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Friday Grab Bag
RJCox
Member Posts: 2,686
Chirp.
Q: The Herald stats are way messed up.
A: We are in the process of breaking in a shiny new web weenie. If you know a web developer, hand him or her a slushie and pose a hypothetical situation - how much fun would it be to take over a website that "evolved" as opposed to "was planned," had three different people working on it with radically different coding styles, and was powered by an asthmatic hamster? Step back and learn what a nervous breakdown looks like.
By the time this column posts, you should already see some improvement, but keep me posted via the "Herald Issues" feedback folder. I cannot respond individually due to volume, but the tech team is working hard to address the problems.
Q: With the addition of dual-core technology on the market and quad-core upcoming in 2007, does Mythic have any plans to start taking advantage of this technology or at the very least make the game compatible with this soon standard technology? There are already issues with dual-core and workarounds needed every time you start the game, are these going to be addressed?
A: So, yeah, I sent this to the Lord of the Underworld, especially because I was concerned about the problems you mention. In regards to the compatibility issue, he replied:
"There shouldn't be any problems with DAOC and dual core systems. DAOC itself isn't multi-threaded (it doesn't try to do two or more things at exactly the same time), so if you're getting crashes it's probably due to some other system component that the game interacts with (a device driver most likely). If you're getting blue screens or system reboots it's definitely a device driver (or hardware) problem. My suspicion is that tech support has probably dealt with this frequently in the last few months."
http://support.darkageofcamelot.com/help/ - fill that puppy out for a response from the team within 72 business hours, usually much faster.
In terms of our future plans, I really couldn't say. I'm not hiding anything from you, it's that I really couldn't say - I intentionally only keep track of what will immediately affect you guys within the next few months, and this is not one of those things. However, we always try to design for the machine that we think will be one step below the top when our game or expansion goes on sale. And that would mean we're certainly going to have this kind of technology in mind as we work on designs in the coming year.
Q: Is the guild autoremove functionality back online?
A: I am very sorry to say that it isn't at this time. We've had a bit of change around the farm lately, and the guy responsible for fixing this tool is in the middle of training new people and transitioning others. It's at the top of his list. I'll keep you guys posted; I know its very important.
Q: I've noticed that Vampiirs can cast Vampiir spells and champion ability spells simultaneously. Bug or feature?
A: Feature. Have fun.
Q: Hey, a bunch of the quest givers no longer have the happy yellow clue circle under their feet.
A: Wince, yes, there was a bug there. We are flipping them all back in 1.83. I am sorry about the inconvenience.
Q: I may have missed the grab bag, regarding the full tank tweaks in 1.81, but I'd like to know something about the 10% more hp-gain between, which all full tanks receive between lv40 and lv50.
Does it increase the hp-per-con multiplier, like CLS did?
Or does it increase the whole hp-pool, like the Aura of Kings does?
A: From the code team: "It adds to the whole HP pool, the same way as the Toughness RA, as a percentage of total HP instead of an absolute value."
***
There is a new poll up, and it asks you about task dungeons and how hard you perceive them to be as a solo player and in a group. It seems a bit out of the blue, and frankly, it is. It's not one of the major things we're working on for 1.83, it's not something that would take a lot of work for us to change, or anything earthshaking. Short version - we meet once a week and read the team lead reports out loud. Long and bitter experience has taught me that developers do not have time to read spreadsheets with hundreds of items, but they will listen and respond to each item in SOME fashion if I read each item out loud. One note was about the difficulty level of our instancing. I shall leave it at "we could not reach a consensus." So don't read too much into that poll, other than evidence that Mythic is not some monolithic corporation where we all march in lockstep towards the brain at the center of our citystate.
Whoops - we had a patch note that we left out of 1.81. It said, "It is now possible to begin repairing a destroyed tower at 0% condition rather than 25%." Sorry about that, and thanks to those who reported it to us.
A nice guy at a site called Corrosion Games got a quote from me to use in his review of Darkness Rising. He sent me the link to the review (http://www.corrosiongames.com/e107/content.php?review.61), and I've enjoyed his whole site so far. Give it a look.
It's the end of February, and I'm still dating my freaking checks with 2005. Tell me I'm not the only one.
Well, I'm bound for slushies. See you around the battlefield.
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
