Editing Announcements - 2002/06 - Castling (section)

== Letter to the Players 2 ==

{{Microsoft Zone
 |  Link = <nowiki>http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/ASHEletter0602_3.asp</nowiki>
 |  Date = June 14, 2002
 | Title = Letter to the Players
 |  Text =
<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Why Now?'''</font>
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Castling, our June Event, marks what may be the most significant change ever made in the history of Asheron's Call--the complete revamping of how players learn and cast magical spells in Dereth. We did not approach this change lightly; indeed, it was the subject of many intense conversations! Those hours of discussion and argument ensured that the changes we finally agreed upon all served our goal: to make Asheron's Call as fun and compelling for as wide an audience as possible.
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Many people have asked us, "Why now?" After two and a half years of relatively few game system changes, why would Turbine and Microsoft embark upon a path of such major changes? Our determination to make these changes ultimately has to do with our desire to see Asheron's Call thrive for a long time to come. Each major change that we make comes from our strong belief that the specific change will enhance the fun of the game for the vast majority of our players.
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We could have decided to play it safe and make only a few changes, to introduce small amounts of content designed to placate our existing subscriber base until the ship of Asheron's Call 2, to allow (and so encourage) AC to pass away in time for AC2.
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Obviously, we chose a different path. And we're not stopping with this month's magic changes! Next month, in addition to the first stage of the Tinkering system, we will be making significant changes to the Transfer spell system. Transfer spells, such as Drain Health, will be altered substantially in July. (Look for more details to be posted before the July Event). And in the following months, look for continued tweaks to melee weapons, including addressing the Triple-Strike Dagger issue.
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Yes, we know that change can be scary and sometimes painful in the short-term, but we also know that change is necessary for long-term growth and happiness. We are striving to make sure that any time we make major changes that reduce an ability of a given class or skill, we also offer new benefits to that class or skill.
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So why didn't we make some of these changes a year ago? Although it was easy to see, in some cases, that things were not working as well as they should, it was more difficult to come up with solutions that we and the players would be happy with. Over the past eight months, we developed a strong vision and consensus on what problems needed to be addressed and how to address them. You are seeing the fruits of those efforts now.
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We're excited about the world that Asheron's Call is coming to represent, and we hope you are, too.
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Long live Asheron's Call!
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Housing'''</font>
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This month we're releasing another 150 Cottages and 50 Villas. While we are not releasing any Residential Quarters at this time, we are planning to release 500 RQs in July (in addition to more Cottages, Villas, and even new Mansions!). We're putting out 500 RQs instead of 1,000 so that we can better monitor the impact of the RQs on the servers in July. Depending on the data, we will decide how many more RQs will be released in the upcoming months
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We also implemented 100 total hooks for Mansions this month, each one of them usable by the monarch owner. There are no plans to revisit hooks for any of the landscape dwellings at this time.
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As for future housing improvements, the server performance issues related to RQs a few months ago have caused us to shelve our plans for incremental storage, at least temporarily. Once we are assured that the worlds can support enough housing for all our players, we may revisit the idea of allowing players to purchase increased storage for their landscape dwelling.
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However, we are still planning to implement the ability for characters to "use" items on hooks, which would allow a number of neat features, such as the ability to place permanent "portals" in one's home. Look for the start of this feature in the next several months.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Miscellaneous Changes'''</font>

:* We're always happy when we can implement new allegiance and fellowship improvements. We hope the @allegiance info tool and the increased uses of the allegiance broadcasts help monarchs manage their allegiances more productively. We're also pleased with the new triangle radar shape for fellowship leaders. After being frustrated for a long time by the inability of a large group to easily follow a leader on the landscape, we hit upon this simple yet effective solution. We hope you enjoy it.
:* We fixed a number of longstanding and irritating bugs this month. Two of the biggest were the "vendors not buying back their own trade notes" and "characters logging back into the world and occasionally discovering that all their items had lost all their mana" problems. Our solution to the vendor issue was to make all vendors able to purchase all trade notes, regardless of what trade notes they sell. As we mentioned in the Dev Notes, the "items losing mana" issue was extremely difficult to track down and reproduce, so please report any instances if you see it happen again.
:* Money, money, money. After analyzing the current state of the pyreal economy and factoring in new changes such as the updated magic system, we decided to increase the stack size of the pyreal to 10,000. We think this change will help improve the liquidity of the pyreal, especially at such a time when the pyreal may have its greatest value.
:* Superb Mana Stones. One change we wanted to make sure to introduce whenever we implemented the new, extended buff times was a new, high-mana mana stone. The Superb Mana Stone has a reservoir of 2,000 mana, and can be found at many mage shops throughout Dereth.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Hot Topics'''</font>

:* @filter recall command. While we knew that some players would eventually learn to ignore the spammy text messages from the numerous recall options available today, we wanted to give players stronger relief from the incessant barrage should they desire. (As one of our grandfathers always says, "Back in my day, we didn't have all this newfangled `recallin'' all over the dang place. We had to walk back to Serac Vault, in the snow, uphill. Both ways!")
:* Bronze weapons. We apologize for not telling people in advance about the sudden change to the Bronze trophies making them no-give. This had been planned as a one-month-only change, and we are glad to change them back to their natural state this month.
:* Hollow Weapons/Racial Weapons. For July, we will be making some minor tweaks to unarmed weapons, staves, and hollows (including some of the racial weapons). While the racial weapons still will not have the effectiveness of their non-racial counterparts, or of the current Triple-Strike Dagger, they will receive some bonuses. It remains true that the four non-racial weapons, sword, axe, mace, and spear, should be considered the "better" class of weapons in the game. However, we do recognize that the current state of non-dagger racials needs some improvement, and we hope to implement that in July.
:* Fast-casting exploits. We're working hard to get a fix for this in either July or August.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Next Month and Beyond'''</font>
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As we mentioned above, next month will see the advent of the first stage of Tinkering, as well as changes to Drain and other Transfer spells.
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While we have mentioned more Treasure system changes (affecting both armor and weapons) for the last two months, we unfortunately have had to postpone these changes due to our focusing on the Magic and Tinkering systems. We really think July will see at least some of these changes; August for sure!
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And while it will be hard for us to rival the suspense and excitement building in our current storyline, we will discuss two top-secret issues in our next Letter to the Players. People have suspected one of the issues for a long time, but the other is something that almost no one ever knew?
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See you next month!
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--The AC Team
}}