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Dev Log: Roadmap 2023
Hey Heroes and Travelers!
It’s been awhile since we really opened the doors and let you in on what’s been cooking at the studio. While we’ve been heavily focused on the Towers of Olympia patch, we wanted to give you an outline of some of the bigger features we’re developing for both Orna: the GPS RPG and Hero of Aethric in 2023.
To give you a better sense of when these features are coming this year, we are going to be breaking this blog down by time periods: Now, Soon and Later. It’s important to note that while we’re setting out to accomplish these goals, game dev can have unexpected twists and turns. Keep in mind that anything we discuss may change in both timing and implementation over the development cycle.
With that out of the way, let’s dive in!
The Now
Daily Mission System Rework
In early 2023 we are going to recreate the daily mission system from the ground up.
In its current form, the system encourages you to find different types of monsters to defeat and you are rewarded with Orns, gold and experience. Often, we see that players don’t think that the current rewards are worth it, asking, ”why hunt for 10 of an enemy when a single boss will reward you more?”
We’re looking to motivate players to be excited to do their daily quests by making the rewards have more of an impact on your gameplay. To accomplish this we are changing both the type of daily quests that you will receive as well as the rewards they offer. Each daily quest you complete will now earn you a tiered reward, including a boost to experience, an increase to movement speed and more! Look forward to updates on this soon.
The Towers of Olympia
Our upcoming patch, named The Towers of Olympia, is our biggest content release yet! With 22 new alternative classes, 5 new superbosses, an overhaul to inventory management, huge quality of life fixes and more, we can’t wait for everyone to get the chance to play it.
The patch is currently in beta for our subscribers over on Patreon, but we will soon be opening this up for all players to test out! We are aiming to get this into the game in February, so there’s not much time left for players to wait to play the new content.
The biggest inclusion in this patch will be the titular Towers of Olympia. We have talked about this new type of dungeon in our previous blog post so today we will instead talk a little bit about what we learned while developing this.
Towers of Olympia is a great example of a system that can be adapted for both Orna and Aethric, utilizing the strengths of each title to engage with the gameplay in different ways.
In Orna, Towers is an opportunity to bring GPS gameplay back to the forefront. The excitement of walking through your city and discovering a tower is truly something special. Within Aethric, Towers brings an entirely new endgame zone and the opportunity to bring some visual lore to Olympia.
For the studio, it was a really great example of how each of our games can benefit from the other. Towers marks the first time that Orna: the GPS RPG players are able to move their character in-game via tapping rather than moving themselves in real life – something we would not have explored in Orna: GPS without the creation of Aethric.
It was Towers that proved the concept for us, but only late game players T9 and above will have access to these, leaving out a good portion of the player base. It was from seeing Towers in action for the first time that really gave us the confidence to explore a new gameplay system bringing us to the Soon™….
The Soon™
Deep Dungeons
Towers of Olympia provided us with the framework to develop a new explorable dungeon type that could provide more immersion to the player.
It’s important to note that we are not aiming to take away from the ability to quickly and efficiently farm dungeons in their current state. Instead, we want to offer an alternative to dungeon play that has players feel a sense of exploration and mix up the gameplay with collection, battle and a touch of lore.
These new explorable dungeon types will have players collecting materials, fighting (or sneaking past) tough battles and seeing just how deep they can make it. Put on your mining gear and get ready for some spelunking later this year.
Pristine Weapons
This one has been on our to-do list for quite some time (you can thank Covyn and Dangy for this). Pristine Weapons offer players the chance to receive a resprited variant of a weapon if it drops above 195% quality.
For the collectors among us, these Pristine weapons will serve as bragging rights and something you can show off with pride.
Chat System Rework
We aren’t shy about it, our chat system needs a bit of TLC. This is a system we aim to rebuild from the ground up, including real time chat notifications, badges and the inclusion of broadcasts – when a Pristine weapon is dropped, all players within the global chat will get to see and celebrate!
In addition to this, we hope to implement chat in a way that makes the game feel more alive. This includes chat bubbles appearing over the players head when in towns.
Additional Action Based Abilities
For those who want to get the most out of battle we’re looking to add an additional component to add a little more excitement to our battle system. It’s important to note that this feature is still very early in development.
