The Story
The Age of Mortus is over. The Dread Lords held sway over the lands of man for thousands of years, until their defeat at the battle of Vallendahl. The curse of undeath that held the realms in its ancient, vice-like grip for so long is no more. A kingdom has risen, built upon the deeds and honor of the greatest heroes of the Dread War. The forest of Taelendor has awakened once more. Life, once a rare, precious commodity, has returned. It is a new age, one of exploration, peace and prosperity.
But all is not what it seems. Ancient evil is not so easily vanquished. The dark kin of the elves stir in their mountain of power once more. Tribes of norse-folk have set aside their enmities under the banner of a new, cunning Warlord. The forests have seen the passage of a race long thought extinct, and the Kingdom of Illiana is beset by political infighting. Yet worse than all, there are Dread Lords who survived the epic battle and now plot and scheme for their return to power and subjugation of all the free races.
Great deeds await those with courage and mettle. Dead civilizations await those with the fortitude to wrest away their secrets and artifacts. Dark foes await those with the skill and power to end their threat to all.
It is a time for Heroes and Legends. This is Arcanoria.
Overview
Arcanoria is a Medieval Fantasy Online Role Playing Game, where solo players or groups can go on quests, craft custom items, join trade guilds, and face deadly challenges using their expertise with sword, bow, magic, stealth, or guile. Arcanoria offers rewarding non-violent quests (in addition to hunting/fighting quests, which are also available). You can advance your character to high levels without ever being required to attack a living being. Arcanoria proves that RPGs don't have to be violent to be fun and interesting! The game also provides meaningful choices in your character's development, where your in-game actions determine your abilities. The more you focus on certain skills the better those skills become - at the expense of unrelated skills. The world itself is very large. From cities to castles to murky caves to wind-swept mountaintops to volcanic islands to barren deserts and salt flats, to lush forests... Arcanoria has it all, just waiting for you to discover!
Player Races: Human, Norse, Elf, Dark Elf, Gnome, Lizardfolk
Combat Classes: Warrior, Wanderer, Mind Mage, Lightbringer, Necromancer, Druid, Elementalist
Non-Violent Classes: (list still in development) Fisherman, Cook, Healer, Blacksmith, Archaeologist, Alchemist, Merchant, Farmer, Tailor, Carpenter, Researcher, Trapper
Most Recent Update
The game is not finished being built yet, but we're hard at work developing it! If you'd like to participate as an early tester, please contact us at web-inquiry@arcanoria.com. Here's a quick look at our latest news update (we post updates here often):
July 24, 2008 - IndieZen Framework Nearing Completion, Massive Influx of Resources
While working on our implementation of the Ogre 3D graphics engine, and integrating other libraries into it (physics, audio, scripting, etc.), we joined forces with like-minded developers from the IndieZen framework development project. This will allow us to take advantage of all the benefits of Ogre3D, PhysX, lua scripting, FMOD, etc. which we were already in the process of building into our own custom engine, but the extra bonus is that we don't have to write all the code ourselves! With excellent and experienced programmers like Tony Richards and his team working towards the same goals, it's a huge shot in the arm for the Arcanoria project.
What's more, Tony's so excited about the Arcanoria project that he's agreed to help us with much more of the game development process than just the engine. Here's a quote:
Tony Richards, founder of IndieZen, LLC announced today that after the 0.1.0 alpha version of Zen Engine is released, the entire IndieZen development staff will be concentrating on helping Arcanor finish his online RPG Arcanoria. "This is what the Indie 2.0 Revolution is all about. We work together to raise the bar of Indie art and technology while we concentrate on completing our own games."
The plan is for delivery of the 0.1.0 alpha of the engine framework by September 1, 2008. Much more to come after that! We'll keep you informed.
For the full list of project status updates, please take a look at our History page.
What Is Arcanoria, really?
Actually, Arcanoria is none of those things. It's just a figment of the imagination. We're working hard in order to turn this farfetched fantasy into a Virtual Reality. This project directly involves lots of cool buzzwords including:
- 3D Graphical Modeling, Skeletal Animation, Physics Simulation, 3D Sound Rendering, Real-time 3D video Rendering
- 2D Graphics Design (i.e. Photoshop/Illustrator)
- Client/Server Network Programming, Security & Encryption, Database Programming and Administration
- Delivery-on-Demand (i.e. downloadable program and data updates)
- Object-Oriented Programming (using C++), UML Design and Analysis
- Game System Design (characters, economy, combat, crafting, quests, monsters, spells, etc.)
- GUI Design and overall UI Design
- Music and Sound FX Design
Our main game engine is based on several technologies including Ogre 3D as the central rendering engine. Please review our Tech Page for more details on the specific tools we use to create our game.
Miscellaneous Other Information
This project was begun on January 9, 2007. For more information, please review the different pages of this site, or contact us at web-inquiry@arcanoria.com. Also, please check back from time to time as we will continue to update this website to chronicle the unfolding of this ambitious project. This site is updated frequently - at least once every week or so, sometimes multiple times per day - so check back often to learn about the latest updates to Arcanoria!
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