April 2006 Developer's Chat (Hosted by the Vault)

Join us for a chat with the AC1 Dev Team!

When: April 18, 2006, 7 PM EST
Where: irc.us.gamesurge.net Channel: #ac1

This is the first AC1 Dev Chat in many months. Come pick the brains of the developers!

The AC1 team will answer general questions about the game, with the emphasis being on these general questions, not the April event.

Ten minutes before the chat starts, I will ask for people to PM me on IRC if they wish to ask the question. I will build a list from those to PM me. We will use this list to determine the order in which questions will be asked during the chat. This will be on a first come first serve basis.

When it is time for the next person on the list to ask their question, they will be allowed to do so. Once the person asks their question, they will no longer be able to speak in the chat room. This process will continue for the remainder of the chat.

To connect to the chat room, you can use a free IRC client such as mIRC.

Alternatively, you can use our web-based IRC chat client.

Hope to see you there!

Turbine folks walking for Multiple Sclerosis! - 4/20/06 (by Frelorn)

Spring is in the air, birds are singing, flowers are budding, the snow has melted – which can only mean one thing, it’s time for the annual MS Walk in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on April 23rd!

A group of Turbies including LOTRO’s Vice-Cardinal Nik “MithrilMiser” Davidson, DDO’s Genius Child-Thing Jesse “devilmouse” Kurlancheek, Heather Sinclair and AC1’s Pontifex-Yokozuna Dave "Crowley" Javier will be piling into a car and making the the 7 hour long drive to join our friend and longtime Turbine fan Shawn “Kwip” Williams on team NeenerNeener.net!

It’s a good cause and a lot of fun. I have also put in a request that pictures from the event be brought back so we can have some good laughs. If you are in the area you can just show up, or if you want more information click here.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
 

Weekly Update - 4/24/06 (by Frelorn)

Hello there everyone. Let’s get right into this weeks update.

I wanted to start this week with an update on the CD Keys/Digital Distribution situation. Let me reiterate that we want these keys out as fast as we can get them out. After much internal debate over the last week or so (office speak for a lot of meetings) the issue has been placed at the top of the priority list. This means that alot sooner rather than later this issue will be fixed. This time I will not give an ETA, but I will say that my confidence that this issue is going to get resolved quickly is very high. This is the way I like to start off my week, things are getting done.

Now lets move on to some other things that are happening this week in Asheron’s Call.

The live events have been continuing on schedule. We have been reading your feedback and doing some adjustments on the fly. Overall the feedback on these events has been positive, and it seems we have a lot of players choosing sides, and taking their choices very seriously. Look for these events to continue and evolve as time goes on. We are already planning some more fun events for the future.

This week the team is busily working on the content for the May event. We are already at the point where most of the content has been loaded on our internal test world, and the team is now working on getting things to where they want them to be. This includes creature balance, NPC/Dungeon locations, lore details and more. This is what we consider one of the busier weeks in the development cycle.

Finally, we want to let you know that next week we will be posting a much more detailed description of the upcoming Allegiance Improvements that were hinted at in the last Letter to the Players. Our goal with these changes is to make the experience of being in an allegiance, a more memorable one. Monarchs, do you want to give more power to your allegiance officers? Done. Want to give your Monarchy its own unique name? Done. Those features are just a hint at what is coming for allegiances in the May event. We will have more for you next week.

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

Weekly Update - 5/1/06 (by Frelorn)

Hi there everyone. I hope we all had a good weekend. We got to see some interesting developments in the battle between Varicci and Elysa over the past week. Things appear to be getting interesting in Dereth. I wonder what might happen next.

As promised, this week I am going to go over all of the allegiance improvements in detail with you this week. There is alot to cover, so let’s get right into it.

Allegiance Names
The first aspect of the improvements we will cover today is the ability to give your allegiance its own unique name. The monarch of the allegiance or an officer with the appropriate permissions may set the name of the allegiance once every 24 hours using the command @allegiance name set <name>. The name of the allegiance may be changed once every 24 hours, by a person with the appropriate permissions, which we will cover more in the allegiance officers section of this report. Allegiance names may be 40 characters long and may consist only of characters that can be used in character names: that is, alphabetic characters, spaces, and normal punctuation only (‘ and -).

Allegiance Officers
For some time now players have been asking us for more structure and control over what goes on in allegiances. These requests include giving allegiance officers more abilities and a better system then what had been in place. Well, ask and you shall receive! Below I will list the officer ranks and the powers that go along with them.

Level 1: Speaker
Allegiance chat kick.
Allegiance chat gag.
Allegiance broadcast.
Set/clear the MOTD.

Level 2: Seneschal
Promote/demote members under own rank
(i.e. can promote/demote speakers).
Allegiance boot.
Allegiance ban.
Access allegiance info.
Lock/unlock the allegiance.

Level 3: Castellan
Promote/demote members to any rank, including other Castellans.
Change officer titles.
Set/clear the allegiance name.
Set allegiance bind stone.
Change mansion allegiance access/storage permissions.
Bypass allegiance lock with own vassals.
Bypass allegiance lock by approving particular vassals.

The monarch and officers with appropriate permissions can appoint officers or remove officers as described in the table above. In other words:

• The monarch can appoint or remove any officer of any level.
• Castellan (level 1) officers can appoint or remove any officer of any level.
• Seneschal (level 2) officers can appoint or remove Speakers.
• Speaker (level 3) officers cannot appoint or remove anyone at this time.

