Dear Shaiya community,

Has been a bit more than a month since we are taking care of the world of Teos, and we are confident enough to share with you our plans and thoughts with the sole and humble goal of drastically improving everyone’s experience. We believe we have the opportunity to manage a great game, with amazing and supportive users, and with a bit of love, we will achieve incredible moments for its community.

Before we get into the future, I would like to recap what we did in the last 6 weeks.

• Received more than 400 DDoS attacks targetting the game, with endless days and nights configuring network rules, adding layers of security, and monitoring our services, aiming to provide you with the best experience we could. This, as a small studio, was a colossal effort from everyone within the team, and thankfully we are at a point where we can say that we managed to keep the game stable. We can’t explain too much here, but just give some advice; be careful with what you install on your machine – a massive network of bots was used, and a decent amount of players were detected and blocked by our protection during the attacks, especially from the Spanish server

• Migrated thousands of accounts. We already have approximately 90% of the previous players in-game. We also opened and have available a parallel method that helped a significant amount of players recover their characters, even if they lost or didn’t receive their code

• Fixed +15 in-game bugs reported by the community or added some quality-of-life improvements as the camera distance

• Included 2 must-have services directly into the game: Item Transfer and Character Ressurection, both requested and necessary by the whole community

• Updated our Accounts Portal several times, to include quality of life improvements asked by the community, or even releasing the Loyalty Rewards system – a highly requested topic

• We cleaned out +300 irregularities within all the versions; from items with wrong or duplicated linked Lapis, to unknown and irregular items or kills generation sources, and we will keep the process ongoing until those inherited human errors are fully sorted

• And despite being quick and small due to shifting our efforts towards the delays caused by the attacks, we also released an Easter Event for the occasion.

We shouldn’t forget that despite having decades of experience in the gaming industry, publishing, and developing games, we also had to set up our entire operational infrastructure to serve live games, which we also keep polishing and improving.

Looking back at what we did in 6 weeks, I am proud of all the things we accomplish. I can only see that we are fully committed to providing you with the best experience we can, and this just has started.

During the last weeks, we have been also observing your feedback and monitoring the game, and like many of you, we also believe that unifying all the versions will only consolidate a strong future and open incredible operational opportunities. We also merged everything in Last Chaos, which gave us proof of concept that the same would be doable and a significant improvement for the game and its community.

Our team met for several days, trying to bring up the positives and possible things to tackle for this to happen, together with the schedule to make it happen, which we wanted to share with you, in order to read your thoughts and help us with decisions.

Positives for Unifying Shaiya

• Reduce operational burdens, allowing faster development and iterations
• Better decisions due to combined data and users’ feedback
• Improved player experience due to an overpopulated server
• Healthier economy due to mixing different archetypes of players
• Simplified User Acquisition pipeline, allowing us to get into other territories
• The possibility of creating game-wide initiatives, such as global rankings and rewards
• Easier and more effective protection – we would only need to tackle attacks in a single place

Identified challenges to sort-out

Orange Stats harmonization

Each region has its own system for the Orange Stats. This is very chaotic even within the single regions, and we need to find common ground in order to unify all the regions.

✅ For sorting this out, we would take the best from each region and create a single system for all of them, releasing it before the unification takes place, and leaving enough time for players to accommodate their stats, with the ultimate goal of having a balanced playing field with the unification.

