Q: (Insert question here about the new Three Second Style Window thingie.)

A: Lots of discussion out on the forums and in the feedback forms as to what we're getting at with this change. I'm going to take a swing at it here for you. Now, what I'm about to describe is how we WANT it to work. It may not be working entirely correctly on the Pendragon server at this time - and we need you to try it out, and appeal if your experience diverges significantly from the following text.

What is the purpose behind the proposed change? Making styles in all their glorious variety easier to use. Our first step towards this goal was the "backup style" concept implemented many moons ago. This new concept largely negates the need for a backup style, though certainly, it can never hurt to use one.

What exactly is the proposed change? A three second window for you to hit any one button representing any style you are eligible to use. The change has NOTHING to do with weapon speed, either yours or your opponent's. In fact, this change cuts out a ton of server checks in combat, so that nothing is checked but the trigger event and three seconds of time as counted by the server.

Why? Because right now, many things can interfere with styles.  Too many things, actually.

How does the proposed change work? Let's say you parry someone's attack. You are now eligible to use any style with a parry opener, right? On Pendragon, you now have three seconds to use any style with a parry opener. It does not matter what else may happen during that three second window. Even if your attacker hits you again, even if your weapon has a twenty second swing on it, it doesn't matter. As long as you hit your button during the three seconds after you parry, your style will go off.

That's it. The style does not have to go off during the three second window. The only thing that must happen during the three seconds is you pressing the button.

What does this mean? It means a lot more people are going to land big style chains more often. And by a lot more, I mean everyone with styles. You might want to consider that for a few minutes.

What about the "stun them for ten seconds and spam a particular style over and over" strategy? Yes, this strategy will be obsolete if we go ahead with the proposed change. Even though many players currently rely on the strategy to get their styles off at all, the new system in theory compensates by allowing those players to use ALL of their styles and style chains, instead of being forced to depend on the one technique. People should not need to use stuns to make their styles work, in our opinion.

In theory, those stun-and-style users should do as well or better than they did before and everyone else should see a big improvement. This is easy enough to test. Run some duels on live, copy to Pendragon, and run the same duel against the same player using the same gear and buffs. Remember that you must run the same exact test many times in order for the results to have any statistical significance. That's how we're testing it, and we will host an RVR event or two as well.

Please give everything a try before posting your comments, so you can discuss this from a informed standpoint. (It will help your friendly neighborhood community weenies if you tell us how many times you ran a test against what kind of opponent with what buffs when you provide feedback. Thanks in advance.)

Q: I have my Champion Level experience option set to "off," but I'm still seeing my artifact gain experience. Is this on purpose?

A: There's no reason to turn off artifact experience that we can see, so we did not spend the resource time on putting in a way to turn it off.

Q: Hey there, I just created a necromancer and I noticed that strength is highlighted as an important starting stat. What does strength do for a necromancer? I can't really figure out what it does unless it increases the pet damage. Thanks for any answers you can provide!

A: Inherent stats (or attributes, or whatever you like to call the stats that you set at character creation) and most buffs cast on the necro do not pass through to the necro pet, according to the programmer who started his reply with "As NecroCoder in residence (WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE)."

The Code Warrior went on to say, "Bonuses from items do, as do spell-casting related stats (since in many ways the necromancer is considered to be casting the spell "through" its pet)."

Strength as the tertiary stat is just a default setting, really, because the necromancer only has two attributes truly essential to his performance - intelligence and dexterity.

For new players: Every character has three highlighted stats on the character creation screen. These stats are what we consider to be the most important stats for your character, and the ones where we suggest you assign your starting points. These are also the stats that automatically grow along with you as you level. HOWEVER, please note that there are some classes with, um, well, mistakes. You should consult http://www.camelotherald.com/section.php?id=15, choose your potential class from the list, and read your eyes out before making final decisions.

Q: WRU Guild Auto-promoter?

A: The auto-promoter (to rescue guilds from AWOL officers) is offline for fixes. With the new cross-cluster guilding capability, we also need to upgrade the tool. We are planning to bring it back online with version 1.82 in mid-February.

For new players: WRU is slang for "Where are you."

Q: My ranger recently got Champ Lvl 4 and speced nurture for the AF, str/con, and dex buff.  My question is, am I able to use the buff enhancment abilities on items to increase the benefit of my CL abilities, like my druid can with his buffs?

A: Yes, says the Code Warrior.

Q: With the cross server alliances available in Patch 1.82, are there plans to increase the number of guilds allowed in an alliance?

A: Not at this time, although I know many people would be pleased if we are ever able to do this.

Q: This is regarding the MOB named Snarls in East Svealand. He is a wolf that drops remains to be made into a trophy. His location is near the Thrall house, West of Vasudheim.  I am a collector of trophies and I am getting close to having all of the trophies that are attainable for a player in Midgard. The one that has given me the most trouble is Snarls, a level 4 wolf. I have spent upwards of 30 or so hours camped at this area, waiting for him to spawn to no avail.

 Can you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me if Snarls is bugged or have I been the most unlucky trophy hunter in the history of the game?

A: I'm a complete pushover for trophies, myself. Encounter Man Rob says, "There's a trick for Snarls. He won't show up if there are other predators in his hunting area. You need to kill any lupine snarlers and young lynx near his spawn point. Once he shows up he hunts in a particular path that takes him a little bit further out of his spawn location."

 ***

Oy vey, as Great Aunt Gertrude used to say. The day started out with a phone call from Missy, inquiring as to why I had not alerted our community to the downtime. "What downtime," I asked in my most intelligent sounding voice. When I took a gander at my email, there were half a dozen messages that I swear on a stack of Prima Guides weren't THERE last night. Including two from my mother. Sorry, mom. But the really important email was telling me about the server downtime. Even if there was a glitch with my email, I still have no excuse - the exploit was Topic A around the farm yesterday. I knew downtime was coming, and I should have gotten up to ask if nothing else. Again, everyone, my apologies for my screwup.

But about that exploit. I can assure you that there is no chance of someone being unfairly banned here. You see, in order to use the cheat, the cheater had to make a macro and take certain deliberate steps (logged by the server, no less) to take advantage of a particular quest. We've issued a pile of seven day suspensions, which is what we hand out when we're 99% sure someone is a cheating warthog from Hades. We will be taking a few days to prove that last 1% before issuing permanent account bans. Get out the popcorn for next week on the boards!

Our Lord of the Underworld wanted me to know that GOA almost always runs our polls for their servers after we run them here at HQ. So, GOA players, you're still welcome to send feedback forms about anything else - but give GOA a chance to run the polls for you before you use the form to respond to a poll. As I said last week, our partner companies take your feedback very seriously, and always pass on your feelings. Think about it - if we never meet your needs, they'll lose your business. They are our partners in every sense of the word.

NeenerNeener.net did a podcast interview with me. If you're looking for information about the game and its inner workings, this is not the interview for you. If you're the type who enjoys reading the gossip columns on the internet because you like hearing silly anecdotes and totally pointless stories, this is absolutely the interview for you. I still hate my voice. It's not for nothing that I TYPE for a living instead of TALK.

Ooooooooooooooklahoma is the place to be! Yeah, so I'm not the first person ever to make that joke, but I'm just excited about our first visit to Oklahoma City. The first stop on the '06 Roundtable Roadtrip is also the winner of the Come to My Town contest, and we're expecting 200+ people to attend tonight. Encounter Man Mike, Moderately Evil Overlord Walt, The Lovely and Talented Miss Juli, and Community Minion Kunou are there and ready to rock.

I'll see you all Monday. Have a great weekend.