So, I did it. I made node 90000 my own. While I could be a scumbag and just write "90k GET" here, I'd rather take the opportunity to look back on the early history of Spiral Knights. Many thanks to the Spiral Gods Alliance, wherever they may be, for providing some of the information here.
Project X was first shown to select Whirled players as part of a secret four-hour pre-alpha test. Nobody knows anything about this, since it was probably only made available to about 10 players.
Over time, and after some more testing (some of which people here will no doubt be familar with), Spiral Knights as most of us know it was born. Going through forum threads and wiki articles from this era shows how little the players actually knew during these early days, and how poorly everything was documented. This, for example, is the earliest known documentation for the Gremlins. This is what we knew about how the Arcade worked. Here's the dawn of 5* items.
Another thing that's striking is how much the game changed prior to launch. Originally alchemy didn't even exist; You bought everything from vendors for crowns or found them as drops from monsters or chests. Mountains of items were left on the cutting-room floor. You could check the numeric values of your defenses and status resists at all times. Exploration was very different; each town had its own Arcade, each subtown was intended to be as much of a player hub as Haven, joining parties cost Energy, and the Clockworks was just odd odd in general. And let's not forget that amazing placeholder logo!
How much of this should have stayed? Well, that's a matter of opinion. I think the idea of a non-linear Arcade is lovely, and those spiral-shaped elevator floors are far snazzier than any other design for them I've seen.
Then Spiral Knights was launched, and the rest is history. On the one hand, we've had new bosses, new levels, new items, new mechanics, and minor improvements galore. On the other hand, we've had the shardpocalypse, the AI nerfpocalypse, and a seeming apathy towards massive bugs.
Overall, however, I feel that there's been a net positive change. However, the issues with bugs and oversights in the game is rapidly becoming overbearing. Hopefully with this newest major update we'll see quality time spent on good old-fashioned bugfixes. Also, the new Arcade would do well to learn from the original system, where gates could lead to other gates and not every gate reached the Core. If that's not a way to make a non-linear sandbox where unexpected things can happen, something's wrong.
Band together and race to the Core!
~Warp-Master
GODDAMNIT!
私が不注意だった
[I was careless]