Inspired by modern turn-based RPGs that implement a small additional active component to their battle systems. We want certain abilities to include a timing based reaction that will lead to bigger damage, higher % chance of status effect or provide mitigation for incoming attacks.
We’re going to be implementing this system in a way that brings a freshness to combat for those who seek it, while ensuring we don’t change the farming experience for those who would rather not engage with this system. We are players of the game and understand how the initial fear is how this will impact longer battles or efficient farming – these will be top of mind as we flesh out this new addition!
The Later
Kingdom Overhaul
It’s time for Kingdoms to become a place where you can join in with your friends and work together to accomplish goals. We’re going to be reworking the Kingdom system from the ground up to feel a little less menu driven and have you interact with your Kingdom mates in new ways.
One of the ways we’re going to accomplish this is through Kingdom housing! We’re going to offer up Kingdoms a customizable area in which they can see and interact with Kingdom mates in real time. Which Kingdom will reign supreme as best home designers in the world? Only time will tell!
Live Events
To truly give the feeling that you’re exploring the world alongside other players. We’re looking to implement live events throughout the lands of Aethric.
These events will see players alerted to a community goal that must be met in a particular zone. The players in that area will then have to accomplish a goal together in order to spawn a menacing boss that will take hundreds of players to take down.
Mounts & Trails
Speed and style is the name of the game here. It has been requested a lot since we launched Aethric and we’re happy to announce that mounts are coming to the game this year! We want to offer players a way to express themselves while also having the functionality of increased movement speed as you make your way through the lands of Aethric.
In addition to this we are launching cosmetic options that will add visual flair to the movement of your character. These player trails will also affect your waypoint markers bringing some more excitement to the player interface.
Farming
Everyone’s favourite gaming pastime will find its way to the Ornaverse later this year. We’re looking to create a system that focuses on both fun and functionality. Expect new mini-games that are closely linked to your goals from the main game, including the hunt for rare seeds within the new deep dungeons.
Keep it Coming
This list doesn’t cover everything we’ve got cooking for you at Northern Forge Studios. For instance, we’re looking ahead to create new monthly events as well as modernize some of the older ones. We’re aiming to create some new, high-quality merch so you can represent the Ornaverse. We’re revisiting base-game content and making sure to think of how we can revitalize and improve on what we’ve done in the past. Finally, we’re going to be creating follower sprites so that you can have the functionality of a Chimera, with the cuteness of a Dog.
Thanks for joining us on the journey so far, we’re excited to bring all of this and more to you in the new year!
- The Northern Forge team
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Towers of Olympia: revealing the new endgame system for Orna and Hero of Aethric
Heroes and Travellers!
For the past few months we have been teasing a new endgame feature called: Towers of Olympia. If you’ve been hanging around the Discord channels recently, you may have noticed some puzzling reveals of upcoming bosses in our games.
Today, we’re going to be pulling back the curtains a little more on our upcoming patch: The Towers of Olympia and talk about how it will shake up the current endgame within the Ornaverse.
What are the Towers of Olympia?
Towers of Olympia is longform endgame content for T9 players and above that aims to take primary focus away from the current Ascension system of player investment. Players will climb daunting towers with the main goal of reaching the top and defeating the Titan that awaits them.
Taking inspiration from roguelite games, Towers are explorable zones that increase in difficulty the higher you climb. Tough battles, hidden treasures (including persistent buffs) and challenging puzzles will test the limits of your character builds like never before!
This increasing challenge stresses the risk/reward system, as you will lose half of your collected Tower Shards should you fall in battle during your climb. Sometimes, the better choice may be to descend the tower before reaching the Titan.
In Orna: the GPS RPG, Towers of Olympia will be primarily GPS focused content, with Origin Town play available through player investment. Hero of Aethric players will be able to find the location of the towers throughout the world while building their own in the ruins of Olympia.
Choices, Choices
Along the journey up the towers, players will collect a new currency called Tower Shards. These shards will serve as the currency you will spend in a new building called the Titan Workshop.
