Announcements - 2010/04 - Shedding Skin

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Teaser

• Aetheria Teaser
• Barbers and Hairstyles Teaser
• Tailoring Teaser
• Multi-slot Armor Teaser
• Rare Items Update

Original Link - http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=550-shedding-skin&catid=39-articles&Itemid=53

Shedding Skin

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When, in time, these words are the history of my people, I pray that my efforts are viewed not as betrayal or folly, but as the calculated decisions of a man seeking absolution and redemption.

File:Asheron's Call Spring Event Teaser

He lifted the quill from the page and paused staring into the dark corners of his room. He found solace in those dark corners now; it had not always been so. In the course of many lifetimes he drew upon his memories and questioned every action and course that he chose. Every path since first stepping in time with his dearest friend lead him to the precipice upon which he now stood. Each decision was weighed and measured in real time and then revisited over the ages to determine if it was for the best.

For Isin Dule it ceased being about right and wrong when he followed Ilservian Palacost in his search for aid. There was nobility in a decision to save a life and for a friend as dear and long-held as Ilservian there was nothing that Isin would not undertake. This, he reasoned over the long years, was the only decision he made without taking the calculated choice. It was a decision of the heart rather than the mind and the one decision that he truly regretted. Even when he left his studies as a young man where reason, temperance and careful study had bridged the vastness once filled with faith and fate he had weighed each option time and again before rationale won out and his time as a man of faith ended. Reason came with a price and his wisdom was kept closely guarded, a secret that would serve him well in the ages that followed.

Staring into the dark, Isin reflected on the tumult of the last several years and arrived at the same conclusion he had reached in every previous reflection. This course was correct and best. He turned back to the page and lowered the quill to meet the parchment.

My erstwhile companions, lost to the ravages that the madness of shadow imparts, provided me an opportunity I had long thought lost to me. It is only through their decisions that I see the eventuality now presented me; an eventuality which provides an alternative to the chaos that breeds at the edges of the Shadow. I may yet transcend the frailty of my emotions and resolve, for the countless thousands who flocked to our banners, the horrors of this curse. For this reason alone I thank Ferah and Ler Rhan for their part.

In the several years since my spire hovered over “the Caul” I have studied the work of the entity called Aerbax and learned of the misguided plans it had. There, in the work left behind, I discovered the means to redemption – a means to channel the maddening sway of chaos elsewhere. The full effect of this taint will not be removed, we are ever bound to the darkness of this world, but there is a means to alter our course and shed this skin in which we have dwelt too long.

Again he paused and lifted the quill, this time in reaction to a sound along a corridor in a distant hallway in his home. The gift he requested of Atlan's Son had arrived. He closed his eyes and thought now.

‘Ilservian, I owe you apologies. I was not the friend you needed in the wastes; I too felt the hatred you harbored, the pain you endured and I was not the strength you needed – rather, I fostered these ills and drove you further to madness. I failed you, my friend, when I did not counsel against your calls to the darkness or did not hear the whispers that responded.

‘When I could not see you any longer as we stood outside the Lyceum at Jaline, reason replace by hubris and the wholeness of the Dark, I should have done more to call to the man I knew. My decision and path laid before me then and every night that has fallen since has been trod upon a lonely path. For the centuries since your fall I worked against your return.

‘Now, I turn to your greatest foe, the son of Atlan. Who, like I, pities what you have become chooses to provide me with a gift of a single stone – and I accept.'

“Master Dule?” speaks a voice at the entrance of his room, shaking Isin from his thoughts. Isin turns his head to see the umbral woman hovering at the portal to his room. “We have Asheron's stone.”

“Very good.” He responds, placing the quill flat on the parchment rising from his seat as he does. He walks toward the umbral woman and the two begin the walk toward the room prepared for his final gambit.

“Master Dule?”

“Yes?”

“You have taught us much in quelling the darkness in our long allegiance to you. We have come to trust and understand how it is that you alone of his generals were able to maintain reason amidst chaos but,” the umbral woman slid before him and stopped as they reached the place where the stone shown bright blue against the darkness, “we are curious why you are so certain that we can shed the shadow and regain a life, like those of the Isparians who now make our world home. Why – why do you think this is possible?”

The response came quickly, with deepest sincerity and the most genuine smile that Isen Dule had ever possessed, “Because I have faith that it will.”

The umbral woman bowed her head and spoke in return, “…and we have faith in you.”

They stepped into the room and Isin passed his hands over the smooth surfaces and jagged edges of the stone that Asheron used to anchor his people in portal space and to maintain the essence of the Isparians. He felt the power within the stone and watched as the anchors were moved into place surrounding the stone. The smoky darkness leapt from his flesh and swirled into the stone drawn into the place between.

One by one those who followed Isin Dule stepped forward and placed their hands upon the lifestone. One by one the stone changed. One by one the followers of Isin Dule felt something they had not known since they had chosen to follow Ilservian Palacost into the wastelands – Freedom.

Rollout Article

Original Link - http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=557-april-release-fiction&catid=81-2010&Itemid=68

April Release Fiction

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The scene spread out before him was like something out of a nightmare. The investigator surveyed how much of the room was destroyed, noting the many things that lay broken as if by explosions or massive impacts, with much of the rest burned to ash. He wondered how anyone could have managed to survive such destruction. How was he going to find the clues that he would need to piece together the mystery before him? The attack was brutal and devastating, leaving little to go on. With a sigh he set to work, even as the Prince burst through the door.

"Sir Alakin, have you found anything yet?" asked the rather strained-looking Prince Borelean Strathelar. If anyone had a vested interest in this investigation, thought Alakin, it was the Prince.

"Have patience, Your Highness. I have only just arrived, and there is much that must be carefully gone through before I can un-puzzle this atrocity." Alakim said, in as calming a voice as he could muster under the circumstances. "Allow me time to cast the spells needed to answer the more pressing questions."

Alakim began the magics necessary to get the first answers he sought. He noted the tension plainly visible on the young Prince's face, and did his best to go as quickly as possible. Alas, such magics were not easy to rush.

As the magics revealed the first bits of information, Alakim breathed a sigh of relief. "Your Highness. The first question I can answer is that, yes, your fiancée is still alive."

The built-up tension in Borelean unwound visibly for a moment, and then some thought made him look even more worried than before. "Now what?" he asked as he began to pace. "She's not dead. Not at a Lifestone. Not reachable via any magic I know or have access to. Where is she? What happened to her?"

"I do not yet know, Your Highness. This will take time. The magical and physical investigations will take time."

"I can't afford to wait." snapped Borelean.

"And would Your Highness risk missing an important clue or destroying evidence due to haste?"

"You are correct. You must proceed with care as not to miss a thing, but I cannot stand here and do nothing," the Prince said exasperated. "Is there some signature you can point me at that I can target with some of my skills or abilities?"

"I can see one trace of her passage. It is here." Alakim pointed to a spot near the door. "If you'll give me a moment to be sure there is no other..." Alakim was cut short as Borelean shouldered past him, muttering in an Empyrean tongue reserved for magics that Alakim had never understood, even when Lord Asheron himself had tried to show him. The mage shook his head, but he really couldn't blame his Prince. Such a situation would be hard for anyone to deal with even in the best of times, let alone for someone with his Highness's temperament and under the current circumstances.

Alakim waited patiently while Borelean finished his spells. A look of grim determination came over Borelean as he finally had a place to direct his energies..

"I believe I can use Geomancy to track her, if I can get close to a point they've brought her through recently."

"So it wasn't a full portal?" Alakim asked.

Prince Borelean shook his head. "The signature here is too faint for it to have been a full portal. I'm certain I can rule out any other transport over a great distance as well. They must've moved her over several smaller hops. Normally, I could track her from here, but there's so much chaotic energy left over from the fight that the signatures here are all jumbled together."

As Borelean started to leave, Alakim stopped him. "Your Highness, if I may make a suggestion?"

"A quick one."

"As you say. May I suggest that you make some means for people to assist you in this search? Would it not be better if many people were searching, and not just one?"

"A good point" Borelean said, with some thought. He turned down a hallway and called out, "Sir Draithon, attend me, if you please."

A man in black Covenant armor moved into view a bit too quickly for the level of dignity he was obviously trying to convey. "Yes, Your Highness?"

