lowly, 2011 is coming to an end. Time for us community managers to sit down and have a look at what has happened throughout this year, a year with ups and downs, an eventful year that has brought many changes to Tibia.

In the beginning of this year, our two famous Tibian Royals, Queen Eloise of Carlin and King Tibianus of Thais, had decided to hang new paintings in their castles. The two painters, Vad Inchi and Lou Toose almost lost their heads in this competition, but they were saved by creative Tibians who helped those two poor souls with their ideas. The Royal Painting contest, which was carried through with the help of many of our supported and promoted fansites, yielded two awesome paintings which can be marvelled at in the castles of Thais and Carlin nowadays.

While Vad Inchi and Lou Toose waited desperately for inspiration, the Tibian lands faced another crisis, at which once again, brave and hard working Tibians had to lend a helping hand. The witches of the green claw swamp needed help to protect their cauldron and to collect ingredients to mix a powerful brew to avert the wrath of evil spirits. 29 game worlds succeeded in the first "Bewitched" world event in January 2011.
So, in January, most Tibians were quite busy with saving lives, saving the world, and also mastering world tasks like "Last Creep Standing" or "A Pirate's Death to Me". In addition to that, January was also the birth of the war horse and the crystal wolf. These mounts were the most voted on in a poll at the end of January, and they came to life later this year.

After all this strenuous work in January, February appeared in a different light. The fun world event "A Piece of Cake" took place for the first time. In this event, cake golems invade Tibia. So instead of fighting horrifying creatures and ending up covered in blood, Tibians are fighting against sweet cake monsters in this event, ending up sugar coated. Also, stuffing yourself with cake till you cannot take it anymore is part of this event. So probably some Tibians still feel a little queasy when they see cake, even up to today.
February was also a very lucky month for some Tibians. In our Fabulous February raffle, 50 lucky winners won an entire year of premium time for free!

After all this cake throwing and munching, it was time to do some more serious work again. In March, the Flash client showed its face for the first time. For this initial testing phase, 371 Tibia players were chosen to experience the new features of the Flash client at first hand. During the test, more than 1,800 posts were written on the private test board. We received very useful feedback that helped very much to get the Flash client into a stage at which it could later be released in its beta form. The testing and the development of the Beta Flash client is still going on today, and and we really appreciate your help and your feedback!

Do you remember CM Ogrey? He shocked the Tibian world by announcing his resignation on the first of April. Despite many people being convinced that this was an April Fool's joke - it was not. Ogrey left us in April, before the spring patch came along.
The spring patch contained many structural changes, mainly in preparation for the Flash client. Most of these structural changes went unnoticed by Tibians, except for one, which upset many. The hand and arrow slots received restrictions.
Besides this controversial game design decision, the spring patch also helped preventing quite some spam on the Tibia forums, since the level limit for posting for players who have never had premium time or paid for an extra service was raised to at least level 21. Also the reporting system was extended, now including signature reports as well as forum posts.

While we said "good-bye" to one CM in April, we said "hello" to another CM in May. Tjured joined our team then and made his first appearance in the Auditorium.
May, being the month of spring in the northern hemisphere, implicating the rebirth of nature and of all life, it fit very well for another first-time world event this year. In "Demon's Lullaby" even the toughest warriors had to show some soft skills by babysitting and caring for a demon baby.
At the end of May, the Flash client made another appearance in an open beta test. Due to some unexpected difficulties with the development, we announced the decision that the Flash client would be launched in a beta version first, which then actually happened shortly after this second test, in the beginning of June.

June was a month of celebration. It was CipSoft's 10th anniversary, and we celebrated it together with all of you. In the featured article of June, we introduced you to several employees, showed you their desks and invited everybody to participate in a thread in the Auditorium. To celebrate the decade of CipSoft's existance further, we sponsored a hundred years of premium time, and spread them among players who logged into the game during that time. 100 lucky winners won a premium time voucher, granting free premium status for an entire year.
Also in June, we started deleting automatically detected botters instead of only banishing them, a measure that was often requested by many players. Nevertheless, the fight against cheating is still going on since the situation is not satisfying, yet.

