It has come to my attention that many of you are unhappy with the current state of Rescreatu development, specifically the lack of website updates this summer. I would like to take some time today to address these concerns, most of which are perfectly valid and understandable.
I would first like to briefly discuss my personal situation and try to give you all an understanding of where we currently are with things. As many of you know, I have been unable to devote as much time to Rescreatu over the last year as I've been able to in the past. Aside from the extraordinary personal and family matters I've had to attend to this year, I spend most of my time (upwards of 12 hours a day) working to try to earn enough money to pay the bills. I'm sure many of you can relate! I have not earned a salary from Rescreatu in over a year and every single penny Rescreatu earns goes towards site expenses.
With that being said, neither I nor any of the staff have given up on the development of Rescreatu. In fact it's been just the opposite. We have spent the entire summer preparing ourselves for the largest expansion and overhaul we've ever had. Not one line of code will be reused. The entire database will be redesigned from the ground up. All of this has required months of preparation. We've had to research and learn close to a dozen new technologies. We've been producing game design documents to ensure that each and every feature is coherent and expands upon the game in a meaningful way. There is a great deal of work happening behind the scenes that we simply cannot show you yet.
Rescreatu was created in 2005. Eight years ago the web landscape was a very different place. Even with a few updated versions of the site, Rescreatu is still largely based on the original code and database. This has seriously inhibited our growth and production especially during recent times. Producing new features and making improvements to the existing code is very difficult and time consuming, and to be honest, the primary reason for a lack of updates. We have decided that it is a better use of our limited resources to spend most of our time on the production of the new website that will allow us to keep competing in this new age of internet technology.
My favorite part of Rescreatu has always been you guys - the community. Together, over the many years, we have created a wonderful place here. Many of us have met lifelong friends on Rescreatu. We come here to vent, to chat, to relax and to enjoy ourselves. This is, and always will be, the best feature we have to boast. It doesn't matter how many features we have or how fancy Rescreatu becomes. I sincerely believe this.
I'm not going to lie and make promises that the new site will be coming soon. We have quite a ways to go. I do however promise that when it is here it will be of the highest quality you can find on the internet. We are not opposed to letting you all be more involved in the development of our new Rescreatu. We have just simply been unable to find an effective way to facilitate this. We would be happy to hear your ideas.
In the meantime, I do realize that you all need to see updates to the existing site. I will make a big effort to do that for you. We do actually have quite a few new things coming your way already. The next Comet Festival is coming relatively soon. We've got a special new set of quests that have been being planned for years with prizes that you will absolutely love. We've spent the last 3 weeks developing a prototype of the new exploration system. We will be releasing this prototype as part of a feature here on the existing site in the very near future so that we can collect your thoughts on it.
We will do our very best from here on out to figure out a good compromise between releasing updates to the existing website and developing the new one.