"Stay here. Make sure the investigation is not disturbed. I will be preparing a number of gems. Once you've learned what there is to learn here, take the gems and seek adventurers to aid in this search. We will get Kei back, even if I have to tear down the foundations of Dereth to do so."

"As you wish, Your Highness." Sir Draithon said, with a salute to his Lord Prince. After being one of Borelean's personal guards for this many years, he was accustomed to the shifts in the Prince's mood. "Is there anything else you would have of me?"

"No, that's all. I'll make sure the gems are waiting for you by the time the investigation is done here. As soon as they're ready, I'll take the rest of my guard to start searching."

"As you wish." said Sir Draithon, with another salute. As Borelean headed off down the hallway at speed, the knight turned to the investigator. "Is there anything you need of me, to expedite this investigation?"

"Just patience, Sir Draithon." said Sir Alakim, with a sigh. With that, he started the investigation properly, hoping all the while Prince Borelean's Geomancy didn't disrupt too many clues.

Release Notes

Original Link - http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=554-april-release-notes&catid=81-2010&Itemid=68

April Release Notes

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Greetings and welcome to the April Release Notes! This month we bring you a special update to the game, which includes new features and the first of several new playable races coming to Asheron's Call! Through the use of Lifestone magic, some Shadows are now able to bind to Lifestones. Will they be accepted into life on Dereth? Let's see what else is new and exciting in Asheron's Call this month!

Updated Content and Functionality Through much time and research, the Arcanum has found a way to harness the power of Aetheria. Make sure you Speak to Cypher the Apprentice in Xarabydun. You can read more about this system here!

Barbers have moved into some of the towns of Dereth. In the mood for a new cut? Make sure you stop by and see one of the many skilled stylists for a new look! Read here for more information.

The Shadows are here! Shadows are now a playable race! You can choose from two different races of Shadow. Find out more about how this all came to be by reading a special backstory written by former AC Dev Orion, and can check out the lore and the Teaser Video here!

The wedding NPCs no longer collect things but will still trade house hookable objects in return for one. There is also a new NPC who rewards those who helped collect the items.

Tailoring is now in the game! You can now move the appearance from one piece of armor onto another piece of the same type that has better stats! Read more about Tailoring here!

Some changes have been made to clothing and armor.

• Under character options, players will now find a toggle for show/hide helmet.
• All pants now cover the abdomen. Shirts will no longer cover the abdomen.
• Leather shorts now only cover the abdomen.
• Long leather gloves now only cover the hands.
• The ability to reduce multi-slot pieces down to just one piece has been added to the game.You can read more about this new feature here!

The Crystalline Crag has been changed to prevent players from bouncing up into an area they should not be in.

Players creating a new character will notice they have a large number of new hairstyles to choose from.

Players will no longer need to have a scroll bar to view the eighth pack slot in their inventory, while in most resolutions.

Some changes have been made to the Rares system. They are as follows:

• There are now only 6 tiers and the later tiers have had their drop rates significantly changed.
• Tier 1 and 2 stayed the same except for the rare potions, which have been moved down to Tier 2
• Tier 3 is the same except the potions were removed from this tier
• Tier 4 is armor
• Tier 5 stayed the same and is eternal rares gems/dyes/salvage
• Tier 6 is weapons

You can read more about these changes here!

The quest journal file is no longer saved with page number information. Players adding pages to their journal files and sharing journal pages will no longer have to manually renumber information in the journal file. Old journal files can still be read into the game, but the game will remove the page number information when the journal is rewritten.

The issues with set pieces/set spells (removing pieces then logging in and having different level of the set active on the player) should be fixed.

Loot should no longer spawn with Racial Requirements. Pieces that would have racial requirements are instead generated as “exceptional” pieces that have lower Arcane Lore requirements.

Known Issues

• When first opened, the Barber shows randomized features rather than showing a character's current set of features.
• Show/Hide Helm starts as the Hide option on existing characters.
• When chain casting spells the sigil particles can fail to show up on the player.
• The set used on Armor Rares is currently casting the Strength Set Spell instead of the Endurance Set Spell as it was intended.
• Some quest clothing covers old slots and may not be compatible with looted pants.
• The Arcanum turn-in merchant is still being interviewed. While the Arcanum have announced they are interested in Aetheria Powder left over from using the Aetheria Desiccant on unwanted Aetheria, the mages are still narrowing down the candidates for the position. We expect the new hire will arrive with the next update.
• Some Lugians show Tusker as their race when examined.

So there are just some of the things coming to Asheron's Call in April. Please remember that along with everything listed here, there are several new quests and exciting things going into the game for the April Event.

April News Roundup

Original Link - http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=561-april-event-news-round-up&catid=81-2010&Itemid=68

April Event News Round-Up!

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With the April update live, Asheron's Call has gotten some well deserved attention. Here are some of the articles recently posted about our latest event!

Kotaku
There's A New Playable Race In Asheron's Call

Massively
Asheron's Call introduces new playable race and more

MMORPG.com
Asheron's Call News - New Playable Race, Features Added

Warcry
Asheron's Call Adds New Playable Race

DevTeam Interviews
Brian "Django" Cottle
Jared "NoWorries" Sears
Eric "Kintani" Deans
Robert "Severlin" Ciccolini

Beckett Massive Online Gamer

New Race in Asheron's Call

Developer Comments

April 13th to May 10th, 2010

11th Anniversary Patch

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Given our current schedule we should be able to put the November update live within a very close time to the Anniversary Date. Right now things are still up the air, so once we get a bit closer to that time we will be able to clarify things further.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Aetheria

April 15th, 2010 - Link

Q: Right, but I remember a similar thing happening before where set bonuses would sometimes expire unexpectedly.

A: Sigil of Growth isn't a set bonus, it's a surge. You had a surge active when you logged out.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 16th, 2010 - Link

Q: Do these Aetheria Mana Stone's have a limited number of uses? Mine seems to have disintrigrated out of my pack. How do you obtain a replacement? Re-run the quest?

A: If you need a new one you can repeat the steps you took to get the first one.

Django Turbine Staff

April 20th, 2010 - Link

Hmmm. The critical damage bonus should be higher than the regular damage bonus. I'll look into it.

Sev~

Frelorn AC Community Relations

April 20th, 2010 - Link

Q: Today I did some damage tests to compare the bonuses given by the Sigil of Fury sets and the Sigil of Destruction sets. (I am talking only about the Set bonuses not any Surges.) So, there is no point in using the Fury set. The Destruction set bonus applies to both normal hits and critical hits with the same bonus. The Fury set bonus applies ONLY to critical hits (and with the exact same bonus as Destruction).

A: The critical damage bonus is going to remain the same. It does allow you to hit maximum possible critical damage by mixing both destruction and fury sigils to bypass the higher levels of diminishing returns.

Due to the feedback and some extra thought we've decided to add in an endurance cantrip to the Fury set. This way you will be gaining endurance as well as higher damage on your critical hits.

Django Turbine Staff

April 20th, 2010 - Link

Q: Sounds good, will this be in for next patch, or sooner?

A: Should be in for the next time we update.

Django Turbine Staff

April 20th, 2010 - Link

Q: If you add an endurance cantrip to Fury doesn't that lessen the value of Vigor Set? Or is vigor mainly intended for extra mana? Or is there some other benefit to Vigor that I haven't discovered yet?

A: No, the endurance cantrip is separate and will stack with all other cantrips. Vigor adds directly to health and will add up to more health points total due to the 2/1 nature of Endurance to Health.

If anything I think this will actually cause some interest in a Fury/Vigor set combination. However this would generally use all of your Aetheria Slots (to hit diminishing returns) so you'd be reducing your offensive and defensive power in exchange.

Django Turbine Staff

April 20th, 2010 - Link

Q: Anything that adds additional health, like this would, should have its implications very, very carefully considered.

A: Aetheria is a fairly reasonable to balance system. In order to gain one benefit you have to accept that you'll have less or none of other benefits. In this case if you want Health/Endurance to reach the maximum HP value you would have to give up Damage Reduction and Damage Rating.

Fury is the only hybrid offensive/defensive Aetheria at this point.

Django Turbine Staff

April 21st, 2010 - Link

Q: I think it'd be more beneficial for the PvP environment if you simply increased Fury's impact on your critical hits.

