MMOS v0.8.0: PvP, Guild Rivalries and a World Worth Fighting For
Arenas, battlegrounds and ranked seasons, zones that change hands, achievements and reputation you design yourself, and a forum where your adventurers talk back.
0.8 is the PvP update, and the build that takes MMOS from alpha into beta. Adventurers can finally fight each other in matches you organise, factions can take whole zones from one another, and you write the systems that give an MMO its long tail: achievements, reputation and guild goals. Your MMO also gets a forum of its own, a rebuilt Guide and terrain you can raise and lower. Every earlier world still loads: MMOS asks before upgrading a save and keeps a backup copy of the original.
Arenas
Research Arenas, then build an arena map of your own: lay out its floor, wall it in and place one team spawn per side, from two sides up to eight. Set up a casual playlist for the format you want, one on one up to five a side, and choose which NPCs, towns and cities take signups. Adventurers sign up in person, travel to the arena together and fight it out, and every running match has a live scoreboard of kills, deaths, assists, damage and healing. New maps start closed, so send testers through first.
Battlegrounds
Team fights on the Large canvas with a real objective. Build a map, place its two side spawns and pick one of four modes: Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag or Area Control with three or five control points. A battleground playlist sets the players per side, six or more, and how teams are formed: random, faction against faction, or guild against guild. Tied matches run into a short overtime before they are called a draw.
Ranked seasons
Mark a playlist as Ranked and schedule a PvP season on the Calendar. Adventurers form fixed arena teams that register for the season and climb an Elo ladder, and battleground playlists can be ranked too. Set reward tiers per competition (gold, gear, a title, an achievement or a mount), paid out exactly once when the season settles. Finished seasons keep their ladders in an archive.
PvP War Table and Spectate
Every PvP surface lives in one window with five destinations: War Table, Maps, Playlists, Seasons and Records. The War Table shows live tickets for every queue, Records keeps every match and lifetime results per class, map and matchup, and reports flag maps that keep producing one-sided fights. A Spectate eye in the HUD lists every live match, dungeon and raid run with the reason to pick it, and map cards carry a true miniature of the terrain.
Territory Control
Once PvP and Factions are both researched, any zone can be made contested. Give it a capture point and the factions fight over it on their own: adventurers deploy to hold or take it, and a successful capture hands the entire zone to the winning faction. Its vendors, trainers, banks, stables, inns, graveyards and the auction house all change hands with it. A marker on the map shows who holds each contested zone and a toast tells you when one flips.
Achievements
Write an achievement, then say what an adventurer has to do to earn it: kill a hundred wolves, reach the level cap, clear a dungeon ten times, own a mount, earn ten thousand gold. Stack as many requirements as you like. Earning pays out gold, items, a title, a mount and achievement points, and capping the holders at one makes a Realm First that lands in your world history the moment somebody takes it. Every profile shows what has been earned and a progress bar for what has not.
Reputation
Research Reputation, then create a Reputation Group, name it and choose its colours. Any quest can pay standing when it is turned in and any mob can pay it on every kill, so adventurers weigh that reward when they decide what to do next. They climb four ranks, Friendly through Exalted, and every rank can hand out a title of its own. Put an NPC in a group and it wears that group's look, so your world reads as a place with sides.
Hardcore realms and loot on death
Two new research nodes for a harsher server. Hardcore Realms lets adventurers volunteer for one life, or forces it on everyone: a hardcore death is a full reroll, back to level one with nothing kept but their friends. Drop Loot on Death makes an open-world PvP kill drop everything but the victim's most valuable items for the killer to collect.
Official Forum
Your MMO has its own forum, and your adventurers post on it. Open it from the HUD for a daily digest of what they are saying: threads about the zones, dungeons, classes and items they play with, replies that agree or argue, and reactions that show which posts landed. World Firsts and legendary drops go up as threads from the adventurers who earned them, and when you release an expansion, open a dungeon or schedule an event, a developer post appears under your MMO's name and the community replies to it.
Guild goals and raid nights
Guilds set themselves a shared goal, gathering a named resource together or clearing a named dungeon or raid as a guild, and members lean toward it when nothing is more pressing. Finishing it is written into a new Guild Chronicle alongside every raid night, clear and call-off. Raid nights follow your weekly reset day, and the Guild window is now a noticeboard with Overview, Roster, Relations and Chronicle tabs.
Also in v0.8.0
- Combat footwork: melee fighters circle and flank, ranged fighters keep their distance and strafe, healers drift toward their group and tanks hold their ground, in the open world, in instances, in every PvP mode and for combat pets.
- Your world shapes its audience: a world full of raids and ranked PvP draws fighters and prestige chasers, one built on gathering and exploration draws treasure hunters and explorers, and a new Audience radar on the Stats tab shows who your world appeals to.
- Raise and lower terrain with new brushes: adventurers path around the drops, waterfalls spill over the edges, and sculpted terrain is saved with the world.
- Item sets with milestones: wear enough pieces of a set and a bonus or a set-granted ability unlocks, and gear can be locked to the classes that should wear it.
- Expansions, built for the full game: release a named expansion that grows the buildable world and raises the level cap, with a developer post on your forum to announce it.
- Customise Sandbox has a Starting research section, every slider can be typed into as well as dragged, and a new Interface size setting scales the whole interface.
- Tints on terrain cells and decorations, a shared colour field with saved colours everywhere, a Body size dial for races, abilities that scale with weapon damage or grow per level, and shields that hold until depleted.
- A rebuilt Guide behind the ? button, with search, Back and Forward and articles that link to each other, tagged by what you have not researched yet.
- Player insights at a glance: a drawer on the retention rail with the three most common thoughts and most wanted things, a strip showing the research in progress, and dungeon lockouts that can run until your weekly reset day.
- Quests can ask for PvP kills, matches or wins, a main quest badge marks the quests adventurers should prefer, and fishing spots can be placed on shallows.
- Guild Renown: clears, goals and Realm Firsts build a guild's standing, and the Players board sorts on it.
- Content Packs gain a shelf of sourcebooks with cover designs, and a pack can carry a whole world map to start a new game from.
Fixes & Improvements
- A performance pass with no gameplay change: about a third fewer draw calls, faster frames in big worlds and a lighter simulation at high speed.
- Ranged fighters no longer stand outside a mob's leash forever, and mobs walking home are left alone until they turn back.
- Time spent with a group counts toward the Social drive again, and zone reports say fun earned per player-hour and only warn when it is truly low.
- Loading a save no longer drops living mobs whose definitions reference content that was renamed or removed.
- Flight points in a zone another faction owns no longer take or land your players, and the fare panel says who a point serves.
- A quest with a single predecessor can only be accepted once that predecessor is done, and spawners can be picked up and moved like any other placed object.
- Dying in an arena or battleground no longer counts as being ganked in the open world.
- Adventurers stop signing up for dungeons far below their level, and value a run by what its mobs really pay.
- Typing in any text field no longer fires camera or keyboard shortcuts, and ability effects accept any duration you type.