OGRank - DAOC: Merry Grab Bag!

Ho ho ho:

Q: The new pet changes with taunts/Detaunts, and new abilities it realy fleshes them out a lot. I see one issue though. What happens to people who specced for the Str/Con buff as a Cabalist, now that Amber similacrums get their own?

A: From the Boss Rob: “He's right. After some feedback and testing from Pendragon we're changing it back to just a Con buff, but giving it an increased percentage so it scales along with the pet as the pet increases in level.”

Q: Are Dob (bear in Bog of Cullen) and the Dob's Bloody Tooth still a valid mob and weapon? If he’s is still a valid mob, and still has the one time drop, what is his repop time?

A: The boys in content checked for you – and Dob is still kicking. But: “You have to kill other mobs to help spawn Dob and the chance for him spawning is incredibly rare.”

You'll note there is not a way to give you a specific time. “Incredibly rare” means every time you kill the place holder mob, there is a one-in-however-many chance for Dob to pop. The system doesn’t ever go “Gee, it’s been three hundred times in a row without Dob, I’d better give him up or else.” The odds of spawning are exactly the same every time the placeholder dies. It is more than possible to be in a location for hours without seeing a particular rare spawn, because that’s how randomizers work. Personally, I find waiting to be too frustrating, so I prefer to just check for these rare guys whenever I’m running through an area.

Q: When is 1.87 going up?

A: January 10th, barring the kind of bad luck that I can inflict merely by hinting at it. Y’all better knock some wood for me.

Q: Why were the relics were not reset on Devon with the addition of the Japanese server? Every other time the servers were clustered, the relics were reset.

A: The short version is we forgot until it was almost zero hour. Then, when we discussed it, the producer felt like the addition of Akatsuki was not likely to have much impact on the cluster (it’s a small number of players, and those players had been playing on a version that was more than a year behind the North American servers). We just decided not to delay the cluster’s return any further for such a minor impact.

The truth, she is not always pretty, and she does not always make me look terribly clever.

Q: (Insert question about the speedwarp change, and our reasoning behind making the change.)

A: All right, we’re going to get all technical here, because the train of thought followed by the Redhead really makes total sense:

“Speedwarp has a radius that’s roughly the size of visual clipping range. That would a 2000 unit radius, which is like saying the circle is 4000 units across, which is:

TWO TIMES the distance of most of the longest castable spells in the game,
Twice the range of many archery options,
Larger than a tower and/or the courtyard of keeps.

You usually get hit by the effect of the speedwarp before you can even see the actual node.

Before, leaving that radius was pointless because it affected you for 30 seconds after you had left it. And the group was either long gone or was running circles around you melting your face. It also created what are called "extension groups," where they would lay down multiple speedwarps while kiting you backwards, and you couldn’t do anything about it, or even escape.

With the change, it has a six-second duration AFTER you leave that radius. It will affect you for the entire time that you're inside it, pulsing every second. The speedwarp itself has a five-minute duration.

Or, put another way, it now works just like every other node ability in the game where if you leave the radius, you lose the effect.”

(If you’re new here, you might be wondering what a unit is. Units as a measurement don’t really translate to anything in the real world. But an average height human character in Camelot is eighty units tall, if that helps.)

Q: On December 14, 2006 you posted on the Herald...

COMBAT AND REGENERATION CHANGES

Does this mean that pure casters now have full endurance regeneration same as other classes that already had it?

A: From the Redhead again: "No, they do not. The end regen they would have gotten while standing still out of combat (End 0) will now work while moving but not in combat. This is the base endurance regeneration that all classes get at level 1 while out of combat. Tireless, the ability that all melee classes have (End 1), gives back more endurance and works in combat. Both of these are overwritten by their realms endurance regeneration. Yellow endurance is End 4 and red endurance is End 5, which are both significantly greater than Tireless or natural regen.

"The only thing that has changed with endurance is that non-tireless classes will not have to stand still to gain end while out of combat."

***

Battler/Malice feedback: Yeah, I didn't expect any different, but my request for the way you send your feedback still stands. I'm not a delicate little flower or anything, and I've certainly gotten used to the clever things people can do with Photoshop, but I'm not passing anything on to the devs that is full of cussing or personal remarks. Most players can and do send me feedback with a modicum of civility. Every shred of that kind of feedback goes straight to the dev team, and thanks to Richard, usually with a clever pie chart. So keep it clean, please.

What a weird, wacky year this was. There was drama, there was uncertainty, there was what is referred to in polite company as “transition,” and much more. But there was also the fun of all of you people in my email every day, which is the best incentive I could have. This is the best community online, it really is. Some of you are practically family after all these years. Even you, Devin. ;)

The whole team and I want to thank you guys for all your help and feedback in 2006.

I wish you all good fortune and happiness in the coming year. I’m out. See you next year.