Earlier this week, our community's interest was piqued by the news that a Tibia player had reached level 998 and would soon be ready to open the 'door of mystery' that can only be accessed at level 999. We had the opportunity to chat with Lead Product Manager Martin Eglseder about this and much more.
MMORPG: Tibia has such a strong community behind it, can you tell us how the team works with the players to make the best game possible?
Martin Eglseder: Within our company there is a dedicated Community Management team. This team processes internal information and provides it to the community. On the other hand, the team serves as the voice of the community and represents the players (for example as stakeholders in design meetings). Finally, there are external test servers before one of the two major annual updates is launched. Then, the community managers, developers and members of our dedicated QA team are discussing general aspects and implementation details with parts of the community.
MMORPG: One of your players is actually level 999 and is about to unlock so major end game material with the “Door of Mystery” without giving anything away how can you hint at what this might be like?
ME: We had long discussions about the content behind the level 999 door. We respect that the first player that reached this limit currently does not want to share this secret. However, we can clarify that it is not a whole feature set or package of “end game” content.
MMORPG: For those who may not have heard the game is in its 10th year, what have you been doing all these years from the development side to keep players so active in the game?
ME: Actually, we are double this age, the game will be celebrating its 20th birthday in January 2017. All the way from the small project of four students up to a long-running MMORPG with hundreds of thousands of active players, CipSoft’s employees have been spending a lot of time and effort to improve the game and keep it interesting. I know that the community has some controversial thoughts about some of the major changes the game ran through during this time. But working for the company now for more than 7 years, I can assure you that every single person working on Tibia does everything in its powers to keep the game alive and rocking, and that all decisions are made to the best of our beliefs.
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MMORPG: Your eleventh game update is still in beta, can you tell us what is in store for players when it goes live?
ME: Version 11.0 is bringing a full new technical base to our major game client. This is necessary to ensure the client can be enhanced and improved with new features for the following decades J. Besides that, we are working on the winter update and are preparing the celebration of 20 years of Tibia in January 2017.
MMORPG: How are you moving forward with the technology behind the game, seeing that it is ten years old, what has it been like to update the game and keep the back end running smoothly?
ME: In a complex software system whose components are up to 19 years old, legacy code is always a big issue. That’s the main reason for building the Tibia 11 client. Of course, we always try to refactor and keep the basic components up to date. The truth, however, is that for some of the most critical components a redesign or full refactoring is not economically feasible.
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MMORPG: Are there any big lore changes for the game in the near future? What are your plans moving into the fall and winter months?
ME: We are constantly evolving the lore and adding parts to the huge content of Tibia. Currently, we are working on a main questline which will bring together some ancient lore parts with a new game mechanic. In agreement with our Community Management team we do not want to spoil more information at this moment. SRY ;)
