Hear ye, Hear ye!

A cloud of dust blinds me, workers hold drills… With all the construction work, my arrival at Ankama wasn’t very relaxing. But I’ve finally gotten here, to the land of Tofus. And even those loud noises in the walls and the capricious air conditioner will not kill my motivation!

But let’s get back to our business. Let me introduce myself. I’m Glacialena and I’m in charge of the french Wakfu community, and part of my job is to form a connection between the players and the developers. I will pamper you, answer your questions and torture Tanuki-Sempai so that he reveals all the new content of Wakfu!

I hope to see you very soon on the forums!

We’ve decided to give you a little glimpse into what goes on day to day here at Ankama… for your eyes only!

8 am, arrival at Ankama:
BAM BAM BAM ... Bzzzzzzzzzzzz ... Klung Klang ...
Venom: Hey, they are working already? Do these guys ever sleep...?

10 am, in the middle of reviewing some details of the ecosystem:
BAM BAM BAM ... Bzzzzzzzzzzzz ... Klung Klang ...
Venom: What’s that huge black thing on the window, it looks like… Yeurk.
BOUM ... BOUM
Tanuki: It’s Godzilla, run!!! …

1 pm, after a nice little meal:
[…]
Venom: **Burp** Ahhhh finally some peace, they must have gone for lunch.
BAM BAM BAM ... Bzzzzzzzzzzzz ... Klung Klang.....
Venom: Ah noooooooooo! **pulls out his hair**

3.30 pm, coffee break at our little terrace:
BAM BAM BAM ... Bzzzzzzzzzzzz ... Klung Klang ...
Venom: Ahhh it’s horrible, what’s that noise? (koff... koff...)
Rumo: Hey guys, I just invented chewy coffee!
Venom: What? ... Where are you? ...

Recipe: Chewy coffee
•A little cup of hot coffee just out of the machine
• A construction site full of dust
• Mix it… and it’s ready!

Yep, soon we’ll have a clean, renovated building… but until then, we have to put up with all the construction work!

It was a source of incredible surprise, and then of crazy bets: which will be the next god to arise?

Around the whole world, the fervor has awoken; the belief in these ancient gods is finally paying off! From mouth to ear, from ear to cabbage leave, the message has been passed on to the depths of the regions under construction in the world of Wakfu: “The gods are back, the gods are listening to you!”

Yes, the last dozing gods have returned, Pandawa, Ecaflip, Enutrof… and Sadida, the only god whose sleep didn’t worry anybody.
In a post cataclysmic universe dominated by beliefs based on Ogrest’s fear, the return of the 12 seems to have changed everything. Is a semblance of harmony possible once more?

Each god is a possibility in itself, a possible future, hope, a lifestyle, a moral, each one with his subtleties, his deviations, his conflicts, his doubts.

I cannot imagine how the past world, reigned by the sole fear of imminent ruin (Ogrest and his symbolic representation), can become one with hopes and, most of all, oppositions?
We are surely experiencing a revolution as important as that of the great downpour. All the most powerful means are formal; Wakfu is so gravely disturbed that a new catastrophe could arrive at any moment!

This is of course only a personal interpretation, but don’t you think that if we fail to organize ourselves soon, we’ll soon experience the insanity of men drunk of gods?

Patch 0.77 brought us the last gods, but many other new gifts too:

-A global map of the world
-A new interface
-Arrival of the Skin Tanning profession
-New craft recipes
-A new drop system
-Combat bonus for quick players

That’s all for now, I’m going to continue meditating on the future of this world…

We’ve been worried for a few days now… Aduline has disappeared and her last message wasn’t very reassuring! We’ve searched everywhere: the BowMeow boxes in the stockroom upstairs, between the pages of the 128 732 DOFUS Mangas, in Daryl’s notes, that he doesn’t really control… yeah, there is Wakfu in there, or Stasis, I’m not really sure, but one thing is certain, it has some kind of intelligence!

