A Thousand Years, Remembered

As of 31st May, Achaea’s months-long celebration of the Year 1000 has concluded. This enormous series of events began on March 16th with a narrative event involving every single living God of the Pantheon manipulating a relic of time in order to reveal the Plane of Memory to mortal eyes.

In preparation for the event, the team and I had produced over 300 “memories”: these are written sequences, poems, tableaus, stories, songs, and scripts that detail parts of Achaea’s history in small and large ways. A vast majority of these were completely hand written from scratch for this event; others were assembled from news posts, scraps of old logs, communication spools from old staff, and scripts from past events that had been preserved in the Achaea admin wiki.

Every single one allowed a player to bear witness to the given event or story and relive it as though they were there first-hand, in full colour, with quotations, and original speech / dialogue / everything preserved. Many were fully original lore. Dozens expounded on topics long-held as mysteries to the playerbase. Yet more answered (and asked!) numerous questions of the narrative. And some were simply fun callbacks to some recurring characters and “in character memes”.

In total we released over 150,000 words of content for these, alongside a hugely complex system for acquisition. Fragmented memories of the Gods spawned from activities related to those Gods: Wealth from exchanging gold and shopping, War and Combat and Heroism from grand duels, the Sea and Oceans from fishing and diving, Magic from traversing Planes, and so on. Numerous one-off events were also run by volunteers and staff with a central focus on individual Gods to reveal their memories; these ranged from multi-pronged PvE encounters to historical battle re-enactments to scavenger hunts, quizzes, and exploratory adventures across the world.

Chasing down these fragments and figuring out how to obtain them was an enormous endeavour for the playerbase that took place over months. The reward for returning them to their origin upon the Memory Plane was a huge amount of experience and daily credits. This solidified for us that making things tangibly rewarding is extremely important and something we will continue to do going forward.

In addition to the slew of memory content, we ran dozens of smaller scale events, contests, competitions, throughout. A highlight of these was seven visits from the Itinerant Bazaar, themed around the Fall of Seleucar. We created ninety bespoke items, crafts, and curiosities for this and offered them for sale to players, who came in a ravenous frenzy to make purchases. This, for many, was the highlight of the entire affair and some of the favourite items included dolls of prominent players, unique weapon holders, cypher games, an Achaean version of wordle, a textured map with over twenty different ambient effects, and a swath of unique steeds and mounts, including Achaea’s very first palanquin and a family of Almathean goats!

In the aftermath, we released a whole area conjured from memories and laid the foundations for a future project due to be released in the near future. This will be a major PvE update to Achaea in an entirely brand new vein from our usual content!

And then of course were the Championship Games! Congratulations to Faerum and Cyrene for a tremendously well earned victory that really showcased the city’s massive leaps forward in recent times. Huge W.

While we consider this an enormous success, there are definitely some areas for improvement that we have identified should we do something similar again:

1. More telegraphing about what the mystery events were going to be. We know that the honours lines for these created unnecessary FOMO and that’s something we can definitely do better on next time.
2. Similarly: timing. Some of the event activities could have been left permanently active so as to not be too time sensitive for unsociable-to-EU hours.
3. Likewise pacing / spacing. A lot of the major beats happened on weekends due to volunteer / my availability. In an ideal world I would have liked to spread these out more.
4. Scheduling the Games so early meant that I mixed up one of the events because of daylight savings, and I also wasn’t aware of a US holiday for one of them as I am not American. This could have been avoided by asking for more input on the schedule (our team are 2 x UK and 1 x Canada so a very unfortunate oversight…)

Conversely, I believe the tremendous amount of lore made available to the playerbase at large is by far the event’s biggest strength. This has been a longstanding problem that I’ve wanted to solve for years and I’m already seeing the memories (a permanent addition) become part of everyday Achaean life for training and teaching new players and otherwise. This is one of the projects I am most proud of in my whole career at IRE. The team really came together for it and I’m overjoyed with how it all went.

Player Testimonials

“I have been around Achaea long enough to see a lot change, so Year 1000 felt like a really meaningful milestone. The celebrations were a nice reminder of all the history we hve shared, through friendships, conflicts, mistakes, and everything in between. Seeing the gods more active again, along with effort being put into improving combat, made it feel like an even better time for game. I am glad I was here to see it.” – Maedhros

“The Y1000 celebrations have been the most fun and engaging events I think I’ve experienced in Achaea. The events, the games, the memories – it all felt like a very heartfelt and sincere love letter to the game and to the community by the volunteers/devs, and it’s been such an incredible joy to witness and to be a part of.” – Aodfionn

“Getting my own memory in a permanent location in Achaea that other people can view and leaving my mark on the game is something that’s really special. Changing the world is what makes Achaea a game worth playing and any time I can see my visible impact on the world it makes me love the game even more.” – Laorir

“i could feel how each item was made with love. i think its awesome how its an event to give FREE LORE about this old ass game and it’s fun even as a newish player to be like damn, that happened wow. (mostly because I do struggle with reaching out and finding information on past events). also the memories were so tragic and awesome and i loved watching them!! and the events per god was also very good and very tragic. I wish there was more cheese.” – Abysal

“my favourite part of the year 1k event was mimery under the stars, and I still linger by the arena to look for combat globes. the dopamine rush from getting experience and memories unlocked will stay with me a long time” – Theosis

“I enjoyed the Y1000 celebrations immensely. Lots of content, lore and all around fun moments.” – Synbios

“I really enjoyed the Year 1000 events I was able to participate in. I felt there was a fun combination of activities that let a lot of different players participate, in different ways (PvE, PvP, etc.) that tied well into the game lore without being something the players passively observed. Sometimes an event can feel a bit like an episode from a show playing out in front of you; I didn’t feel like that this time around, collecting memories, fighting demons, dodging dragons and more. I really appreciate the work the team put into everything.” – Davok

“Year 1000 reminded us that Achaea is more than cities, wars, and gods. It is a tapestry woven from the lives and memories of those who experienced it, each generation inheriting it before adding threads of their own.” – Othival

“Being able to wander around the world and experience lore and history that I was not even born for is amazing. The memory system is one of the best things ever added to the game.” – Anon

“For 20 years, Achaea has been a source of wonder, an outlet for creativity, a reason to connect with others and above all, a font of endless, exciting stories. I never expected it to be the game that has lasted the longest through the various seasons of my life, but I consistently go back time and time again, and every time I do there is new magic to discover. It’s truly a labour of love by so many and I hope it continues to go strong to Y2000 and beyond.” – Jurixe