With the editor in place now we can have a continuous flow of new content made by the community, only waiting to be reviewed and approved. Hence we can have a chance to live in this cruel world of private servers. However, that doesn't mean the "development" on the server is done. We keep raising the bar by hacking the game and adding various quality of life improvements to it. PW Mirage uses an old, classic PW version on purpose, but it's not meant to stay in the past. We believe later PW versions evolved the way they did basically for 3 reasons:
- common inconveniences reported by the players
- keeping the players engaged with the content
- maximization of profits for the company
The modifications made because of #3 like R9 gear can be simply ignored here. We're enthusiasts. We do it for love, not for money.
On the other hand, modifications made because of #1 and #2 shouldn't be ignored. Not even mentioning new dungeons, take auto-pathing for instance. It was too boring for people to fly from one point to another over and over. Other games had auto pathing already, so this one should have too, right?
It's certainly a solution to the problem, but not a very good one. If the game is too boring to play, how does adding a bot that plays for you make the situation better? (That's basically what auto-path is) Is there a better way to solve the problem? What if we made flying faster instead. ...So that's what we do in PW Mirage. We look at the obstacles the game throws at the player and try to minimize them or even get rid of them, possibly just like PWI did, but without the priority on maximizing the profits. Gameplay comes first.
Nevertheless, the new PW definitely excels in some areas, like extra dungeons, ability to share items in chat, or 10-person squads. Those are some Quality-of-Life features worth having that we can't easily backport to our version. They, themselves, are a good reason to update the server to a newer PW version. But there's one more reason to stick to classic -> The technical mess in newer PW versions
So are we a true classic server? No, I don't think so. PW Classic died in 2009. It was good while it lasted, but it's no more.
We will always be a 3-race server with no r9 gear and no p2w packs, but we will develop in a completely other direction.
