In "put the poor thing out of its misery" news: Mythic announced that they would be shutting down Andred sometime in the next two months, and letting players there copy over to Mordred somehow. There would be much rejoicing, but for the fact that there aren't enough people left on Andred to do more than raise a faint cheer.

In "sorry we're late" news, the 1.63 patch notes have been added to our Patch Notes page, Realm Ability changes from 1.62 have been made, and there are new reports from the Reaver, Sorcerer, Mentalist, and Warden Team Leads, which are of course over on our TL Reports page.

Lastly, in "yet more undocumented changes news": the 'detail' pages for news items on the Herald, which you reach when you click "More" beneath the news item in the front page, are now shtml files, not PHP. This means that all links to Herald news items posted prior to 6/26/03 are now broken. As far as I can tell, all their old news items are simply gone - not converted to shtml nor still there in PHP form. Hopefully they'll get that fixed up while they're working on the XML...

So, I've updated the spells pages as per patch 1.62. There were a *lot* of changes, but I think I have them all, however, there are a few exceptions:

The Enchanter's Dazzling Flash line has no values in the XML
The Mentalist's Curative Trance line has no values in the XML

If you have info on these two lines, please send it in! Also, The Enchanter's Beguiling Will line is kinda fubared in the XML ... ya know... cause "Not Parsed!" is such a great descriptor for them =) But other than those three lines, if you see anything strange, please let me know.

The main problem comes in with styles.xml. First off, even though we're dealing with patch 1.63 and soon 1.64, styles.xml has still not been updated for patch 1.62. Not much I can do about that, but even if it was updated, patch 1.62 deals with a lot of changes for styles that are class-specific changes. Traditionally, unless a class was missing the prerequisite opener for a style, their styles were the exact same as every other class. Now, that is no longer the case, and the current XML does not support these class-specific differences. I have updated the Archery styles with the new Quick Shot, and Penetrating Arrow, but there's not much else I can do with the rest of the styles until the XML is fixed. If you'd like to see the new style information, you'll have to bug Mythic to update their stuff.

Version 1.63 has been released. Virtually the only thing of note in this update is the Housing 'expansion', Foundations. Mythic has also posted some housing prices on the Herald. With starting costs for house deeds ranging from 1 platinum (for a cottage) to 100 platinum (for a mansion), getting into the housing scene doesn't come cheap. Upkeep costs, though, are only 2% of the original purchase cost - meaning you might pay as little as 20 gold per week.

If you visit other DAoC sites, you're no doubt aware that big things have been happening in TL-land recently.

First, there were the departures. Oakleif, long-time (very long) Scout Team Lead, resigned so that he could spend more time with his family and away from the game and the duties of a TL. The next day Taldren's removal was announced, for less understandable reasons. Depending on how you look at it, he was removed either because he disagreed with Mythic on what should be done, or because the tone he took in making his arguments created a hostile work environment. Mythic declined to comment when I approached them.

Next was the update to the program itself. A section of the Herald was created to show Team Lead positions both filled and available, and a Producer-level staff position was created to act as a sort of messenger between the Team Leads and the development team. The TL section of the Herald also allows you to send feedback (directly?) to the Team Leads.

And then was the filling of open TL positions, including a newly created Roleplaying TL. Here are the new Team Leads and their domain...
Turkinolith - Eldritch
Los - Paladin
Nimm - Hero
Xenogenic - Berserker
Omyz - Sorcerer
Tiralle - Bard
Solice - Roleplaying

Interspersed among all the rest of the TL news, patch reports have been going up left and right. Among the new reports are the Minstrel, Scout, Wizard, Druid, Eldritch, Nightshade, Valewalker, Bonedancer, Hunter, Shadowblade, Shaman, and Skald. You can find links to all of those new reports on our Team Lead Reports page.

