploit I fixed a while ago that may have broken that. It won’t be coming back. Switches and other triggers will never be affected by anything other than the players themselves.

Dalla: have you considered having a zoo for all the pets?
Willem: yeah, we’ve been working on something like that.

FrogBoffin: how can I sacrifice my guildmates to Oryx?
DashAhead: you could trick them? Maybe on testing let us know and we’ll spawn Oryx on their head.

(59:30)

Adventure Time Q&A for Willem

1. Jake’s a attention seeker True
   True (True)

2. Finn losers more often to Jake on video games True
   True (True)

3. A melon has a family of fruit that do stuff False
   True. Wait, no, false. (False)

4. Finn is afraid of large volumes of water False (He’s only afraid of the ocean)
   True (True)

5. Bubblegum has died more than ONCE False
   False (False)

6. The party god is a giant cat head False
   False (False)

7. The ultimate tart is only eaten at the back rubbing ceremony True
   True (True)

8 Jake’s imagination is more powerful than Finn’s True
True (True)

9. The Lich king controls a snail to do his bidding True
   True (True)

10. You’re the ultimate adventure time fan besides me True
    False (True)

(61:50)

DashAhead’s farewell.

Todays Taco Total:

Willem: 3
DashAhead: 3
Zbornox: 0
TiffyTiff: 0
SirRacha: 0
BuffSoulja: 0

Woah, I’m disappointed!

It’s here! Join the Realm of the Mad God GMs Zbornox, BuffSoulja, and SirRacha on Season 2 of RealmCast, the official RotMG podcast!! We’re back with player questions, game news and community event updates.

And for your viewing pleasure, please take a looksee at the video version of RealmCast right over here! (Note: there are no pics of the GMs in this video…sorry!)

**Special thanks to Beat Garden for the opening track “Slow Game” and to Bilal for providing the other musical tunes throughout the show. You can check out all of Bilal’s here.

Many apologies to everyone who is used to Doc’s excellent work on transcribing. I did my best. Also, I don’t recognize buff and racha’s voices yet to tell them apart, so most of their quotes may be juxtaposed.

~*~

Zbo: welcome to realmcast season 2
Participants: zbornox, buffsoulja, and sirracha
We are giving you what you want: Updates on Game & Community, Answer to Player Questions.

Buff: “we acknowledge the feedback we are getting from you (both good and bad) and we are loving getting”

Racha: “This is one of my favorite Kabam games that’s come out since I started working here. As an MMO player, it’s awesome to be working on this and awesome to be working with the community.”

Buff:” The whole point of an MMO is the community. It’s exciting to see a passionate community on this game. “

###Game Updates

Buff: “The Lair of Draconis was released in error when the Rock Dragon was released. The dungeon will be released later and none of the things you saw in the dungeon are what you will see later when it is officially released. Also, expect it to be a lot harder.”

Racha: “It looks like the Rock Dragon is new and challenging, which is good.”

Buff: “Yes. We want the game to be difficult. There’s no fun if you can beat things the first time you encounter them. You don’t want to die (Nexus Nexus Nexus!) but we do want it to be difficult for you and we welcome any feedback that you guys have and we look forward to developing more difficult content in the future. We have had some good feedback on the Rock Dragon so far, for example:

ClipsPL “the rock dragon is IMO a great challenging and well designed event
DanJamWar “the rock dragon is an epic boss-it was so much fun!”
MrBunk “the rock dragon is a wonderfully terrifying experience”

Zbo: “We love hearing what you think about everything in realm. Speaking of realm, we have….”

###Community News

Racha: “Chinese/Lunar New Year just passed and we had the Chinese New Year Parade event. Everyone who submitted a parade got the 2013 fame prize. Congrats to PixelHero, DonghuaP, YoungAngel810”

(cont’d) “We also had the big twitter boost event. We set the bar at 10k followers. We got 1k new followers, but I’m happy with that so we are going ahead with the spawn-a-thon as planned”

Zbo: “Racha just doubled the twitter following in one week.”

Racha: “There will be a valentine’s day event as well, so stay tuned.”

(Cont’d) Also, there is a new e-mail address for all of you creative artists making realm related art artists.rotmg@gmail.com

(Cont’d) Check out Bilal’s music! https://soundcloud.com/bilalrotmg

Zbornox: Another event in progress: the tournament of fame. Top 10 on weekly legends board will get tops/UTs of their choice. Mouseyface is in the lead right now with 41k fame.