July started off really well with the summer update. It brought a complete new feature to Tibia: world changes. Now it is partially in your hands to shape your game world. In a poll you have told us about your most favourite world changes, and the top three are: the horse stations, the demon wars, and swamp fever. It is probably safe to say that in the future of Tibia, many more world changes will come to life.


Unfortunately, the summer update also came with two bugs that caused plenty of discussions, sweat and bug fixing rounds for CipSoft employees: Out of nowhere, one of the fansite items simply kept on spawning in the Thaian temple, and it did not take long before the once pretty rare dread dolls were owned by many players.
The other bug allowed players to illegally receive experience points. Even though a rollback of the servers could be prevented, the word "rollback" was probably the most dominant in our forums during that time.
Also in July, a new feature for the Beta Flash client was implemented. Maps from the stand-alone client could finally be imported.

August was one of the calmer months in 2011. That does not mean though that nothing special was going on. For example, in August it was time to cook, time to help Jean Pierre preparing delicious meals. Also, the Tibia Movie Awards were running at that time, which were organised by Tibiopedia.pl, and supported by several other fansites.

The next month provided more action and more news again, though. September started off with the "Devovorga". 72 game worlds completed this event successfully in 2011.
Further, in September daily server saves were synchronised and the autumn patch with a revamped Grizzly Adams was introduced, something that had been on the wish list of many players for quite some time. This patch also brought the game play board, that, according to a poll, is at least in part interesting for about three quarters of all players.
Also, our three wizards Furb of Fun, Feiz of Power and Fern of Nature competed once more this year about who has the most followers, in the world event "Colours of Magic".
September ended with the Grab a Draptor campaign. A campaign, criticised by some, and loved by just as many. Loved especially by those, who now happily ride into the sunset with their Shadow Draptor.

October started of with the world event "Annual Autumn Vintage". In this event, you have to gather and process Winterberries for the Combined Magical Winterberry Society. 13 game worlds succeeded in this event in 2011, and by that earned themselves a temporarily enhanced health and mana potion effect.
On October 20th, a new tutor system was introduced. Now it is possible to give "Thank you!'s" for helpful answers from other players. With enough "Thank you!'s", you will become a tutor, and stars will appear next to your character name in the forum, thus reflecting your helpful nature.
October is also the month of Halloween, so the Halloween Hare and the Mutated Pumpkin completed this month, unfortunately having a very unpleasant surprise ready for Tibians: a kill limitation that had not been in place the previous year. We apologise once more for disappointing many of you with this event.

In November, after the switch to daylight saving time in Germany, you can really feel that the days are becoming shorter and the nights get longer, temperatures drop and life appears to be freezing. This month is just perfect for the Lightbearer event. In 2011, this event took place for the third time already, and 40 worlds succeeded in keeping the sacred light basins burning for four days in a row.
Apart from this event, we community managers had much fun in our heated up offices with the Caption Contest. There were some really good captions for the screenshot that we had created. Thank you for making us laugh during such a rough time.

Now it is December, and as every year, December will bring the winter update! We hope that you are enjoying the teasers that have already been published and we hope that we wrapped up a nice Christmas present for you with this update!


That was our quick review of 2011. Of course, it is merely impossible to include all bits and pieces of an entire year in such an article. Nevertheless, we hope you enjoyed this short backward journey with us.
We would also like to say "Thank You" to all of you who have supported us in 2011, who do not get tired of giving us feedback over and over again. We strive to get better, at all open topics - be it the fight against cheating, vocation balancing and PvP, and we need your help and feedback to do so. Thank you for being here with us!

At the end of this year, now that you have read this recollection, which were your most memorable impression of 2011? What did you like best this year?

Join us in remembering 2011!
Your Community Managers