Product Manager Letter November 2024

From this post on RoM Forums by Zenitsusan.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the colder season, marking the inevitable end of the year 2024, and having us glide (slither?) gently into a new year of 2025 (the year of the snake!).
It has been a while since I last voiced my thoughts about the future, but that doesn’t mean things haven’t been happening in the meantime. I still ‘exist’ to give you some background for past changes, and some insights into the next steps.
One last preambly note – I’m writing this before going on a longer trip abroad for work, and on the night after learning the results of multiple election outcomes at home and in the world. Sooo stay with me should my wording be more out of the norm and whimsical… vacation-trip-brain has half taken over already! 😊
==What has happened since February?==
Okay, going to keep this short, too many months have passed!
===Timeless Instance II===
Our target was to release this for RoM’s 15th anniversary. Revamping instances is harder than it might seem, and balancing, functionality and suchlike is important to get reasonably close to “right”.
So while we took a bit longer, the changes we did envision to go alongside it were done successfully (Peak Level requirements), including the updated Peak Level EXP thresholds.
We’re happy with the outcome overall, and hope you’ve been able to enjoy it a lot since the release!
See: 
==(No longer) Public World Bosses==
This topic unfortunately was much more complex than expected, and we went through too many iterations both internally on design (finding out what our technical possibilities were…) as well as on the live servers having to adjust balancing & reward structure.
We should be in a stable state now, and while it’s not the solution we initially wanted to go with, it should at least help with the previously bigger client crashing issues due to having way too many people on the same channel.
See Public World Bosses
==Many improvements in the background==
Ever since the above two – which took a lot out of us and delayed quite a bit of stuff overall to get right – we’ve also been working on many other improvements currently stuck in a “getting ready” phase. Lemme give you an update on that!
==Is there more to come in 2024?==
The following is all tentatively planned for a release with the Snowflake Festival in early December.
===New Player Experience===
Starting us off with this, my very first experience with taking over responsibility on RoM in 2022 was going back to leveling a new character from scratch… and I can tell you this much, I don’t have as much time as back in my old Chapter II times anymore ☹
Times have changed quite a bit in the gaming & MMO space since I first started RoM in 2012, and we want to spruce up the first steps for existing, returning and new players in Runes of Magic – so we’ve updated the leveling experience from level 1 to 50+ quite drastically.
But don’t worry, fans of the original experience won’t lose any of the zones or quests you’ve learned to love. Instead, we’ve opted to allow every new character to choose between “existing experience” and “3rd class experience” right off the bat.
This means that, after this goes live, a brand-new character can choose to level at super speed, with some updated items to help you out along the way.
==3 New Mirror Worlds==
Just a short note here – we know there are some Cenedrils missing, and while this isn’t new “high-level content” for existing players to enjoy, we want to close the gap and/or finish the holy trinity duodecimity (Twelve...? I did warn you about my state of mind).
So a heads-up about that, and maybe let us know if – somewhere waaaay down the line – you’d be interested in us making “endgame level” Mirror Worlds & fitting Cenedrils to experience? It’s an idea we’ve been playing around with for future content – now’s your chance to give us your opinion!
==Class Balancing==
As promised last time, we’ve gone back and reviewed our stance and possibilities regarding class balancing and will apply a big batch of changes. I stand by my statement that this is very finicky work for us, and we don’t wish to impact your familiar playing styles too much or too often... so don’t expect this to be an often-recurring occurrence.
However, do let us know how you feel about these once they’re out. Have we hit the nail on the head? Or have we introduced new headaches to deal with? Small fixes to what we’ve done (or reverting things) aren’t out of the question, obviously.
==And 2025?==
While I’m sure you’d like me to be more concrete at this point, I’ve learned my lesson about being too specific. It’s like a curse – you name a date or timeframe, and you can be sure to miss it! So I’ll avoid the ‘jinx’ and instead give you an overview of topics currently on our minds:
*Timeless Instance III – 
*Potentially high-level Mirror Worlds
*Potentially a new “non-public” World Boss
*Additional tweaks to leveling (low or Peak, tbd)
*More currency store updates
*Other playable content ideas
It’s not going to get boring on our end anytime soon, and we hope that you’re looking forward to the rest of our plans for 2024 – as well as forwards into 2025!
I’ll already take this opportunity to wish you all a merry festive season, and a good transition into 2025. I doubt we’ll find enough news over the next few weeks to warrant another such letter before the new year.
Patrick out (on vacation)