If you played Perfect World around version 1.3.9, you remember where the world ended: the long southern coast, the Sea of Reality, and grey "unavailable" land beyond it. Later versions opened that south up, first for the Tideborn and then for the Earthguard.
This realm is meant to feel like the classic world, so today the main world went back to that older map.
What changed in the world
South of the classic coastline the later lands are closed: no monsters, no NPCs, no zones, no safe areas and no teleport destinations. The ground itself follows the old map again, so the coast, the seabed and the southern edge of the regions near Dreamweaver Port and the Sea of Reality have their 1.3.9 shape. Four dungeons the old client did not have are closed as well, including the Wedding Church and Phoenix Valley.
Quests go with the land. A quest that needs a person, a monster or a place that only existed in the south cannot be finished, so about 1,600 such quests are now locked rather than left as dead ends. Some familiar later chains go with them, among them Coming of Age and the Phoenix Valley line. Teleporters no longer offer the southern destinations.
The Tideborn and Earthguard lands are not deleted. The world can open them again if it later moves to a newer era.
How the old map came back
The reference was an original 1.3.9 client. Its terrain, coastline, zones and waypoints were compared with today's world area by area. North of the coast the two are almost identical; the differences begin at the southern rows of the map.
The server side was rebuilt from that comparison: ground heights, invisible walls, where monsters and NPCs stand, zone borders, safe areas, teleport lists and the quest list. Every rebuilt file was checked against the old client before anything went live.
The game client needs the same world, or the scenery and the server would disagree. The newer client stores its terrain differently, so the old terrain was converted rather than copied. Buildings, lighting, the far-away view and the in-game maps of the south were taken from the old client too.
The rehearsal caught a crash
Before touching the main world, the new map ran in a separate small test world. The first start failed at once: the server stopped while loading. A few teleporters had lost every destination, and the server refuses to start if a character offers an empty teleport list, even if that character never appears anywhere. Those teleporters now simply offer no teleport, and the build check refuses this case from now on.
After the fix the server stayed up, and twenty fresh characters played there for 25 minutes. They reached levels 3 to 6, logged out cleanly, and none of them wandered south.
The switch
Characters standing in the south had to be moved first, or they would have logged in on closed land. Thirty-five were found and taken to the nearest city. Then the main world restarted with the new map. The server itself was down for about three minutes.
What still needs checking
- The client update for testers is ready but has not yet been looked at in a person's own game client. If something in the south looks wrong when you get it, tell me.
- On the southern edge of a few coastal regions, a handful of buildings exist only in the old map or only in the new one. There may be a spot where you walk through a wall or bump into one you cannot see.
- A few patches of grass in the far south may use a different grass model than they did in 1.3.9.
The map on this site follows the same change: it shows the classic world with English or Russian place names, as in each client.