As Tower Shards will be difficult to obtain, how you choose to upgrade your character is up to you. Will you seek out a new upgradable Celestial Weapon, adorning it with pieces of defeated Titans? Or would you rather try out one of the new Celestial Classes, offering new ways to play for existing endgame players? You can also opt to spend Tower Shards to build a tower of your own!
The new content will offer players meaningful choices like never before!
What Else is Coming in Patch 3.4/1.1: The Towers of Olympia?
While the Towers of Olympia is the biggest focus of the update. Patch 3.4 (Orna: the GPS RPG) and Patch 1.1 (Hero of Aethric) are jam packed with more content. Here is a summary of what you can expect when the patch drops:
- Orna: The Fishing Hut
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- a new currency, Corals can be collected through fishing and spent at the Fishing Hut
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- Inventory Overhaul
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- New inventory management tools have been added, making it easier to manage larger inventories
- Auto-dismantle options can now be found in the item bag and in-battle options
- Changes to reduce device processing power and RAM allocation
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- The Benefactor Specialization
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- A summon based specialization that transfers the summoners power into the summons
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- All dungeon types can now be run in Horde mode
- Item quests now take any quality of item
- Berserk enemies are now denoted in-battle when on low graphics mode
- Any Kingdom quest can now be turned in by the Kingdom’s officers
- Graphical updates, bug fixes and more!
We are really excited to get to share more news about this with you and can’t wait to experience Towers of Olympia alongside you all when it releases. We are currently running an Alpha of this patch in Orna: the GPS RPG with Tier 3 Patrons and will soon be moving to Tier 2 Patrons. This will be followed by an Open Beta.
Alpha and Beta versions for Hero of Aethric will come in the upcoming weeks.
We will have more news to share on this release schedule so stay tuned to our Discord channel for more information.
- Orna: The Fishing Hut
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Hero of Aethric: an Orna RPG Release Date Announced
Hey Travelers,
Our next title – Hero of Aethric: an Orna RPG has an official release date – and you won’t have to wait long to start your adventure!
We plan on launching Hero of Aethric on Tuesday, November 15, 2022 in Early Access!
We are so thankful for those of you who took part in the Alpha and Beta of our new title. We’ve loved seeing your reactions to exploring our game world for the first time and offering us invaluable feedback.Party up with friends or go it alone to explore the lands of Aethric!
Early Access?
We have decided to release Hero of Aethric under Early Access so that we can continue to work with our community and implement feedback to create the best game we possibly can! In Early Access, players will be able to party up with their friends and experience the game from start to finish and yes, progress will carry over to the full launch!
As a live-service game we will be evolving the game world over time and can’t wait make this one of the greatest mobile RPG adventures out there! We’ll be supporting both of our titles moving forward, sharing events and content between them. However, since progression is tied to exploration in Aethric, your Orna: the GPS RPG progress will not carry over to Aethric.
Our next title will see players explore an in-game world hand crafted by the team at Northern Forge Studios. Those familiar with our first title, Orna: the GPS RPG should expect to find similarities in the combat and gameplay systems but a newfound sense of exploration within the bounds of an in-game world. From climbing the mountains of Jotunheim to exploring the depths of Balor we’re excited for more players to step foot into the lands of Aethric.
To seasoned Travelers who have played in the Ornaverse before, to first timers who are embarking on their first adventure with us, we can’t wait to grow this game alongside you!
– The Northern Forge Team
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Hero of Aethric: An Orna RPG Closed Alpha Begins!
Hey Travelers,
It’s been an exciting summer for Orna: the GPS RPG, with Dragons taking over in August and the introduction to Summoners of Elysium in the Riftfall event this month. We’re set to increase the spook-level in October thanks to the continued respriteification project from our pixel artist Covyn.
Did I mention this will include a new version of the Hallowed event? Get hyped for trick or treat season!
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There’s been so much amazing Orna content that you may have forgotten that we have a new game coming out this year! Our studio would love to share some news about our upcoming title – Hero of Aethric: An Orna RPG…
We’re announcing that the Closed Alpha of our next project will be releasing this coming week. In fact…
Hero of Aethric Closed Alpha access will roll out to Tier 3 Patrons starting Monday, September 19th!
Patreon processing times can lead to a delay of up to 24 hours from the time of signing up to gaining access to the Alpha so please plan accordingly! Here’s a link to our Patreon in case you want to take part in this Alpha period.
