Return to the Dream is a project to attempt to revive the now defunct online video game ‘TERA’ (The Exiled Realm of Arborea), which shut down in 2022.
The Story
In the world of TERA: Two titans Arun and Shara fled from a war-torn world. They dreamed of a better world, one that is magical and free of war and suffering, filled with all kinds of wonderful creatures. As these two titans fell asleep, they began to dream this world into existence. Their bodies became the land, and their tears became the ocean. Shara flew up and placed a bright burning ring into the sky to illuminate their dream, before laying by Aruns side.
Return to the Dream
The goal of this project is to return to that dream world by reviving the online service in a form that is as true to the original as possible. This means we are leaving the game in its most pure state, before some of the many patches which spoiled it, and ultimately led to its demise.
We are not the first alternative (a.k.a.: ‘private’) TERA service, and we won’t be the last. What we are aiming for specifically is to revive the game back to the state it was in before such things as ‘Avatar’ weapons (which made the leveling process laughably easy), and to slowly and gradually progress the world by updating to newer patch levels, and introducing the newer content while removing some of the things that led to the games downfall.
Development
Development and testing of this service is currently being done by two people, building on top of the great work done by the community before us. We hope to eventually contribute back to the TERA community by eventually releasing some of the changes we make, and tools we develop.
At this time, the service is on a small server for testing and development only. We welcome a limited number of testers (within the capacity of the test server) until we are ready to fully go live.
Funding & Monetisation
Sadly (unlike Arun and Shara’s dream world), servers in our world are not free, so we need to come up with a way to generate enough funding to sustain it in such a way that is as fair and transparent as possible.
To facilitate this we plan to fund the servers via two methods:
The In-Game Shop
We will offer various cosmetics and services via the in-game shop, such as costumes and skins, pets, additional item storage, slots for new characters, and so on. All revenue generated from this will go directly to funding the running costs of the server.
Donations
We will welcome any donations. If you have an account, and mention your user or character name when donating, then we will give you shop credits as a thank you.
Finally, we will be publishing the operating and development costs for all to see. This includes the costs of the server, (anonymised) income from the shop, and (anonymised unless requested not to be) income from donations.
Any surplus will be used to pay future running costs and cover ‘dry periods’ where income is low.
We appreciate that funding and monetisation can be somewhat sensitive topics. We will gladly welcome any criticism, questions and suggestions you may have, and will constantly re-evaluate our approach to this particular aspect of running the service.