A: Increasing the Critical Damage by even an additional percent would completely outweigh any HP gain from Endurance. The total HP gain from Endurance will be around 1% of a maxed out player's health. The total damage boosts add up to well over that amount.

This will certainly be an additional bonus but based off the statement of how the sets are being built it shouldn't have a huge effect on how it functions. If players are focusing on damage that means they are not taking advantage of the new damage reduction and are dealing 10% or more total damage on criticals than they were dealing before Aetheria.

The flavor of Fury is more of a "rage" that causes the player to be more resilient to damage while delivering massive attacks. Endurance lends itself to this very well.

Django Turbine Staff

April 21st, 2010 - Link

Q: I don't think I can count that many numeric positions without taking my shoes off. Please add commas!

A: I don't think there's enough digits. I was thinking of multiplying all needed XP by 100 and all XP rewards by 1000 so you would end up with something like:

1987456388000/3000000000000

Sev~

PS: Just messing with yah, I'll look into it.

Severlin Producer

April 21st, 2010 - Link

Q: Django, what if Fury, instead of Endurance, provided a small benefit to crit *rate* in addition to crit damage? Make it a distinctly secondary effect, one that's not too big even if you stack a bunch of fury (say, *maxes* at an additional 5%. So, most people going 2 destruction, 1 fury will get ~1-2% crit bonus). Something you wouldn't take fury on its own for, but is nonetheless nice to have.

A: Even a small increase to critical rate is a huge increase to total DPS.

Also, adding secondary (lower progression) abilities to Aetheria is something we don't want to do at this point in time. It adds further layers of distinction to some aetheria that push the player towards leveling that Aetheria up to a specific number as opposed to deciding based off the diminishing returns and total effect as it is now.

The Damage Rating and Reduction as well as Critical Frequency properties only work as whole numbers, so we can't increase any of these by less than 1 per tier or less than a full point increase. Critical Damage currently is a 1 point increase for each level of the spell, if it were any higher it would need to be a 2 point increase per level. Having it go 1 3 4 6 (roughly a 1.5 rounded down) it would add in those layers of distinction we're trying to avoid that would drive players to keep the level of their total Fury Aetheria even as opposed to using it the same as other Aetheria where you're driven by the diminishing returns level and desired effect. Also, we believe that the rounded down 1.5 would increase critical damage to a point that it could easily be too strong in PK.

Django Turbine Staff

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: One question, does the Sigil of Growth increase the normal health regeneration over time or does it just affect the use of healing kits/potions/foods/spells?

A: Healing Rating and Healing Reduction Rating affects DoT spells, but not natural regeneration.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: So Sigil of Growth has no affect on the effectiveness of healing kits/potions/foods/spells?

A: Of course these are affected. I thought that was clear from the description. I am pointing out that there is a difference between natural regeneration and DoT spells like the Surge of Regeneration.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: I understand what the Sigils are saying as Diminishing returns cap of 7 when active and have xp in them. What I was getting to is are the spell numbers Bogus at 7 if you have trinket effects that stack, as Turbine doesnt know what choices a person made for tinkets. Even though it says X Sigil Spell VII. is it really active?

A: All these spells stack. They are all in different categories. Diminishing returns, as explained above, affects what spell is cast but all spells from the sources you quote stack with each other.

Severlin Producer

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: Whats the baseline to compare these on? IE Defense 1 is 1 damage reduction. 1 damage reduction is literally 1 damage , 99 not 100? or whats scaling factor? Also with Surge of protection on sigils, if cap is 7 surge of protection cause damage reduction of 20 which is over cap period, purpose?

A: All damage increases are measured in "damage rating." Damage Rating increases damage with the following formula:

(100 + <total damage rating>)/100

So if you have a damage rating spell from trinkets of +3 and a damage rating spell from Aetheria of +2 and you have a +20 damage rating surge active:

(100 + 3 + 2 + 20)/100 -> 125/100 -> 1.25 modifier to damage.

Damage reductions are measured as Damage Resistance Rating. This is the opposite of Damage Rating and in fact will completely negate an equal damage rating. Damage Resistance Rating decreases incoming damage with the following formula:

100/(100 + <total damage resistance rating>)

So if you have a damage resistance rating from trinkets of +3 and a damage resistance rating from Aetheria of +4 and a damage resistance rating surge of +20 active:

100/(100 + 3 + 4 + 20) -> 100/127 -> ~0.787 multiplier to incoming damage.

As a comparison, 100 damage resistance rating will multiply incoming damage by 0.5, thus reducing incoming damage by 50%.

Severlin Producer

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: Also in patch notes "Surge of Regeneration: You begin to regenerate at an increased rate. For the next 50 seconds you will gain 16 health every 5 seconds." However ingame on Sigil reads 90 points over 15 seconds

A: If those contradict then we didn't update the description text.

Severlin Producer

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: Growth Sigils from patch notes "Sigil of Growth: Your healing rating is increased, which increases the effect of healing upon you." Again, question is whats baseline and mulitiplier.

A: Healing Rating and Healing Reduction Rating use the exact same formulas as DR and DRR.

Healing Rating increase incoming healing using the following:

(100 + <total healing rating>)/100

Healing Reduction Rating decreases incoming healing using the following formula:

100/(100 + <total healing resistance rating>)

Sev~

Severlin Producer

Bonus XP Weekends

April 20th, 2010 - [ Link]

With a new race and many players returning to the game, we will be having a bonus quest experience weekend starting sometime before 6 pm on Friday April 23 and ending after midnight on Sunday April 26. All quest XP rewards during that time will be increased by 50% for a total of 150% experience.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

April 26th, 2010 - Link

Q: 1) Weekends are good for a lot of players, but some players can't do weekends. I'm one that seldom plays Friday - Sunday. Can we get one that starts on Thursday perhaps? 2) Questing is awesome, but a lot of people like to hunt as well. It would be nice if hunting had a bonus of xp as well. Perhaps Questing gets 50% boost and hunting 25%?

A: Both are very valid points, and good suggestions. The team can talk about changing up times and adding some variety for future events.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

April 27th, 2010 - Link

Q: Would it be possible to let everyone schedule their own "window" for bonus xp? For example, talk to an NPC when you are ready to start your 3-day bonus xp period and for the next 3 days you get that bonus. That would allow people to have a little more flexibility. The NPC could disappear after some period of time. Even better would be to have the game track in-game time for the account...maybe allow 24 hrs. of actual play time. That way real players would benefit more than UCMs.

A: Things we like about bonus quest XP events:

~ Lots of people playing at the same time. ~ Lots of people interacting by grouping for big quests.

We are hoping players have fun with increased opportunities to interact with other players, and the newer players can learn how experienced players run quests they might not have done before. It's not designed to simply be extra reward, but rather a social event that is triggered by that extra reward during the weekend.

Scheduling events during the week can still accomplish that, but we don't see XP tokens accomplishing the same thing.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May 6th, 2010 - Link

Q: Any chance of another XP weekend soon?

A: There is always a chance.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Boss Trophies

April 26th, 2010 - Link

Q: Increase reward drops on Quest bosses (Apostate, etc). Only Lunnum has it right. And leading 12 people on any of the Apostate quests and waiting for the respawn is a bit like herding cats. Yes, many, most, or all quests can be soloed. But for the people who enjoy/prefer or need to do them in groups. Lunnum drops a ton of keys and that is awesome. Why can't the others? As far as I can tell, it would harm none.

A: I'll bring this up with the team.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

Community Spotlight: Featured Player

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Connor the Craftmaster, also known as Chazriker, has come to the forefront of the Asheron's Call community by his helpful nature towards players and his impressive video production skills. From his hilarious series “Connor's Adventures in Dereth,” to his 2009 Video Contest winning entry “Derethian Times Daily Newscast,” his ability to combine humor with valuable information has made him one of the more beloved members of the AC community. Please join us in congratulating Connor on becoming the very first Asheron's Call Featured Player!

Check it out!

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Corpse Bugging

April 18th, 2010 - Link

Q: Official stance on corpse bugging?

A: We are aware of this bug and it is slated to be fixed. With all the features of the big April patch we just ran out of time. Apologies for the delay.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

DDO Malware

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: Basically, DDO has started a new rewards program that's infecting peoples' PCs with MalWare and sending out your login and password in clear-text even if you don't download anything. This is... not good. I assume this won't touch anything AC related, but given how crazily far-reaching this sounds, I'm pretty spooked.

