History and Acknowledgements

Bending Age

Not all of the credit for Avatarverse's world and builds can be given to our build team. The world itself was painted years ago for the now-defunct Avatar server Bending Age and was gifted to us with the assent of Bending Age's former staff in 2020. Many of the major sites on the server are alterations of builds from Bending Age, most notably:

  • Spawn (Bhanti Island)
  • Exterior of the Fire Nation Royal Palace
  • Some of Caldera City's houses
  • Many Fire Nation villages
  • The southernmost portion of Ninuno (Sun Warriors island)
  • Exterior of the Ba Sing Se Royal Palace
  • Portions of Ba Sing Se's Upper Ring
  • Portions of Agna Qel'a
  • Layout and central buildings of the Northern Air Temple, Western Air Temple, Eastern Air Temple, and some of the Southern Air Temple
  • Miscellaneous structures throughout the world that would take too long to catalogue

Few if any of our players played on Bending Age, but their community still exists on the Internet. When the world was given to us, it came with the superflat world the BA staff used for building, as well as all of the items people had in chests. These rare items are sometimes jokingly and affectionately referred to as "ancient artifacts" in current Avatarverse roleplay, though few know their true origins.

Developing Avatarverse

Since August of 2020, Avatarverse put together a small team of builders to fix up the map. They labored tirelessly until March 2021 (the release of Avatarverse RPG) to build a world ready for players. Here are those former staff members' acknowledgements:

  • Administrator Kameron built Omashu, Anana Tun'ila, the Agna Qel'a Royal Palace, Port Silana on Whaletail Island, Kyoshi Island, most of Ba Sing Se's Middle Ring, Caldera City, other builds...
  • Staff member Aqualon has the distinction of giving access to the Bending Age world to Avatarverse's owner, Aztl
  • Staff member Infin re-painted portions of the world, updating them from their original 1.12 landscapes to the modern era
  • Staff member Parker was Avatarverse's first designer and created textures and models for dragons, bison, and many other mobs, alongside Kameron, and also helped build various structures
  • Staff members/builders cuchibarbie, NickC1211, xris, Xhosu, and Tree built much of Anana Tun'ila alongside Kameron
  • Builder Stacker contributed to the construction of Omashu
  • Staff member Janny built Cranefish Town, which developed into Republic City, although this build has since been replaced with a more urban/modern one
  • Owner Aztl terraformed and built much of Ba Sing Se's Lower Ring
  • Other builds I may have forgotten to document here (ping me (Aztl) if I did!)

Building was not the only thing going on before Avatarverse's beta release. The earliest RPG systems were being coded by the server owner, Aztl, and were compiled into a few plugins:

  • Azimuth, the precursor to Avatarverse's character and nations systems, which had a character creation menu very similar to our current one
  • Fauna, a plugin for handling custom dragon/bison behavior
  • Nonbenders, a bending plugin that introduced nonbending subclasses to the game
  • ProjectKorraRPG, a plugin created by the ProjectKorra development team and greatly altered by Aztl to make a bending leveling/progression system

Beta

Plugin development

Avatarverse Beta was released on March 6, 2021. There were lots of new players eager to try out the new server and unfortunately lots of bugs and other issues to squash.

In May of that year, Aztl began working on a new RPG core plugin to add tons of new features to the game. In June, the server rebranded from its previous name "Indigon" to Avatarverse. In July, Aztl released Routes, a new plugin that connected the world via a global oceanic transportation system. In August, Avatarverse became cross-platform. In October, the Azimuth plugin received an update that added the /character command and some combat features. In November, subelements became randomized upon character creation.

In January of 2022, Avatarverse Core, Aztl's RPG core plugin, was finished. It added a new nations system, one that had invitations, formatted chat based on ranks within the nation, a collection of provinces and settlements based on their ownership of chunks, and integration with Dynmap to display the nation, province, and settlement borders on the map. It also added a new economic system, one which introduced physical currencies that nations could design, mint, and distribute as needed and functioned with player chest shops. There were several other quality-of-life changes packed into the plugin.

In May of 2022, Avatarverse Core got its first update, the Combat & Jailing Update. It allowed characters to hunt and murder each other, as well as handcuff one another and bring people into custody. It also got rid of the unpopular leveling system introduced in Beta's early days.

In August, another update was released, which added the /reroll command, added a grace period for new characters, and updated the server to 1.19.

On New Year's Eve 2022, the December update was released, adding 5 more hearts to players' health and other numerous quality-of-life changes.

Construction

Many construction projects have taken place since Beta launched, so many that it is hard to keep track. Most of them were carried out under the auspices of nation leaders who wanted to improve the aesthetics of the land they ruled. Therefore, a new staff role, Contract Builder, was created, whose purpose was to build for a specific nation until that project was completed. Building new towns and reworking existing ones also became a way for nation leaders to prove their aptitude. Here are some highlights:

  • First expansion of Republic City from the initial Cranefish Town by former builder Mira Feng
  • First reconstruction of Republic City by the build team in general
  • Construction of Air Temple Island by builder Sasha
  • Rework of Western Air Temple by Sasha
  • Construction of Bianqui by Sasha
  • Rework of Agna Qel'a by several Water Chiefs
  • Rework of Anana Tun'ila by several Water Chiefs
  • Expansion of Ninuno by Aztl, building of parts of La Bayan later by administrator Malcolm and builder Jasper
  • Rework of Azu (initially named Mazu) by Jasper
  • Construction of Namta Kaghar by Jasper
  • Reconstruction of Gaoling by head builder Cody
  • Construction of Hama's village (now called Noriko) by Cody
  • Construction of the Cave of Two Lovers by Cody
  • Construction of Senlin, Tongzhen, and Gaipan by Cody
  • Construction of Nuniq Estate on Khet by Cody
  • Rework of the Swamp by build team in general, mostly builder Egotopataki
  • Construction of town of Bei Da Feng by various citizens/builders there
  • Construction of Hortezuca by builder Alinova
  • Construction of Wuzhen Village by former head mod/builder Aden
  • Rework of the Southern Air Temple by former builder Sponge
  • Construction of Chieseret by Zia
  • Construction of Zeizhou (initially named Karnaka) by former builder Ryuco
  • Second reconstruction of Republic City by the build team led by Head Builder Cody

Post-beta

Avatarverse will be considered "post-beta" when Aztl considers the server polished enough to be constantly advertised and publicized.