Happy New Year!
The status 12 months ago
It's something I had - hilariously - forgotten, but at the beginning of 2020 Empire War didn't exist. I had taken the decision in December 2019 to shut the server down for various reasons you can read in older posts, and the host shut the server down finally on the 3rd of January.
Despite this, behind the scenes (and publically, to an extent) we had the full intention of returning in some form somehow, but weren't quite sure what. One might say that we had a gleam in our eyes about the future, and were even silently working on it back then. That gleam, of course, has grown into Empire War v3, which I will move onto in more detail later.
And then the covid nation attacked
I really needn't go over this as its all so traumatic, but around March 2020 a lot changed in the world. Despite the chaos Coronavirus caused, it made me quickly realise that an awful lot of people, ex-players and potential players alike, were sitting around at home doing very little at all. As such, after talking to our SysAdmin StealWonders, and the remainder of the staff, we posted a poll on Discord probing opinion about whether we should re-open the server on a temporary basis, to give people stuff to do.
The response was utterly phenomenal, and we re-opened the server, "temporarily", in March. Of course, it turned out not to be temporary at all. After re-opening donations just a week or so later, we were completely flooded with support, and the server has remained open since. This, of course, gave us the chance not just to re-open our existing server, but gave us an opportunity to strive for something more.
Empire War v3
I have talked about v3 an awful lot, and am confident by now the community know about as much as there is to know about it. In many ways, the re-invigorated v2 (v2.1?) is simply a stepping stone to v3, which is why it hasn't received quite as much development as one might have expected ordinarily. The staff and I have still strived to keep squishing bugs and innovating, but I'd be lying if I said it was our priority.
The donations we've received from v2 are almost entirely allocated to funding v3, while the v2 servers are comparatively cheap at some 30 Euros a month. The Dev team have made brilliant progress on the new server, and many of you will have experienced it first hand on the various tests and events we have done. Needless to say, there's a long way to go yet. I dislike setting deadlines for these sort of things, but I'd cautiously suggest that an Open Beta some time in 2021 would be a good achievement.
And Finally...
Thank you! None of us would be here without you! The staff, the donors, and every player on the server makes Empire War Empire War. It's been a weird, rough and rocky year both inside and outside the server, but I'm confident that it's just a stepping stone onto something much greater. Without you asking for EW to return, without you donating, without the staff helping, and without the players playing I wouldn't even be writing this now.
Happy New Year!