On the way to the next Alpha Stage

I am sure you all thought that we were on vacation due to the lack of updates recently, but you can rest assured that this is not the case - we have been quietly busy and  heavily focused on doing Alpha 4 content.  So I thought I would share, and shed some light, on what we are working on at the moment.

• New World Map. The new world map will be huge - hundreds of times bigger than the current Alpha 3 world map. A single region of the world map will be much larger than the whole world map as it stands now, with 4 regions making up one continent. We are working on this map right now, with the intent of launching it with the release of Alpha 4. You will notice that the landscape will be different too. We have added islands so that people whose starting location is close to the sea will be able to expand into the islands to prevent being locked away by others. We also plan to do some adjustments to the world mini-map which will only display the current continent, making  it more convenient.
• Rings and Amulets. These two category items were in the plans, but as of yet have not been implemented. Therefore, we decided we need to get to work on them. As you can see from those included in this threads artwork, our artists are currently working hard on designing these items. I can't say when they will be added into the game, but they are shaping up nicely as we speak.
• Medieval Age. It is not a secret that Alpha 4 will see the introduction of the new Medieval Age. There is a large amount of stuff that still needs to be completed before it is ready for release. The team is also busy working on missing content.

Now for news of something that we hope to have ready in the not-so-distant future - we have plans to redesign the espionage system and to have it ready to be included in the next major Alpha 3 update.  This is second on our priority list and will be tackled as soon as we are finished working on the Alpha 4 world map.  The new espionage system will also fix the lone attacker bug.

Finally, as there are some nice big wars going on, an important issue of town defense has been uncovered and I would invite all players who take part in the war to take part in that discussion as well.