A look back
2017 was a huge year for ArdaCraft. We adopted Conquest Reforged, giving us thousands of new blocks, a larger dev team, and an enhanced place amongst the wider Conquest community. We finished 49 projects, which is nearly half of all the projects we’ve ever completed since we started building in November 2014. We accepted 62 new builders into our ranks, many of whom have become integral members of our community. We’ve added vast new areas of terrain (remember that our map looked like this only six months ago). Put simply, this has been our most successful year ever, and I want to see us build upon that success in 2018.
This post is intended to lay out what I want this community to achieve during the rest of this year.
A push eastward and southward
Everything west of the Misty Mountains (not including Cardolan) should be in a more or less completed state by the end of September (ideally before the end of the summer holidays). This includes the Shire revamp, which @kingorrik is going to speed up via simplifying his changes to interiors, and accepting help with some villages.
This will enable us to focus on moving south-east towards famous locations which we can promote heavily on our various social media channels. This should attract more attention, more players, and more builders, as Tolkien’s world begins to return to the front and centre of pop culture with Amazon’s new TV series in 2020.
Lothlórien
Forlond and Rivendell should be completed by the end of January, paving the way for Lothlórien, which I hope to start in February, and have finished by the end of the year.
Rohan
Isengard, Helm’s Deep, the Argonath and Edoras should be completed by the end of 2018, after their release in the spring.
Moria
Thorin’s Halls should ideally be completed by September at the latest, allowing plans for Moria to be accelerated with concept builds and progress on it to begin by the end of the year. Such a project should not be rushed into and extensive planning and preparation should be dedicated to it. As such, @Phe will lead the first part of Moria, which will consist of planning out the whole project at a 1:10 scale, and then replicating that 1:1 in the seperate Moria world.
These are clearly huge goals, and they may even seem unrealistic. However, given what we achieved last year, I believe this community is more than capable of fulfilling them. I look forward to seeing us reach new heights in 2018!
