Forging the Future: Runeteria's Roadmap
Welcome on in! Before getting too into things I wanted to quickly introduce myself to those of you who haven't met me yet! My names Ren, a guy in his mid 30s who has been into gaming for as long as I can remember. I've always had a crazy passion for both MMOs and RPGs in general, and most of my inspiration for game design is deeply rooted into categories from those genres.
My day to day job is creating content for the Minecraft Marketplace with my collegues over at Float Studios! We are currently one of the top teams when it comes to making unique content and we are excited to basically bring our skills into the Hytale scene as well - making something truly unique here!
I've personally been running successful Minecraft RPG SMPs for well over a decade due to my passion for projects like that - One of the main issues we always had with Minecraft, was the limitations of the engine itself. With Hytale finally coming out, it's time to make the ultimately RPG SMP project that we deem possible - and we're excited to tell you more about it in the following weeks!
The Multiple Phases Plan
We're launching Runeteria with 3 initial Phases focusing on certain key points and keeping things realistic! Over the coming months, we're going to roll out a 3 phase plan that grows the world, deepens progression, unlocks community driven adventures and much more. Think richer biomes, smarter and more fun challenges and ways to make your mark! This is our pledge to boldly build boldly, polish relentlessly and keep the magic alive - till we all have a world where we feel we belong.
Now, let's get into the phases!
Phase I - Early Access
Runeteria's first phase is all about setting the tone and sharpening the experience. We consider this a true Early Access phase due to no one knowing exactly what can be expected from Server Infrastructure in the week of the game releasing. We intend to have a SMP server available within the first week of Hytale's release and plan on focusing on creating systems that will better the future of Runeteria. We will be fine tuning progression, tigthening performance and introducing the first wave of QoL related features such as essential things you have come to expect from a Minecraft-like server experience. This includes QoL commands, safety mechanics and stability fixes.
Before making it to Phase II, we will be working on implementing “base-versions” of our more refined systems for Phase II, these systems will include:
- Essentials-like Plugin - Gain access to the most basic commands/UIs to make your life easier.
- Guild System - A way for you and your friends to make a system to protect your land and upgrade it.
- Wilderness/RTP - An easy solution to travel across the various worlds of Runeteria.
- General QoL - Performance tweaks and cross-server functionality development.
Phase II - Guild Update
Our second Phase is all about giving more power to the players! This is the phase where we will introduce refined systems that makes our base much more solid. We turn up the dial a whole lot, introducing new loops for deep progression, biomes becomes more interesting and systems begin to interlock with eachother in satisfying ways. Expect meaningful discoveries, new reasons to return to familiar places and much more! In this phase you can expect a lot of the systems will be focused on sandbox related features, giving more power to the players in an economical way. This is also the phase where we will be focusing more on cross-server functionality to spin up more nodes for intertwining SMP servers, meaning our world will expand in cool ways!
Before making our way towards Phase III, these are the areas you can expect us to work on:
- Guild & Town System - A way for you and your friends to upgrade your Guilds into proper towns with functionalities exceeding just base-protection.
- Admin Shops - A way for players to spend their ingame money on buying various things.
- Player Economy - A way for players to take charge of the economy! Set up your own shops and make money by selling items to other players.
- Bounty Quest System - A Quest System that will be accessible via Quest Boards in both Spawn but also a Players Town!
- RPG Skills Progression - Lots of progressions to grind out that will tie into future systems, unlocking immense power for vertical progression.
- Refined Player Spawn - A more refined and updated spawn reflecting implemented changes.
Phase III - RPG Update
Our last initial phase is where the RPG features will shine through - this is where you get to truly make your own mark as a player on Runeteria and where our end game loops start shining through! We will be introducing various grinds, aspiring goals, seasonal rhythms and community powered challenges. Expect leaderboards, prestige paths and reasons to party up for high-stakes content!
This is the stage where we will be working on introducing Rift systems, which will be our unique take on introducing Dungeons, Custom Materials and Items into the world! This will offer options for vertical progression in terms of crafting and player power. More information about these systems will be published in the near future too.
This last initial phase will focus on these areas in general:
- Dungeons & Rifts - Our unique Dungeon system focusing on making unique challenges for you and your friends to conquer.
- Custom Weaponry - New chase-items to make your arsenal more fun!
- Rune Forging - A way to forge Runes that can be added to your gear, making your playstyle more unique!
- Custom Weapon Skills - Expanding upon Hytale's basic combat system and making it our own.
- Custom Loot - More Armor, Tools and whatever key-items we can come up with!
- PVP Features - Unique High-Risk, High-Rewards PvP systems.
- New Spawn - A proper finalized spawn accomodating all the features we have to offer.
And this concludes our initial Runeteria 2026 roadmap! QoL and stability features will be focus area for us as our goal is to have one of the more stable SMP experiences out there. The main focus will be to ensure we can hold a high player capacity that makes it fun and enjoyable for everyone - once that is taken care of, we move into the more exciting stuff. Throughout the next two weeks, we will be doing more deepdives into our systems to give you all a much better idea of what's planned and how the various systems might work.
Thank you for taking the time to read all of this! We're super excited to see you all on Runeteria on Hytale's release date!
- Runeteria Management Team
