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Turbine Moves AC Home (link)
- Aug. 25, 2005 Dear AC1
subscribers,
After significant consideration, we have decided to move the AC1 live team
back to Massachusetts. This is the right decision to support AC1 going
forward, allowing us to better coordinate between the game and support
teams.
During this transition, we plan to provide uniquely fun live events for
everyone to enjoy.
Best regards,
Vijay Lakshman
VP Production, Turbine
Turbine Moves AC Home (by
Calandryll) - Aug. 25, 2005
I wanted to direct all of you to this
announcement. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in
this thread. I will answer them as best I can.
http://ac.turbine.com/?page_id=390
A few comments, just to address some concerns I figure some of you may have.
Q: Will this delay the next update?
A: It’s too early to tell as it depends on how smoothly the transition goes.
At this point though, I’d say it’s likely. We will hopefully start some of
the events next week though.
Q: How does this effect the plans for CA Turbine Nation?
A: Unfortunately, since the AC1 team will be here in Massachusetts, we will
have to cancel the west coast event. Because of the timing of all of this
unfortunately TN got caught in the middle.
Q: Does this impact your ability to handle server, billing, or customer
support?
A: No. Net Ops, billing, and customer support are already handled out of
Massachusetts.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Looking Forward (by
Calandryll) - Aug. 26, 2005
The future of AC1
As I said in the previous post, we have no plans to shut down AC1 at this
time. It’s not something we want to do and it’s not something we are
planning to do. Nobody can predict the future of course, but right now we
intend to support AC1.
The move
People in CA just found out about this yesterday and most probably haven’t
made any decisions yet. While I fully expect that some folks will decide not
to make the move, I hope that many do. Once we know who is coming back to MA
and who is not that will give us a better idea as to the future of live
development. I know you guys want more specifics than that, but right now I
simply don’t have any. The moment I do, I will let you know.
Live events
As most of you read, it is our plan to run live events during the transition
period for the CA staff. I’ve been asked to coordinate those events with
some folks here and I’d like your feedback as to the kinds of things you’d
like to see. I know live events aren’t exactly the same as new development,
but I am hoping we can create some fun stuff for people to do in the game.
Our plan is to start these events next week. We’ll probably start small and
then build up steam as we continue on.
About me
I know most of you don’t know me very well. I haven’t been on these boards
as much as I’d like. Actually I haven’t been on any of Turbine’s boards as
much as I’d like – goes with the territory of working on multiple projects I
guess. But I can tell you that my focus right now is on AC1, on getting the
live events running and communicating with all of you the most up to date
information that I have.
I’m hoping this post puts some of your fears to rest. I totally understand
the anxiety that the announcements have caused and I’ll be here as much as I
can to help answer questions.
Thanks everyone.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Quick Update (by
Calandryll) - Aug. 29, 2005
I wanted to give everyone a quick update on
the status of a couple of issues.
1. The September update. I met with the QA team and went over the current
bugs for the update this morning. We prioritized and assigned all of them.
I'll update you again once we have a better idea as to how quickly we can
get these fixed. We're still shooting to have an update in September, but
there are still a few factors that will impact whether we make it or not.
2. Live events. I had a very productive meeting with the folks who will be
running the events. Right now we are focusing on documenting everything and
creating a schedule. We should be able to start running events late this
week or early next week. I'll keep you posted.
That's the latest for now. Should anything change I'll let you know.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 8/31/05 ( by
Calandryll)
As promised, I'll be writing these updates on
a daily basis. Sometimes there won't be a lot of news, other times there
will be. Today we have quite a bit to report.
As most of you already know, Srand, Ibn, and Meanbeard have decided to leave
the AC team. Everyone at Turbine wishes them the best of luck in their
future endeavors. We’ll have a good idea as to how things will shake down
next week, so I ask that you please bare with us during this transition.
I don’t have any new information on Dawnsong or the September update yet.
Those are both still very high on my radar though. Live events are still
scheduled to start next week...more info on that soon.
Another update – the Decal folks have entered their first phase of Alpha.