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Grab 3 of your best friends and get to exploring!
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We are really excited to get Hero of Aethric into the hands of players and can’t wait to see what you think of our next project. If you are unable to support us at the Tier 3 Patron level, we will be releasing the closed Alpha to Tier 2 Patrons in Mid-October, with a planned Open Beta available to players at a later date. More details on these opportunities are to come!
We can’t wait for travelers to set foot in the lands of Aethric for the first time! We’re looking for feedback on the project so if you haven’t already, make sure to join our Official Discord Channel to take part in the conversation.
Be sure to pre-register for the game on Google Play by following this link! See you in Aethric soon, Traveler.
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A Message to Content Creators
For those of you who are interested in creating content during the Alpha period of Hero of Aethric, we are asking that you keep content within Tier 1 to Tier 5 gameplay (level 1-124). This way we can keep some surprises for players when the game officially launches!
Please note that we would appreciate mentioning that this is an Alpha version of the game within your content. Things will change and get refined on the path to launch but keep in mind there may be some rough edges during this Alpha gameplay reveal.
If you have any additional questions with regards to content creation, please reach out to Purrly on the official Aethric Discord.
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It’s always going to be dangerous out there, take this!
Hey Travelers,
Over the last few years, the world has collectively been figuring out how to exist during a global health crisis. For us at Northern Forge, we knew from early in the pandemic that we had a responsibility to keep our players safe. Since our game is GPS-based and requires players to get outside and experience the game, we knew this meant that we had to offer more for them to do in-game from the safety of their homes.
This led us to the implementation of the buff you see on your Events tab called “It’s Definitely Still Dangerous Out There” – which gives players increased Orns earned and offers reduced Gauntlet cooldowns so that playing from the comfort of your home was made easier.
We’ve watched other games remove their pandemic related changes, and have found it to be unfair. These changes have been the norm for many players; we believe that players should be able to enjoy Orna the way they want to play, and for many players, the removal of the “Dangerous” buff would drastically change the way they’ve come to experience Orna.
We’ve decided that we will be keeping this buff enabled permanently and making it the new normal of Orna.
This means that you will no longer see the buff in the Events tab or on your buff panel but will instead just be merged into the game as the standard experience. We believe that players should be able to enjoy Orna their way and for many, the removal of this buff would drastically change the way they experience Orna. With the addition of Memory Hunts and other upcoming GPS features, we are confident that Orna can keep its identity as a GPS game while also allowing those who cannot or prefer not to move around to enjoy the game as well.
We’ve got a lot of great things coming for our players over the next few months. With Hero of Aethric inching closer to release, a brand-new class line, and the new endgame content: Towers of Olympia, we’re excited to keep growing the Ornaverse alongside you, Traveler.
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Introducing Northern Forge Studios Next Title
Project Eh is on the way
Hey Travelers,
If you’ve been hanging around our Discord or have read our State of the Game blog post, you will know that we have referenced something called Project A for a little while now. We’ve loved the speculation amongst the community on what this project could be and we’re very excited to announce that Project A is in fact our next game titled:
Hero of Aethric: An Orna RPG
Here’s a teaser to show you what we’ve been working on:
Hero of Aethric is a cooperative turn-based RPG where you can explore a new world, face off against powerful foes and loot unique gear to your heart’s content. Hero of Aethric takes place in the same game universe as our previous title, Orna: the GPS RPG. In our new title, players can adventure solo or team up with friends to grind for loot – locating dungeons, bosses and challenging raids along the journey.
In Orna: the GPS RPG, a core gameplay feature was to explore the real world using your phone’s GPS to experience an RPG adventure. While we know you’ve been enjoying the GPS exploration, we’ve also heard that you’d love to be able to explore a world from the comfort of your couch. We always try to offer players an option to play their way, and it was this feedback that served as a catalyst to create a new gameplay experience for a different type of gamer. An exciting part of this development is that this gave us the opportunity to create a game world that would demonstrate the visual distinction between the fiery depths of Balor to the frozen tundra of Lyonesse.