A: We have no plans to add something like this to Asheron's Call.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Double Chat

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: Why is chat getting doubled?

A: The team is looking into what might be causing this. As soon as they have more information it will be passed along.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Fuzzy Bunny Slayer and Baby Bunny Booty

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: Hmmm, I thought they already turned off the Hulking Bunny spawn. I know for sure it was turned on for April Fools but thought that only lasted a week. Could be wrong.

A: It lasts until the 15th, same with THOP.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: Baby Bunny Booty Orb? Has this been turned off? I was killing them for a few days, got a hulking to spawn but no white and someone mentioned it was turned off on the 15th... Can I get a clarification from a dev so I dont waste time killing more rabbits?

A: ''I would assume that if THOP (The House of Pancakes) isn't there, then this was turned off too.

Bingo

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

GUI Improvements

April 15th, 2010 - Link

Q: I am inquiring about the ability we had in DM to free swing the camera using the right click buton on the mouse! Is there some bug that stops us from doing this in TOD or is there a button or series of buttons that I am not aware of? I think that it is a very valuable ability...and I miss it..sniff sniff!

A: Making mouse-look work is on our big list of things we want to get done. I don't have an ETA right now, but it is on the radar.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: Sev, NoWorries, or Frelorn can any of you guys tell us if there are any plans to do major or minor tweaks of the UI? Maybe make them more friendly to people who like to move their UI frames around, or to get rid of decal (by allowing us to create mods using only functions you allow us to access).

A: We have nothing to announce at this time.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May 10th, 2010 - Link

Q: Any chance that there will ever be an opacity slider added to the AC HUD?

A: At this point I would say anything is possible.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Housing

April 27th, 2010 - Link

Q: Why can't I buy a cottage?

A: That count down is actually based on the amount of time you have had a character on the server, not trial vs paid account.

Victorie Turbine Customer Support

Landscape Textures

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Oh by the way...

Guess what?

Click me

Click me

Click me

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

BTW Gigantic credit on this goes to NoWorries. He is the man behind the magic on this one.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: Oh, is water going to get a facelift too?

A: That is the plan, though due to the engine limitations I would not expect it to suddenly look like the water from some of our other titles. I do expect it will look better though.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Also keep in mind these are not the completed versions. There is still some more finishing touches to be done, but we wanted to keep you all informed about what we have going on here. These guys never seem to rest these days.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: If I'm not wrong, there's a difference between 'blue snow' on the Halaetan islands (Viamont land) that's sort of supposed to be ice, and the snow-snow everywhere else. Don't think you're going to see mountains capped with blue ice.

A: Yes there is a difference. As a reference though, I have seen the new snow as well and it too looks great.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: ISO pics of upgraded water

A: It is not done yet. I suspect that we will be sharing more pics as we get closer to making these changes to the worlds.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: I'm imagining this texture right now combined with added-back-in weather effects for the Big October Patch.... It's going to be nice.

A: Not to derail the thread, but it will likely be a big November patch to coincide with the anniversary.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: I always thought that white stuff was snow. I never imagined it being ice.

A: There is snow, ice and blue ice. It was tough to tell the difference before.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: ISO pics of upgraded water

A: To make sure we're clear, our engine didn't get any changes to it. Which means we can't render water the way most modern games can. It will still be a flat, non-moving texture the same way it is now.

But yes I'm sure Frelorn will bug me daily for more screenshots and we will get some out when we can.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

These will not be in with the May Update.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: For us running XP an older (but still quite good) card and direcx 9c: What kind of rig is required to enjoy the new additions?

A: Once the implementation part of it is complete we will be running it on different machines to see what effect it has.

I will say that I am running it with the texture detail settings/filtering at max and landscape draw distance at very high while running in windowed mode. And this is while running another client that has the old landscape setup, and about 10 other programs at the same time. So I don't think it will be much of an issue for most people.

Also the texture detail option can scale it down if you are experiencing issues, and from my testing even lowering that down to medium or low still has the landscape looking better then before.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: For us running XP an older (but still quite good) card and direcx 9c: What kind of rig is required to enjoy the new additions?

A: From what we can tell you may notice a very small bit of a memory usage increase, but your CPU usage may actually go down. Overall unless you can barely run AC now, there should be no real difference for you after this is live, if all goes well.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

And just to be clear, we are hopeful that the texture upgrades shown in these shots will be in the game before November. We don't want to give an actual date yet, but we are shooting for sooner rather than later. The other stuff we have spoken about would be more likely for November.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: I read awhile back with the issue with windows 7 and ati cards somewhere. With this update might we be able to turn on the landscape detail textures?

A: I haven't gotten to landscape detail textures yet so I couldn't tell you yes or no on that. It is something I am going to try and fix while the rest of the landscape is being improved.

However those after screenshots are taken with landscape detail textures unchecked, since using the old details textures actually makes the landscape look worse currently.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

May 4th, 2010 - Link

Q: Looks nice but how will this effect the lag in the game its already horrible at certain towns like Ayan and Teth.

A: It's 100% client side so it won't affect lag at all.

However if you do happen to have an older machine and it is causing it to run slower you can simply change the texture detail setting down to a setting that runs good for you.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

Leathered Items

April 16th, 2010 - Link

Q: Is there any way currently to remove leather from an item?

A: Currently, no. We've been talking about this as a possibility, though there's no certain direction on it yet.

Django Turbine Staff

Loot Profiles

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: I opened the armor chest, it contained 1 weapon. That is all. And before any of you claim this was 'free', just go post somewhere else.

A: That extra item (which is in all of the mana forge chest types) is what is allowing a chance for an Aetheria to show up in the chests.

As for the chest not spawning all of its loot, we know of the issue but we haven't found a solution for it yet.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: I think this is new, after the more recent tweeks to them i hadn't seen anything strange. I've made over a thousand pulls from armor chests and i can't ever recall seeing a weapon.

A: This is not a new issue and has been around since MFC were added to the game, the fact that you haven't run into it should tell you how rarely it happens.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 23rd, 2010 - Link

Q: Sealed Treasury Vault nerfed?

A: There have been no changes to the over all quality of loot.

Django Turbine Staff

April 23rd, 2010 - Link

Q: Turbine you should look into this I 8 Castle Mhoire pulls and NO level 8 spell comps were in any of them. The level 8 spell comps issue also applies to the mana forge chest. Please look into doing actual pulls before you dismiss this issue.

A: Nobody dismissed the issue. The fact is that the quality has not changed. Mundane (non-magical stuffs, like spell components) were changed in order to add Aetheria to loot profiles. The thread brings up 2 issues, one that can be looked at (level 8 spell components) and another that we hear a lot but almost never has any actual change connected to it (over all quality of loot). The systems and files that control over all quality of loot are completely separate from those that control what types of loot drop in a specific profile.

Django Turbine Staff

April 23rd, 2010 - Link

Q: I Used 12 MFK pulls on the Magic Chests for components. Out of every chest I opened there was 1 piece of jewelry with absolutely no spells on it just a lvl 150+ requirement. Something is wrong with that. I have yet to find a Magic Chest spawn with nothing but components in it.

A: The magic component chest was using a standard drop profile for aetheria instead of the one intended for the mana forge chests. This means that it isn't currently dropping aetheria at the same rate as the other chests and isn't necessarily dropping weapons when it doesn't drop aetheria.

This is being updated for the next release.

We're also making the Sealed Treasury Vaults a little more appealing and adding spell components back in.

Django Turbine Staff

April 23rd, 2010 - Link

Q: Should the Chests be droping so many items that have nothing on them. Example would be a Bracelet with no spells or anything just a normal bracelet with a 150 Wield Requirement.

A: Yes, they should drop exactly 1 except in the case of special chests. In the case of mana forged chests the item without a spell on it should be a weapon.

Django Turbine Staff

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: You guys going to take this crap out or are you pretty happy that MFKs give no magic necklaces?

A: If you observed the drops in the chest you'll notice that the number of pieces of armor (for instance) in the armor chest is exactly the same as it used to be. There is also the additional of a non-magical weapon in most pulls, this non-magical weapon counters the Aetheria.

We need to add our drops up to 100% and the MFK chest Aetheria drop is non-magic weapon or aetheria. The reasoning for this is that non-magic weapons are likely the best non-magic item you can find, sure they're not amazing but it's certainly going to be more useful than non-magic jewelry or non-magic armor.