*moment of deep thought*

Ohhh! But of course! There’s one place left to search! It’s cold, humid, dark, filled with strange odours, it somehow looks like a holiday camp for Chafers! This cursed place, it’s the basement! The -1 floor of Ankama’s dungeon! Only a small few have come back to report what really happens down there. Others even pretend that Ogrest takes his nap between these empty walls every once in a while… Yes, this place is mysterious, and if this is where Aduline has disappeared, we’ll need a lot of courage to go look for her!

*Note: ask one of the new interns to explore the -1*

The weird thing about this story is that at Polymanga (Swiss japanime convention), we discovered that Aduline disappeared the very same day that the SRAMS appeared! SRAMS everywhere! Did they foresee this? The basement will tell us!

But what about my part in all this? Was it a mistake to run through the Astrub plains and tell everyone who would listen that they must pray to the gods? Was it the prayer of a vile servant of SRAM that triggered their reappearance?

Do we have the power to bring back the gods? If that’s the case, by what means?! And is there still hope that a huge number of mighty souls can come back to our world through Incarnam?

Anyhow, one thing is sure: the SRAMS have arrived!

Let’s go mushrooming for mushrooms…

… or not.

In any case, mushrooming is one of the skills that we are adding to the game at the moment. This meticulous task includes placing resources, adding recipes, designing machines, drawing items… so we end up with something coherent and interesting.



Right now, version 0.72 is finished! We are still doing intensive testing, while new content is being added… By the way, I found some notes on Jean DeLano’s desk… It seems as if this mysterious character has his informants, who give him juicy details on the updates of the patches… let’s see:

-You can now repair your equipment with a forge
-Professions now have 300 levels
-The economies of ingredients during the crafts are working
-Monsters no longer commit suicide at the edge of the sphere of combat
-Appearance of … wait… what’s that noise?

Who’s there? Hey! Who… aaaarrrrrgh!! ...

Curtain up – Ogrest cracks the head of a champion against the wall of a citadel, he grunts. Before him, an army of mercenaries trembles, their hair fluttering in the breath of this mythical throat… A horn sounds. High upon his rock, Ogrest bellows and the few survivors who remain run off screaming in terror, across the broad plain, into the forest, the sea and the waiting ships. Satisfied, the ogre descends from his rocky perch and lurches towards the yellow mass of a wounded Tofu. He takes the animal in his great, pitted fist, this little yellow ball, and his eyelids quiver.
Ogrest cries.

*

A black Eca laughs, squints towards the sun. Placing a hand on my shoulder, she says, “if you seek to understand Ogrest, you must first come to know something of his heart.”

*

Exhausted – panting
Sweat upon my brow.
Shadow.



Where am I? I am in Ankama’s toilets. A high ceiling, and a mirror which doubles the sense of space. I hear the dogs bay in the hallway, my Chapka was given to them to sniff on, they weren’t long tearing it to pieces. I lock myself away in the third cubicle, I know there’s a hideout, behind the cistern, a square of PVC left loose by the workers. I slide in with my laptop, my Activebook and my torch. In the guts, the intestines of Ankama, I go on crawling, looking for a place where I can wedge myself into a corner and concentrate for a while. The entire building shook as though it was growing. I am buried. After the last post on Stasis, my situation has changed. I know they want to get rid of me. I’m too much trouble. I have this note in my shirt pocket, written on a paper tissue during my last dinner with Tot at the Portuguese place: Stasis only exists in the heart of Ogrest.



I have never felt such a strange sensation of mingled terror and joy. Yes, I was wrong. They were wrong. What does it matter now? To stop me revealing the true nature of Stasis, they told me a few fairytales, gave me broken files or mould-pocked archives ruined with time and damp down in the cellar of the factory. I had been reading forged report books all along! Traitors! ‘Read it,’ they said, ‘do what you want with it.’ Faced with this mountain of paper, what else could I do? I threw myself into a void I could never broach; I believed I could hold the truth of the cosmos in a human grasp. But truth does not exist, those who lead us to believe in objectivity want us to swallow their vision of things – and me too, I was becoming like them, unable to let silence speak. All must change, all is shifting always. The very elements which we take to be many are but one. Always dividing, we arrive nowhere. All must unite.



