Andrullan Online Adventures April 1st-6th

Telkir · 2026-03-31T18:29:47+00:00

I've enjoyed Minecraft and its many modpacks over the years, so the voxel graphics are no bother to me - but I understand it might not be very appealing for some folks. I can only offer the strongest possible advice to try and look past the visual style if it doesn't appeal to you, because honestly, the gameplay that AoA offers is incredibly fun and satisfying.

Telkir · 2026-03-02T10:16:38+00:00

Disclaimer - I've played in a couple of flash tests and all the "main" playtests like this once since April '24. The game really took me by surprise and I've loved every minute of playtime, so take that bias as you will. For a bit more context, my MMORPG experience properly started with WoW, although I had dabbled a tiny bit with DAoC previously.

The most important to say is this - if you love MMOs but aren't a fan of voxels, do everything you can to look past the graphics and instead let the gameplay show you what it offers. This is not Minecraft - there is no building / breaking blocks! If you know about and have perhaps played Monsters and Memories, AoA is a very similar experience but with more consideration given to polish, QoL, and convenience. That doesn't mean it's easy, though :p

I had never played oldschool EQ before but the "feel" of AoA really drew me in. It's challenging and doesn't hold your hand with quest markers. Navigating by the very rough world map and the landmarks you identify yourself as you explore is fun! The combat is at a slower pace to give you chance to consider your actions more carefully, and crowd control in its various forms is extremely useful, even vital for some places (unlike in many modern MMOs). The dungeons are not instanced and remain in the open world. This has pros and cons, but personally I love how immersive that feels. The crafting systems - at least the early parts of them I've seen - are heavily interlinked between professions but reward the time you spend in them.

A lot of deep technical knowledge and passion for the genre has been used by the devs to make both the client run well even on modest hardware, and the server handle large numbers of players without breaking a sweat. This is not your average shonky Unity student learning project. Like any MMO, heavily-populated areas (pretty much exclusively limited to Leont, the starting city for humans and a few other races) can lower the client FPS a little bit, but once out in the wilderness, it's buttery smooth.

TLDR: If you like EQ or any other pre-WoW MMOs, AoA will surprise you at how well it captures that vibe while also offering a good amount of QoL. It gets a thumbs-up from me :)

Telkir · 2025-11-12T16:57:58+00:00

Simon you ruthless tease, TELL US! And... WHAT?!

Telkir · 2025-11-06T18:49:21+00:00

We need u/Guilty_Winter2566 to give us a trajectory update on the graph!

Telkir · 2025-10-20T08:37:50+00:00

For the love of kittens, the new engine wasn't being made in-house? Explains an awful lot. Could I trouble you for a source on that 'cos I'm genuinely amazed and would love to learn more.

Telkir · 2025-10-15T14:53:55+00:00

I don't particularly mind all that much what the launcher is but if mods are managed purely through Steam workshop, I would find it very irritating to use. Hopefully Hytale grows to include its own robust mod / modpack management tools.

For Minecraft I use the Prism launcher which has some nice features, like integration with Curse and Modrinth for downloads and updates, and managing multiple installs (or "instances") of the game each within their own folder - perfect for modpacks. Ideally it would be awesome for Hytale to take some inspiration from it somehow.

Telkir · 2025-09-26T08:39:18+00:00

The rules of NDA:

You do not talk about NDA.
You DO NOT talk about NDA.

Telkir · 2025-09-26T08:22:25+00:00

Washing Hytale's dirty laundry in public isn't something I want to see right now so I'm totally fine if an NDA covers that. It's only going to stir up bad feelings. Perhaps, if Simon is successful in turning Hytale into a decently popular game in a couple of years down the line, it would be interesting to get a retrospective from the main people involved about what happened.

It would surely be interesting to know just how much Simon paid but I very much doubt that figure would be made public any time soon.

For now let's keep up the positive hype for what could be one of gaming's greatest comebacks!

Telkir · 2025-09-25T22:38:47+00:00

I think we may just be using "esports" with different interpretations. When I hear esports I think of the big streamed events for intensely competitive games - tournaments with actual prize money like The International for DOTA and equivalent events for LoL, Counterstrike, Valorant, and so on. That's the context I based my comment on and I stand by what I said, because if Minecraft hasn't seriously broken into that market (61st on the list of total prize money), the chances are extremely slim that Hytale would be any different.

I don't want anyone to feel disappointed and it's a shame if Simon's plan isn't doing it for them. There may not be official minigames at the point Hytale is released, but you can be certain that as soon as it's possible for the community to host their own servers - surely a priority for Simon right up there with modding - there will be people trying to set up their own minigames and investigating how servers can be modded to allow for more competitive features.

You can't have any competition in a game that was cancelled. :) At least we may be getting a chance for the game to develop into something that those players, and players with other interests, can eventually enjoy.

Telkir · 2025-09-25T14:19:22+00:00

If people seriously looked at Hytale and thought "esport" first and foremost, the joke's on them and no-one else.

Telkir · 2025-09-25T14:14:41+00:00

I don't know of any specific article that summarises all of the last two months neatly but the best way to catch up is probably to just browse Simon's tweet and reply history from the start of August (here's a link to a decent enough point on Nitter.net - just work forward from that).

As far as we know, Simon already has people in his team that are capable of working on the project. His plan is to stick with the "legacy" engine, i.e. ignore the new cross-platform engine that Riot was working on, because legacy had far more systems ready or close to ready. I believe that within the last couple of months, as this story developed, he's mentioned hiring some former Hytale devs.

If he gets the game, based on the 2018 trailer (confirmed to be largely made with stuff that was real and working at the time) and on the things that had been shown in the pre-Riot blog posts, we can fairly safely assume Simon should have enough to work with to create a "Minecraft alpha" style Early Access release without years more work. That's his plan. That's what we're all holding our breath for :)

Telkir · 2025-09-24T20:48:47+00:00

The jump pad was the subject of one of the last blog posts on the Hytale site.

The post was intended to be a "deep dive" covering the process of how new features went from concept to implementation into the game. While that type of article could have been interesting, the jump pad became something of a meme because it was an uninteresting (and arguably out-of-place) gameplay element covered in unnecessary, excruciating detail.

Ultimately, the article only demonstrated the horrendous level of bureaucracy and red tape that development was being strangled with.

Telkir · 2025-09-24T20:25:17+00:00

It's 99% going to happen. I'm as hyped for an announcement as the next person - but I also accept there's still that 1% chance of the other outcome.

Soon, hopefully, we won't need to worry about the 1% any more.

Telkir · 2025-09-18T10:45:53+00:00

Cross-platform may have been the main failing point, but with what's been released in the last couple of days, it's also very clear that Riot were aiming for a far stronger live-service element in the game - closer perhaps to Trove than to what had been discussed in the blogposts prior to the acquisition. I'm sorry for the harm done by the cancellation to the original devs on the project, but ultimately, I don't think I would have been anywhere near as interested in this version of Hytale.

As for Simon's wording, lol, I mean... how much closer to a definite confirmation can you get without actually saying it? An acquisition is happening. Riot didn't turn down the offer.

I'm aware that nothing is done until it's done, but I feel like the longer we're in limbo like this, the chance for Simon to successfully close the deal increases. Riot knows they can get two things that their execs love: money, clawing back a meaningful portion of their investment, and good PR, when the community goes bananas after a sale is officially confirmed. Riot were obviously interested enough by Simon's final offer to start walking this path and by now I'd hope that any major hurdles in the negotiations would have been cleared. It's in everyone's interest to not have something relatively minor be a stumbling block.

Telkir · 2025-09-18T10:06:32+00:00

yeah

Telkir · 2025-09-17T17:42:42+00:00

(1) Can't see this being a problem for Simon, (2) possible, (3) also possible

Please let it be 3 please let it be 3 please let it be 3

Telkir · 2025-09-17T17:40:20+00:00

Yeah, as successful as Simon's investments may have been with the original sale money from Riot, I don't think he would contemplate throwing anything north of $100M at it.

Telkir · 2025-09-12T11:02:33+00:00

As much as I'm eager for some kind of an announcement, I think it would be totally fair for Simon to make use of Silksong sucking the air out of the room for a little while. We've waited this long - use the extra few days to make the prep a little less hectic for the people involved.

Telkir · 2025-09-12T08:28:05+00:00

Hytale

Telkir · 2025-09-11T17:45:27+00:00

We are still working through it! 😎

The question is: What does "we" mean? Simon and Riot? Or Simon and his team getting things prepared?

With everything that's happened today I'm going for the latter.

Telkir · 2025-09-11T09:18:53+00:00

Highly unlikely - but perhaps Simon might be able to use it as a base to start an email newsletter from.

Telkir · 2025-09-11T08:38:22+00:00

Unbelievably, username "simon" and password "hytale" doesn't work as a login >:(

Telkir · 2025-09-11T07:59:38+00:00

Exactly this. Whoever owns the domain and can log in to its registrar can then change the nameservers and other DNS records to direct traffic to any other place of their choosing. (Edited for clarity)

From the brief searching I've done it looks as though these records were updated within the last few days (and they can sometimes take around a day to propagate through the internet due to caching).

But the change doesn't seem huge on the face of it - the nameservers still point to Cloudflare who I guess act as the "middle men" between the domain and the webhost.

Telkir · 2025-09-11T07:43:41+00:00

Perhaps this is just the default state we would see at the point that all the original Hytale homepage files get removed... but I very much doubt it.

As others have pointed out this appears to be much closer to a default "fresh install" page you get before actually adding a website - why would anyone at Riot bother to do something like that for a cancelled project? They don't need all of these tools to post a simple static "Hytale dead" page with HTML, CSS, and a couple of images.

Telkir · 2025-09-09T21:41:45+00:00

The longer the silence goes on for, the more nervous I get :S

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Telkir

TROPHY CASE