Dear Strats-players,
On this page wou will find short descriptions of the main changes since the game of Stratholm, as it could be played in the version of 2005/6. More details about the new features haven been integrated into the manual. But first we will start by giving a short overview of the history of the game.
I will try to recall some of my own memories and share them with you. I joined the game in 2003, continued playing until late 2005, interrupted by some breaks of a few months. Maybe those of you who have a better memory would like to meet me sometime to contribute your views in some way.
The alpha version was played on a very small map which you could hardly call a game world. But the gameplay in the first few zones was already very detailed and managed to keep quite a few players busy. I dont think this phase lasted longer than a year.
With the next version then, the game got the name which made it so popular among players: 'Stratholm'. In the beta version of Stratholm we already found all the features which made it appear as perfectly grown-up. The game was still played on only one continent then but had a very interesting collection of terrains between which you had to switch constantly while levelling up. There were no real golding or iteming zones yet though, and character development was slowed down very much after level 500 and there werent too many players who reached level 1000. However, the fascination was great to just make another character of some different class and start over to see how well it would do. Now I had to pause playing for 7 months, also moved to a different place in the meantime. Looking again into stratholm I was very surprised as the world I knew only appeared as a tiny part of the curreent world. TROLLING had been invented making me appear like a poor beggar from skelly-town compared to those who were already able to item-hunt. And then so many new quests had been added, including the boat quest and the map quest. I think these quests drove most of us totally crazy at some point and I would like to thank the responsible people for that fun again. There were the master skills, the randoms in darkness
The following round in stratholm was played with the addition of two zones that made fast levelling between levels ~250 and ~1000 possible. So you got to trolling quite quick here. I think this was the round where also the impact crater appeared. At some point, adam had quit hit interest in the game. I think he said he was busy studying computer science. But using the nice game-engine, Baramos and Hazue, spending so much effort and skill, had managed to take the game up to new dimensions.
During the last round of stratholm, we did not find a Shrine of the Item God any more which made some players quite disappointed but was probably a preparation for further changes in the game. However, the game did not much in the last two online years and the admins promisses and players hopes had been unfulfilled until the game closed. This was a very sad end, allthough very understandable from my own point of view.
About one year before the main game closed, two different versions called Lost Hope (by Josh) and Shantara (by 0mega) had been released and tried their way. Both sites had ups and downs but I think I might say that none of them gained such a great longterm acceptance by players as the original (especially before 2006).
Baramos used to have definite high plans and already worked a lot on a new build. Some info about the planned new races and classese were already given and it is known that the game world was supposed to grow on big scale. Also, the stats system would have been due to changes.