Bridging the Vast Divide

Bridging the Vast Divide - Dev Updates

Weekly Update 1/22/07 (by Frelorn)

Hi there and welcome to the January 22nd edition of the weekly update!

Crowley has finally returned to us today, after his trip to the west coast. He reports that things were fun and he enjoyed the chance to meet with folks at the AC dinner. From all reports the dinner was a success and fun was had by all. Thanks to everyone who attended and those who set things up. Next time it will hopefully be our turn to get things set up. We are hopeful to have more information about another ACPL in the coming weeks.

Over the past week with Crowley out, there were not a lot of decisions made about what was going into the game. We had a few discussions about the direction we should go with the next story arc. A big part of those talks were based directly off feedback we got from folks here on the forums and in the game.

Please remember that the scheduled Live Ops begin this week. Make sure you are ready for it when it is time for your server. You can view the full schedule here. Just as a friendly reminder, here are some tips to help your live event experience go smoother.

1. Make sure if you have any question about what your PC can handle, turn down your graphics ahead of time. This will save you the hassle of doing it in the middle of the event due to performance issues.

2. Some sound cards can draw from system resources. If you are one of the people who runs the game on a lower end machine, turning off the sounds of the game can sometimes help increase overall performance.

3. No matter what level you are please feel free to participate in the event. If you do not know where to go when the event starts, do not be afraid to ask for directions in general chat. The chat is there for a reason.

4. The person or persons running the events will be in character while the event is going on. That means they will not be answering your question about the variances on weapon damage. If you want to ask them about something related to the event, please feel free.

5. It is recommended that you do not send tells to the person running the Live event. They may get the message, but you have a better chance of getting an answer if you ask in local chat.

Last but not least we are happy to let you know that we have some new pets coming soon. Players have been asking for some time now, for pets to be more useful. So coming soon will be some craft buffing pets. These pets will be able to give you temporary buffs to your crafting skill while out. As of right now these pets will buff only one skill per pet and they will buff the four basic crafting skills of Alchemy, Cooking, Fletching, and Lockpick.

We will of course have more information about these pets as we get closer to their release in to the world. Right now we are aiming for them to be a part of the February event, but as always this can change.

That’s about it for now. Everyone have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

Weekly Update 2/5/07 (by Frelorn)

Hello there and welcome to the February 5th edition of the weekly update. Let’s get right into some of the news for this week coming up.

Our billing folks have been hard at work trying to get new offers together for our loyal customers of Asheron’s Call. We are pleased to announce that Asheron’s Call is now offering multi-month purchasing options. These options will give players a chance to make a one time purchase to pay for their accounts at a discounted rate. This is the first of what we hope are many exciting changes coming to Asheron's Call in the coming months. The available plans are as follows:

3 months -1 time charge of $35.75 ($3 savings)
6 months -1 time charge of $67.75 ($12 savings)
12 months -1 time charge of $119.75 ($36 savings)

If you are interested in taking part in one of these great deals, please click here for more details on how you can sign up today.

As of right now we are still in the process of nailing down the launch date of the February event, Rekindling the Light. As soon as we have the date for the event set, I will make sure and post it.

As pointed out earlier this week by Severlin here it appears we have finally nailed down that pesky bug which caused some creatures to teleport home.

Quote:
Severlin: Well, I think I nailed the bug where homesick mobs never quite reach their home and eventually teleport back. After some initial testing with the usual suspects we couldn't reproduce the behavior. Yet since it is an intermittent problem if any of you see that bug after the fix goes live it would be great if you could throw a post or PM our way.

The scheduled live events have been wrapped up for the month. As far as I have seen and read, most people had a great time, and are enjoying Bur. We would like to thank everyone who participated in the events, and we look forward to doing more of these in the future.

That's about it for this week. Everyone have a great day and see you all in Dereth!

Update: As it stands right now, the February event will go live on February 20th. If there is any change to this date, we will let you know here on the forums.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

Vista Info... 2/5/07 (by Trident)

The best I can do right now is tell you it is being worked on. We have placed some items in our knowledge base that have helped some folks make the game work running Vista. If you are putting a fresh install of the game on your Vista machine the version from the disk will not work, but the install from the download section of our website will get you around the issues caused by the use of IE7.

As far as we can tell the version of Vista that MS gave us to test on, was not the same as the release version. So we have had to start the testing process over again.

We will be getting out a Vista friendly version of the game as soon as we can, but right now I have no ETA for it.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
__________________
Turbine Technical Support

Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Frelorn)

Hello there and welcome to the February 12th edition of the weekly update. Let’s get into some of the things going on this week.

In the interest of keeping everyone informed of what is going on, I wanted to give an update on the unexpected downtime last week. After some investigating it appears there was a problem with something on our network where the servers are housed. It does not appear to be anything major, but our Ops team is going to be watching things closely, to be sure. We hope the downtime did not cause too many issues for anyone.

Now on to the good stuff.

This week we are going to focus on something coming in February, The Colosseum.
This is pretty much what it sounds like. The Colosseum is a dungeon of sorts with repeatable content. The premise is very simple. Players will enter the Colusseum and fight their way through increasingly difficult stages.

Players of any level will be able to participate, but The Colusseum is geared towards fellowships. In order to go through, you must be part of a fellowship. When players enter, they will be in a staging area which will be used by everyone. This is a great place to get your fellowships together, or to find a group to tag along with. Once in a fellowship, one person will need to purchase a ticket at a reasonable cost from a nearby NPC. That person will then give the ticket to the starter NPC who will lock the fellowship and let them know they can enter The Colosseum.

