There are two days left (well, one day and 23 hours really) before the contest for Darkness Rising beta spots ends - and thus far I've received very few entries. So if you do send something in, you have a very good chance of getting a beta spot (certainly better than the 2.5% chance Sanya estimates for the random selection).

In case you want to go for a spot but can't think of anything to submit, the discussion thread has a list of some of the things that won't require much time...

Edit: OK, there's now less than a day left - so if you send anything in after this point, it'd be a good idea to send your account name (not password, never ever password!) at the same time, so that if you win there's no need to get it afterward.

We sort of skipped Catacombs, but this time of year is the time for fansite contests, and for those who want to get into the Darkness Rising beta, here's one way:

This isn't a "screenshot contest" or a "poem contest" - it's a general contest. The concept is simple - you submit things, I give you points for uour submissions, and those with the most points win a prize - a spot in phase 3 of the Darkness Rising beta.

Eligible Submissions: Whatever you feel like! Since the focus of the site is game information, something like a class guide will get more points than an entertainment counterpart (such as a story). Any size submission will count, and can include things like a link suggestion or a note about incorrect Artifact info as well as works created by you. You can send in things hosted elsewhere also (assuming you created them), though generally they'll be given less points than if the submission were entirely new.

Prizes: 5 Darkness Rising beta spots.

How to Enter: Send your submission to uriel@classesofcamelot.com with "CoC Contest" in the subject line OR, if you are registered (or if you're unregistered and put your email in the form along with your comment), use the Comment page. Your email address will be used both to identify you if you send in multiple submissions and to contact you if you win, so be sure to make sure I can connect all of your submissions with your preferred email.

Scoring: Points will be given based on three things:

• Usefulness: The more helpful your submission will be to future visitors to the site, the more points it will be worth. If you write a guide for a class that doesn't have one right now, for example, it'll be extremely useful and get more points than a guide for a class with several out there already. Info on spell lines not on the spell pages at all will be worth more than fixes for the ones already there. Etc.
• Quality: If something is well written (or if a screenshot is particularly well done), it'll get more points. Spelling and grammar errors I'll correct regardless and won't affect a score (much), but if your submission isn't legible or doesn't make sense, that certainly will have an effect.
• Thoroughness/Length: Bigger is better (keeping in mind the quality part).

Start Date: Thursday, August 25

End Date: Noon (eastern) on Friday, September 2

You've got a while, but don't procrastinate - now let the games begin!

Edit: Changed the end date to a couple days earlier; at some point I got the end of that week and the beginning of the next switched.

The Vault has a Darkness Rising exclusive video - with shots of some of the Champion Weapons, as well as a glimpse of the DR story...

And if you don't recognize the reference at the beginning, I say this to you: Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Now go rent the Quest for the Holy Grail or I shall taunt you a second time!

The Island of Agramon is open to all today - or, at least, those who update quickly.

The Trophies page and the Kill Task pages are now sortable and have a row hover color change to make it easy to tell which fields are on the same row. The caps page now has a calculator, if you just want to see all the cap info for a given level, and the tables for all levels now show up one at a time, eliminating the buggy expandable table.

Edit: OK, now the trophy page really is sortable.

Well, apparently a lot of people have used the RA calc over the last day - pretty much the expected result of being linked to in a Grab Bag :). Three people have sent in notes on errors they found:
An anonymous Hunter pointed out that True Sight doesn't exist anymore and that Purge 1 was set to the early 10-sec delay rather than the more recent 5.
An anonymous Shaman noted that AoM wasn't listed for Shamans.
And an anonymous caster brought to my attention that the description for Mastery of Concentration didn't list the duration (shows you what I get for copying and pasting Herald descriptions, huh?).

So those are now fixed - if anyone finds more, of course send them in!

In a press release released today, Mythic has a link to a zip file containing some images of player mounts...

Other revelations in the release: Mythic doesn't seem to have a publisher for this expansion, as they'll be releasing it directly via download; and any hopes that the beta would be lengthier than usual since it's starting this early are dashed - the expansion is due for release in October.

Though he's not really returning, and there's not really much triumph in this one, so... uhh... Kwip (of neenerneener.net) wrote an article. Yeah. About the trials he has faced as a Lurikeen Spearo. You can read it here, and decide for yourself whether it's a tale of the plight of misunderstood liliputians, or if the tiny little guys are just getting what they deserve.

The new login poll asks:

What would you like the login timer to be for crossing realms on clusters?

Although there's no "get rid of the damn thing entirely", as I'd like, the options go from 8 hours down to 15 minutes. Consider this when voting: with the rise of voice chat, crossrealming the old fashioned way by switching realms is actually the least efficient method and the others are widely available. The xrealmers are moderately annoyed at worst by the current timer, while anyone unlucky enough to play in multiple realms on the same server is hugely inconvenienced.

This message brought to you by CoC PAC.

By popular demand (ok, one person, but still), I've added a "Realm Points Required" area on the RA Calc; I've also prevented selection of realm levels 1-9 when RR12 is selected. The RA Calc is also now linked to in the nav bar, under (of course) Realm Abilities.

A game merging servers is always a sign that the population is declining; and while clustering isn't merging, it's close enough...

Two weeks from now, DAoC will have gone from 16 distinct normal ruleset (including RP) servers down to 4. Here's the announcement from the Herald:

During the past weeks, we have been paying close attention to server populations. Our Herald Team has received a tremendous amount of feedback asking us to cluster more servers. In response to your top requests, we decided to do just that. Here are the server clusters scheduled to take place in the upcoming weeks:

On Thursday, August 4th, Guinevere will be clustered with Nimue and Percival.

On Tuesday, August 9th, Merlin will be clustered with Palomides, Bors, and Gawaine.

On Thursday, August 11th, Lancelot will be clustered with Iseult, Kay, and Pellinor.

On Tuesday, August 16th, Galahad/Morgan le Fay will be clustered with Bedevere, Igraine, and Tristan.

We expected the island, but there are other significant changes slipped in as well, such as:

• Heath and Power regen increased on a sliding scale - greater at lower levels.
• Power regen is no longer decreased when below 50%
• Hunters given Evade 3
• Gaheris keep mobs have an increased chance to drop Dreaded Seals.
• And one rather vague and sinister-sounding one: - As the Isle of Agramon appeared an increase in demonic activity throughout the Realms started to rise. Now human servitors of the Demon Lords of Darkness Falls strive to construct portals to usher their masters into the lands.

The rest of the patch notes (including some new details on The Island, Agramon) can be found in the discussion thread.

I'm finally ready to unveil one of the probjects I've been working on for a while - a Realm Ability Calculator.

Since there were already at least two realm ability calculators out there already, why make this one - and why use it? First, it should generally be up to date, since it's tied in with the existing RA lists here at CoC. Second, it works in the latest versions of both IE and Firefox, whereas the one at ceoliath.com works only in IE. The CoC calc goes up to RR12 and has a box to add extra points from Gaheris. And finally, I liked the idea of having a summary of abilities you've chosen at the bottom of the page, which is something that I don't think any of the NF-compliant calculators had.

Although the calculator's gone through testing by me and by a few of my guildies on Gareth, there are almost certainly still problems. If you find one, please email it to me or use the comments form. General suggestions are welcome, as well - if there's something you don't like, or something you want to see added, there's a good chance I'll make that change, so why not tell me?

A huge thanks goes to Sven Neuhaus, whose calculator I, like most of the DAoC community, found a great resource for years. I don't know if it was the first one around, but it was the best.