I think of Ogrest, of this terrible demon I knew from legend. The myths of the beast’s gratuitous cruelty had long been whispered down. I think of the woeful burden he must carry, of all that suffering expressed in his clumsiness – why would I not believe that Ogrest was the destroyer of whom everyone is terrified? He cries, and by crying, he ruins the World. And yet, he’s not manic-depressive, he’s not a dishcloth, he thinks and doubts, tossed from within by jolting emotions – like all that lives, Ogrest sometimes crumbles. If the choice were given him, should he let the world perish? I picture him upon his rock, I can get so close, I can almost stroke his shabby coat after so many hours of fighting. If Ogrest is sitting on the Zenith of Wakfu, after the power brought by the six primordial Dofus, and he changes the world, our world, why would he not change the cosmos, its energies, its structure? I was so pretentious to believe that one could conceive of a cosmic system without taking its point of fixation, its anchor point, into account. I did not realize to what point that aspect is important, despite the brutality, the monstrosity and the radical nature of the beast… That’s where the true order of the universe is to be found, and around this, the cosmos are structured. It is in his injured, bruised heart that the key resides.

(Thanks to Crounch for the drawings!!!)

This morning, after weeks of sleeplessness, Tanuki finally cracked. He drifted into an uneasy sleep beneath his desk and I heard him murmuring something about an “Emissary” whose arrival he would await like that of the Messiah. He grumbled incoherently about the Stasis that would be nothing like what we expected. I must talk to Daryl about it… once he stops hiding behind his Christmas plant.

Fortunately we were well stocked with provisions. Pauline is rationing the caviar and guacamole with an iron fist.

What’s the weather like. Well, the last I heard it was snowing, but here we are warm, and we have plenty of hot tea. I can hear Jean-Marc and Alex discussing the look of the new maps which they are creating as we speak, and the latest shots of the landscapes sent by the artists. Alex casts an absent eye over the tiled expanses… “The shots for this zone are badly drawn… » A nervous breakdown is looming for him also.

As for me, I’m fresh out of Gobball sausages, so I’m gonna get stuck into the Tiramisu or the leftover Christmas pudding. It helps me see clear through the fog of the professions interfaces.

But I forgot the most important part. If someone from the outside world is reading this, I just want to wish you a great New Year 2008… the year of Wakfu, and a leap year too, which means we’ve a better chance of catching up on all the stuff we’ve let slide. It’s gonna be a good one ;)

Take it easy!

Surprise your friends and parents with a Kwismas dessert that really rocks: the Gobball Sausage!


Ingredients for 1 chocolate Gobball Sausage:

30 Ladyfinger biscuits
30 whole walnuts
4 table spoons of cocoa (without sugar)
100g soft butter (very soft)
6 table spoons of milk
icing sugar



Preparation:

Turn the biscuits in a rough powder by crushing them. Add the cocoa and walnuts in small chunks.
Mix and add butter (softened for the pros, molten for the less skilled) and milk.
Knead the dough well to obtain a homogeneous mix.
Shape the dough into a sausage, wrap in tinfoil and leave overnight in the fridge.
The next day, sprinkle with icing sugar and spread it well with a clean finger.
Draw a sausage tag, print and stick it on. Et voilà, a fine dessert for gourmets!


Curiously among my colleagues, nobody wants to taste them... bunch of Bworks!
Anyway that won't stop us wishing you all a merry Kwismas :)



Note to Fibojo: Thanks for your help with the translation.