You can read their press release here:
http://forums.acdev.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3224
Some other interesting news. As some of you may know Turbine recently
attended the Penny Arcade Expo. We had game stations for DDO, LOTRO and
Asheron’s Call at the booth. The Asheron’s Call stations allowed players to
use their existing account or create a new one to try out the game. The
station got a lot of attention and people were playing the game for almost
the entire show. We also gave away a bunch of copies of ToD as door prizes
and other giveaways. I think AC was well represented at PAX.
http://x2.putfile.com/8/23914350456.jpg
And last, but certainly not least...we’ve hired our new Asheron’s Call
Community Specialist! Some of you may already know him as Frelorn. Frelorn
has been an AC customer support representative for almost two years and has
helped moderate these forums from time to time. He’s also been an Asheron’s
Call player since the beginning and is extremely knowledgeable about the
game. Frelorn is going to be working on the live events for now, so I’ll
still be the main point of contact for all of you on the boards. Once the
events get into full swing, he’ll take a greater role on the boards.
Please join me in welcoming Frelorn to the Community Relations team!
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/1/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Not a lot to report today, but I wanted to post anyway just to keep you
all in the loop.
We've made some progress on the September update. That's obviously a good
thing, but there are still some more issues to work through before I am
comfortable releasing it. As always, I will keep you all posted on the
progress.
Frelorn and I will be finalizing the event schedule today and tomorrow with
the folks who will be running the events. I'm really looking forward to
kicking off these events next week.
That's it for now. If anything else comes up today I'll let you know. Again,
I want to thank all of you for your patience and support during this
transition.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/2/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Just a couple of updates today.
Hurricane Katrina has devastated the lives of many people and for most,
logging into a game is the very last thing on their minds. In order to make
sure nobody loses their house, we will be refreshing housing maintenance
across all servers automatically for the foreseeable future. Frelorn will be
logging in and running the necessary command on all servers in order to make
sure the house maintenance is paid. In fact, he just ran the command on the
servers about an hour ago.
I would also like to take this opportunity to encourage all of you to donate
what you can to help the victims of this disaster. You can contribute to the
Red Cross at the following link:
http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate2/
Even a little bit helps. Thank you.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/6/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. We had lots going on at the
office this past week and there is a lot of news to tell…
September Update
We are very excited about the progress we have made on Asheron’s Call in
the past week. We still have people working on the September update which
looks great. It is our goal to get this update out in September and I will
continue to update you on the progress. Of course, we expected to lose a
little time during the move back to Massachusetts, but we planned for that
and our goal is to get the update ready to go before the move. Once the live
team is here, we’ll evaluate the team structure; not everyone has decided to
make the move back, which we expected would be the case.
Live Events
Live events have begun!! The schedule is set, the planning is complete, and
Frelorn has already run a couple events! The plan right now calls for 3 to 4
events per week per server. They will run from around noon until late in the
evening, Monday through Saturday. Keep in mind that we are rotating the
event schedule so just because your server doesn’t have one today or has one
while you aren’t online doesn’t mean you won’t have a chance to participate
in another event at a different time and date. We’ll be running similar
events on each server each week to ensure as many people have a chance to
participate as possible. We also specifically chose a couple ideas from the
Live Event Idea thread and will be continuing to take ideas from all of you
as we progress. Keep an eye on the Asheron’s Call website for recaps and
screenshots of the events!
That pretty much covers all of the news I have for today. Apologies for
posting this later in the day than usual. There was something I was waiting
for confirmation on before posting but it's not confirmed yet. Hopefully
tomorrow...and yes, it's good news.
Again, I greatly appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding through
all of this. I plan on continuing to update all of you with information as I
have it. If you find these updates useful I’d like to continue doing them
indefinitely.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
hello (again) from Crowley - 9/7/05 ( by
Crowley)
Hey everyone,
I just wanted to send a message out to those of you who are concerned about
the state of Asheron’s Call as it moves back to Boston. I’m Dave “Crowley”
Javier, and I am one of the team members who’ve been in the LA studio for
the last fifteen months or so. I was Lead Designer on Throne of Destiny, and
I also was a member of the first Live team when Asheron’s Call shipped in
1999. Since we wrapped work on Throne of Destiny, I’ve been working with the
rest of the Live team on our monthly events. I hope you enjoyed August, and
I am eager to continue work on further Asheron’s Call events. Fear not for
the status of the September event. Most of the work is already done.
Obviously the transition of the project and the team back to Boston has
caused some disruption, but people on both coasts are working hard to ship
September and to ensure that the ongoing content suffers minimal
interruption.
I’d like to thank you all for playing our game, and I look forward moving
ahead with the game when I go back to Boston.
