News Archives - February 2007
No petspam for you! 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/24/2007 6:33:55 PM
1.88b is out, with a couple notable changes. First - the gigantic nerf of the Animist class!
Animists

- Animists are now limited to a total of 5 active fire and forget (FnF) turrets at any given time. This does not include bombers or controlled pets.

- The hitpoints on fire and forget turrets have been increased by 50%.

- The following Animist bomber spell lines are now no longer bombers and have been converted to normally cast spells.

Creeping Base Line:

Rampant Vines - Root
Wisp Inferno - Direct Damage/Debuff


Creeping Spec:

Dancing Flare - Area Effect (AE) Armor Debuff
Binding Spirit - Area Effect (AE) Root


Verdant Base Line:

Rejuvenating Spirit - Pet Heal
Spirit of Nourishing - Pet Regen


Verdant Spec:

Fortifying Emissary - Short duration absorption (ABS) Buff
Essence of the Forest - Long duration absorption (ABS) Buff
Woodspirit Seal - Bladeturn

It's highly unlikely that this is the last of the Animist changes, but lots of people are threatening to quit over it anyway, unless Mythic gives them their precious petspam back. To which I say: Glad to see you go. If you only want to play a game when you're overpowered, then you leaving is a good thing. Rather than temper tantrums, may I suggest thoughtful ideas on how to make the class fun without leaving it grossly overpowered?

There was also another change, though it's considerably less controversial...
TRADESKILL NOTES

- Timers for all recipes have been standardized to reduce some inconsistencies, as well as to eliminate many excessively long crafting times. For the vast majority of recipes, this results in a significant decrease in crafting time; anywhere from a few seconds to as much as two minutes, such as in the case of the bulk trinkets.
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AJAXification 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/18/2007 2:47:04 AM
A couple of small news pieces...

The Artifacts page now uses AJAX to display search results. Aside from being very buzzwordish, this means that it won't reload the page when you search by item type, class, etc. It's been tested and works fine in IE and Firefox. It also works in Opera, although I've discovered that the navigation doesn't... doh. Oh well. I'll be converting more pages to use this method, as well, because page reloads are annoying.

Second, the RP calculator now includes Champion Levels 6-10, if you're wondering how much that CL10 enemy of yours is worth.

Edit, 2/19: The Master Level Ability and Realm Ability pages also now use AJAX for reload-free searching.

Edit 2: Unfortunately, the spiffy new versions of the pages broke some of the direct links to specific classes, paths, etc, so the old versions are back up for now and until I can get everything to play nice together.

Edit 3: Those three pages are now fixed... I hope. The TL reports page is updated as well.
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Bounty Point Items 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/17/2007 12:55:45 AM
I've made a list of the new bounty point items - you can find it at http://www.classesofcamelot.com/misc/BountyItems.asp. Read the descriptions of the new jewelry for some chuckles and references to DAoC history... you might even be there! I'm not, mind you, but you might be.
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1.88a 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/15/2007 8:21:12 PM
Analysis to follow... for now, here are the important changes.

The game now stores some files in a new folder, rather than the DAoC install root as it has been using.
Bounty points can be used to buy XP, MLXP, Artifact credit, Artifact scrolls, new items, respec stones, and Master Level credit.
The basic horse is available at level 10.
Aurulite drop values have been doubled.

Read more for the full patch notes.
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Mauler Character Builder 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/7/2007 7:11:39 PM
One of my remaining Labyrinth projects (I'm still going to do a Chapter 3 walkthrough, really!) is complete - the Mauler Character Builder. I used the code from the ever-popular but no longer updated character builder at DAoC Catacombs to create this, so it'll probably be very familiar to you all - the only significant differences (aside from the look) are the removal of the spell line boxes and the addition of a reset link.

Depending on how the Catacombs folk react, it may not be available for long, but for now - go crazy with the Mauler spec planning.
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Who doesn't like free? Part 2 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/6/2007 3:16:05 PM
As they now do yearly in order to limit the number of clients they need to make updates for and keep the divide due to lack of expansions from growing too large, Mythic is making another expansion free - this time it's Catacombs. If for whatever reason you don't have Catacombs yet, go ahead and download it, because it's fairly likely that soon you won't have any choice in the matter.
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Who doesn't like free? 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/2/2007 7:43:32 PM
There's been some confusion (at least on my part) recently about news coming out of Mythic's press event - specifically, the mention of Campaigns and expansions in the same breath. One article mentioned that the Campaigns would replace our yearly "content patch". GamersInfo.net said flat out that the Campaign would take the place of a retail expansion. RPG Vault assumed - and I have to say I thought this the most likely scenario, based on past conversations with Mythic - that Mythic was still planning on making an expansion in addition to the Campaigns.

Determined to clear up the confusion and prove my assumption correct, I talked to Sanya. And, umm, I was wrong.

There will be no retail expansion this year - or free expansion, for that matter. The Camelot Campaigns will take the place of both.

The more pessimistic or cynical among you might think that this is a bad thing, a sign of Mythic moving on to the new shiny and neglecting their older game... however, it's fairly clear that's not the case. For one thing, just earlier today I posted about their plans for this year - which are pretty significant even aside from the Campaigns.

On top of that, if you don't care about those changes and just want New Stuff To Do And Get, Sanya pointed out that you won't be getting less of it because of the lack of an expansion:
The live campaign we're working on, and the ones still to come this year, will have content and other new stuff equal to or greater than the content in some of our recent expansions.