Odie exploring the world of Aethric
Now that we have a full studio of resources behind us, and that both games exist in a shared universe and follow the same initial story path, we intend on developing content for both games simultaneously.
2022 has been a big year for content releases in Orna: the GPS RPG, seeing the new Rise of the Unfelled storyline, Memory Hunts and the Apollyon and Draconian Era themed events. We’re going to be keeping this same momentum going, and we’re developing content so that it can be experienced in both of these titles.
In 2022 our plan is to release:
- Summoner Classline
- New Monthly Events
- Hero of Aethric: Early Access
- New Endgame Content: Tower of Olympia
- Hero of Aethric: Official Release
For a game born of player feedback, we want to remind you that we’re taking this journey with you and will continue to keep ourselves close to the pulse of the community and continually improve our titles.
While we’re not quite ready to give a firm release date on Hero of Aethric, you can expect to be playing it by the end of 2022. We are aiming to release on both Android and iOS, with the potential for additional platforms in the future.
We’re sure you’ve got many questions about our new game, and we will reveal more information in time! Stay tuned to this blog for more news and development updates on all things Northern Forge. You can also join our Discord to keep up with the conversation and catch any teases we put out.
You can also preregister on the Google Play Store today!
As always, our team at Northern Forge wants to thank you for all the support throughout the years. We are excited to take this next step of the adventure with you!
– The Northern Forge Team
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Welcome to the Orna Dev Blog!
Hey Travelers, it’s Purrly here and on behalf of the team at Northern Forge Studios I’d like to welcome you all to the Orna Developer Blog. We plan to use this space to bring you the latest news from the studio, provide you with insights into why/how we change up the game and give a deeper inside look at what goes on at the studio on a daily basis.
So why choose a blog to do this? We know that the beating heart of Orna is our community. We always try to spend some time chatting with you where you like to hang out be that on Discord, Reddit, Twitter, in-game chat, etc. This form of general chit chat with the community isn’t going anywhere as we love getting to know Travelers.
OdieWave
The idea to start a dev blog came from noticing that company communication can be hard to keep track of in its current casual format. We’re finding that we are putting some of the work on our community members who champion our message by pulling up a Discord chat from weeks prior in an attempt to show where our company stands on certain features and even core beliefs on the future of our game.
While I personally love that Travelers are so helpful to one another and so dedicated to what we’re putting out into the world, we feel it would be best to have a central resource for thoughts and plans we as a team have on the development of Orna. This blog will (hopefully) serve as a resource that folks can direct newer players towards for the latest and greatest from Northern Forge and and a place we can talk to all of our audience regardless if they are a Redditor, Discordian or Facebookee. And it won’t always be me chatting away, expect the rest of the team to chime in on development and artwork processes and some fun stuff too.
We have some exciting stuff in the pipeline and while we’re not ready to pull back the curtains on certain projects just yet, we’d love to start things off here with a quick walk down memory lane to talk about what has happened in Orna since the year started – and maybe a sneak peek at what’s to come in the back half of 2022.
State of the Game: 2022
Can you believe we’ve halfway through the year already? Between many balance changes, UI improvements and quality of life fixes, these past 6 months have seen us set the foundation for many new key features that we are able to build on over time.
When thinking about future patches of Orna, we try to marry our vision of what we see for the future of Orna with what the community is most commonly requesting. This led us to build new features to meet three particular goals: new-user experience, massively multiplayer functionality (while retaining our focus on privacy and player protection) and putting a focus back on GPS gameplay.
RISE OF THE UNFELLED STORY REWORK
Recreating the onboarding experience for new players was our chance to iron out some of the rough patches in Orna’s early game. The fellas at the studio draw some inspiration from the design of FromSoft titles. As such – discovery, experimentation and a wee bit of difficulty are a core part of the Orna experience.
Our new storyline offered the chance to inject more personality into the characters and world of Orna, but also gave a new structure to the onboarding of new player and the tutorialization of the game. The new quest and dialogue interface will allow us to implement future content in the form of side quests, allowing us to explain new features more easily from within the game itself. A good example of this came with the addition of Memory Hunts, where we used a new NPC Pythia to add both lore and explanation to a complex new feature.