Just a word, briefly, from the edge of my desk, covered in paper, diagrams and the husks of water bottles: Stasis, this stranger. Take some aspirin, it's not obvious (we'll get to the myths concerning stasis in a future post).
In the very beginning, then, there was this strange notion of moving transparency, which some slow minds took for ice - of course, on a purely visual level, a stasis effect could seize the retina and imprint on it the memory of a translucent glass. However - we know now that the Wakfu represent the sum total of energies of the universe, whether they are kept within the confines of our material plane (the elemental energies) or left to roam freely throughout the celestial layers (the cosmic energies). There are eight energies in total, four on each side of the wakfu - allow me to use this simple analogy of a two dimensional space where a left and a right exist. According to my information, given to me by a former disciple of Fullcanelli converted to Shintoism since, the cosmic vibrations are bound to subtraction, and the elemental sounds are linked to addition. Which would mean that, on either side, we subtract (we destroy), and on the other hand we add (we create). The principle of the universe, the line of wakfu, is this perfect synthesis to balance a finite universe (an egg, as I've already explained in my paper on the great cosmic omelette). The wakfu is therefore composed of an equal number of creation and destruction.




Our subject is Stasis, the archetypal cosmic energy, a destructive principle. But destroyer of what?
This is where the theories on a cosmic energy of ice collapse. Ice is simply frozen water. Without water, no ice (although one could argue that cosmic assemblers could carry out energy conversions whose residue could be, yes, why not, ice). I have been able to observe, on the forum, some very interesting things (you can in fact consult it _here_), but the truth seems much more complex.
Stasis is an energy amongst others, and what it destroys is space. One might refer, why not, to an essence, which would allow us to bend space, but it isn't a distilled product, or a process. It's a concept, which inevitably escapes the idea that we, mere humans, might have of the principle of cosmic motion. Because indeed, the cosmos moves. At the human scale, we cannot even conceive how an infinite mass, this vast shapeless unknown, in which resides the Cosmic Egg of our universe and that we call the Sea of Oblivion, how all this could budge, move, and shift. It's subtle, it's celestial, it's beyond us and we will never know. And yet, today, all our instruments shout to us: dark matter exists, the world around us, which we think empty, is in fact full.



So then, Stasis would be an expression of this movement.
A celestial body which is moving seems not to move, and it's from this phenomenon that we obtain the origin of the term Stasis. Movement without motion.
The applications of Stasis in the material world have always had phenomenal consequences: maintaining somebody in suspended animation, slowing, accelerating reality, putting it on pause. Xelors make great use of Stasis when exercising their time spells: they use it as a means to interact with elemental domains, restoring the states of things to preceding or later states. All this is very technical, in truth, and this is why we must consider Stasis as an extremely dangerous tool. Displacing void can create holes, rip apart the so thin membrane that lines the inner shell of the Egg, the wall between the material and ethereal planes, this buffer membrane that separates us from the astral void. But when correctly used, this destruction of space (one step after another, the motion "digests" the distance that separates us from our target) is an efficient mean of preserving those perfect moments, much like reality snapshots, which we could manipulate at will. It isn’t inconceivable at all to imagine that, once, a long time ago, when Xelor's Clock was built out of Stasis, this energy allowed time itself to stop flowing, creating an endless instant between the creation of the world and that of the vulgar, human dimension of time. This period where the mysteries of the Wakfu are formed, protected by a veil of invisible motion.

Note to Fibojo: Thanks for your help with the translation.

We’re back from the Chibi Japan Expo! We’re getting over the tiredness from the expo and the effort put into the Wakfu demonstration (I’ve decided to cancel the foot amputation). Despite having had to improvise from time to time, we’re delighted with the reception the game is getting so far. Visitors were enthusiastic and impatient to learn more, and questions rained down upon the 12 booths we made available.

The features we sketched out, such as the new drop system, trades and the dimensional bag intrigued more than one of them, but since all of that is yet to be finished, we’ll talk about it later. All will be explained here very soon… that’s a promise!

Especially since the closed Beta is looming on the horizon... ;)

Watch this space!