(cont’d) We also have some packages in game right now. The rogue pack is up right now. This comes with a slot as well as some items for only 1200 gold. It’s a pretty good deal, considering the price of a slot running 1000 gp by itself. (13 minute mark)

(cont’d) I like the rogue. In fact, the mods have been teaching me to tomb!

(cont’d)We also have the valentine’s pack, which I think is cool because you can give a heart pet to a friend. Very romantic.

Buff(?): Spread the love, guys.

Zbo: Spread it pixel.ated.ly

(cont’d): If you have feedback on the packages, please tag it on twitter #realmpack

###Player Questions
(14:30)

Zbo:There were a lot of questions about Mike Sellers’ post in the forum about selling top tier items.

Racha: This is a big decision made in the best interest of the game. We are working with the team to see how this is going to work out and we want to keep you guys in touch with the team and the decisions that are being made.

Zbo: Changes are inevitable.

Racha: One of the nice things about a game like this is that if something doesn’t work, it can be changed back. You saw that happen with the release 9 pot drop
changes. If something truly doesn’t work, we can always change it back. There are a lot of different types of feedback that we get. You have the obvious forum feedback that everyone can see, there are the actual sales which show how many people are buying and using the packs, and then there’s lots of data that we look at – users that log in, new users, how long players stay, etc. There is a lot of data that comes in, and with something like this I know that Mike is looking at as much data as possible and wants to make changes that are not going to hurt the game and will keep the game going for the long term.

Buff: The game is evolving. Sometimes people are afraid of change, but sometimes we are in a position to listen to you guys, see how you take it, and see if things work out. It’s a scary thing, but it’s a good thing. In the end, we want realm to be the best game in the entire friggin world.

Zbo: We want the same things (the best game with the best content). How we go about getting there may be not what you think would get us there initially but we do want the same thing and we want it to be around, so this is what we have to do.

Racha: And if you look at the thread, you do see players voicing their opinions from different perspectives. Some players don’t like it and they are very adamant. Others say it couldn’t affect me in the slightest. And others say they like the packages. Those are three very strong points of view that reflect the overall realm population. It came down, I think, for Mike to determine whether it would hurt the game overall or whether it would help the game in the long run.

(cont’d): One thing that’s very interesting about this game is that there are three full fledged economies operating at the same time which impact each other (the item trade economy, the Kabam economy of items sold in the game, and the RWT economy of third party sellers).

Buff: Those guys suck. Don’t buy from them!

Racha: We want it to be a skill based game. I think most people will agree that even if you have great items you will just die if you don’t have skill. Some items may help you get there a little quicker, but you can also die with them. The other thing is that these items were already being bought from RWT sites, and that just takes money away from the development of the game. We want money spent on realm of the mad god to come back out in realm of the mad god.

Zbo: That said, here are some specific player supplied questions:

QTrollatron: “Not asking for lots of details, but in regard to the elder realms, will the release of elder realms make oryx obsolete or will oryx be adjusted to keep him from becoming obsolete with the new content?”

Willem: “Elder Realms are a thing the game has been calling out for in so many ways, but it has been pushed back. The best way to think of them is as level 2 where the normal realms are level 1. Oryx will not be obsolete for people who play level 1 and people who reach level 2 will have new challenges.”

Q Lodis: “Will the future of RotMG be more of a co-op experience? Will you basically reduce all possible ways for solo play and in some way enforce the co-op aspect?”

Willem: Realm is a coop experience and will continue to be one. I think a lot of what makes it cooperative is how difficulty curve works. Many of the classes are also specifically designed to work well together. I am going to continue to perpetuate this coop through the design of the game”

QHolyBlades: Why don’t you do more in-game events which all the players can participate in, instead of forum based events like videos. Why can’t you do more events actually in the game?

Racha: We will definitely be doing this. Specifically, pay attention to the twitter for information about what we are doing in game.

Buff: BTW, when we are in game we are not ignoring you if we don’t respond to your messages. We just get so many that it’s impossible to read and respond to them all.

QFlairious: What are your thoughts on the Lair of Draconis leak and people using it to obtain high tier equipment?

Buff: I think we mentioned it a little earlier. We are working to make sure these things don’t happen and it’s unfortunate that it did. We’ll just have to make changes to improve the way we are doing things to prevent them in the future.