Cheers,
Crowley
__________________
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -- Hunter S. Thompson (RIP)
My New Role at Turbine - 9/7/05 ( by
Scenario)
For over five years I have been, in one form or another, a part of this
community. Many of you have helped me on quests (whether you know it or
not). We’ve fought along side each other against the threats of Bael’zharon,
the Virindi, and Gaerlan. I was fortunate enough to have been part of the
team that has pitted you against the Olthoi, Burun, and Viamontians.
Asheron’s Call brought my friends and me together through college and kept
us together afterwards. It brought me here to Turbine and gave me some
amazing opportunities to grow both creatively and professionally.
After being a member of the Asheron’s Call Development team for two and a
half years, I am moving on to another project within Turbine. I am happy
knowing that I’ve left the team in good hands and that I have had the
opportunity to work with them and work for this great community. It only
took me two of those years to convince you all that I wasn’t Sean Huxter
(though I suspect that some of you still aren’t quite convinced). :P
My decision to leave the Asheron’s Call Live Team came several weeks before
the announcement of the closure of the Santa Monica studio. I was in the
middle of a vacation when the announcement was released, moving from Santa
Monica back to the east coast, and had heard nothing of what had happened
until I stopped by the office to visit early last week. I’m going to miss
working on Asheron’s Call, and I am looking forward to returning to the
project that started my career here at Turbine as a member of the Lord of
the Rings World Building team.
While the September event is my last Live Event, my presence will still be
felt over numerous following months. I’ve left the Live team with a lot of
brand new monster art that they will be filtering in over the coming months,
starting with September. I will also remain available to the Live Team to
answer their questions (and your questions), offer suggestions and lend them
a helping hand if need be.
For September, those of you with an eye for dungeon exploration will get to
see the first appearance of the second place Make-A-Monster contest winner.
The Shallows Sharks, no longer content to look like their “land-lubbing” kin
will have a brand new set of textures, just for them! In addition to that,
we will also be introducing another brand new creature – the deep sea
dwelling Remoran (some of you may recognize this creature; it has been a
part of our data for years though it did receive a substantial facelift)!
Lastly, numerous NPCs throughout our September content will be previewing
some of the other new monster looks to come.
I look forward to being a player again. I’ll see you in Dereth.
Matt “Scenario” Elliott
Daily Update - 9/7/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Bunch of stuff today.
September Update
Not much new to report on the September update. Things are moving along well
though. We have a follow-up status meeting on Thursday.
You probably saw Scenario’s post. While those of us on the AC team are sad
to loose him to another project, we’re very happy that he’s with Turbine and
he has been helping us (and me personally) a lot with the September update
and other AC issues. Dave “Crowley” Javier also posted a quick update on the
work he is doing on the September update as well.
Open Issues
I know you guys have a lot of questions about some open issues such as the
high-res textures, new artwork, Dawnsong, etc. I don’t want anyone to think
I am blowing off those concerns. I just don’t have an update for you on
them. Right now our focus is on the September Update, live events, the move,
and the day-to-day activity of keeping the service going. That’s not to say
there isn’t room for other suggestions or concerns, but I did want to be
upfront and let you know that right now our focus is on those things.
Live Events
The Live Events went well yesterday and participation was great! If you
missed yesterday’s events, don’t worry. We’ll be doing plenty more. We’ve
also posted an account of one of the events on the website along with
screenshots.
http://ac.turbine.com/?page_id=391
We’ll be posting these about twice a week to give everyone a chance to see
what occurred during some of the events. I also want to start getting more
content on the site and this is the first step towards that. If you take
part in an event and want to submit your own account of what transpired
please feel free to e-mail it to us along with screenshots to ac1stories@turbine.com.
I’d really like to start getting your stories on the site as well as our
content.
Message Boards
I’ve lowered the post delay timer from 360 seconds to 90 seconds. We’ll
tweak that number depending on how things go, but 6 minutes seems a little
too high to me. If everything goes fine, I’ll keep it at 90 seconds.
Last but not Least
I don’t have an update on that good news I mentioned yesterday yet. Just to
clarify though, the news doesn’t have anything to do with development. It
probably won’t affect most of you directly, but it’s something I think
people will be happy to hear we are doing. I am hoping we can announce it by
Friday.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/8/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Quick update today.
September Update
Bug fixing is moving along well. We have our status meeting later today so
I'll have a better idea as to how close we are to releasing the September
update by tomorrow. Again, probably won't have a set date yet though.