On top of dropping your normal MFK items the chests now also include one "hoard" (also known as non-magic) item to support the appearance of aetheria.

We've made some changes to the profiles and many MFK chests will also have the chance of dropping spell crafting components as well as their magic items and the non-magic items in the future.

There is currently a bug that one of the MFK chest types will drop non-magic jewelry, this is changing over to match the rest of the MFK chests for the next update.

Severlin Producer

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: I was pulling from the Magic chests for spell comps and pulled a piece of jewelry with no spells on it every single time.

A: This has been covered a few times. Some of the MFK chests are currently dropping non-magic jewelry instead of the non-magic weapons they should be dropping to support the dropping of Aetheria. This has already been corrected for next update.

Django Turbine Staff

April 30th, 2010 - Link

Q: I had a pull from the Armor chest that yielded only one item - a 2H weapon. I think something is bugged. When you say Django that there are still the same number of armor pieces, that isn't always true.

A: That's an existing bug, it has nothing to do with Aetheria or these chests in specific. You're not getting less armor because of the aetheria or the other items, the profile simply isn't generating all the loot it should.

Django Turbine Staff

May 2nd, 2010 - Link

Q: Viamont lace boots are still spawning w/ junk AL

A: There is a bug with those type of boots (not the chest). It's fixed on the test server for the next patch. There was a bug in how they generated. Since it is a mutation, only new boots will be affected.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May 4th, 2010 - Link

Q: Good call on the retry idea for chests spawning only 1 item. I was pretty frustrated to burn a key on a armor chest only to get 1 single 2h weapon. Bah!

A: I just found the bug that caused chests to fail to generate loot. Basically every loot check in the game since the dawn of time was actually 1% less than marked. So the MFK chests with three profiles that were marked 100/100/100 actually had a 99/99/99 chance to generate items from their profiles. I fixed in for May, assuming it passes QA.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May 5th, 2010 - Link

Q: So is this affecting the number or items spawning in the MFK chest, or just it's chance to spawn absolutely nothing? I've come across chests with 0 (9,000) burden, and I just don't open them. I mean, I'm sure not everyone is cautious enough to ID every chest like I do, but yeah. Again, does this bug affect the number of items in a chest aside from that? Say for instance, 3 items when there should be 4, and so on?

A: There are three separate treasure profile types distributed among various creatures and chests. Each profile type can point at a number of treasure tables. Internal names aside, basically it's weapon/armor stuff, magic stuff, and mundane stuff. While the exact tables each points to vary, each has a different way of mutating the stuff it generates. That is why we can't just put spell components into the weapon/armor profile; the profile would choke because it has a specific way of mutating items it generates. When we need spell components to drop in the same chest as other items we have to include two profiles to do it. Each profile had a 1% greater chance of not generating things.

Aetheria *has* to drop in the "mundane" profile because it doesn't mutate like other treasure items do. We had to add special code for it. That's why the Aetheria that drops in chests is in addition to the normal loot, and its why when Aetheria doesn't drop it is replaced by a weapon with no magic mutations.

So if the primary profile in the chest hits this bug, you'd see a single weapon with no stats generate. Conversely, there is also a chance that the Aetheria/Non Magic Weapon slot won't generate.

Countless creatures and chests all have various combinations of these profiles each with potential different treasure profiles within each profile so this bug can manifest in a large variety of ways and appear to only prevent partial loot drops.

I apologize if that is too much information.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May 6th, 2010 - Link

Q: Thank you for ruining the in-game economy by changing long-established game mechanics in your far-too-late macroing witch hunt. Judging by the numerous threads/posts regarding the removal of peas and such from the loot profile, I'm thinking I'm not alone.

A: This change is a side effect of the Aetheria additions. When we first added Aetheria we noticed the magical creatures seemed to be dropping them at the wrong rate. When we looked into it, it appeared that many of the creatures that were considered "magical" and were supposed to be using the magical loot profile were using the mundane loot profile and vice versa. So it got fixed.

As a side effect, a lot of magical creatures that used to drop peas and kits (mundane items) now drop magical oriented loot, and conversely a lot of mundane creatures that used to drop magical loot now drop peas, kits and mana stones. We didn't want to inconvenience the players as much as fix loot profiles as we encountered them.

If someone needs these items they should be able to hunt "mundane" creatures as was intended. My question is are the creatures considered "mundane" not dropping peas and kits and mana stones?

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May Lore Articles

May 8th, 2010 - Link

Q: Where is the love? No lore this month!? Rollout Article, Teaser, nothing!

A: The person who was going to be writing the lore had a pipe burst in their house, so the lore article was a bit delayed.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Menhir Mana Fields

April 28th, 2010 - Link

Q: We clearly didn't get any hints that made it into the last patch! Wherever those last 2 menhir rings are located has apparently not been visited at all by any players on any world in more than a month...you might want to examine those areas in general to determine why no one wants to go there! Maybe time for a revamp of those areas! Anyway, can you throw us a bone or two to put us on the right path? Maybe narrow down the general areas or anything?

A: We did add a clue last month. It may or may not have been an obvious clue.

Severlin Producer

New Character Races

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: This is my new shadow. Stock Bow Hunter template, which uses all 50 starting credits; level 10, which should add 9 credits; and no skills picked up since creation. I should have 9 skill credits. As you can see, when I re-logged I got a "Your available skill credits have been adjusted" and I went down to 7 credits. My skills screen is up so you can verify my count: 6-arcane, 16-bow, 20-melee, 8-item. Everything else is a normal starting skill.

A: We have confirmed this is a bug. The skill credits will be returned next time we patch.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: I read the same post that you did, where the dev said there would be no salvage to change race req to Shadow, but I can't find it either. Thought it was NoWorries that said it.

A: Well sure I handed out the other news people didn't want to hear tonight, I might as well cover this as well.

There is no way to change race req to Shadow (or any upcoming races) nor are there any plans to implement a way to do so in the future.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: Originally Posted by Buk View Post I might be way off but I understand that there is in the works about not having race as a req for future items.

A: Starting with this patch race reqs won't show up on loot. However pre-existing loot will not be changed and there won't be any additions for changing existing loot with race reqs to a new race.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: One thing I find annoying about the Umbraens is that it's difficult grab and drag any footgear from your paper doll.

A: We understand this problem and we are looking into solutions for an upcoming patch.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: I was really hoping the shadows would be transperent ona side note.

A: We tried transparency. While the monster shadows are simple enough to pull it off (barely) the player shadows looked really bad in a *lot* of gear combinations because the game doesn't use mesh graphics.

Sev~

Django Turbine Staff

May 7th, 2010 - Link

Q: Is there a new race introduced this patch? Or did i miss something?

A: If all stays on schedule, the next new race will be in the June event.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

New Loot Armor

April 21st, 2010 - Link

As always, the team is looking for ways to add new and exciting things to Asheron's Call. Thanks to our old friend Matt "Scenario" Elliott for creating this concept and the armor in-game that player will be able to acquire when the May event goes live!

Check it out here!

Django Turbine Staff

April 21st, 2010 - Link

Q: Will this be loot armor or quest? And will it be single or multi-slot? (please say single slot)

A: As far as I know this new armor will be found in loot and single slot.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Premium Services

May 7th, 2010 - Link

Q: I have 2 accounts that never got migrated away from having an email address as the username (old zone login maybe? its been a while). Can these still be reactivate? or are they simply lost?

A: Turn around for the initial response from Premium Services is about 2 weeks right now. They are able to help most players who contact them to migrate accounts, or find already migrated accounts (in some cases).

Victorie Turbine Customer Support

PvP Issues

April 24th, 2010 - Link

Q: Severlin and Friends, do you bother looking at the PVP boards?

A: ~ Yes, we read PvP threads.

~ We are not convinced that archers need an overall boost. We'd like to see how they perform once Aetheria is fully equipped, where they can rail gun with accuracy boosts fishing for surges. If they do need a boost they are the easiest attack type to change since we can always make better arrows available.

~ The loss of "mundane" loot is a side effect of Aetheria changes to the loot profile that doesn't affect every profile and hunting area equally. This makes it time consuming to examine all the areas that are affected by it. The reason we haven't commented on it is we have no news to post about it.