QSnup: Why don’t you take a resolute stance on all the hacking and cheating that goes on in the game? All you did was to tell players to send in a support ticket, but you did not say what action you are taking on the players being reported. Do you yourself have any experiences of seeing cheating going on while in game? What is the focus of development right now?

Zbo: I work a lot with the support team. Sending in evidence is the best way to alert us. This flags the situation and through this we can investigate it in our own way. We have a privacy policy to protect both sides though, so we cannot talk about this in the forum. Although we cannot discuss the details of the investigation you can feel safe that we are looking at it. I haven’t personally experienced seeing someone else cheating in game, but I think we can all agree that this does create a bad experience for people and it’s something we don’t want. So we are definitely working to stop it, we’re looking at your evidence, and we’re looking at things on our own. The main focus on development right now is content that everyone can enjoy, but

Buff: We really do adhere to a super strict privacy policy. Writing a support ticket is the best way. We don’t want players to be shamed in the forums because we don’t want the hacks to be on the forum.

Racha: we want to make sure everyone enjoys their gameplay experience. When someone is publicly put out there on the forum that’s when it can become a witch hunt, and in essence it can become bullying. We have a strict policy against bullying, and we know that rumors can get started very easily and spread like wildfire. We try to handle all of the accusations in a way that works with our terms of service and doesn’t hinder anyone else’s gameplay.

Zbo: To report hackers or cheaters send us an e-mail to support@wildshadow.com

QSlugKing: Sell the peppermint sale. Also, do you take skin submissions?

Racha: Yes! Follow us on twitter @rotmg_news and tag your submissions with #realmrequest and we’ll look into them. Also feel free to submit to artists.rotmg@gmail.com as noted above. We are always looking for ideas to throw at the design team and there is a process but we would love to see your stuff! It might even make it into the game.

QCgaff: Still no news about the treasures?

Willem: No news. They will be and already are valuable.

Racha: I know we are waiting, but there is really good stuff coming up soon.

Zbo: And that is the end of realmcast Season 2 Episode 1. If you have questions or comments #realmcast2x1 on twitter.

Racha: and we do this for you so give us your feedback about what you want in the realmcasts.

Zbornox, Buff and SirRacha are at it again with RealmCast Episode 2, where we update you on all things Realm!

This episode includes Zbornox chatting with Tournament of Fame winner, MouseyFace, while SirRacha shares all of the awesome event submissions from the last few Community Events, and Buff presents an overview of jobs that are currently working to make Realm the best game in the entire universe.

Add to that a bit more game and community news and toss in a few player Q/A, and you have RealmCast 2x2! Thanks for listening and please leave your feedback here and on our Twitter with #RealmCast2x2.

To view MouseyFace’s Tournament of Fame winning death, please check out his Youtube channel over here!

**Special thanks to Beat Garden for the opening and closing track “Slow Game” and MouseyFace for his interview!

Amulets aren’t coming back
There’s no release date for the Elder Realms yet
There will be tons of cool stuff omfg omfg but they can’t tell us what these awesome things will be, or when they’ll be released because they’re so extracool they have to be kept a secret
Google Chrome is shit, don’t use it
Check out the awesome new messages that now pop up instead of packages, aren’t they awesome?!
Mouseyface tells us the story of his life (he’s the guy who accidentally died when the “fame tournament” was going on, and won the first prize)
Useless blabber about recent competitions/events (Wiserhood got mentioned the most, well done I guess)
They know people are pissed off about bugs not getting fixed, etc. but don’t worry folks, Uncle Mike’s got it all under control, for real
Lack of new quality content is Willem’s fault
GMs have a plan

!!! Q&A !!!

There were over 300 questions but they only answered 3
There will be no zooming in/out
There will be no titles such as lord/king, etc. (rofl@the autist who submitted this question)
There will be no PvP (see above)
Final remarks: submit tons of stuff (music, art, etc.), kthxbye

Willem, SirRacha, Buff, and Zbornox talk about the recently released duping Hotfix and the upcoming functional Pets!

Add to that a bit more game and community news and toss in a few player Q/A, and you have RealmCast 2x3!

