Here at Iron Realms we’re constantly beseiged by fans. I literally cannot go to the grocery store without someone approaching me and telling me how our games have altered their lives in the most fundamental of ways. Groupies are everywhere and prominent world statesmen seek our advice on the most serious of issues!!

None of that is true of course but we do have a small base of fans who are willing to check out whatever we develop. On Earth Eternal we’ve really tried to involve these fans in some of our core decisions. We’ve done things from expose multiple pieces of concept art for the same asset to fans on our forums and let their feedback dictate our choices to polling them for their opinions on how the basic server/shard model should work.

As an example, one of the Beast races I didn’t anticipate any demand for and thus didn’t plan for was Longtails (rat-people). I personally am not a huge fan of rats as animals and as such I lacked the ability to pick which piece of concept art to go with to represent Longtails for the modelers/texture artists. I turned to the fans on our forums and got immediate, quality feedback, and everyone seems excited about the final result.

We announced a contest tonight that, while I’ll admit is mainly a promotional stunt, is still going to be interesting I think. We’re letting fans submit a proposal for our 14th and final (for release) player race. I’ll work with the winner to accomodate as closely as possible his/her vision regarding what animal the race is based on, what the race’s name is, and I’ll incorporate some of the winner’s wishes when working the race into the history of Earth Eternal (can’t let the winner dictate it for obvious reasons).