Valor MMO · The website

The website: valormmo.com

The Valor website has to do several jobs at once: persuade a stranger to try the game, get the launcher onto their computer safely, teach them how things work, and tell regular players what changed this week. It is a fast static site, built the same way we build sites for towns and shops, and it is rebuilt with every release of the game.

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The Valor MMO home page: the headline A Living Medieval World over a painted valley with a castle, a jousting ground and sailing boats, a gold Play Valor button, a Pre-Alpha notice and a line showing the server is online. — The home page.

A home page that is honest about the stage

The first screen says what the game is, that it is free, which computers it runs on, and that it is Pre-Alpha and still being built. Under the buttons a live line shows that the server is up and what the date is in the game world.

The Valor MMO home page on a phone: the headline, the Play Valor button, the Pre-Alpha notice and the server status stacked in one column. — The same page on a phone.

Built for a phone first

Most people meet a game through a link on their phone, long before they sit down at a computer. The whole site reads in one column with large buttons, and loads quickly on a mobile connection.

The Activities and Guides page: a heading over a painted castle town, and a row of cards for Jousting, the 1v1 Arena and the River Race. — Activities and guides.

Guides for every activity

Each thing a player can do has its own guide, written for someone who has never played. The tables of items, places and rewards are generated from the game’s own data, so the site and the game agree.

The Royal Joust guide page: a knight on horseback with a lance under the title The Royal Joust, and a strip showing eight riders, three passes per match and the reward. — The Royal Joust guide.

A page that sells one idea

A guide page opens with what the activity is in one line, then the three facts a player wants: how many riders, how long a match is, and what it earns.

The People of Oakvale page: the heading A town is its people over painted portraits, with filters and a search box above a grid of character portraits. — The people of Oakvale.

A directory you can filter

The town’s characters are listed with portraits, roles and a search box, so a player can find the banker or the weaponsmith and learn what they teach.

The What’s New page: a release picker set to the latest build, and the headline and summary of that update. — What’s New, with a release picker.

Patch notes for every release, in plain words

Every update gets its own notes, newest first, written for players rather than programmers, with a menu to step back through earlier releases. The first line of each tells players whether their character and progress are kept.

The Server Status page: a line showing the server online with the in-game date and time, followed by paragraphs explaining how the status is measured. — Server status.

A status page that is measured, not typed

The status line is read from the live server, not written by hand, and the page explains exactly what it does and does not prove.

More of the project

The rest of Valor

The game

A shared medieval world: a town, keeps to fight through, the sea, and tavern games.
The launcher

A Windows application we wrote to install, update and start the game.
The character creator

Six clear steps from a blank slate to a named character, with a live 3D preview.
Interface design

The title screen, character windows, conversations and mini-game screens.
Fifteen languages

The game, the launcher and the website, translated and checked, including Arabic.
Technology

What Valor is built with, from the game engine to the web server.