GAME UPDATES
Emphasizing the SB situation is temporary
In the end the SB will be good for the economy because it won’t be flooded with so many items
Reason why it too so long for them to deploy the SB was they wanted to make sure it worked with the new pet functions
Pets just around the corner

COMMUNITY NEWS
Fan Lore Competition
Mr.Hotgod 1st Place-Tale of Septavius
Bopadop 2nd Place-Knight Lore
Youaremyhabit 3rd Place-Drowned into a New World
Unknownstoryteller 4th Place-Wizard
Pentagraph 5th Place-Untitled Story
1st Place-Ring of their choice
2nd Place-Ability of their choice
3rd Place-ect. ect.
4th Place-
5th Place-

KNIGHT RUN
The GMs enjoyed it, had fun
There’s a few videos of the Knight Run, Zbornox filmed one

ST. PATRICK’S DAY
New packages
Green dyes and other green “stuff” available in nexus shop
St. Patrick’s Day Video Competition
Make sure your videos stand out and are unique since the spawn-a-thon is a pretty big prize
Leprechaun Forums Hunt Competition
Free Beer Giftbox Package
Unique St. Patrick’s items(Lucky Clover for ex.)

PET FUNCTION NEWS

Pet changes coming soon but can’t say exact date
Willem’s idea, had it for a long time now
He was sad the pets didn’t have a function other than aesthetics
Can buy for find pets
Pets will begin in egg form
Hatch them in your pet yard
Pet yard dedicated to where your pets will live
Access your pet yard through your vault
Have one of them at a time
Each pet will have several abilities
You can level the pets up
Pets will not die, to compensate they will have a slower leveling up process the our characters

Please sit back and listen as Zbornox, SirRacha and Buff catch you up with game updates, community events, and player Q&A. This RealmCast includes special guest star appearance by RotMG’s Quality Assurance Analyst, KoalaP!

Please sit back and listen as Zbornox, SirRacha and Buff catch you up with all things Realm. This RealmCast includes special guest star appearance by RotMG’s lead, ArbiterZ.

Random stuff in the intro

At 1:40, they get right to business and introduce our fluffy new general manager

###ArbiterZ
First, questions from the older GMs to ArbiterZ

"What do you do here?"
ArbiterZ is responsible for making sure the game stays on track in terms of content releases and making sure everything runs smoothly. “My job is to make sure that I have as little work to do as possible… It’s a kickass job.”

"What’s your experience with games?"
Mostly a PC gamer, mostly plays MMORPGs. Favorite game: Everquest. Has played at least 45 MMOs. It’s how he discovered Realm.

"What makes Realm stand out from the rest?"
Easy answer: the art style and permadeath. What really makes it stand out is how easy it is to pick up and play. It’s easy to learn but hard to master. The leap from low-midlands to Godlands and solo dungeons is large and takes a lot to master. The skill requirement and ceiling is one of the big things you don’t see in other MMOs.

SgtSunshine dies a lot.

ArbiterZ picked up Realm before Kabam acquired it, towards the end of 2011. One of the engineers on the team that he just moved to at the time was playing a goofy 2D pixel shooter MMO and he got hooked. His favorite dungeon is Manor, his favorite boss is Davy Jones (for the invulnerable/puzzle boss aspect), His favorite classes are Mystic (if he feels trollish) and Paladin (otherwise).

"Will there be a Paladin buff in the future?"
Not 100% yes, but not 100% no. Class balance is definitely something they want to look at. It’s not uncommon for classes and characters to be rebalanced in MMORPGs. There haven’t really been many overhauls, so they’ll try to tackle that. He knows that melees are overpowered, and that functional pets have caused healing classes to be less useful. He can’t 100% say Paladins specifically will be buffed.

"What makes Manor your favorite?"
The way it looks. The lightning effects, the atmosphere. It’s just a level of depth that he wasn’t expecting in a 2D pixel shooter.

Zbornox loves Lord Ruthven

"SB UTs?"
Soulbinding all UTs is not what’s best for the players. There’s nothing worse than getting a white bag with a UT you don’t need and can’t use and having no outlet to trade them to other player for stat pots, etc. However, on the other hand, there’s nothing worse than taking the best items in the game and mass-duping them, ruining the game’s economy. These are the two opposite ends of the spectrum, and neither are good. They’ll look into it. Soulbinding all UTs is not the answer, but ArbiterZ doesn’t have an answer yet. As soon as they have a solution, they’ll inform the players through their usual means of communication.

“How do you go about selecting user ideas to implement?”
“We have a big hat that we put all the ideas in, and every Tuesday, we pull one out. That’s what I was doing yesterday; that’s why I was so busy.” He said in the intro thread that the players have amazing ideas. None of the new team members think that they know better than the community. So, they’ll be turning to the community for input and suggestions a lot more. They’re not going to implement everything that’s suggested (salt vs. chicken), but they’re going to focus a lot more on community.

