9Lives Arena Development Update
January 2022
2021 Recap
Closed Alpha version 0.6d was successfully completed in early 2021. Big shoutout to all the active closed alpha players, you guys are the backbone of our community and have helped shape and balance the core game loop of 9Lives Arena. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive throughout the entire closed alpha period and we have seen some impressive dedication and persistence amongst the player base to unlock every last secret, achievement and Easter egg. Over 2 million Fish have been caught, almost 100K arena duels have been fought, 15,000 Ooogies found a new home and the average playtime per player was a stunning 104h 47min. This is exceptional for a closed alpha where all progress is to be lost and reset (except Ooogy levels).
Scalability
In 2021 our development focus for the majority of the year was the scalability of the game. The closed alpha could not handle much more then 40 players at peak times. We are proud to announce that we were accepted into Canada’s Center of Excellency CENGN. The Next Generation Network Program (NGNP) which allowed us to do intense player simulations and network tests on their specialized infrastructure identifying all remaining bottlenecks and rework, rebuild and bug fix all the issues that were limiting us.
We successfully completed the CENGN tests in November 2021 with a backend that allows us to handle 100K users simultaneously. Moving forward we also have a plan of action to be able to boost this number to 1 million+ within the next 12 months based on the identified bottlenecks beyond 100K players.
What’s next?
We have big plans not only for the release of 9Lives Arena but also for the My Ooogy mobile app as well as a bunch of post launch content that we have already started work on in early 2021.
My Ooogy App
We are aiming to launch the first iteration of the My Ooogy mobile App towards the end of 2023.
Farming
It is key to have a roadmap with constant content updates post launch for any successful online game. 2v2 and 3v3 game modes will get introduced post launch between the seasons. Another popular feature that has been in the works for quite some time will be farming.
Spirit Warrior Hunting Grounds
We do not want to give away too many spoilers but we have been secretly working on the Spirit Warrior Hunting Grounds for 12 months and it will be the first major expansion of 9LA post launch. This one is so huge and complex we look forward to sharing more later.
This place is so vast — prepare to saddle up on your own unique mounts.
As you can hopefully tell by now, we have been quite busy throughout the last year. Now that we are about to grow — the sky is not even the limit!
Oh wait there is more…
9LA Avatars
9LA Avatars are coming to a marketplace near you soon… these are not just great looking Avatars you can use as your social media profile picture. These are actually tradable in-game achievement trackers that will level up through your progression in 9LA. These unlock unique in-game features like new playable races and more… Some will drop in a QR code so keep your eyes open and follow us on twitter!
Wait, there’s more…
9LA Bull Token
We decided to reward all those early adopters who have spent over 10K US$ in our store with this unique NFT. Anyone that has one of these in their wallet will receive super rare annual rewards. These can still be acquired by anyone who spends over 10k US$ in our store. The total supply will be limited to 99 to guarantee that the reward items will remain rare. These will drop to the first 11 9LA Bulls during Q1 this year. Anyone holding one of these will also be able to join the exclusive 9LA Bulls chat on telegram.
The Road to Open Alpha in 2022
- Hiring, Hiring, hiring
- Localization into different languages
- Auto Patcher
- Account services
- In-game store integration
- Arena matchmaking
- Bug testing
- In-game Chat rework
Summary
2022 is all about growth and the release of our open Alpha simultaneously across all regions. In parallel we are very engaged in building post launch content already to guarantee 9LA will have a strong flow of additional content post official release. Besides a bunch of smaller future updates we are already developing 9LAs first massive extension called ‘The Spirit Warrior Hunting Grounds’ which has been in development for 12 months now.
Oh and I almost forgot, we will airdrop another in-game achievement tracker during 2022!
The heart of the Warrior
As many of you know, death in 9LA is just the beginning and not the end. Yet dying is part of the permadeath progression loop around spirits, immortals and black phantoms. ‘The Heart of the Warrior” will specifically track your dedication in the ranked arenas and will level up through each of your permadeaths! Certain levels of the heart will unlock rare in-game customizations. Some of these Hearts will airdrop, some will be for sale on NFT.io and some will be a rare drop in the ranked arenas!
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