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Dark Age of Camelot
Version 1.32 Release
Notes
October 19,
2001
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
=============
Open letter from Mark Jacobs:
If you want to know where we're going with DAoC,
see Mark's letter at the end of these release notes.
The Appeal System:
In order to take care of the issues that are having
a serious impact on your game-play, the Customer Support department is
prioritizing these critical issues above all others. If you have "How do I..."
types of questions, these can all be answered either by using /Advice, searching
our website, or on one of the many fan-sites on the Internet. Please be
aware that if you send "How Do I ..." types of questions in an /Appeal, they
will not be answered at this time. We hope to be able to help you with these
types of issues again in the future. Thank you!
Naming Policy:
There have been some changes to our naming policy,
and specifically how we deal with violations of it. Please read the revised
Rules of Conduct, so you understand how this works.
The Advisor System:
If you would like to help your realm-mates with
common questions that they may have, try becoming an Advisor! The Advisor System
is setup so that players with more than 15 hours of played time, can choose to
help others in their realm. Simply type /Advisor, and you will be flagged so
that others know you are willing to help.
E-Mail Support:
If you have sent an e-mail to support@darkageofcamelot.com, and
have NOT been contacted by a technician, please send us another e-mail now. We
believe that some e-mails were not received correctly, and have implemented some
features to make sure that this will not happen again.
NEW THINGS AND BUG FIXES
========================
- All Rogue classes (Minstrel, Scout,
Infiltrator, Hunter, Shadowblade, Ranger, Nightshade) can now train fully in
their weapons. Previously, they could not train more than half their level in
primary weapon skills.
- Midgard Seers now start with a training
shield.
- Midgard Warriors now properly recieve the
Thor's Anvil hammer combat Style.
- Poisons above 10th level now work ('proc'),
and should be much easier to apply and resisted far less. Please note that
applying poisons to a weapon is now based on your specialization level in
Envenom. If you have 10 trains in Envenom, you can apply 10th level poisons, but
not 11th level poisons, and so forth.
- There was a potential crash bug when
entering cities while it was raining. This did not effect too many players, but
it has been fixed.
- By default, new players will now see all
private send messages in all chat tabs. Please note that you can configure your
chat interface to NOT show these messages, if you wish. Existing characters will
not see this automatically; you'll have to configure it manually.
- You are now able to shift-click on values
(i.e. when selecting coins out of your inventory) to increment by
10's.
- When trading coins, you can now "make
change".
- The guild officer and alliance chat colors
are now on different channels, so you can set them to different colors if you so
choose.
- The Performance Meter has been added. There
are three indicators: Packet Loss, Latency, and Frame Rate. Green is good,
yellow is ok, red is poor. Use Shift-P to display it (it has two states, small
and large).
- Camelot now supports an on-screen graphical
compass. Use Shift-C to toggle between no compass, small compass, and large
compass. You can set transparancy on this window if you wish.
- Class name should no longer overwrite level
in group window.
- NPC Interaction window now uses the large
text font, so you can actually read it at high resolution.
- The Pet Window now absorbs left-click (you
cannot click through it).
- Datagram bandwith used by the game has been
optimized and reduced.
- Players were sometimes invisible to other
players in the outside zones. This has been fixed, although we have a similar
bug that is NOT fixed in the cities.
- Buff and hit point updates on the group
window should now work correctly and more timely.
- You can now "delve" items to get additional
information on their magical and other special properties, including which class
can use them. Right click on an item to see its standard information in the
small object window, and then use the "Delve" key (default is shift-I) to see
summary information.
- A confirmation dialog has been added when
items are dropped.
- The default quicksell key (shift-s) no
longer forces the camera to look up.
- A bug in the name checker allowed players
to create duplicate names, in some circumstances. This has been
fixed.
- The lag time-out has been increased from 30
to 60 seconds. Players should not get disconnected as often now. Additional
streamlining of the datastream has been implemented as well.
- You now have to type "yes" when deleting a
character. There should be no more "I accidentally deleted my character"
events.