###Community questions
(around 10:00):

Xonico (that’s how Zbornox pronounced it, anyway):
"Is there any more information on the Shatters?"
He has a bit more info. Why they picked the Shatters? It lays everything out nicely, describing behaviors, effects, enemies, etc. in a way that the team doesn’t need much extra information to build the dungeon. They’re building a template based on the Shatters’ forum thread that allows people to fill-in-the-blanks and make a good dungeon design that the team can work with. As far as the dungeon itself goes, they’re working on it based on the design from the forum thread, getting familiar with the monsters, layout, bosses, etc. They don’t have an actual timeline yet, but they’re certainly working on it. It’s one of the first things the new team will do.

Concerns on the forums about following the design of Shatters verbatim:
They’ll build it verbatim, test it (likely on Testing), and go from there. If it’s too easy (due to pets, new tiers, etc), they’ll make it harder. If it’s imbalanced, they’ll tweak it. It seems unfriendly to melee at first glance, so they’ll make sure to test it with all character types. They’ll probably keep some bosses melee focused and some ranged focused.

An anonymous player:
"What are some aspects of Realm that you would like to put emphasis on while developing to make the game better? Some examples could be teamwork, cool loot, simplicity, or difficulty."
Since it’s an MMORPG, there are some core things to focus on, and there are some things to focus on specifically because this is Realm. They want to make sure there are compelling content, both solo and group. Some of the epic-level dungeons will probably require more than a few people. One idea to force group play is regenerating walls. Since this is Realm, he wants to focus on difficulty. With higher tiers and pets (and therefore a player buff) there needs to be content that matches it, so just having a pet doesn’t mean you can breeze through the content. “Your characters are going to die.” This is Realm, this is what makes Realm special, and if you take that way, it suddenly loses a lot of its charm. The three things will probably be engaging solo content, engaging group content, and difficulty.

Next question:
"Hey, ArbiterZ! How’s it going?"
It’s going good. Next question.

"When will we start to see all those amazing promises? I don’t expect for you to introduce everything in one update, but I would like to see what you have planned for the next update."
Not everything will be in the next update; if it was then it would take too long. It’s pretty much 100% guaranteed that not all of it will be in July or August. They have new team members who need to learn the dev tools, and some things like Elder Realms are a very large undertaking. He can say that the next release will contain one, maybe two, epic-level dungeons. They’re looking at the early dungeons, like Pirate Cave and Spider Den, and those will be the first epic dungeons that they introduce. Right now, that’s the only thing slated for the next update. There will likely be bugfixes, etc. as well.

Something about Star Wars Galaxies.

###Community news
(at 19:00)

SirRacha is Mr. Community, apparently.

3 events, because the number 3 is fantastic.

Fight for independence video contest. There were around 15 entries. BlueMarble, Bleddicson (sic), Wiserhood, GeeroTwo, XMBotX won. Zbornox is impressed because all these people have skills. GeeroTwo’s in particular was awesome.

Arena Lore contest. There were some very good stories coming out of this. One in particular was really good from some player named Zerao (sic). He had a story with how the spectators came to be. It was really cool and ended a bit creepily.

Something about Broadway.

“And, last but not least… that’s such a cliche saying! Why did I even say that?”

Pirate king challenge. They’re offering a released UT ability for anyone that submits a video where they finish the Pirate Cave in the fastest time. They mentioned an 8 second time (probably mine), and there are even faster times out there. Zbornox is just shocked at anyone completing anything in 8 seconds (i think 4-5 seconds is the current record, actually). Luck is useful since the dungeon is randomly generated in a way that makes it easy to get to rooms that are nearby but not connected by paths.

They’re thinking about doing a similar Forest Maze contest, since you actually have to navigate. How quickly can you kill an Ultimate Squirrel? “It looks like there’s a giant Moth Queen trying to get in the room right now. Oh, that’s just Arbiter.”

Realmcast has been fun.

Contact information:
blog.wildshadow.com (Tumblr)
forums.wildshadow.com (This place)
artists.rotmg@gmail.com (For artists to send them stuff)
facebook.com/rotmg (Facespace)
@rotmg_news (Twitter)

realmcast (Twitter)

youtube.com/realm (Youtube)

Thanks to Local Party (IGN:ThugZero) for outro music.