Live Events
We ran a bunch of live events yesterday and some more today. I'm pretty
happy with how these are progressing so far. We're starting with some basic
monster spawn events and will continue to ramp them up over time. I had the
chance to watch over Frelorn's shoulder during one of the events and it
looked like the players were having a blast. I hope that over the coming
weeks you all get a chance to participate. We'll be posting another event
recap tomorrow.
Hurrican Katrina and Billing
I can finally tell you all what that good news is that I mentioned earlier
in the week.
Because most people affected by hurricane Katrina probably cannot access
their account or call our billing department, in addition to automatically
paying house maintenance we have also decided to stop billing for those
people in the affected states. This is effective immediately and will
continue for the foreseeable future. This required some work on our billing
system which is why we couldn't do it right away. I wanted to wait until the
work was completed and tested before announcing anything.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/9/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Two quick things today.
September Update
We had out meeting to discuss the September Update. There are quite a few
bugs, but they are being addressed. We probably won’t be able to make a “go,
no go” decision until next week. The move is probably going to happen at the
end of the month, so we’d want to get the update out before that in case
anything needs to be addressed. We wouldn’t want to release the update while
people may be out of touch. As always, I’ll keep you posted.
Live Events
Another recap was posted today. Two actually! You can read about them
here. So
far we’ve hit our schedule almost perfectly, so we’ll continue with the 3-4
events per server per week goal.
Well, that’s it for today’s update. I hope everyone has a great weekend!
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/12/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Hope everyone had a great weekend. Most of mine was spent reading the
boards, doing some scheduling for AC, playing some poker, and watching my
Steelers trounce the Titans!
Now onto the update…
Just a reminder about what these daily updates are. I’ll include anything
that I have new information on and things that we are currently working on.
So if something doesn’t appear here, it doesn’t mean it has been forgotten,
it just means I don’t have new information about it today.
September Update
There are still a number of bugs that need to be fixed, but the team
continues to work hard to resolve them. Our goal is to have the bugs fixed
by Wednesday so we can do the last part of our test procedure and get the
update out the following week. So Wednesday is pretty much going to be the
key date for us. We’re already talking about coming in this weekend if we
need to and if it will make a difference. Again, I will continue to keep all
of you posted as new information develops.
Live Events
Events will continue this week. We had a pretty good first week and I am
looking forward to seeing even more.
Decal
The Decal developers posted an update regarding their Alpha status. You can
read it here:
http://forums.acdev.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3281
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/13/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Not much to report today.
September Update
We prioritized a bunch of new bugs this morning. Most of them were pretty
minor so I don't expect the new bugs to have a major impact on our schedule.
We do have some others though that are a bit trickier and that we are still
resolving. How well those go will be the biggest factor going forward. Our
publish status meeting is tomorrow afternoon.
Live Events
These are going well although I've asked Frelorn to help our QA team a
little with the regression of some of the easier bugs, so he might have to
reorganize his event schedule a bit. We'll still be running plenty of events
though.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/14/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Again not a lot to report today.
Server Downtime
I gotta start with this since it is the most pressing issue at the moment.
We're still investigating the problem with the servers and our ops team is
diligently working to resolve the problem. Unfortunately we expect that this
downtime is going to last into the evening hours and that there will
probably be a rollback to the last backup at 6am EST this morning. As soon
as we know more we will let you know immediately. This issue pretty much has
everyone's attention right now.
September Update
We found a major bug last night with the global chat system that turned
out not to be a bug. Don't ask. So things are still moving along and we have
our status meeting later today. Thursday's update should have some more
information for all of you.
Live Events
We posted an update about the recent live events. You can read about the
events here:
http://ac.turbine.com/?page_id=393
Don't forget to send us your own write-ups for events you participate in to
ac1stories@turbine.com.
That covers everything. Aside from the publish status meeting later today
right now I'm focusing on getting more information about this downtime. I'll
post as soon as I have more information.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/15/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Lots of stuff today!
Server Downtime
First, I want to apologize again for the downtime last night. Our Ops team
was here until 1am making sure everything was stable even after the servers
came up, so I wanted to recognize their effots in this post as well.
I also want to thank all of you for being so patient with us while we fixed
the problem. I’m not kidding when I say I am proud of how the AC community
handled this. It is that, more than anything, that makes me want to do
something to make it up to you all. More on that later in this update.
