New Species (November 2006 Speculation)

When wandering around the Dragon Isles there are places that give subtle hints as to the future of dragon-kind and there are helpful people eager to answer questions to the best of their knowledge. What follows here then is a fun exercise in guesswork about the future of the dragons and should not be taken as any kind of "official" announcement. All of these articles are collected together on the New Species Speculation page.

October in Review

The Halloween month proved to be an exciting time for followers of Daryth, with many developments taking place: Her return to the Isles after a short hiatus for personal reasons turned into a Welcome Back Party with a special twist. A raffle ball was set up raffling off the Hatchling version of one of Daryth's newest creations:

Wyvern Hatchlings

Representing a departure from the pure quadruped dragons, the Wyverns are distant cousins who walk on two legs and possess a more feline sense of grace than your average dragon. While the full Wyvern release is still pending, the Hatchling size has been unofficially released if you know where to look around the isles and was also offered as a raffle prize.

Dracolich Dragon

October also saw the official release of the Dracolich Dragon in Wyrmling and Wyrm sizes. The noon release was crowded although the sim wasn't quite as full as on main release days and the batch of eggs sold out quickly. The midnight release was a little more sedate, but a quick message to the Council Groups for the smaller size dragons soon finished off the batch. There were many jubilant people in the sandboxes showing off their first steps into full dragon membership and enjoying the unique and imaginative saddle position for this particular avatar.

Remember November

A month of remembrance, for the 11th hour, for the whole Guy Fawkes business and now, on the lighter side of things, for hedgehogs:

A Hedgehog Invasion

One cannot hang out on the Isles for too long without noticing Daryth's affinity for the little spiky bundles we know as hedgehogs and her fund raising work for the St. Tiggywinkles charity. This month merges those efforts with her creative eye to produce the cutest avatar yet: a rolling, tumbling, colour-changing hedgehog! The avatar itself is as wonderfully engineered as one would expect and comes with the usual tinting and texturing HUD that dragon aficionados know and love. The best part is that all the money raised from the sale of these avatars will benefit their real-life counterparts. So get yourself a cute "tiny" style avatar and help the hedgies today: see Purchasing a Hedgehog Avatar for details.

Dragons: Forest, Earth and Mech

There are several new dragons whose names have been popping up on the approach radar for greater or lesser amounts of time now. Featured in last month's speculation were the Forest and Mech dragons and while neither of them got their release last month, we may be lucky enough to see one or both of them soon.

Another candidate for future release is the Earth Dragon, although little about it is known to this writer. It's a name to look out for, a name to ask about, to wonder and dream over until more is revealed.

Dragons Version 3.0

We learned recently, in response to a question about script load that there is a plan to release a version 3.0 update sometime this month. Rather than rehash, let me give you the words from the creator herself:

"In November sometime the v3.0 update will come out for all the dragons, new and old. It’s most notable feature will be a complete separation of HUD functionality, into two completely universal HUDs: a tiny one for everyday actions, breath, sounds, etc … and one for all the color, texture, and pattern controls." -- Daryth

Also mentioned is a "Publishing feature" which will aid in reducing the lag/scripting resource overhead of the dragons.

Wyverns

As noted above, the Arctic Wyvern Hatchling and Desert Wyvern Hatchling have both crawled out of the nest and sneaked away to cause mayhem and mischief as only hatchies can while their parents search frantically for them. Keep your eyes peeled and you will surely see the Hatchlings running around Limbo and you may even find their nest. It can't be too long either before the parents track the kids down.