@everyone This April 1st, we have a special major update to the direction of Agony Online. We have removed all content which has been deemed offensive to our corporate masters, and have rebranded as Harmony Online!

There are over 98 gender pronouns to choose from in the character creation menu, each class now has action-packed virtue signaling abilities. We have reallocated our donation assets to hire therapists for emotional support for our players. We scrapped our game Engine, and upgraded to UwU-Engine.exe. The 10,000 player battle royale mode will no longer promote senseless killing as it will now be a hug-fest with kisses for everyone. Finally, we replaced Health Potions with Puberty Blockers!
Yaaaay!
   

@everyone Alright folks, an update on our current EXCELLENT state.

#1. WE MADE HUGE GAINS!
We have acquired the necessary encryption for AO to protect our licensed assets. Big thanks to @Founder for funding part of it. Professional programmers ain't cheap. With that monumental task out of the way, we just need to take a few more steps to ║join-beta║.


#2. WE GOT GREAT IDEAS FROM SEEING OTHER GAME'S FAILURES
We have a whole private dev channel setup in here where we post systems/code examples of how to make the game better than others and avoid failures we've seen over the years. Here's our last idea from yesterday. Its already coded and done.

Gathering Objects
We won't use custom objects for gathering, instead, we will apply the same commonly-seen object as a gatherable material. Gatherable objects spawn in random locations which prevent cheating; standing in a spot afk with a clicker script
Example:
Rocks are everywhere, but if you see a rock with a glowing effect on it, then it is a gatherable object. This also goes for trees with a little glow at the bottom, etc.


#3. WHAT ARE THE RULES OF THE GAME??
It seems that in ALL games (in recent years), the end-game "meta" is getting banned for some stupid shit like Hate Speech or Abusive Language. I recently tried out Amazon's "New World" to gather more ideas and learn from failures, and a MAX LEVEL guy got permanently banned for calling someone a "Bitch"...

I think most people will really appreciate this about AO.
If someone annoys you, we have a block feature. The only thing we'd take bannable action on is something crazy like child endangerment or actual terrorism.

We do have a system setup for people literally doing everything possible trying get banned. Instead of banning, we have an in-game Jail where psychos can eventually come out days/weeks/months after cooling off.

Our Terms of Service is located here: https://forums.gabhub.com/misc.php?action=help&hid=9

Merry Christmas @everyone !

Since BETA is around the corner, we thought about the support from the community; giving feedback, reporting bugs, etc. So we are including $20 game cash (and many more items) in the Beta Rewards Package which will be in the storage of all players that have made accounts and logged in during Beta.

We hope this will encourage players to tell their friends about AO, furthermore, we have a Mentor system in-game which will reward players helping players; the more newbies that register you as their Mentor, the more rewards you unlock ?

Unrelated, we'll release our ToS policy this week on our site. This can be a very competitive game, so we like people doing / saying whatever without worrying about feelings police ?

2022 is going to be very exciting, let's hope the world doesn't nuke itself or release Covid-2000 ? ?

@everyone GREETINGS! It has been 5 months since our last announcement.

BETA?? WHATS THE DELAY?!?
We literally have 1 last step to take before Discord BETA is launched; encrypting our game client for security. BETA Release will be announced!

TRANSPARENCY
Since we are using our own custom engine, our lead programmer has to make a custom encryption. These things take time, especially when our team is developing AO on commission pay (which makes progress slow). We've exhausted our funding (I sold my other car), so our team is developing on their free time. We expect good funding from our cash shop upon Steam Release after BETA is complete, so we can pay our dev team well and continue adding further content as the game progresses - adding more areas, levels, enemies, gear, etc.

MONUMENTAL thanks to @{DEV} GhettoScouser for spending his free time developing core animations of AO, and our lead programmer spending extra time coding essential functions. @{DEV} KiLLeR and I are grinding on our savings to get this AO project released WITHOUT it being rushed with bugs.

We're HUMBLY grateful to our @Founder group for pre-ordering Founder's Packages from KickStarter and IndieGoGo - both of which have been closed, and we've just opened our own funding page on our website https://www.agonyonline.com/founder.html so there is no middle-man and every dollar goes straight into AO development!

Thank you so much everyone, we strive to satisfy you by making the best game possible.

@everyone Hey AO Community! Here's an update on our progress!

IM DYING, WHEN CAN I PLAY?!
Transparency is best to answer this, so here's the facts.
- Skills are completed FINALLY! ║media║
- We already wrote ALL the mob AI stats (ATK/HP/etc) just have paste them into our network. Same for the player Armor & Weapon stats. YAY !
- Our next meeting with our main programmer will be Monday (19th). His job is updating our client with our game feature ideas, etc, and encrypting everything to protect our game from any exploits and content thieves (pretty standard).
- We need to add the quests from the story-lines we already written (only takes some hours to do).
- Our security professional will test our game's network for vulnerabilities.
- THEN BETA BEGINS!!! Download & Registration links will be posted in ║join-beta║ .

HOW LONG WILL BETA LAST?? AND WILL WE KEEP OUR PROGRESS AFTER BETA?!?
- During BETA, we will be addressing content suggestions and general improvements to our game.
- BETA will continue until we add our Archer & Mage classes.
- It is normal for all games to clear the database after BETA is finished, that being said, our EXP/Drop rates will be dramatically increased and Daily Login Rewards will give free Cash Shop currency, so that all players get a good feeling of what this game is and has to offer in terms of fun!
- Once everything from BETA is completed, we expect 7 days downtime while we transfer our game hosting to a very powerful & secure host in a location that supports ALL countries, so we can have a single GLOBAL server.
- We will set a date on Steam for official release, then BINGO! Agony Online!

