2021 Year-in-Review & What's Coming Next

[Lation 942]

NOTE: This is a copy & paste of an email that was sent to all members, but I wanted to make a public copy for all to read & comment on here. Let me know your thoughts!

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2021 Year-in-Review

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to each and every one of you. I would like to start with this; I know emails can come off very impersonal but it's very personal to me. I know a lot of you that read this on a personal level. I've spoken to many of you one way or the other. Either through Discord, the forums or in-game. When I am writing this email, I'm writing this to you directly, each and every person individually. Ely is very personal to me and each member of this community is a friend of mine. With that said, I want to re-cap what Ely has done, accomplished & failed on this year. As well as discuss our plans moving forward into the new year. This has been Ely's 4th year since going online (officially 4 years in February/March 2022 actually) and that is a huge milestone for me/us.

When I launched Ely in February 2018 I did not imagine at the end of 2021 I would be here writing an email to thousands of members recapping the year and how far we've come, it's crazy to me. I got you to thank for that, so thank you. Ely has become an absolute staple in RSPS when it comes to this revision. We've set the bar for this revision for time to come, and that's amazing. Let's get started with some miscellaneous statistics from Ely for the year 2021. Each of these stats below are for this past year only, not lifetime stats.

Pretty insane, right? You guys knocked it out of the park. Over a quarter million visits to our website, over half a million times Ely appeared in Google search results, over 2.8 million drops were picked up from drops and over $100,000 were received from purchases. Absolute insanity, like I said - you guys knocked it out of the park this year. Also, 99 punishments issued? I guess I maxed my "Moderating" skill, finally. If you enjoyed statistics like this, let me know! For our 4-year anniversary I plan to post lifetime statistics from Ely & much more than what you see here.

Up next, updates. This past year we introduced some of the largest, most incredible updates to the server we've ever done. Get your reading glasses on & let's recap.

We started the year on January 6th with our introduction of the full Wiki available in-game with it's own dedicated tab. Players were now able to search drops, NPC stats, Clue Scroll tips, Grand Exchange offers and more while on the move. We followed that up with the ability to craft Armadyl Runes, increased cannon capacity via Slayer Rewards & a slew of bug fixes. Next up was the highly request bank overhaul, resulting in doubling the amount of bank storage players were able to hold as well as a bunch of miscellaneous sorting & withdrawing features. Next, we finally finished moving over the referral system to the new forums with another batch of bug fixes resolved. Following this we came out swinging new Discord commands, Vote Parties & Player Examine features - in this update we also reduced the amount of money required to start the Well of Goodwill. We instantly followed this update with another banger - the Achievement Diary with over 1,200+ achievements & a Summoning overhaul. This was also the month Splash completed our custom-made Cerberus set that was uber popular. Next up was an update that introduced the new quest "Camel's Boy" by Winter with the herblore-assisting NPC "Zahur" that changed the way that skill was trained forever, as well as another batch of bug fixes and more. As if we didn't have enough bangers yet, the following update was a more fully featured Runelite client, featuring countless quality of life updates, the first 718 ever to do it. After all these bangers, we pulled back and focused on the back-end of Ely. Stabilizing our client and performing efficiency updates silently. Then we came back swinging with 3 consecutive updates featuring nothing but bug fixes as we focused on stability and overall smoothing game play for everyone. When it was time for the next update we came out with a complete Farming rework as well as tons more bugs fixed (resulting in 17 pages worth of bug reports completed at this point). We followed this up with another massive list of fixes as well as a bunch of quality of life updates and changes. Then wouldn't you know it - we came out with yet another banger - the Upgrade Chest. The ability to sacrifice gear & items in exchange for gems to upgrade your existing gear & make it 10% stronger. This update also included the "Beginner's Amulet" which auto-upgrades new players gear from Iron to Rune while they train. Next up was yet another massive list of fixes, adjustments & the introduction of the Fire Max cape & Team capes. Also included in this update was the massive client update that allows players to now customize their own draw distance & better zooming! The following update was again, more bug fixes and also going back & adding disassembly options to all overrides. We came out swinging with another banger that included completely overhauling all our NPC's & the Magic skill and spellbooks. This update made Ely act & feel much more accurate than it did previously. Following this we released another highly requested update; Daily Challenges. Every day players now get assigned random tasks that are based off their account progress and a new shop to spend points earned in. The last two updates of the year were; more bug fixes of course & then "Perks" were introduced. This is the ability to purchase individual donor benefits (such as access to ;;Bank command) for a limited time without donating to reach the specific rank required for that benefit.

As you can see, we stayed very busy this year. We posted a total of 20 patch notes which averages out to 1.6 updates per month. Ely is now in a state that is leaps & bounds ahead of any competing server in our revision. That begs the question then, what's next? Let me tell you.

In the background we've recently began development on a web client. We even hired a dedicated developer for this. Why a web client, right? That's so 2012. Not quite. One of the most prevalent issues we've had over the years with Ely is client related. While we've largely eliminated most of these issues, some still persist. There a few barriers we must cross to on-board a player. One of the toughest is of course, discovery. The next issue is then getting them to download our client. Many people are skeptical of what they download on their PC, especially in RSPS. Then we have to hope they experience no trouble booting up our client. Often times when a player downloads Ely and experiences trouble, they just delete the client and move on. This is where a web client can resolve much of this. They find Ely and learn they don't have to download anything. They can load it right in their browser and give it a try before committing to it. Thus also eliminating any issues they may experience trying to load it from their PC. I've included a picture of a very early version still very much in development, web client I loaded on my iPhone. Yes, my iOS device.

Yes, that is a picture of me playing Ely on an iPhone. This client has incredible potential, but we are months from release yet. I just wanted to showcase the potential this web client has.

What else? Many of you may be aware we have spent a significant amount of time trying to get Chambers of Xeric to you. This is still very much in development, but due to it being such a large piece of content it takes a lot of time and resources. This is not something we can willy-nilly whip together, because no one would want to play a terrible CoX. We are making this as accurate as possible and bringing in many people who have a deep understanding & lots of experience doing CoX. With their help, we hope to make this as accurate as we can. It will take time, but we've already made incredible process & already have a version much more accurate to OSRS than most servers today. Couple months back we posted a progress / Development Blog update regarding this project, so if you would like to learn more and see some images of CoX in Ely, click here.

On top of all the above, we have much more on our roadmap. We truly hope you'll be here to experience it all with us, because without you none of this is possible. Every player matters, every vote counts, every dollar makes a difference. You are the reason we are here almost 4 years later making incredible progress & seeing incredible numbers. If your already an active player, thank you so much. If you've played in the past & haven't been online recently - come visit us! I love seeing older players come online even just to say hey. With that said, thank you again. Seriously, what a year it has been. Next year is right around the corner and together we can crush even this year's records. LFG.

[GIM Opoxi 31]

It brings a tear to my eye

[Jake 141]

Thankyou so much everyone for creating a community of absolute legends! Bring on 2022, stronger and better for ELY

[Chimpamzee 86]

 

Chimpanzee spawning 900,000 cows in lumbridge event:

 

 

 

 

[fm das 114]

Hell yeah guys! Can't wait to see next years stats 

[X E N O 26]

What a year it has been! I’m proud to say I was part of this AWESOME community/E-Family!

Thanks again for countless hours of fun and engagement to the whole community! Ely is and will always be a part of me! I just love it, I can’t help it! 
Those are some great statistics and I wish we can crank this up next year.. cause tbh, those are just rookie numbers  

 

With that said, here’s to this year and many more to come!

 

Merry Christmas and happy new year!!

much love ,

Pearleem