~ People have more health, but at this point players should be able to gain extra damage modifiers and other damage boosts as well. They should also be able to equip a small selection of surges.

~ We understand players are concerned that a stack of meats and a shield make it impossible to kill people, and with the last patch we added a damage surge and a surge that debuffs healing effects. Is it enough? Maybe not, but we'd rather move PvP in little steps towards balance that swing wildly in one direction and then nerf.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 27th, 2010 - Link

Q: Myself and other archers find that pvp on a archer isnt consistent. If your playing a mage with great armor and full epics including epic armor... an archer can never win this fight. I have a mod 161 +15 MAJOR BT BD 8 bow... and I hit for 30's-40's and crit for 180... I have a dext set with epic cord and I use beers (383 cord). I want archers to be able to have some viable damage again, this is getting ridiculous how bad archers are at times. Melee's and Mages in bad armor will die quickly or pull out a shield... boo hoo right? Well they should upgrade their armor imho. I believe this has been a problem for awhile... I hope others will give their input.

A: Would it be useful to add Fast Missile and Unguided Missile options to the keybind screen so you can toggle them on and off during combat?

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 27th, 2010 - Link

Q: Point of recall timers? Everyone suicides now. Make it so you cant kill yourself for 2 minutes when you're casted on or cast on someone else.

A: My question to the players: is there a compelling reason to even have a /die command? It seems like a lot of exploit potential and very little game value.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

May 3rd, 2010 - Link

Q: Shows you how much Devs care about the PvP aspect of the game. Everything they're doing is aimed towards carebears. Tailoring, haircuts, new graphics.... Give me a break. The ONLY good thing about AC is the PvP, but I guess since more ppl play on carebear servers, the Devs don't care about pk. I play with my graphics set on the LOWEST possible settings. Graphic upgrades are a waste of time.

A: The addition of healing debuffs is specifically for PvP actually since it has no use in PvE currently.

We are *much* slower to make PvP changes because it is so potentially volatile to the PvP scene.

As for the settings, the current code actually spends a lot of time scaling all the textures up and down. While the update uses more memory, it should actually be easier on your graphics card because it isn't scaling all the landscape textures on the fly. The caveat there is we haven't done performance testing or put it up on the test server yet.

(We have run it on some pretty low end machines though and it seems to run fine.)

Sev~

Severlin Producer

Quest Hub

April 20th, 2010 - Link

One of the appeals of Asheron's Call is that it has a large exploratory component that many other games lack. We do not wish to create a quest system that takes that away from players. In many other games I have tried that use "modern" quest trackers those actually take the place of figuring out quests. Yes, it is convenient at first but after a while one tends to click through quest accepts without reading them, run to the blue blob on the map without reading the quest or knowing why, and killing things until feedback happens saying the quest is done. After hearing player feedback we didn't feel that would be right for Asheron's Call. We were concerned it would diminish the exploratory aspect of the game.

That does not mean that the current UI and quest systems can't be improved. We can and do implement such improvements. We will continue to do so.

Our goal for tailoring is to make the game have as much customization as possible in how a character looks. The layer tool is just a way for players to tell use the order that their characters are putting on their armor. Everyone can make the decision to tuck in their shirts; this is just an in game way of telling the game your preference along those lines.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 20th, 2010 - Link

Q: I understand that a real quest tracker or adding other ways to alert players to quest might interfere with the original design of randomly stumbling upon quests. Still I think many players here are disillusion. The majority of people are resorting to using the Wiki to find quests for MFKs and XP and looking to the Wiki for steps to complete it. If they are not then they are most likely one of the newbs who are 275 and are incapable of completing a quest unless they have someone to lead them the through it. Even then the leader is probably just reading from the Wiki. If not that then they are asking on /cg where a person points them to the Wiki or someone answers them back on /cg after looking it up on the Wiki.

A: We are always looking for suggestions on older quests that could use better explanation, rewards or even balancing. We have gone through a number of older quests to update them and plan to continue to do so. If people have specific examples then post away.

As for the multi-slot tool, reducing all existing multi-slot armor to single slot would have left many existing characters who used them with big holes in their protection and no way to inform them of this fact and no way for them to hunt effectively for new pieces if they are randomly hit in unarmored areas for huge damage. We were unwilling just convert armor and leave many characters potentially unplayable. It would be particularly bad for returning players who were suddenly unprotected in areas.

As for the layering tool, making these armor pieces into single slot as a large scale forced action would still leave the problem of armor that can now be stacked having uncontrolled visual layering rules. Yes, we could have easily made arbitrary decisions on how things stacked. In fact our first iteration did exactly that, but every decision ended up with some combination of armor pieces that would have looked better layered differently. We would rather give the player a way to control things like this instead of arbitrarily making a choice for them they may or may not like. Believe me, an arbitrary stacking order would have been much easier to do. I had to add new tech specifically to get the layering tool to work.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 20th, 2010 - Link

One of the goals of the quest hub was to introduce players to the world of Asheron's Call (or re-introduce) by showing them a great variety of locations and types of quests as well as introducing bits of lore through the NPCs and the quest.

For instance it was decided that every portal in the hub would place the player on the landscape outside of any dungeon. This allowed the player to see where they were in the world and experience a great variety of locations.

When Asheron's Call launched there were a great number of low level players experiencing the world together and happening across a low level dungeon in that level range was something that would likely happen. Now, however, as many players have pointed out at low levels players don't wander the world happening across dungeons at low levels, they get twink gear and buffs and go to Olthoi Arcade or Moarsmen or other such locations. The quest hub re-introduces players to many quests they haven't done in years or have never done.

Before the quest hub the difference between leveling a low level character using buffs from a bot and twink gear was greatly different from working on your own. The quest hub allows players to work on their own to level at a similar rate. Between increasing experience gains on the quests and reducing running/searching time it goes a long way to catch up to buffed xp grinding.

Django Turbine Staff

Rares Update

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: Are all the rares still available to any level?

A: Rares still have no wield requirements.

Django Turbine Staff

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: Do all rares still drop from any creature? Do the new rares only drop from higher level creatures, or in higher level hunting areas?

A: Rares only drop from creatures that are a higher level than your character and/or level 100+. Same as always.

Django Turbine Staff

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: Thunderhead lost biting strike and gained tusker slayer. Lightning tusker slayer? Why oh why couldn't it have been lugies.

A: This is part of the bug with Lugians showing up as Tuskers in the examination. It's actually Lugian Slayer.

Django Turbine Staff

April 14th, 2010 - Link

Q: Can you still get the high tier rares or are they only one per server?

A: Rares are only limited by drop rate, they are not limited by the existence of other rares.

Django Turbine Staff

April 15th, 2010 - Link

Q: Seemed in prior times it was 2,500:1 for low tier and stayed with that ratio of adding a 0 per tier up it went.

A: The odds of finding a rare have not changed at all, it's the odds of that rare being a higher tier rare that have changed significantly.

Django Turbine Staff

April 15th, 2010 - Link

Q: So the high tier rares are they only balanced with tier 8 loot places like the release notes says or can they be found all over dereth?

A: Rares still, and have always, dropped form any creature that is a higher level than your character and/or is level 100+.

Django Turbine Staff

April 17th, 2010 - Link

Q: Aren't they supposed to stack with the rest of the cantrips and not override? Please confirm. Thank You.

A: The spell with the higher buff will be overriding the lower level version next update. The rare armors and weapons have spells from various loot armor spell sets as well as unique spells. The unique spells will stack with anything, the loot armor set spells will take the highest value.

Django Turbine Staff

May 7th, 2010 - Link

Q: In other words, I have the exact same chances as before of finding the same stuff?

A: That's very incorrect.

What Tao was explaining is correct.

The chance to find a rare has not been changed, so the number of rares the show up on a server in a given month has not changed. The chance that the rares that are found will be the top tiers has been drastically increased.

Which means your chances of finding a nice rare have gone up, not stayed the exact same as you suggest.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

May 8th, 2010 - Link

Q: Were there any changes to the real time rare system?

A: Real Time Rares work the same as they always have. It rolls a number between 1 second and 2 months worth of seconds. When that number is up you get an additional chance of finding a rare on any valid rare kill. That additional chance is very high. You can still only find one rare on any given kill but it's possible to find a normal rare when your Real Time Rare timer is up but you haven't found one yet.

