13 classes and 39 specs, 8 questing zones, 14 dungeons, 5 raids with 20 bosses, 8 world bosses, 5 ships at sea and 73 achievements. Here is everything, in the order a guild meets it.
Found a guild with nothing, and build it into one that clears the final raid.
Found a guild with nothing, recruit a few level-1 hopefuls and watch them level in the open world. Then pick five and lead them through a dungeon, pull by pull, until the raid opens and you pick twenty.
Every day opens with a briefing in three steps: staff the bounty board, post the message of the day, then read the day ahead.
Nobody plays all day. Each player plays about 4 to 8 hours a day, logging in at their own time, and only works while online.
The roster holds 5 at guild level 1 and grows with guild level (22 when the raid opens), and there are always more applicants than spots.
Automated players with skill, personality and needs. You keep them happy enough not to quit.
The classic eight play as Vanguards, Zealots, Grovetenders, Penitents, Earthwardens, Chronomancers, Swashbucklers and Beastwardens, next to classes of the game’s own: the Necromancer, the Bard, the Tinker, the Hexer and, once the guild has sailed, the Corsair.
Every spec has its own resource, a generator, a spender and an ultimate, with three versions of each, so two players of the same spec play differently.
Nine races, each with a racial (Dwarf Stoneskin, Gnome Slippery, Troll Juju Rush...), three genders, 25 personality traits and around 200 names.
Drops go straight onto whoever they upgrade most. In a raid, the loot council is yours, and it makes or breaks morale.
Guild ranks follow seniority and level, with limited seats at the top. A dungeon the group outgears by 5+ item levels can go to an officer instead.
A recruitment board fed by renown, a guild hall you upgrade, crafting from components, narrative events and a guild chat that talks back.
Aetheria: a mainland, the islands off its coast, and the Corsair Reaches beyond it.
Six mainland questing zones, each for its own level range from 1–6 up to 26–30, and two island zones that overlap them, so levelling branches.
Ferries sail the sea lanes from the Highcrest Docks out to the islands off the coast, each lane with its own ship and its hours at sea. The crossings take real time out of a session, and island quests pay 30% more XP for it.
An ocean of its own, on its own chart, reached only by the guild’s ship from Saltmarrow harbour. Charts, supplies, fog to clear, islands to land on, ports to trade in and ships to fight.
The server’s rare spawns, forty players at a time. Every one of them has a fan wiki with a timer.
Four contested zones (Ashfen, Saltwind, Frostspire, Stormreach) where guilds meet in the open.
Every dungeon pull and raid boss is a live, positional 2D combat simulation. Players are not perfect.
Telegraphs, projectiles to dodge, beams, donuts, soaks that punish too few soakers, marks that drop a burning pool where they leave it, adds, tank swaps and phases, in a themed room.
Spread and stack, frontal cones aimed at a random player, interrupt rotations, intermissions, hard and soft enrages, and a lot more.
For each boss and dungeon, tell the group how to play it. Then make live calls mid-pull: War Drums now, spread out, defensives, potions.
Tanks make three times the threat and open each pull; healing makes threat too. You pull aggro at 110% of the holder’s threat in melee, 130% at range.
Every room of a dungeon or raid is laid out in one place, joined by corridors, and the group walks it for real between pulls.
A new boss has to be learned. Every wipe teaches the raid a little, and the raid meets three nights a week, so a first clear takes a couple of months.
Five-player dungeons, mythic keystones, raids, the arena and battlegrounds.
Five-player dungeons from level 6 to 30. At the cap they take mythic keystones with rotating affixes.
Two 10-player raids, Ravenhold Keep and Tidegrave Hold (a sea fortress the guild’s ships find), then the 20-player raids: the Wyrmspire, the Abyssal Sanctum under the Drowned Reef, and the Starfall Observatory.
Once a day, take on an arena event: pick a 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 team from whoever is online, queue, and another guild’s team answers.
Once a day, a 10v10 battleground: ten of your own players against another guild’s ten, on a capture-the-flag map or a hold-the-nodes map.
A browser game for desktop and phone, free and open source.
Play locally in the browser, or sign in for three cloud save slots with conflict detection.
Raid Leader Simulator is free software under the GNU AGPL v3. Its music and sound effects are played live by Strudel.