STEP	OLD	NEW	DESCRIPTION	DROP
1	Recreation Runes	–	Allows to get an attribute up to 44, together with some other smaller stat points in the rest of the attributes. Its current functionality won’t change.	✅Easy
2	Premium Recreation Runes	–	Allows to get an attribute up to 88, together with some other smaller to medium stat points in the rest of the attributes. Its current functionality won’t change.	✅Medium
3	Max OJ (US)	Recreation GM	Allows upgrading to 40/44/50 stat points for any attribute, in any piece of gear such as accessories (40), armor (44), or weapons (50), can’t be applied in costumes.	✅Hard
4	OJ Doubler (US)	Recreation Doubler	Allows to double the stat points for any attribute (no HP/MP/SP), in any piece of gear such as weapons, armor, or accessories (can’t be applied in costumes). Can only be applied to a single attribute achieved using steps 1 to 3.	✅Super-hard
5	Ultra Stat Beta (EU)	Recreation Boost	Allows to add +10 stat points to any attribute (no HP/MP/SP) achieved from steps 1 to 4, with a maximum of 99 stat points. Can only be used once per piece.	❌Shop
6	Ultra Stat Alpha (EU)	Recreation Max	Allows to add +25 stat points to any attribute (no HP/MP/SP) achieved from steps 1 to 5, with a maximum of 99 stat points. Can only be used once per piece.	❌Shop
0	Max Stat (EU)	Recreation HP/MP/SP	Allows to add HP/MP/SP to any piece of gear such as weapons, armor, or accessories (can’t be applied in costumes). Can’t be applied to items recreated via steps 5 to 6.	✅Super-hard
–	Recreation Reset (EU)	Recreation Reset	Allows to remove all the recreations in a given piece, allowing the player to recreate it again with a different combination.	✅Free
–	OJ Exchanger (ES/PT)	Recreation Exchange	Allows changing the Orange Stats points from one attribute to another in any piece of gear such as weapons, armor, or accessories. Can be applied in costumes.	❌Shop

EU users connectivity

90% of the user base, is based in the Americas, where we will place the unified servers. Under normal circumstances, this would cause issues for Europe-based players, however, with the Last Chaos merge, and the latest networking technologies, we managed to circumvent this problem thanks to a 3rd party provider.

✅ For sorting this out, all the users (not only the EU-based ones), will be connecting to our servers via a private network from their closest ‘pop’ to the game server. Instead of using the common and shared internet network, you will be going via a private line.

If you live near any of those locations, you will be connected to it, and your traffic will be sent over a high-quality and private network to the server’s location.

For EU players, we expect your ping to increase by ~10-15%. Unnoticeable (or better) for the rest of the current servers.

It’s like a gaming VPN service, on steroids 💪

Guild Ranked Battle schedule

By having a single server, with players from all over the world, the GRB won’t be any topic. It will be required to be adjusted, so we can accommodate all the regions and common ground is in place.

✅ For sorting this out, once the unification is completed, we will keep it on Sundays, since that is when we have most of the users actively playing and it’s a common free day everywhere in the world. Regarding the time, we will also provide a poll with 4 different schedules where you can decide.

Our goal is to be done with everything by early July 2023, having at that point a single unified server, and before we reach that point, there is a significant amount of work to do, and some of that will be noticeable to you.

Shaiya Unification: Timelines

1️⃣ EUINT > USINT Merge

Monday, 08th of May

Is no secret that nobody is playing in the international servers. Our first milestone will be to merge those 2 servers into one, allowing us to validate all the theories we have on paper, with a real example.

There is nothing to worry about from a user’s perspective; the process will be very smooth, without codes, migrations, or whatsoever. The only thing you need to make sure of is that, if you are coming from the merged server (in this case EUINT), your Auction House and Bank are empty before the designated day (08/05) – you will lose those items otherwise.

2️⃣ Boltagate: Orange Stats

Thursday, 11th of May

As mentioned in ‘Orange Stats harmonization’, we will unify all the Orange Stats services, having a simplified version of those, and giving enough time for everyone to adapt their sets and items for the upcoming unification. They will be available directly in Boltagate, while the old ones will remain available on the black market map as before, until the final unification milestone, in early July 2023, when they will be completely removed from the game.

We will also run discounts and events to help everyone speed up their gear adjustments, especially in the Spanish and Portuguese servers, where the difference in attributes is significant.

3️⃣ Boltagate: Copper, Silver, Gold, and Diamond vendors

Thursday, 18th of May

During this update, we will bring back a completely restructured version of the Boltagate vendors. You will be able to farm within the entire game, regardless of level or type of zone, and with a special focus on the PvP maps and bosses, the designated currencies (Copper, Silver, Gold, and Diamond) accepted by those vendors.

With those currencies, you will be able to purchase all the basic items required as small resurrection runes, potions, or recreation runes, to allow smaller players to be part of the grand picture. Later on, with the unified game, and the different archetypes of users, they will play an important role within the entire game economy.

The items offered by those vendors will be limited at the beginning but will gradually increase and change over time. We expect to have a permanent offer of ~35/40 items.

4️⃣ INT > ES and EU > US Merge

Thursday, 18th of May

As with step 1️⃣, we will do the same with the already merged INT servers, but into ES this time. EU will be also moved into US during the same maintenance. Again, you have nothing to worry about, outside of emptying your Bank and Auction House if you are coming from INT or EU – we will handle the rest.