Any member of the allegiance may become an officer. An allegiance may have a maximum of 12 officers at once (not counting the monarch, who is not considered an officer), but those 12 officers may have any level of permission. For instance, there may be 12 speakers, or 6 speakers and 6 seneschals, or what have you.

In addition, at any time a member of the allegiance can find out who the officers of that allegiance are by typing in the command @allegiance officer or @allegiance officer list.
Either command will display a list of allegiance member names in no particular order followed by their officer title.

Custom Officer Titles
In order to help customize allegiances, the monarch and officers with appropriate permissions can rename the officer levels in whatever fashion they desire – so long as those names meet the following two criteria:
• The new title must be no longer than 20 characters.
• The new title must consist alphabetic characters and normal punctuation (namely ‘ and -) only.
• The new title must not be profane, as determined by the chat language filter.

Note that officer titles may contain spaces and capital letters. If an allegiance has not set a custom name for an officer level, the default title is used.

Allegiance Chat Gag
As you may have noticed, there are some abilities listed above that were not available before. One of these is the allegiance chat gag. The monarch or any officer of Speaker level or above may temporarily prevent any allegiance member from participating in allegiance chat by entering a command. By default, this gag will last 5 minutes and then wear off. An officer or the monarch may explicitly end this gag early, if they so choose. Note that officers may gag each other or even the monarch, but that a gagged officer can always just turn around and ungag himself immediately.

Allegiance Lock
Another ability that was once not available is the ability to lock an allegiance. The monarch of the allegiance or an officer with the appropriate permissions may lock or unlock the allegiance. In addition, any member of the allegiance can see the current state by entering in a command. Allegiances are unlocked by default, to match existing behavior. When the allegiance is unlocked, new players may swear into the allegiance in the normal fashion. When the allegiance is locked, however, only the monarch and officers with the appropriate permissions may accept offers of allegiance. If a player swears allegiance to a monarch or Castellan-level officer in a locked allegiance, the action proceeds as normal. But if a player attempts to swear allegiance to a lower-level officer or non-officer in a locked allegiance, then the swear attempt will fail.

There you have it. The allegiance improvements going in for the May event In the May Letter to the Players we will give a more expanded listing of the commands that go along with these changes.

Everyone have a great week and see you in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
 

Weekly Update - 5/8/06 (by Frelorn)

Hello there everyone. I hope you all had a good weekend. Let’s get right into this weeks update.

This week the team is working on getting all of the little things done to the content that is going in for May. This includes fixing any bugs that may be in the new content, and balancing the creatures for their intended level groups. Part of this process is having what we call “play days”. These are set times where we take our characters and run through the new quests and features. This is where we tend to figure out balancing for the quests. If a bunch of us run in and get killed too fast, we turn it down a bit. If we blow through the quest, it’s time to make it a bit harder. Either way it’s a great opportunity for us to check out each others work.

This is also the week in the development cycle that the team has to have all of their internal documentation completed for the June event. We have already had the meeting where it is decided what specific quests will be going in to the game, and how the quests will help advance the story line. Those meetings are usually the ones I look forward to the most. Some of the strangest ideas can come out of these meetings and some of the best ones as well, as we hope you will see in the coming months.

With all the hype and excitement of E3 coming up, a large portion of the Turbine staff is either in LA already, or on their way. Unfortunately for me my wife had other plans so I don’t get to make the trip this year. I am looking forward to some good updates from the many Turbinites who will be there wandering the halls. We may even have a few surprises coming out of this year’s event. You will just have to wait and see.

That is about it for now. It is one of those weeks where there is not a ton to report on. Things are going well, and we are looking forward to the May event, The Price of Loyalty. Once we know all of the testing is done and everything is ready, I will officially announce the date of the event.

Everyone have a great day, and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
 

Weekly Update - 5/15/06 (by Frelorn)

Hi there from all of us here in wonderful underwater New England! I hope you have all had a safe and dry weekend.

So this week I have chosen to pick out a couple of questions that seem to come up alot on the forums these days.

What is the deal with the Pre- Order gems?
So having seen this one come up alot I wanted to make things as clear as possible. There are no plans to allow people who still have existing codes to enter them now. Players were given plenty of notice that the program was coming to an end.

That being said, we are discussing ways we can make something similar available to players, while at the same time not alienating those people who were able to enter their keys before the program ended.

Where is the high level outdoor hunting you promised us?
In spite of what some have said in the past few weeks, this is till something on the radar. Perhaps it is something that is going to be tied into the story line.

Will there be more Live Events coming in May?
I don’t really want to give away too much information before the May event goes live. What I will say is that when/if we do more events of this nature a schedule will be posted. We saw that people liked knowing when some events were happening, and they also like the spontaneous events. We are still talking about some of the things we saw during these events. The players ability to react and change with the theme of what is happening, is pretty amazing sometimes.

I can say with all honesty that running some of those events was the most fun we have had in some time. We look forward to more of them in the future.

What is in the future for Asheron’s Call?
I can tell you that this is an exciting time to be a part of Asheron’s Call. We have some great things in store for everyone in the coming weeks and months. From things that players have been asking for, to a few surprises that have been needed for a long time, in game and out. When the time comes for all of this information to come out (and that time is right around the corner), we will be making sure everyone knows about it. I am truly excited about the future of Asheron’s Call.


Well that's about it for now. When there is more news on anything, as always I will let everyone know. Have a great day and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc