OFFICIAL MERIDIAN 59 NEWSLETTER	January 4, 2002

	Meridian 59 will go live this year! Hehe, ok so I couldn't resist. Sorry. Happy New Year to all! Things are moving along quickly. We hardly have enough time to pull things together before we start our pre-launch test. This will be your chance to preview the game, check out the changes we've made, let us know your feelings, and give Meridian 59 its second stable, successful, launch to the public. Be sure to sign up for the mailing list if you haven't done so (yes there are still people that only read these newsletters on our site) and get registered and voting on the forums. Most likely we'll be pulling the contact information from these sources to gather our base of testers. Plans for the launch are being tweaked here and there to give players the game as quickly as possible while still ensuring everything goes well on our end. We understand you're all anxious to learn when you can play again so we'll say this... the game will go live sooner than it probably should and later than you'd probably like. Sharing our plans with our fans is an important aspect of our company so be assured that we'll let you know any details we can as soon as they're solid. It's hard making everyone wait when we're *pretty sure* what we're going to do, but we'd rather have that than disappointing you when our plans need to change. Around the web we have many people posting whatever news they can find about NDS and Meridian 59. Though we've mostly been keeping relatively low there are a couple of features and interviews that we know of that should be popping up. This past week HomeLAN Federation & Aliance posted an interview with Brian.
	The boards are on fire! We mentioned last week that the new Official Meridian 59 Forums are a huge hit. Since then the conversation has stayed lively and on topic. Thanks to all of our members there for working toward making Meridian 59 as great as it can be with helpful on topic posts. There have been over 3000 posts covering nearly all aspects of the game since the forums went live two weeks ago. Thanks again, vote on those polls, and keep posting your ideas!
	Old friends and old games getting better with age Again we'd like to thank the Kirmse brothers for their commitment toward helping make the re-launch a success. Andrew and Chris have been close friends for a long time and working with them often feels like "the good old days". We'd also like to let the fans know that our friend Damion "Zjiria" Schubert, one of the game's original team members and designer of most of the game mechanics has offered up his help. Some may know Damion better as Ubiq from his time spent working with Origin on UO2. Damion will be working on some of the nagging artificial intelligence (AI) problems with the game. It's great to have Damion contributing and with everything he's done for the game in the past, his fixes will certainly make Meridian 59 an even better game.
	Who are these people!? Our good friends Barry & Colin are making great progress with the CD artwork. The sketches have been approved and they're working toward the final image. From there we work it into the CD printing template, get film made, approve the film, and we'll be ready to go to press with the CDs. Pretty exciting stuff! Watch the website for a feature on the creation of the CD artwork. Together with Barry and Colin we're building a cast of characters for our out of game artwork. These archetypes will represent the players of Meridian 59 in scenes shown on our CDs, splash screens, website, and merchandise. The first two archetypes are shown here. We've decided to ask you who these people are. Who are these two? What are their stories? Get on over to the Official Meridian 59 Forums and submit your ideas in this thread. These characters are likely to be worked into the Meridian 59 history over time and may well make appearances in the game. We suggest not offering the name you plan to play under because the names will not be valid choices during character creation. The people that come up with the names and histories that we select for these characters will receive a special title on the official boards and recognition in game!
	Finally Rob says something In working to get Barry and Colin up to speed on our game, and while working on the game manual, I've been reminded that there are many unique features in Meridian 59 that aren't found in other games. Having been so close to the game for so long, we sometimes forget that some features we take for granted are really unique in the online RPG genre. Everyone goes on and on about Meridian 59's PvP and communication systems, but what about the Guild system? What about the Arena of Kraanan? Factions with territory conquest? The Assassin's Game? The Quest of Riija? A rentable casino? The Justicar? ...the Vale of Sorrows... I sent Barry and Colin a bunch of artwork and included the Fey Dirhai and the Fey Elhai. So I began explaining the Vale of Sorrows scenario to put the images into perspective. By the time I was finished I was blown away. This is a really cool game scenario! The features are genuinely unique. How can it be that something so cool doesn't get the attention that it deserves? Probably because it's been there since 1996. To those of us that make Meridian 59 a part of our lives, it's as normal as the long swords and plate armor. It's part of the game. With everyone talking about how great of a PvP game Meridian 59 is, players new to the game reading about Meridian 59 for the first time here, in the forums, and on fansites aren't getting the whole picture. So we're going to begin a series of articles focusing on these unique aspects of the game. We'll be introducing these articles on the website leading up to the game's official release. The first one should be up soon. Over time these will be worked into the Manual and New User's Guide. For now it seems like these articles are a great way to quickly introduce new players to some of the more unique features of Meridian 59 that might not be getting the attention they should be.