For EU players, you will be at this point within the Americas servers, connecting via a private and high-speed network. Your ping might increase slightly (~10-15%) but will be barely noticeable.

5️⃣ PT > ES Merge

Thursday, 1st of June

As with steps 1️⃣ and 4️⃣, we will do the same with PT and ES. Again, you have nothing to worry about, outside of emptying your Bank and Auction House if you are coming from PT – we will handle the rest.

At this point, we will have 2 servers in the Americas region; one with US and EU, and the other one with INT, ES, and PT.

6️⃣ Shaiya Unification

Early July 2023

As with steps 1️⃣, 4️⃣, and 5️⃣, we will do a final unification, moving the US/EU players into the PT/ES server. If you are coming from US/EU, the only thing to worry about would be your Auction House and Bank items.

At this point, we will have a unified game, with thousands of players, harmonized stats and economy, and an incredible opportunity – we will get Shaiya into a never seen point, allowing us to hastily interact with it in terms of events, content, and changes, balance, infrastructure, etc.

It will be a changing point for the game, and we want everyone to be part of it. The Shaiya you are used to will completely change for the best – this is our commitment to the game and its community.

Shaiya Unification: Other Changes

*️⃣ Loyalty Rewards

As you know, a few days ago we released our first Loyalty Rewards in order to try out the system and polish its functionality and during the following months, we will keep releasing more Loyalty Rewards.

Those won’t be as you were used to – their intention will be completely different and aim to stabilize the in-game economy rather than burn it.

*️⃣ Rankings

We are working on the ranking page: from the basic total Ranking you were used to, to monthly and daily ones, together with non-PvP related ones, such as collected pets or mounts, GRB leaders, Arenas system, etc. It won’t only be a vanity display; players will have the opportunity to earn rewards based on results.

We will simply not stop there. We have several things we would like to tackle after the Unification that we want to disclose to you. We believe we should be fully transparent with our plans, so you can provide your feedback beforehand, and help us build an even greater game.

What do we plan to do in the close future?

Freezes during PvP

This is a very candid topic. Together with some other things, we inherited an optimization problem with the game client while loading many characters at once. This is sometimes causing freezes for everyone while doing PvP, especially for lower-end computers, which shouldn’t be the case.

Our team is already collecting information from the most affected users, and it seems the issue might have a different source depending on the version, and while and after we work on the unification, will be one of our top priorities. It won’t be solved drastically and from one day to another, but we already have an idea of how to minimize it and increase the performance for everyone.

GRB changes

Our team is planning to rework the GRB system, fixing some exploits that we were made aware of, together with increasing the challenge of participating in them, while also increasing the rewards. We aim to overall balance the system, taking into account the new player population.

Class balance

By having a unified community, balancing classes will be a much better option. With the current split and the differences in playstyle, attributes, itemization, etc. between the different versions, is extremely difficult to find the right common approach to your balancing concerns. After the Unification is done, rest assured we will look into this.

Economy

The same as with class balance happens with the economy – each server has its own needs, and balancing our store, loyalty rewards, events, drops, etc. to find a middle and common approach, is a difficult task – by having a unified game, and all the same archetype of players together and in synergy, keeping a healthy economy would be a much easier job for us.

Rankings Expansion and Armory

By having all the moving data unified, this is another branch we would like to explore. We will start with very basic and simple ranking systems, moving into much more polished data-related ones, like damage dealt or heat maps during specific PvP encounters – can you imagine seeing in real time where the fights are happening? What about being able to enter the Armory and check your enemy’s gear?

Content

And of course, we will keep producing content updates, with clear and defined feedback, from users under the same conditions and needs. This will literally cut in half our development times, reduce iteration costs, and overall produce better content.

We will also focus on using the already established, liked but unfortunately, old and outdated systems, in order to upgrade them to current standards and bring them back to life. We also plan to have more accessible content, since the population will allow for different approaches for the new content.

We know it’s a lot to digest and tons of information to tackle but we believe in communicating and understanding our players, being close to them, and making them be part of the decisions. We believe that by the above changes, we will be capable of setting a before and after for Shaiya and its community, and we would love you to help us with this.

We opened a forum in Discord to discuss this with you. Remember to apply tags for the given language.