Quoted a horribly obscure reference that had nothing to do with DAoC, but then, where would we be if I didn't? =) So, I've got all of the non-spelllist, non-skilllist, non-RA changes in for patch 1.62, including the changes to Triple Wield, Dirty Tricks, and Elves. The spell/style lists should be coming soon, and I believe Uriel will be updating the RA lists here in the near future.

Other than that, I re-did the site so that it will not be hindered by IP address-blocking firewalls, which means all you people out there in corporate land with crazy firewall rules on your office LANs should be able to view the site now =) There's a new listing in the Fan Art section for Jorfir's Paintings, and I made a new page under the Spells header called 'Master List,' which is basically just a shortcut page with links to every class' spell lists, something which was requested for those who like to compare multiple spell lists from different realms without hitting the back button a gagillion times.

Lastly, our friends over at Camelot Seer have been busy reorganizing their vast library of reports, as well as creating a new one called 'Realm War Status', which tracks all the activity in the frontiers, and who owns which dungeons, and all that yummy goodness. It's kinda like Phrogz's old site, if you were familiar with that.

I'm just dropping a line today to everyone that's been asking... I realize there were a boatload of spell and style changes in patch 1.62, but as of yet the Herald has not updated it's XML yet, so I can't update our lists until they release the info... sorry =/ However, I'm going through the extensive list now, and trying to get everything else updated. Will keep you informed.

Some of you will remember the numerous posts on CoC about MOG Magazine in the past - about their first issue, the subsequent death of their publisher, their revival, etc etc. Unfortunately, the magazine is apparently not meant to be, as hinted at in a post by it's managing editor... an excerpt from that post:

IMGS announces, with regret and some embarassment, that MOG is now officially cancelled. There will be no MOG #2 or MOG #3. We sincerely apologize to everybody who did so much hard work on the magazine over the last few months.

No subscribers to MOG have had their credit cards charged, and they will not have their credit cards charged.

Unfortunately, CoC fans, this means that the second issue's featured DAoC website - none other than this very site - won't be effusively complimented in print in thousands upon thousands of magazines across the country. However, you may yet to be able to read the feature (though it is at this point several months old) online. Should it be posted, we'll let you know.

Today, we've got an updated version of the CoC Companion, available from the Charbuilder page, under featurettes. The new version allows for larger resolution monitors - 1024x768 and up, and allows you to resize the window. I also fixed the formatting on the class pages, so they look a bit better now, especially with the CoC Companion.

In other news, Jester updated his Valewalker guide for us, and there is a new melee ranger guide by Jorfir. Lastly, I wanted to thank the people who have been donating to the CoC fund recently, but please remember to include your site username when you donate, so I know whose title to change!

Or at least on the Herald... Julie Velez, the newest addition to the Herald team (this makes four people working on it now, by the way), is starting up a new feature, where you can send Mythic accounts of your achievements - slaying of uber mobs, hitting level 50, wedding your sweetheart, and so forth. So send in those tales... and make sure they're appropriately embellished, so the rest of us can enjoy reading them.

Julie will also be "camping one of the more populated message boards" - which appears to be the Vault dev board. I suggest we all pray to our respective deities or higher powers for this poor woman's sanity. No word yet on whether this means Sanya will have some time freed up to read our boards. ;)

And the CoC Companion is now fixed. Gotta love that speedy service! Since a one-line news post looks silly, some other minor site news - most pages are now formatted correctly, so that the content doesn't go right up to the silver borders. The Featurettes are now in a mini-menu of their own rather than a separate page. And the Patch Notes listing has been updated for 1.62.

The guide links should be fixed now. I know we've said that before, but this time it's true! Of course, we could be wrong again, so if there are still problems, let us know. Thanks to Damitjim for sending in a list of wrong links.

In other site news, the character builder is currently on the fritz. Hopefully we'll get that fixed soon, but for now, it's probably best not to try downloading or extracting it.

The links to the guides on the class pages have been broken for a few pages, but they should be fixed now. Sorry for the downtime. If you notice any that are stil broken, please let us know.

In Other news, Patch 1.62 came out today, with A LOT of changes. I suggest you take a look a it!