WORLD NOTES
===========
Albion:
- The convert guards and Dwarven Priest in
Camelot Hills are no longer charmable.
- Better better directions added to the
Thinking Cap quest
- Sir Graide and Sir Jerem in the Guarding
the Stone quest are easier to talk to now.
Hibernia:
- Blackthorns now accompany the lunantishee
in Hibernia.
Midgard:
- Ulga moved slightly closer to road as Ulga
was spawning to deep within a group of higher levels.
- The epic for the Viking classes is now up
on Pendragon. This will allow players to continue and finish their
epic.
- Denise no longer gives out directions from
Mularn to Mularn. Any players that may have been stuck on the Lvl 11 shadowblade
quest, Jewel Hunt, at the point where they need to speak to Denise, can now talk
to Denise
and complete their quest.
- Throwing daggers in Midgard now have the
correct icons. Sorry, no more throwing worms or bags at your
enemies!
- Bowyer's Draw quest now gives out the
reward. Also, the level of the quest has been raised to reflect the monsters
involved in the quest. Players currently on the quest will not be affected by
the level being raised.
General:
- A few creatures in the world have become a
little more talkative.
- Appropriate effects should play for
monsters with spells or special abilities
- The weeping willow, envy drakeling, and
silverscale drakeling are now slightly weaker.
- Guild registrars in all three realms now
give instructions on how to fashion a guild.
AN OPEN LETTER FROM MARK JACOBS
===============================
First, I want to thank all of you who have bought
and are playing our game. You are part of the most successful launch in MMORPG
history. The copies have flown off the shelves, our servers are stable and we
are running 24x7 except for patching and a couple of hours on day one. For those
of you who can’t get a copy, I have good news for you as well which I will
address below. No matter whether you are a player or, we hope, soon to be a
player, things are just going to get better and better. The point of this letter
is to let the community know just how much better they are going to get in the
next few months. As I’ve said before, it is our goal to make DAoC the premier
MMORPG in the industry. When competing against the excellent other games in our
industry you do not get there by resting on your laurels or by losing focus. We
will do nether and here are a few things that we will be in place in DAoC before
the end of the year.
1) Working with our friends at VU, an additional
75K copies of the game have been shipped. This should help take care of some of
the demand for DAoC. More copies will be manufactured after that so the shortage
of DAoC on the shelves will soon end. We have already arranged for enough
servers and bandwidth to handle the additional demand.
2) We will make major additions to the various
interfaces that are part of DAoC. In the most general of terms, we will be
adding improvements to chat, appeal, quest journal and advice. We will also be
adding an auction channel and a compass to the game.
3) We will be adding at least two more sever types.
While I won’t go into details in this letter, these are types that the player
community has been asking us for and I think will bring a smile to many faces.
4) We will be taking care of some issues such as
grouping across zones, lag in the big cities and some networking issues such as
when you go link-dead in the game. We are also further reducing the amount of
bandwidth the game consumes.
5) We will be adding a fuller implementation of
horses and transportation modes in the game.
6) We will be adding a housing system (in stages)
to the game.
7) We will make improvements to things such as the
water, lava and snow events in the game.
8) We will add commands such as tracking, climbing,
etc.
9) We will be adding shapeshifting to the game.
10) We will be adding more intricacies to the PvP
system within the game. Look for things such as slopes and fatigue, falling
damage, alliances and more.
11) We will be adding ladders to the game.
12) We will be adding a lot of new content to the
game including new spells and spell lines, quests and fighting areas.
This is just some of the things we have planned to
add over the next three months. It is not an exhaustive list and it does not
reflect the usual bug fixes, tweaking, etc. of the classes. Do not get upset if
you don’t see something that you expected or wanted, this is just a list of some
of the things we are doing. So please, no new topics such as "I CAN'T BELIEVE
THAT MYTHIC IS WORKING ON LAVA WHEN THEY SHOULD BE FIXING XXX." This is only a
partial list and as our beta testers can tell you, we are quite capable of
multi-tasking around here. There is a lot more coming…
Mark Jacobs
President