Django Turbine Staff

Router and Networking Issues

April 15th, 2010 - Link

Q: All of a sudden when I launch AC, both vials fill up, and then acclient crashes. This is happening on both of my computers?

A: It sounds like you might have a corrupted dat file.

Your .dat files are in your AC folder. One thing you can do to avoid a complete reinstall is to delete one file and re-patch to see if that fixes the issue. I'd try to do this with these files first.

client_cell_1.dat client_highres.dat client_internal.dat client_local_English.dat client_portal.dat

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 15th, 2010 - Link

If you can connect fine in other areas of the world but one particular area has issues it might be some data corruption in your local files. If you want to avoid a re-install you can first try to delete your .dat files one at a time and re-patch them to see if one of them failed to update correctly.

I have no idea why your router set up would suddenly stop working when AC had worked in the past. This has happened to me before when I change something in my gaming environment and I usually end up getting a new router.

I know AC is twitching with some brands of routers; I am looking into this and will be examining the network stack for solutions. This process will be time consuming however.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 15th, 2010 - Link

Q: It has worked on this same router before, different geographical location. I'm using a Netgear (I know, ew). You think its the router?

A: I don't know yet. I know some Netgear modems have an issue with how our server transfer code is implementing, which is why the problem tends to happen at the second blue bar and when people are trying to enter the world.

Right now I am in the process of evaluating the workload to change the network stack of AC to address some of these issues so I am gathering data on it.

Have you gone through the router sticky above?

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 21st, 2010 - Link

Q: I used to play and i wanted to start up again so i purchased ac and started a new account. When i go to play it gets to the update screen and then just stalls out until i get a message " your connection to the server has been lost" I was wondering if anyone could help me with this as i would like to get back into ac and play. I have forwarded all the ports that were listed by tech supports suggestions i also made sure it wasn't my anti virus/ spyware/malware protection blocking the update. I use bright house cable for my isp and i use a linksys adapter srx series, model: Wmp54GX with corresponding router of the same series. i was wondering if anyone could please shed some light on why i cannot get in world or even past the damn update screen. If anyone could help that would be great because i really want to play and i don't think turbine is gonna refund the cost to buy the game due to a compatibility/router issue.

A: I am working on the network problem so when I am finished there should be fewer incompatibilities. My personal routers have a unfortunate tendency to malfunction so I understand router rage well.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

Tailoring

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: Retained items cannot be Tailored? Was this meant to be?

A: This is by design. We don't want people to be able to accidentally blow up retained pieces by taking their appearance. You should be able to craft an appearance *onto* retained items using a tailoring kit, you just can't blow up retained items by trying to take the item's appearance.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 13th, 2010 - Link

A slot reduced hauberk is still a hauberk as far as tailoring is concerned. You may take the appearance from another hauberk (destroying it) and add that appearance to the slot reduced hauberk (changing its appearance to be the same as the destroyed hauberk) and it will remain slot reduced.

Django Turbine Staff

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: I don't think retained has anything to do with it - I've tried another that is not retained and it doesn't work. I have slot for slot - single slot items only. I'm using Covenant as my "look" armor onto pieces of varied type. I have not gotten one covenant piece to work.

A: Covenant only works on other covenant. Unenchatable armor types were intentionally done this way.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: And its still mentioning im wearing it.

A: You can't use any of these kits of armor you have equipped, you have to put it in your inventory and apply a kit to it.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 16th, 2010 - Link

Once they have a green arrow on them they've already been destroyed. The item you have is simply the name, material type, description and appearance of the original item being stored for transfer.

If you'd like to make sure you don't accidentally destroy items you want to keep you can retain them which will prevent the use of the tailoring kit on the item.

I can't say how many imbued items I've accidentally salvaged. I remember the first 10 tinked wand (mana c and critical strike, this was before rending imbues, before melee d on casters, before most mages even had melee d) that my patron gave me for years of vassalage. Yeah, took me about a week to accidentally salvage it.

Django Turbine Staff

April 25th, 2010 - Link

Q: You could have made multi-slot armors useful by making them single slot.

A: This would have left existing characters who were wearing these pieces with "holes" in the coverage of their suits. When we examined the fall out of this, and the inconvenience of leaving existing and returning players unplayable because they would have holes in their coverage the result was unacceptable.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 25th, 2010 - Link

Q: Again like I said you had no problem introducing a new loot tier, which makes people have to work for new items again. Yet apparently letting these old multi-slot pieces fall by the wayside was unacceptable. Non-sense. Just as with when the new loot tier was introduced people had to work to upgrade. With my proposal some people would have to work to upgrade.

A: I have no issue with something like this if our design goal is to provide new challenges and new loot to gain. That was not our design goal with this change, nor was it a request of the player base that we were trying to accommodate.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

April 27th, 2010 - Link

Q: The color of your under garments has a profound impact on the look of many armor styles. There are some unique underwear colors that aren't available via dye. So if you want one of those unique colors you have to be extremely ultra ultra lucky to find it on a T-shirt you want to use. Being able to transfer those colors to the shirt/pants you want to wear is the missing ingredient from making tailoring near perfect.

A: If you told me years ago that someday I'd be working on a game where players would be clamoring to be able to custom tailor their underwear I would have laughed.

As I recall there was a tech reason we didn't do it. I'll bring it up with the team.

Sev~

Severlin Producer

ToD Content Issue

April 23rd, 2010 - Link

We are aware of an issue that may not allow returning players to access Throne of Destiny content or create new characters (of any sort, or of the newer races). This issue can be fixed by the Account Management department. (Please note that this is not something that an Envoy or Tech support can fix.)

You can also post here if you are experiencing this issue, and this thread will be checked periodically and the accounts updated. Please be sure that you are posting with the forum account associated with the game account that has the problem. Please do NOT post your account name, for your security.

Please ONLY post here if you are experiencing this problem. If you are receiving a different error, we CANNOT assist in this thread. Multiple non-related posts will result in this thread being closed and all players having to contact Account Management for assistance with this issue.

Victorie Turbine Customer Support

Training Academy

April 22nd, 2010 - Link

Q: New players today arrive in Dereth with little to no sense of all the history that's happened over the past decade in-game. One relatively easy idea that would go a long way toward fixing this situation would be a segmented 'museum' of sorts as you're leaving the training hall. A series of portal-linked rooms telling the story of Dereth up until the present.

A: I like the idea. I'll bring it up at the next team meeting.

Kintani AC Live Team

Turbine Forum Boards

May 5th, 2010 - Link

Q: Players considering playing AC - where can they post?

A: I have brought this up in the past, but in part due to how our billing system works, it's either one way or the other here on the forums. Either you need an active account or we disable that feature and let anyone post here.

Perhaps in a future update we can make some back end changes that would allow us to use both, but for now we will go with the system we have in place.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

UCM and Code of Conduct

April 19th, 2010 - Link

Q: What I can't figure out is why Turbine doesn't take a stand. Saying you're against it...saying you're going to enforce it and then doing almost NOTHING about it is just inviting people to keep doing it! If you aren't going to enforce it, then don't keep talking about it like you are. It's terribly disatisfying to the playerbase to see you say one thing and not follow through.

A: Unless we make a change to the Code of conduct, our stance remains the same. If you get caught UCM'ing you will be banned. If you suspect a player of UCM, report them and we will test them.

Unless otherwise told, our stance remains as it has.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 10th, 2010 - Link

Q: Should Asheron's Call still try to stop/ban players who Unattended Combat Macro?

A: We have no plans to change our Code of Conduct, or the general rules of the game.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Warner Bros. Purchases Turbine

April 20th, 2010 - Link

WARNER BROS. HOME ENTERTAINMENT GROUP ACQUIRES TURBINE, INC. NORTH AMERICA'S LARGEST PRIVATELY-HELD ONLINE GAMING STUDIO

BURBANK, Calif., April 20, 2010 – Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group announced today the acquisition of Turbine, Inc., the largest privately-held online gaming studio in North America, further strengthening Warner Bros.' position as one of the industry's fastest growing, full-scale games publishers.

“Turbine is a leader in online entertainment and a strong strategic fit for Warner Bros. as we continue to broaden our games portfolio and development capabilities,” said Kevin Tsujihara, president, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. “Turbine's renowned online game development and publishing expertise will help us develop additional online product offerings, while also providing us with new and innovative ways to market and communicate with our consumers.”

