The New Horse Races

They’re back! The horse-races have been re-vamped to accommodate the new mount system, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that these will be around for a long time. I know you’ve probably noticed the long absence of the Festival Run quests since some unexpected bugs we encountered during the Spring Festival. That was when we cried uncle on that particular setup, and decided that we needed to think about these quests in a different way altogether.

The biggest problem with the old quests was unfortunately ingrained in the nature of the gameplay – our multi-player setup did not have the capacity to give proper feedback to the individual gamer’s experience. I know I experienced this a number of times, and you may have too: it looked like you were winning, and you were positive you were strides ahead of the other three players against whom you were racing, but the broadcast called out a different winner, and you failed the Festival Run. Then you probably felt rage, and hated us, and cursed our name. This happened because the client-to-server-to-client feedback had just enough of a lag to enable you to see a different race than what was actually happening in real time. Because of this, we collectively decided not to turn them on again until we could give the player a legitimate racing experience. As fun as they were, we strongly felt that these races were essentially broken, and there was no way to fix them.

Our solution has been to reintroduce them as a solo experience. This is a far more reliable system that has proven its worth in the level 35 quest to obtain the riding trait. My greatest challenge, however, was to balance the inherent frustration of an obstacle course with FUN. It is still a festival, after all, and we want you to have fun.

The tricky racetracks have been jazzed up by the World Team with a number of more elegant obstructions, hurdles, and barriers to better channel the flow of the race. Players who successfully navigate the course will enjoy speed boosts to help them along the way, while an unfortunate misstep will trip up your horse or pony with some sticky mud. But even accident-prone players will have a shot at the finish line, if luck is on their side. With a combination of luck, skill, and inevitable practice, we hope to see many people enjoying the special Yule steeds as a reward for their hard work.