In the interest of full disclosure I will say the initial download time upon entering is a bit longer than most places. The drop is not hot so players are safe upon entrance and should only have to go through this download once. Once you hand in your ticket, your fellowship will have 1 hour to finish the Arena from the time that they start. After this time is up they will all be teleported out of the arena and will be able to speak to the NPC to get their reward. The rewards will depend on how far the fellowship has made it in The Colosseum. If you die in the arena you will be able to re-enter through the first door and then go through all the doors that you have passed through, they will remain open and the creatures will remain dead in previous stages as long as you are within the 1 hour time limit allotted to your fellowship. If this time is up and you still have a corpse in one of the rooms, the normal corpse timer applies. This means that you may need to get some help to run back through for recoveries. Or you may want to prepare ahead of time so that corpse loss will not be an issue.

There will be 5 branches of The Colosseum so 5 fellowships full of players may do The Colosseum every hour. Once a fellowship is inside a branch of The Colosseum, that branch is locked from letting other players in. In the coming months we have plans to further update The Colosseum with things such as Boss fights, which can be unlocked by completing various stages in The Colosseum.

There will be an Authentication downtime on Tuesday February 13th from 7am EST - 12pm EST. During this time, players will not be able to log in to the game.

Last but not least, the February event, Rekindling the Light is still tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, February 20th.

That's about it for this week. Everyone have a great day and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

Re: Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Frelorn)

Originally Posted by Cezium
So spills the beans
Is there a timer on repeating this?

No. You can run through as many times as you and your fellowship desire.

Are there level ranges or is it anyone can participate in the sense that there is no level req on the portal? Is it hard right away or setup in a way that "anyone" can do the first few rooms as they get harder and harder and get an appropriate reward for doing what they did?

anyone can participate, as there are no level requirements on the entrance portal. The xp rewards are proportional based on level.

Are the rooms full of terrain and objects, or just empty rooms?

You will have to wait and see.

In testing has it been cleared? Is there a defined end or will everyone be playing there for exactly 60 minutes.

There is a defined end, but no matter how far you have made it, you will be portaled out after 60 minutes. If you want to leave before the 60 minutes is up, you can, but you must wait for the 60 minutes to expire before collecting your reward.

Is it 60 minutes so that we are forced to
-buff aug
-fellowship buff somewhere after the first 10 mins
-rebuff before the end?

With some planning these should not be too much of an issue.

Can one person or the whole fellow bail after a certain amount of rooms and get something?

Yes. However that person will still need to wait for the 60 minutes to expire to collect their reward.

__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

Re: Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Frelorn)

About this, if i go in with a high level fellow when i first go in will i be fighting bunny's and then drudges and then at the end we have mukkir and sleeches?

Or since the fellow is higher level we start out with tuskers and move our way up?

Yes, there is a way for those higher level folks to skip the first few levels if they so choose.

Also, is this an instance dungeon in that only one fellow per ticket. So only 5 fellows can be going on at once. And if this is true will there be a standard line like a que system?

Unfortunately our current tech will not support a queue system on an NPC right now. /e looks over at Severlin. So for the time being it will be a first come first serve type of thing when the notice goes out that a branch of The Colosseum is coming open.

Will rares not be allowed to be used in here?

A Whole team with a melee D rare and Magic D rare can run through unscathed...

Rares are allowed to be used. Everyone will however have to kill everything in each section before moving on. There will be no running through and skipping some critters in the room just because you feel like it. Everything must be killed before you can access the next section.

The rewards are a big surprise, can you tease us?

I could, but what fun would that be?
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

Re: Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Frelorn)

Quote: Originally Posted by Sucamarto
So the further you get the higher the reward, does this mean as an example if a level 1 made it to end without dying by tagging along with high level group the reward would be substantial or have I misread this?

The rewards are based on what level you are and how far you made it through. So if a level 1 makes it all the way through with a fellowship they will get a reward based on their level, not on the level of everyone else.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

Re: Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Django)

Quote: Originally Posted by Frelorn
The rewards are based on what level you are and how far you made it through. So if a level 1 makes it all the way through with a fellowship they will get a reward based on their level, not on the level of everyone else.

Further clearification on this: The "starter" section of the Colosseum, the part that higher level players can elect to skip, gives flat xp no matter the level. This is intended to be rewarding for a lower level character who puts some time into doing this. After that it's pxp.

Re: Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Django)

Quote: Originally Posted by Ministry
Frelorn this is great news. I tip my hats to all of you for the idea and making it happen and keeping it hush hush for so long. Im really excited to try this out.

Im 275, will there be rewards for me?

Yes, you'll want to do the Colosseum to get the completion reward and access to future boss fights that may also grant you useful rewards.

At this point I'm wondering if you guys will be able to make it through the Colosseum in its first incarnation. I'm thinking no. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Re: Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Severlin)

Quote: Originally Posted by Dread-Vitae
Would it be possible to somehow make this area more contested on Darktide?

Having 5 area's for fellows to sit on their own with a possible xp/loot reward kind of gives me the vibe that it will be a great way for people to gain levels/items without having to worry about enemy raids etc?

Well, technically you are fighting in there with 8 other potential PKers.

Choose your fellowship wisely.

Sev~

Re: Weekly Update 2/12/07 (by Frelorn)

So after getting some feedback from various sources we are making a key change to how The Colosseum works. One of the fears that players brought up was about corpse recovery. Well after some discussion and some magic from Severlin, players who die in The Colosseum will not drop death items. We are hopeful that this will help increase the overall enjoyment of this new area.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

Happy Valentine's Day (from Aerbax)

(click to enlarge)

Contents

Event Teaser
Roll-Out Article
Dev Notes
Letter to the Players
Dev Updates
Patch Page
Live Events
Town Crier Sayings
Ulgrim Sayings