I'm glad to have been proven wrong in this case - I like free. And I was in favor of DAoC going to this kind of free content updates after Catacombs; I'm even more in favor of it now. There are only so many things you can do in an expansion...
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Camelot in 2007 - 1.88, 1.89, and Beyond 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/2/2007 12:42:50 PM
Mythic at their most recent mini-Roundtable event shared with attendees their plans for Camelot this year. I didn't go, but luckily someone with a video camera DID go, and has posted the video of the presentation (made by Mike Stone) to Google Video. So, to that person I say thank you... wherever you are. Also thanks to Lucrin on the VN boards, who posted the link.

The video is a whopping 48 minutes long - worth at least listening to in the background, IMO, but if you don't have that kind of time on your hands, here's the synopsis.

Patch 1.88 - March

Mythic will add X-Fire support - will allow you to use X-Fire to see when your friends are online, as well as some info on what character they're playing (not location or anything sensitive, however). You'll also be able to launch the game from the X-Fire client.

Animists - Will get a second LOS check. Mythic was going to put this in 1.87 but waited to, well, make sure they should.

Music classes - instant cast or uninterruptible songs

Bonedancer - More versatile spec options

NF changes will start but not be available for public yet, only Team Leads.


Archery revamp

The long-awaited archery changes are finally coming!

All archers receive a new set of buffs (buffs is probably the wrong word; abilities sounds more accurate) by spending points in their bow line
More versatility - there will be many varied types of shots; close range, far range, magical shots, etc
Simplification of interface - no more arrows, one click will fire one shot
Fire, cold, and poison arrow graphical effects added
Beastcraft/Pathfinding/Shield and other such differences will remain; bow abilities are being normalized, not all abilities.

1.89 - June

1.89 will mostly be an update to NF - will we call it NF2, or New New Frontiers (NNF)?

Structure updates:
Different levels of keep will no longer be different heights; all will be about what is currently level 2-3
Upgrading will increase strength of walls and doors
There will still be a visual way to tell what level a keep is
Ladders will be removed and replaced with ramps (this got a big cheer)
Bridges will have lower towers, no ladders
Players below will be able to attack players above

Brush system for NF - it sounded like not just more grass but possibly brush you might use to hide or for other tactics.

Too steep code changes - remove code that stops movement, will just move slower; will be able to run almost anywhere in NF, except possibly around some of the chokepoints.

Player clip distance increase - variable options for performance vs distance

In the only non-NF related change mentioned, they'll start updating the UI, though most of that (including a "modernization" of the look, new icons, and presumably more) won't come until toward the end of the year.

Account Services

Nothing really new was revealed about this, other than that they WILL be doing it - the poll either wasn't being used to make that decision, or it was an easy decision.

He named the services we've already seen mentioned:
Account split
Gender respec
Character transfers across servers
Additional inventory slots - characters
Additional vault slots - horses

He didn't go into any detail, other than to say that gender respecs have in fact been heavily requested because people don't like the way one gender looks for their race (presumably because of Catacombs model changes).

There were some other services suggested by audience members that he said were possibilities, but I couldn't make out what those were. According to Luclin, two of them are race respecs and starting stat respecs.

Camelot Campaigns

We already knew some things about these, but he expanded on the concept a bit and shared a small preview of the current Campaign…

Campaigns will offer new content every 2 weeks within a 6 month period.
Rather than adding new areas, Mythic will use the Campaigns to bring life back to old areas - starting this time with the "epic" zones (homes of the original dragons).
There will be new item drops, new creatures, and a lot of changes to existing creatures.
Campaigns will be free.
Over the course of a year, will get as much if not more new content than an expansion would provide.
This Campaign will see the classic dragons revamped, including new art. The other mobs in epic zones will also get new art.


That ended the "Camelot in 2007" presentation. They did not mention an expansion - which could usually just be assumed to be coming this winter, but would be worth mentioning this year given the Campaigns. The lack of mention is probably that they didn't realize there's any confusion about whether Campaigns are replacing expansions… based on conversations I've had with them, I don't think Mythic is at all interested in getting rid of the retail expansions.

Q&A

After the presentation he took questions from the audience, leading to answers containing the following…

There's been talk of more clustering, but they want to wait until they can see the effect of Campaigns and the NF changes.

They're looking at making Bounty Points more useful, with better things to purchase. Those might go in 1.88.

They might make the basic horse (currently level 35) available at level 10.

Housing utility - there's been some talk about instancing housing and providing more things to do in housing. If they don't instance, they're still looking at more things to put in houses to provide more utility.

In-game mail is coming; probably with the UI revamp toward the end of the year.

They're looking at why Midgard's population is low and how to fix it; don't think the reason is because of the look and feel of the zones.

They're thinking about some kind of automated RvR balancing system to aid when one realm seems to have all the advantages. (This sounded to me like the NPC allies players of WAR will get to balance out the population of battlegrounds, but he didn't elaborate.)

And there you have it - almost as good as watching the video, which is almost as good as being there! If you WERE there, please let me know what people suggested as account services, or anything else of use that you heard.

Read more for pictures.
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Don't you just hate it when... 
Submitted by: Uriel on 2/1/2007 5:36:51 PM
You are happy with having just finished a project and then someone comes along and dumps more work on you? So I felt when I read the 1.87i patch notes... which, despite my whining, are good notes (or not, depending on whether you're one of the classes losing uniqueness) - at the very least, they're more significant than most post-live patches.

So check out the notes, and disregard anything I may have said about being almost finished with 1.87...
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