Q: So… how are you planning to balance that minotaur thing where he can use a 2H weapon in one, mighty… hoof?

A: The minotaur has regular hands, silly.

Okay, sorry, I'm not funny. As I warned you in an earlier grab bag, there was a good chance the 2H in 1H thing wasn’t going to survive testing. It didn’t.

Q: Does Mythic have anything in the works to fix the .ini file conflict that has show up with clustering and duplicate character names in different realms on the same cluster?

A: Yes, we do. This is a hugely annoying problem, obviously. But the fix may not be live for awhile, as it’s more complicated than it first appears. We have to change the entire way we save the character settings. We didn’t do it sooner because the latest cluster had dramatically bigger problem with this than any other to date, due to the way people migrated around the parts of the new Bossiney cluster. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.

Q: (Insert question here about selling potions, particularly those created during the process of skilling up.)

A: We still don’t have a fix for the way the game treats potions (I’ve mentioned in past grab bags that the game looks at your potion and treats its value as fully charged, and grants gold accordingly – this is a bit… exploitative). You WILL be able to sell them back when we fix the problem, but for now, we think that for most people the convenience of having charged potions outweighs the bug of not being able to sell them. Sorry about the delay, though – since devs don’t have magic plat fairies, my own potion crafting is on hold.

Q: Will there ever be /level for Catacombs classes?

A: At this point, I doubt it, even though I’ll probably croak out the request for it with my dying breath. That and a Guild Management GUI. Almost a year ago, we set up the Catacombs classes with a nice fat bonus exp benefit for levels 5-20. A player just wrote in asking if it was a bug that his vampiir went from five to eighteen in the same time as his friend went from ten to fifteen. Nope. That was the compromise.

If you do a Google Advanced Search, and search the Herald domain for a post using the words “Catacombs class bonus experience /level,” my old Grab Bag from last September will pop up as the top result.

Q: Hey! Put those sixty minute charge timer things back!

A: I know, they were cool, but they really weren’t supposed to go live. I asked the designer (Red Headed Stepchild, a veeeeeeeeeery straight shooter who has been with us for years, but new to sitting in the pilot’s seat) to give me the scoop on why we killed your dream.

1)      Potions were never supposed to get changed in the first place, actually. I was changing [other things], and didn’t mean to mess with these. Noob mistake on my part.

2)      The negative feedback [from people who hated the sixty minute timers, not the negative feedback from people who loved them] was completely legit. Timered buffs are not equal across the realms, and the dynamics involved in using them are very particular. By increasing the durations, we created a new breed of buffbot. It allowed certain classes to gain abilities they had little or no access to before, created a large disparity across the realms, and further pushed certain classes out of their minimal roles in group dynamics. Why group a class for a certain type of buff, when you can fire off a buff from a bot and be good for a full hour?

3)      Making buffs castable on the move solved almost all the issues that the changes were trying to address. Lowering downtime, stopping every 5 minutes to rebuff, and getting straight back to the fight after a rez being the major factors.

4)      Allowing one hour timers made people on classic servers particularly unhappy, and for good reason. The mechanics of it pretty much kick the “no buffbots” aspect of the server in the nuts.

Hey, the man is nothing if not totally honest.

**

No grab bag next week, I’ll be in Vegas with 300+ of my favorite people.

Hey, if you’re going to be in Vegas, I want you to keep an eye out for Ratakaboum, a kobold from Broceliande. Actually, he’s not technically a kobold; he's a GOA player (as you probably guessed from the server name) who won a contest – his prize was that he and a friend are going to be flown from Europe to Vegas just to attend the 2006 Roundtable. Please give that jetlagged man a warm welcome.

I have long believed that Camelot gamers are the best breed of MMORPG players in the world. I got more proof of this after we put up the Japanese server move poll. The vast majority of the email I got on the topic was not complaining about the upcoming move… but was concerned that I had not asked the Japanese players where THEY wanted to go. That’s the kind of community spirit Camelot has got a lock on, and I’m just about to die of happiness.

The log in poll is still running, as well as the poll we put up for the Japanese players. So far, the winning cluster in BOTH polls is the same, and boy, am I relieved. But we’ll let it run for the weekend before we decide for certain.

(A few people did ask for more information, so let me see if I can provide it: Whatever cluster gets the new Akatsuki will still be an English language cluster. That’s why we’re making an English clone of Akatsuki; to take out all the Japanese characters. There may be some interesting communication issues with a few of the new players, but no more so than with any player who *already* plays on North American servers with limited English skills. Whatever cluster gets Akatsuki will not change in any way, besides having a few hundred new people. And again, their typical play time peaks a half a day ahead of that of most North Americans, so there should be zero “lag” change.)

Bringing me back to earth from my happiness coma was someone who wrote me an angry email, asking why no one ever answers his messages. I responded. A second later, I got BACK a form letter saying “To control spam, I no longer accept email from people that I have not pre-approved. To be added to my approved list, please fill out the following form.” Am I a bad person for finding the situation hilarious?

I feel like a deranged camp counselor - I've spent the week working with the gang on the different games and activities we will have for Roundtable attendees. And if you don't feel like playing games, well, that's the main difference between camp and Roundtable. If you want to just hang out with your friends, snarf some nachos, play a little RVR over on the LAN... hey, that's cool. 

See you next week.