This is annoying. I wrote something up and my connection just completely crashed. Bummer. So, here is the rewrite but with changes, I'm sure.

Slight detour from the "Leading to Winning" theme. This posting would be about Teppy's views on self-publishing ATITD2 and some of his policies. Well, what we the community knows off. Teppy is still very much a mysterious and elusive figure, like the Pharaoh namesake he takes on, so it's always interesting to pick and pick his mind.

It all start out when Jaby posting in the forums about Teppy commented on Slashdot's posting on self-publishing (scroll down the page, it's further down). That was the first time, anyone of us had any indication of the game earnings as he does keep it very hush hush. And, it looks like ATITD2 is doing much better than expected. Well, my hats off to you, Teppy. It is a great game with great graphics and interesting gameplay.

Teppy has an interesting game policy where he would occasionally meet up with the players to get ideas. The medium is usually in the IRC channel in an impromptu manner. So, there we all are, tossing ideas to him, etc. Teppy would then consider it and possibly put it into the game. Of course, it all depends on the coding i.e. how difficult is it to code, how long it would take, would it disrupt the game.

So, a lot of ideas would get generated from the players, mostly in IRC but also equally frequently on the forums. Of course, in the forums, he doesn't always respond but when he does, it's like the President is in the room and everyone wants to get a piece of the pie. Phew!

The only downside to this, is that players who have given so many ideas out, may feel depressed and disappointed when Teppy doesn't or couldn't consider their ideas. Or, players would think that Teppy may not be interested in fixing some of the games major features that are irritating them or the community as a whole. Bran was definitely disappointed. It's a dicey game that Teppy is playing but then again, ATITD2 is a social experiment as he likes to put it always.

Still, there's always one thing that can make or break a good game, is the in-game community. After playing 3 MMORPGs, I must say that the community in ATITD2 is very welcoming overall and people are generally more friendly and helpful than others. No matter how the gameplay works out, it's still a great place to meet people and if you like to work in huge groups but do not like to confrontational PvP, ATITD2 is the game for you.

So, whether you agree with this posting or not, perhaps it's time for you to take a ferry ride to Egypt. Click here : http://www.atitd.com.

University research is going to be a little different for Tale 2, and we're getting the first taste of that right now. From the Dev Chat in IRC the other day, we learned this:

[23:24] [Scott_Miller] - [Enenhoc] - Is the progress from beta 'Too fast' and are the requirements going to increase?
[23:25] [Teppy[eGenesis]] - I'm going to do something a bit different for Tale 2's early research than I did in Tale 1...
[23:25] [Teppy[eGenesis]] - Techs can either be linked so that as soon as one is researched another opens...
[23:25] * Parts: da
[23:26] [Teppy[eGenesis]] - Or Individually released ('Scientists at the Great Universities of Art and Music announce new research!')
[23:26] * Joins: ssd|jeratha-fjenn
[23:27] [Teppy[eGenesis]] - In Tale 1 we had a huge problem of people absolutely killing themselves to unlock every new technology. Most of those people burned out in 3-6 weeks.
[23:28] [Teppy[eGenesis]] - And so we had these ultra-hardcores who maintained 80+ hours/week playtime, and casual players who would log in to find that the latest research required stuff they didn't even have.
[23:28] [Teppy[eGenesis]] - So I'm going to weight things a bit more toward the individual release to start, and then we'll see how the pace feels to everyone.

What this means is that the only University research available right now is Agriculture. (Agriculture, once unlocked, distributes free veggie seeds.) Animal Husbandry (for sheep and camel pens) and Controlled Burn (for bonfires and charcoal) have usually been researchable from the start. Not this time.

I guess I'm one of those icky hardcore people, and well, the pace feels a little slow for me right now. I don't kill myself or spend 80 hours a week doing it, but I do enjoy the tech race at the beginning of the game. Considering that my guild spent the day stockpiling resources once Agriculture research was on the timer pretty much everywhere, I'm wondering if the casual players benefited from this change. Research helps everyone advance, after all. I'm interested in seeing everyone else's reaction when Teppy does a poll or takes comments. (I also wonder if any of the research requirements have been changed in evil ways. ;) )