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS LOW GRAPHIC STYLE?? WHY NOT USE UNREAL ENGINE FOR INSANE GRAPHICS??
...LOL how can you have AO2 already planned?? :dogjam:
- Being that our game is COMPLETELY unknown to the world, we had to strategize how to grow and hold a community. Low graphics & our netcode will allow ANYONE with a $20 Hello Kitty laptop using stolen dial-up to play; this will make our game/community inclusive to absolutely anyone so we get a good head-start on growth.
- Graphics don't make a game, content and game-play does. We know this from people still playing Runescape, Minecraft, PUBG, Roblox, etc etc.
- Our plan is, once AO has a large community, we'll use the money made from our game and begin development of AO2, hiring staff for Unreal Engine 5. AO2 will have the same database as AO1 so people don't lose their invested time & money and the AO2 world/players/mobs etc will be ported from AO1... basically a massive client update. That's basically our plan/strategy for the years we have ahead.

Please share our Discord with your friends.
https://discord.gg/8sZdvQD

Hello @everyone , we've started streaming Q&A on Twitch.tv/AgonyOnline. I'm on the right with the AO logo behind me, @{DEV} KiLLeR is on the left.

We're working hard at making this game very unique. This is 1 of 4 videos we're releasing for Q&A. We hope these start some discussion in ║general║? and you share AO with your friends ?



Enjoy

Hey @everyone , we've submitted AO to the Epic Games Store; so we'll be on both Steam & EpicGames platforms.

BETA Rewards
Thanks for being here before launch! You can lock-in your BETA Rewards here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-ne_tTs...acuJceQcUA

LET'S GET HUUUUUGE
We really want this community to grow so we have a packed BETA & Early Access release, please let your friends know about Agony Online, our website is https://www.agonyonline.com/

ANY UPDATE??
Yes! We got more work done, another skill was added, and another almost finished for an enjoyable game. Check ║media║ , as we're adding to it regularly. Also, we want your ║suggestions║ on what you want in AO.

ANTI-SOCIAL NETWORK LOL
We're launching a Facebook/Twitter/Youtube hybrid social platform soon after AO's release, called https://www.gabhub.com/ . With all the crazy censorship going on and people quitting Facebook, we thought it would be cool to try this out.

Agony Online Forums
If you enjoy forums, we have one created here: https://forums.gabhub.com/
We check it often, and plan to be mostly active there after Steam release, because posts are more formal than Discord chats.

alright, back to work ?

Hello @everyone, our Discord is 159 members strong, and you all inspire us to work hard at completing core functions to make a playable & enjoyable Open BETA.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
We are a micro-team of currently 3 developers, so thank you for understanding and sticking with us after our DELAY of March 18th 2021's (end of Winter) planned BETA date.

What is done so far?
As normal every-day gamers ourselves, we want to be transparent about our progress. Currently, the World, the Monsters, NPCs, Quests, Battle Royale, Guild War, RAIDS & Boss Fights are working as planned for this massive Horror MMORPG & Battle Royale.

What remains for a playable BETA is some skill animations?
We have 2 of 6 completed. This is why when asked, we say BETA is "very soon". @{DEV} GhettoScouser  is our 3D animation artist; he has made everything from sitting, standing, drinking, dying, eating, melee attacks, blocks, evade, etc etc etc etc etc - he has done a terrific job, and nearing completion with these last few skills for BETA to begin.

I WANT GAME, I WANT PLAY, NEED NOW, WHEN STEAM?!?
BETA will continue until the day of Steam Release (when 2 more classes are created with their own set of skills). Until then, players can play 24/7 if they desire. We will have awesome rewards for players participating in BETA, and those whom achieved the most during BETA. Rewards list will be announced once BETA has opened.

We want to thank our active discord members @Awesome109 , @Vexris , @Berith and @Colpus for keeping the chat active for such a currently tiny community. Thank you @ham for testing the game a while back UwU ^.^

Massive thanks to @Davon Crushin for faithfully ?  purchasing our Founders game package without seeing much of the game yet.

there, i think thats a pretty good announcement ^^

Thanks for the support @everyone , please share our website https://www.agonyonline.com/ on your social media / friends. Because we are developing & releasing Agony Online quickly, our Discord community is quite small, but it is nice seeing people joining every day! This is a horror MMORPG & 10,000 player Battle Royale, we're doing something new and exciting.

BETA:
Beta will begin once we finish our Warrior's skill animations. We have gotten a lot done in such little time for a 3-man development team (positions are open). EXP / Item Drop Rate will be highly increased during Beta so players get to see quickly what Agony Online offers for entertainment. During Beta, we will be developing the next 2 classes (Ranger/Witch) and taking ALL player suggestions seriously. After Beta, we'll have a database wipe before Steam Early Access release.

Founders:
As a small team, we're very humble for anything we receive, so we're giving very nice exclusive in-game rewards; stuff that really makes you pop-out from the rest.
https://igg.me/at/AgonyOnline/x/23838608#/

PS, see ║media║ for our latest graphics update.
Please give us your ideas in ║suggestions║ you want in this game.
We've simulated 10,000 players at 144FPS, then spawned and killed 22,000 monsters at once at 144FPS with perfect stability!

Just read some articles "MariaDB vs MySQL", 24% faster INSERT query processing speeds. MariaDB + Hyperfilter servers, this game should have the same if not better security & performance than AAA budget games. On release, we're also paying hackers to find vulnerabilities. Everything in the game is server-sided, so we don't believe cheating is possible.

Beta is coming soon, client and registration will be posted in ║join-beta║

Testers will receive a cool item to show off they were in beta