Founded in 1994 and operating primarily in Boston, Turbine has created some of the most popular and exciting gaming worlds on the Internet, including Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Eberron Unlimited™, the world's best free-to-play massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) and The Lord of the Rings Online™, the first and only MMORPG based on the books of J.R.R. Tolkien. Previously, Warner Bros. held all The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) games rights, with the exception of the literary MMO (massively multiplayer online game) rights. Now all games rights for the LOTR franchise will be unified under the Warner Bros. shield.

“We have been looking to expand access to our online worlds to more players and more markets,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO, Turbine, Inc. “This acquisition is very exciting because it allows us to expand globally while continuing to focus on creating spectacular online games that our loyal fans and players have come to expect.”

Additionally, the acquisition of Turbine provides Warner Bros. with access to a proprietary digital publishing platform that enables dynamic direct-to-consumer relationships, robust online merchandising opportunities and vibrant e-commerce functionality for online games. Turbine has also developed a social networking platform that can integrate their self-developed online communities with popular third-party social networks. Outside of the games arena, these platforms present unique opportunities for Warner's other home entertainment businesses.

“Turbine is recognized globally for its industry-leading technology, groundbreaking graphics and its unique ability to create and operate massive and persistent online worlds which greatly enhance players' social gaming experiences,” said Martin Tremblay, president, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “The Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online have both been an enormous success for Turbine and we look forward to working with their talented development team to continue creating award-winning online games.”

In 2007, Warner Bros. acquired TT Games, developer of the hit LEGO-based game franchises, including LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Batman, which have wide appeal with players of all ages. Early in 2009, Warner Bros. acquired Snowblind Studios to develop its The Lord of the Rings games franchise, with the first title The Lord of the Rings: War in the North expected to be released in 2011. Also in 2009, the Studio purchased the primary assets of Midway Games. Midway published the Mortal Kombat franchise, which has sold over 26 million units worldwide. Most recently, Warner Bros. acquired a majority stake in Rocksteady Studios, a privately held developer of interactive entertainment targeted at teens and adults.

Warner Bros. continues to grow its games business through key acquisitions, building internal development capabilities, leveraging its global video distribution infrastructure, and focusing on developing major games franchises such as Batman, F.E.A.R., Mortal Kombat, The Lord of the Rings and LEGO.

About Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group (WBHEG) brings together Warner Bros. Entertainment's home video, digital distribution, interactive entertainment, technical operations and anti-piracy businesses in order to maximize current and next-generation distribution scenarios. An industry leader since its inception, WBHEG oversees the global distribution of content through packaged goods (Blu-ray Disc and DVD) and digital media in the form of electronic sell-through and video-on-demand via cable, satellite, online and mobile channels, and is a significant developer and publisher for console and online video game titles worldwide. WBHEG distributes its product through third party retail partners and licensees, as well as directly to consumers through WBShop.com.

About Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, is a premier worldwide publisher, developer, licensor and distributor of entertainment content for the interactive space across all current and future platforms, including console, handheld and PC-based gaming for both internal and third party game titles.

About Turbine Turbine, Inc. is the premier creator and operator of massive, persistent online worlds that foster powerful social gaming communities. Turbine is the largest privately-held online gaming studio in North America and has created some of the world's most popular and award-winning online games, including The Lord of the Rings Online™, Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Eberron Unlimited™, and Asheron's Call®. For more information on Turbine, its products and services please visit www.turbine.com.

1. # #

THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE™ interactive video game © 2010 Turbine, Inc. and patents pending. All rights reserved. Middle-earth Poster Map © 2007 The Saul Zaentz Company, d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises f/k/a Tolkien Enterprises (SZC), under license to Turbine, Inc. All rights reserved. “The Lord of the Rings Online”, “Siege of Mirkwood”, Middle-earth Enterprises logo, “The Lord of the Rings” and the names of the characters, events, items and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SZC under license to Turbine, Inc. Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Turbine, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Dungeons & Dragons Online, Eberron Unlimited, Stormreach, Dungeons & Dragons, Sentinels, and Wizards of the Coast are trademarks or registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions, and are used with permission. Hasbro is a trademark or registered trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions, and are used with permission. Atari and the Atari logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc. Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Turbine, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Patience Online Community Manager

April 22nd, 2010 - Link

Now that we've unveiled our big announcement, it's time to share a little more detail about what this means to you, our players.

Many of you have asked what this means for your game experience. The simple answer is that we don't expect much to change for the foreseeable future. We remain committed to each of our games as we move forward. This change in corporate ownership is not expected to affect our current product portfolio. We're still the company that brings you AC, DDO, and LOTRO.

Most importantly, not only do we remain fully committed to our core franchises but will seek to grow them aggressively going forward. We're looking forward to putting our newfound muscle behind your favorite games as we grow into our new role within the WB family of companies.

Overall, this change is a great thing for Turbine. We're excited for the future of our games and we hope you'll share the excitement with us in the months and years ahead.

Thanks again to each of our players and subscribers - as always, Turbine is Powered by Our Fans

Marketroid Turbine, Inc.

Wedding

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: I can't get this focus of marriage item but I'm sure I helped in the preparations. What gives??

A: Yes it was a reward where you had to have completed a quest that is no longer available to get the rewards.

Yes we will have one time rewards occasionally in the future as well.

In this case the reward was for those who decided to do the quest even though it had no immediate reward so many went and turned in one item then decided to never go back, or asked what the reward was and when they heard it was nothing they didn't bother to help out.

Also the spells on these bracelets are not unique, they are spells that a lot of people already have on their armor/clothes. The only difference in this case is that they are on a slot they don't normally show up on. So the items are not game changing or unbalancing, since a person can go trade for the spell on another piece of equipment.

To go along with the these items are tradeable so someone who really wants one can trade with someone who earned one. Some previous one time rewards were either attuned to the person who earned them, or titles which are stuck on the character.

Essentially this was a thank you reward to those who spent time doing a quest that at the time had no reward. It's an item that isn't over-powering in that it has a level 8 castable spell on it and an epic that can be found on many other pieces of loot already.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: What was going on with this quest on HG? Nobody was ever able to turn in any dyes, and the whole thing seemed sort of bugged.

A: I didn't get a chance to look at it closely before patch day, however I would suspect a hiccup caused the landblock to reset temporarily which could of caused something like that. Unfortunate in that it wouldn't allow tulips to be turned in but fortunate in that trees could have been turned in again.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: An epic AND complimentary level 8 spell. In one item. That won't drop.

A: It is not bonded, but it does have a lower value. Since it is not attuned it can also be traded to someone who really desires one.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: Where's the thank you to the people who've ran around for a month checking every nook and cranny of Dereth for menhir rings?

A: Different quests have different rewards. The wedding is a monumental occasion in AC and as such had a special reward tied in with it.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: I thought Attuned meant that. Either way, AC Wiki lists both, but apparently it's wrong. NoWorries said that they can be traded here, so I take it all back.

A: As these bracelets are sitting on a bench near the wedding they can also be inspected by anyone if there is any confusion, but no they are neither attuned nor bonded

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

April 13th, 2010 - Link

Q: I always go out and explore the new content on patch day, so on the patch when this was introduced, I gathered my stones and trees and turned them in. Upon trying to turn in a second of each, it became apparent that there was nothing else I could do at that point, so I moved on. There was no indication of how many items needed to be turned in to advance it, and limited to 1 item per character, that's a maximum of nine items I could have added, as I don't run multiple accounts. Now, because I wasn't around when others got to the dye and flower stage, I miss out on the rewards? It's cool to make unique rewards, but it's not cool when you are limited to the amount of effort you can put in without relying on the help of others. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

A: You could turn in one item to each NPC without needing the help of any other players to turn in more, that was 4 items. You needed to turn in at least 3 items to get a bracelet.

NoWorries AC Quality Assurance

May 7th, 2010 - Link

Q: When is the wedding event?

A: We have not announced the date yet. I would expect an invitation to go out sometime next week with all the details.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

May 7th, 2010 - Link

Q: He's a prince! I think he's entitled to some pomp. He did, however, help us open up the portal to Bur while he was being attacked...

A: Indeed ^^ I was waiting to see who would be the first to mention that...ding ding, we have a winner!

Tolero Turbine Community Team