Everyone’s favourite Oracle
Memory Hunts
Running a GPS empowered game during a global pandemic offered up some unique challenges to the team. Over the past few years, we made playing from home easier in an effort to keep folks safe, adding in increased Orn gain and gauntlet cooldown reductions.
With life (somewhat) returning back to normal, we started to see two types of players in the community. Some were requesting that the pandemic buffs remain, but on the flip side we had users that missed getting outside and playing a GPS focused game.
We made the choice to keep the buffs going, as they do allow for different types of players to enjoy Orna. However, we do fundamentally see Orna as a GPS powered game. This led to the creation of Memory Hunts. We wanted to create a feature that was engaging enough to get players off the couch again. We coupled this with an exciting new equipment slot to make it even more enticing.
We really believe that we can expand on Memory Hunts and Amities in exciting ways and can’t wait to look back and see what these systems look like in a year from now!
Other Realms
Other Realms was a concept that was worked on at the studio for a long time. We are always trying to bring Travelers together in a safe but meaningful way. The emphasis on safe GPS gameplay for us is paramount, so creating systems on the overworld map come with a lot of restrictions as to avoid any territorial fist fights.
Still, Orna is an MMO and we wanted to have a feature that brings players together in a large-scale manner. Other Realms offers players a few things: the opportunity to see players from around the world, the ability to obtain seasonally restricted loot all year long and epic battles with a sprinkle of environmental storytelling.
We’ve had a few beta tests now and we’re hoping to get this up on a regular 15 day rotation as soon as we can, just ironing out some of the final loot distribution snags we’ve faced.
Other Realms is a system that holds so much potential. We can do a lot of interesting things with the system we’ve built and we’re excited to see where we’ll take Travelers next.
Got any (future) stuff? Got any (future) things?
While I’m walking on mighty thin ice in terms of spoiler territory, I’d like to cover what we’ve got on the horizon at Northern Forge in the coming months. You may have seen various teases or mentions of these floating around the interwebs, but here is the official on paper list (which of course is subject to change):
Project A
You may have heard us talking about working on something big on our Discord channel. Let’s just call that Project A for now. More news on this will be coming soon.
July Mechanics Update
With most of our focus set on Project A and the (note: really hype) August content drop, we took this time to shakeup the follower system that hasn’t seen large scale balance updates since things changed with patch 3.0.
Followers will be gaining new skills that aim to bring more variety to which Follower you take along for the journey as players level through tiers.Create a Follower Competition Winner
In addition to the skill shakeup, we’re also adding the winning entries of our Community Contest to the game. We asked our community to create their dream followers and had an overwhelming amount of talent in the submissions. In the end, we couldn’t resist the concept of adding weapons that had been taken over by magical power to come alive, a follower concept that is drastically different from anything we’ve implemented to date.
Completing Purrly’s Nier weapon fantasy
An additional surprise – the winner of the Follower contest will also receive this exclusive sprite! August Content Update
The August content update has me counting down the days. We’ll be teasing out more on this soon but for now I’ll let you in on the special sauce: wicked new artwork by Covyn and a new and interesting way to engage with seasonal content – get hyped.
Summoner Class line
Orna’s nostalgic vibe stems from the classic (J)RPGs of the 80’s/90’s, and it feels like it’s missing something…
The summoner class line is coming!! This one still needs some time in the oven but we’re really excited to bring a new gameplay spin to the later tiers.Orna: Endgame
Just putting this here to note that we hear you on this – endgame players are looking for more to do. This is something we’re taking very seriously at the studio. This will take time as we’re looking to create meaningfully crafted endgame content. We’ll take you along for the journey as always but just know we see you wild-child Tier 11’s and we’re working towards something great in this department.
That about wraps up our first dev blog, hope you’ve enjoyed your stay! We’ll be back every two weeks with one of these posts but for now, happy adventuring!
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Dev Log: Roadmap 2023
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Towers of Olympia: revealing the new endgame system for Orna and Hero of Aethric
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Hero of Aethric: an Orna RPG Release Date Announced
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Hero of Aethric: An Orna RPG Closed Alpha Begins!
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It’s always going to be dangerous out there, take this!
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Introducing Northern Forge Studios Next Title
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Welcome to the Orna Dev Blog!