September Update
Yesterday’s status meeting went really well. Despite a few more bugs we’ve
gotten the publish to a state where we believe it will be ready by next
week. We’re targeting Wednesday, September 21st for the publish. The move is
the following week, so if we miss that date we miss September. Needless to
say we all REALLY want to get this done this month. So we’re pushing hard
and will be here on the weekend to cover all the bases. Assuming all goes
well, I’ll probably post a Letter to the Players on Monday. If something
goes wrong and we think we’re going to miss that date I will let you know.
But right now we’re feeling pretty good about it.
Double XP
Because of last night’s downtime, we’ll be turning on double-XP starting
today at around 6pm EDT and ending on Monday at approximately 6pm EDT. This
should give people who play on weekdays and weekends a chance to get some
extra XP. Some of you suggested we should do double-XP next Wednesday, but
I’d rather not do that on a publish day. Maybe we’ll do double-XP on another
Wednesday though. Just to be clear, double-XP does require ToD and we can’t
change that for now. We know some of you don’t have ToD yet and we’re going
to account for that as well with some live events.
Live Events
Next week we’re going to do some live events geared towards helping people
gain XP. This is to make up for the fact that some people can’t play during
the double-XP time and some people don’t have ToD. We’ll be posting a
schedule on Friday. Again, we understand that some people will miss out on
the events, but I think between double-XP and the events most of you should
get some benefit.
That covers everything for today.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/16/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Not much to report after yesterday's update.
September Update
Still looking good on this front. We'll see how the weekend goes.
Live Events
We've posted the schedule for next week's live events. Again these are going
to be geared towards XP gains.
http://ac.turbine.com/?page_id=394
We've also posted the Friday even write-up (these are posted every Wednesday
and Friday). You can read it here:
http://ac.turbine.com/?page_id=395
Double-XP
This is currently active. We also accidentally increased the majors drop
rate. We turned this back off though. We might do this at a later date, but
we didn't want this active this time.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Event Schedule - 9/16/05 (link )
This is the schedule for our upcoming xp themed events. These events are
going to be geared towards making players some extra experience this
upcoming week.
September 19, 2005
2-3pm EDT Frostfell
3-4pm EDT Verdantine
4-5pm EDT Thistledown
5-6pm EDT Darktide
September 20, 2005
1-2pm EDT Darktide
3-4pm EDT Wintersebb
4-5pm EDT Verdantine
5-6pm EDT Solclaim
6-7pm EDT Harvestgain
8-9pm EDT Frostfell
10-11pm EDT Leafcull
September 21, 2005
6-7pm EDT Morningthaw
8-9pm EDT Solclaim
10-11pm EDT Thistledown
September 22, 2005
4-5pm EDT Frostfell
6-7pm EDT Verdantine
8-9 pm EDT Wintersebb
10-11pm EDT Darktide
September 23, 2005
4-5pm EDT Leafcull
6-7pm EDT Thistledown
8-9pm EDT Harvestgain
10-11pm EDT Morningthaw
Daily Update - Weekend Edition ( by
Calandryll) - 9-17-05
It's amazing how many people on various projects are in the office on
Saturdays. It's really great to work at a company that has so many dedicated
people in it.
Obviously I don't have much to report since yesterday, but I wanted to write
a Daily Update today just to let you know how hard to team is working on the
September Update. I'm currently writing the first draft of the Letter to the
Players (it's really long!) so we should have no problem posting it on
Monday.
I hope everyone is enjoying the double-xp weekend and we look forward to
running the xp-oriented events next week. As always, I'll keep you updated
on the status of the September update, but so far everything still looks
good.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/19/05 ( by
Calandryll)
A couple things today...
September Update
The weekend testing went well and we are still looking good for Wednesday.
The Letter to
the Players has been posted later along with a
feedback thread. Please write your feedback in that thread. The teaser
fiction will be coming soon as well.
Live Events
We're going to be running the xp-oriented events this week. Again, the
schedule is
here.
That covers everything for today. Hope everyone had a great weekend!
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
Daily Update - 9/20/05 ( by
Calandryll)
Quick upate today.
September Update
We have our final September Publish meeting today. If everyone signs off
we'll be publishing tomorrow. If we encounter a blocking issue I will let
you know.
__________________
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Director of Community Relations
Turbine, Inc.
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