Results of 2019 and plans for 2020

Several hours ago we saw out 2019 and new 2020 year started, I wish you happy holidays, both finished and upcoming.

We will start with main events of 2019, in order:

- Arena rewards at Wotlk logon are now given for a tournament following each arena season, not for the season itself.
- Black market implemented for Wotlk logon realms.
- Legion 7.3.5 x100 and x4 realms have been merged into 7.3.5 x4.
- Wotlk logon battlegrounds are now cross-factional, this mode can be enabled in menu (.menu), you can also find some more useful settings for your character there.
- Wotlk 3.3.5a x10 and 3.3.5a x100 have been merged into 3.3.5a x100.
- At last we got around with updating website, forum and control panel design.
- In the middle of the year I appointed Vusale as my deputy, that helped me to relieve a bit and advance problem solution on all fronts, I think all the players could assess his impact in project development and numerous problems solution during half of a year.
- Logon control panel features have been also updated. Improving account and operation protection should be specially mentioned, it is nearly impossible to perform anything for a hacker if you use all the protection features.
- We finally launched Cataclysm 4.3.4 x5 fresh realm in the end of a year.

These might be all main global changes that took place during this year and can be categorized as positive, but I will also underline some more ordinary everyday events / changes:

- Wotlk logon realms got 6 major updates, fixing more than 1000 bugs.
- Cataclysm logon realms also got 6 major updates, fixing more than 2500 bugs while preparing to fresh realm launch.
- Legion got 3 major updates, fixing more than 500 bugs.
- General project high online remains the same, some realms lost a bit of players, but cataclysm x5 launch even changed situation for the better if we compare with 18/19 season, this is a catch when other servers have a tendency to lose online annually.
- More than 200 thousand new accounts have been registered at logon and more than 50 thousand at legion.

Now we will pass to some negative moments, that we encountered:

- From the end of May we were under ddos-attack, that last nearly all summer long with small pauses, we covered this news there: https://forum.wowcircle.com/showthre...=1#post6920140. Unfortunately, it took Data Center about a month to secure us somehow and something more or less helpful was ready only after 2 months, as a result - high ping, connection breaks, players encountered these issues to often this summer and though this guilt is slantingly ours, we are responsible for stability and game quality, that was harmed.
- We tried to fix several ancient and difficult Wotlk core bugs and as a result encountered a number of new issues and downward spiral for old bugs. Everything was fixed till autumn, but it brought much negative, but without this it was nearly impossible to fix those bugs.
- Cataclysm x5 launch has been marred by problems with stability, unfortunately, most bugs leading to crashes could not be fixed in advance, because they occured only under heavy load. Situation has been stabilized only two weeks later, I am sure, if it weren't for these bugs, we could easily reach a point of 10000 players at start. Even though problematic launch players did not lose interest much and a month later more than 7000 players spend their evenings on a realm.

Thank you for your patience and understanding of the above-described and other bugs, that you encountered during this year while playing on our servers.

Plans for 2020 are rather global, I mentioned some of them in latest interview, but I will make a list of main, in order:

- We will continue working with bug fixes for all available encounters, we will try to gather momentum as much as possible, but without compromising fixes quality.
- Besides fixing bugs we will continue working with custom fixes, to increase players interest, for example rated battledgrounds for Wotlk, Naxxramas or Sunwell analogue, but with interesting loot and achievements, and more from your propositions.
- We are also proceeding with control panel innovations, we plan to add numerous features, that you asked for.
- In the end of winter we plan to launch low rate 5.4.8 MoP realm with PandaWoW (on their side), wait for soon announce.
- If everything goes fine, we will launch latest actual version of BFA realm in spring-summer.
- Low rate Wotlk realm launch is planned for the end of this year, I can not give details, but it will be something new and fresh, like there has been nothing like this in CIS for many years. We already started preparations for opening this realm, we will bring pve content to ideal state, starting from low level without decreasing work with actual content, new developers that joined us during 2019 will help us succeed.

These are all plans for the nearest year, we can add something, of any importance, but I will not mention it now.