Direction:
Welcome to 2022! We are excited to begin this year’s plans as we return to work after the Holidays!

Quest
Quest spent this week working on the Ezekiel project by patching bugs and answering related issues. Derpadillo tackled installation, testing, bug fixing, player support for Ezekiel Incursion event. Iyyiushi handled player support and ticket handling.

Lore
Lore Updates:
Changes Submitted by Wumpatron & MonMarty

https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Ithanian#Holidays
This is the 1.17 resourcepack release. This resourcepack no doubt has issues (as it always does with every update cycle) so expect a hotfix in a few weeks when we’ve had some more time to see how the textures all work out.
A bunch of textures were changed, along with some color fixes for old textures, and adding in the new 1.17 models. Optifine is Highly recommended, 1.17 Forge works well with Optifine, but the resourcepack should also work on clients without optifine.

If you are receiving an error in chat along the lines of “OpenGL Error: 1281 (Invalid value) this is mundane and doesn’t do anything. To turn off the spam in chat, press Esc – > Options… -> Video Settings… -> Other… -> Turn off Show GL Errors so it says OFF. This will simply disable them from showing up.

Included is also the MassiveFont as an additional Resourcepack for my personal font that I like better than the thin font on Conquest, https://i.gyazo.com/03e773a38dd0b54524d95c146c54a810.png An example of what it looks like. If you would like ot enable this, make sure it loads higher than the MassiveCraft Resourcepack. This resourcepack will eventuall be set to the website and server, but Birb went to a well deserved sleep, and I am on a new computer without the software to set all of this up myself, so it will have to wait until he is around.

For now, enjoy the texture pack update. Report any issues in tickets please. To install, just drop both Zip files into your Resourcepacks folder in your minecraft installation. These are all 1.17 applied, but should work on 1.18 also (without 1.18 textures though).

World System Updates:
No new changes!

Event Updates:
No new changes!

Roleplay Updates:
Changes submitted by MonMarty

Due to repeated issues with skin identification and my vague writing, I have updated the Law on Armor Permits for House Guards and Mercenaries.

Instead of vague definitions such as “25%” or “50%” of skin cover, two different Lesser Armor Permits are supplied:
Lesser Armor Permits A and B and C. Permit A includes a chest-piece (covering only the minecraft body section) and forearm bracers (covering only the lower half of arm sections). Permit B includes A full-arm piece on either right or left arm (covering an entire arm section, but not the other) and a helmet, and a forearm bracer on the other arm (covering only the lower half of the arm section). Permit C includes forearm bracers (covering only the lower half of arm sections), shin bracers (covering only the lower half of leg sections) and a shoulder-piece (that descends no further than 3 pixels from the head) Permits cannot be combined, one or the other must be chosen.

Here are examples for
A: https://i.gyazo.com/1bca8458d9e8c3e9926f9142f885362a.png
B: https://i.gyazo.com/fd8d5307e4f9c116fad627f99448a830.png
C: https://i.gyazo.com/25d62e2588e471a2da926c7f0fa0d77b.png

This law goes in effect immediately. Anyone violating this law will be arrested from today onwards.

All of this too much bother for you? Contact the Armament Officer and request an Armor Permit, which grants the right to wear full-body armor. I do not know who the Armament Officer is off the top of my head, but it’s a government position so any of the Minister is bound to know.

Tech
This past week we’ve been hard at work at final tweaks and new features for our 1.17.1 release, which went live on New Years! This update also included the release of the new Qadir race option in MassiveRaces. We’ve also seen new support for the Recipebook, Achievements, and player statistics go live alongside support for Map items across shards. Work continues for us with plenty of new features and updates in our pipeline including performance enhancements, MPM 1.18.1 (WIP), as well as bugfixes as issues arise. (edited)

Game
Over the past week, the Game department has been working on the following projects:

1. With the release of 1.17 to the server, we have been working on getting 1.17 blocks into the economy in different ways, with 1 currently mob drops giving keys for the 1.17 crate, with more ways to acquire these resources coming soon™.
2. The Essa spawn region is continuing to be remastered with this week additions such as a warzone, farming area, new quarry and the start of a dock. Come and check it out at /tp essa.
3. This week the new race Qadir was released, you can read up more about this technologically advanced race here https://forums.massivecraft.com/threads/massiveraces-qadir.97558/
4. The Essalonia rental regions for houses in Fort Presford, have been refunded.
5. As always, we continue to assist the playerbase by answering questions, moderating rule-breaches and handling 40+ tickets.

PR
This week PR focused on the 12 days of Plugins showcase. Social medias were posted to as usual, and a charity thing is in the making.