Hello everyone and welcome to the first official devblog of Quiazal Legacy! Having spent the past 2 and a half months building this website for ease of access for the server, it's a breath of fresh air to be able to write information directly addressing my consumers and to inform them of my future plans with the server. I plan to post one of these every few weeks depending on how many updates I manage to get out to maintain transparency with my playerbase and to keep everyone informed of my development progress.

This world has been in development for 7 years, and this server just over 3 months before posting these devblogs, and as a mono-developer it's been a hard task and an effort to get it out as quickly and effectively as possible. Errors may be prevalent, changes will be made and this server may not look the same way it did when it began, but that's the fun in developing a huge project like this. My intentions with making this world was to make an open and mature world setting where players could come and build stories in an open and encouraging environment, with other, welcoming players.

During this blog I will be detailing what I plan to do in the future rather than what has been accomplished. All dev blogs after this one will be a changed process where I post what had been accomplished that half month or so, and what steps I plan to make next, as well as addressing any questions or comments left regarding the server which have yet to be addressed.

Species and Character Customization

From the beginning I've had a vast interest in designing a world appropriate for players to design and make their own things. This of course requires a magnanimous amount of content, something of which is already in the works but has been taking a long time. Currently, around half of the capacity of existing species is present on the website but this isn't enough, and ideally I'd like for a much larger array of species to be available to remove as much limitation as possible from our players.

Currently there is a work in progress advanced roster of about 30 species being prepared to be introduced to the website. I plan to gradually introduce these first and prioritise them over adding lore to the website as, at the heart of the server, a player's creativity and ability to actually mould their creations into what they want is the most important aspect of a good roleplay server.

Because of the permanency of characters within the world of Quiazal, it's very easy for players to grow attached to their characters. By allowing players to customise their characters as much as possible within the lines of their species, with as huge an amount of species as is possible, players will be able to feel that even though they have a select amount to choose from their characters will be unique and stand out to the crowd, something important to general content creators and myself. It's with this in mind that the very first beginner roster of species was shaped, attempting to get a variety of everything possible while making it not overbearing to new players.

In the future, I plan to also add a species application system, so if players get their species approved for the world they can add even more levels of customisation for not just themselves, but other players too.

Attributes and Character Customisation

Our system of attributes and dice based mechanics may be frustrating or even intimidating to some at a first glance, but I'd like to preface this section informing you all of the fact that it is truly easier than it may look. First, I should begin by explaining why we use attributes and dice in our server, and how they benefit you as players during your interactions and development:

Attributes lie at the heart of every character and their capabilities. No character is going to start off the best, especially in a new environment, which brought about the idea which lied in my heart but never had a functionality behind it until now. A problem I see in many roleplay servers is the lack of equal opportunities, places where not all characters can become the same things, and it can be tiring to players. Everyone wants to have a chance of getting to the spotlight no matter where they are, and its with attributes that I am to do just that.

All characters in Quiazal Legacy have equal capabilities to develop into what their players want them to be. A character could start out as a mere peasant, but through development and determination from their player, with levelling up and adding points to their attributes where earned, a character could become a high noble and even go on to create a world changing business. Myself and the staff here at Quiazal are here not only to drive the overarching plot of the server, but to assist in this exact developmental process and to help enable players to get to where they want their characters to be.

Character Customisation is equally as important as character development. The way a character looks, acts and even feels when playing is extremely important to any character owner, and I know as a content creator how easy it can be to grow attached to your characters designs. My intention with our ''little to no limits'' character policy is to allow players to make and shape characters to be almost, if not exactly what they can imagine in their heads when traversing our world. All too often do I see roleplay servers implement silly rules on what characters can and can't do and it can direct attention away from the heart of the character and towards whether you're actually allowed to do something or not.

I don't want this to be a concern with my players, and as such I enter a character review as open minded as possible and see the positives and negatives in everything a character can have. If a player does go too far with their creation, I'm not going to say ''no, you can't have that'' but instead I like to detail a different, simpler way they can do the exact same thing, thus not rendering the design of their character entirely pointless or unusable.

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Our usage of dice is equally as important. Although it may be an intimidating annoyance to some players, I like to title it a ''necessary evil'' and is actually much more helpful than some may see it. Freeform Roleplay can especially difficult in such an open and creative environment and as such is rarely found in worlds which utilise such huge amounts of lore and world build (see Dungeons and Dragons for example.) While all different roleplay environments who utilise d20 have their own views, my particular view is this:

The dice which we have are there to assist those who may not be quite so quick thinking in their environment just yet. What I mean by this is; say you're a freeform roleplayer in an environment which uses Attributes such as our own. The way we use our attributes is to guide players who do freeform, to help them know the appropriate degree their response to another's action should be, but this is not automated. With our dice system, it automates this and the player has to do much less maths, and more focus on what the dice feeds back to them as a base for their replies.

Conjuring accurate and sensible replies in response to another's action can be a struggle for some. I personally wanted to use the dice in our server to help combat this and give all players the assistance they might need in making accurate responses, and eventually with some practise leave the dice behind. Of course there are other reasons the dice are present within the server, such as certain roleplayers having a preference for dice or for their use in some of our roleplaying scenes, but this is my overarching logic.

For now, these are my main regions for the next steps of development. Of course, development always takes time, and as such I don't want to rush in head first and make updates too quickly while my players claw at the server's walls trying to keep up with the movement. As stated at the beginning of this blog I will be putting out updates once every couple of weeks so, potentially faster immediately after release.

I look forward to seeing what everyone makes of the world I've build and I simply cannot wait to work on the world with everyone!