Q: What classes can the minotaur be?

A: This is at least partially thanks to the feedback we got at the Roundtable, incidentally.

Albion: Merc, Arms, Heretic, Mauler

Midgard: Warrior, Berserker, Thane, Mauler

Hibernia: Hero, Blademaster, Warden, Mauler

More information to come on Monday – they’re putting the polish on the webpage now. We’ll also be uploading other material, along with the number one fan winning video, later next week.

Q: I heard that Mythic said at the Roundtable that one realm having so many relics is a fluke.

A: The awesome thing about rumors is that I never get a name to go with the part about “Mythic said.” No one said that in my hearing, and I would purely love to get a name so I could go have a chat with this mythical developer. No pun intended.

I am having a hard time believing any developer would have been that… silly. But one never knows. The short answer is that we are very aware of which realms have which relics, and we are also very, very aware of how long this situation has persisted. The things we are discussing have enormous implications, and we cannot make decisions lightly, especially considering that we’re about to add a new class. And that’s not all of the things we’re looking at, obviously, but I can’t turn this column into a dissertation.

We are aware of the situation, and we definitely appreciate all the many interesting charts and tools that have been brought to our attention.

Q: Is putting a shroom on a window an exploit?

A: “Yes and no” is not the kind of thing I like to put in the grab bag, because fine distinctions don’t translate into signature files very well.

Yes, it’s an exploit. It takes advantage of a flaw in the game, and we never for a moment intended to set up a combat situation where an unkillable enemy can fry you like a tater tot.

No, you should *not* appeal *every* animist you meet as an exploiter. Because of the flaw in the game, and the way pets kind of snap to locations, it’s sometimes hard for certain classes to avoid the bad spots. It's a bad situation for everyone, but a special kind of awful for animists who aren't cheaters. 

I don’t mean to say that you should not report people who are deliberately exploiting. But I would ask one favor. For us to be able to take CS action, we have to catch the player in the act, and prove to our satisfaction that he or she intended to cheat. If everyone on a raid appeals at once, we end up sorting through dozens if not hundreds of appeals in a situation where seconds count. So, I ask… I IMPLORE you – let the raid or battlegroup leader be the only one to send an exploiter appeal. One is all we need.

We are aware of this situation, have been since the beginning, and we work on the problem every patch. The best way for you to help is to send us the trouble spots in bug appeals. We do not answer those appeals. We do read every one.

Q: How can I report a pathing bug, an instance cobweb/critter in wall bug, a tower wall exploit, or a window bug?

A: So, no one in Vegas seemed to believe me when I explained that many of the feedback forms and bugs that we get say little more than “Fix pathing n00bler.” Oh, but oh mercy, walk a mile in my high heeled boots.

We rarely need narratives. Most of us do play, particularly the guys who read the bug appeals. We can already translate “loc 2345, 4567, 1234, XYZ Zone, X keep, Y tower, north window, unkillable shroom” as “BLEEP BLEEP THAT STUPID BLEEP AND BLEEP THE BLEEP YOU BLEEPING BLEEPS, MYTHIC.” So if you could please just give us the locations, the zone name, and the structure name if you’ve got it, we can extrapolate from there. You don’t have to explain how you died. The advantage to the just-the-facts approach is that you can give us all the information and not hit the character limit, as many people seem to do.

Also, interesting fact: If you send the appeal BEFORE releasing from the spot where you died, your appeal will have the /loc of your death automatically attached to your appeal without you doing a thing. You can just say “unkillable enemy in wall here at the place of my death” and be fine. Just don’t release before appealing. And please note! This only works with bug appeals! Your /loc does NOT appear on regular appeals or stuck appeals!

The procedure is slightly different for bugs in instances. For those, we need the name of the NPC that spawned the instance, the zone name, whether you chose caster or melee, and a brief description of the dungeon piece – long hall, open room with statue, four way intersection, etc.

Remember, you will not get a response to a bug appeal, or feedback forms, but everything is being read and counted. I really, really want to say thank you in advance to everyone who helps out.

Q: On Bossiney, Hibernia is not underpopulated AT ALL and yet they had a bonus for being underpopulated.

A: They don’t anymore. We made a mistake with a hot fix, and we’re very sorry – but appreciative towards those who let us know. I’m hugely sorry it took so long to address the situation. It’s not an excuse, but a reason – those of us who read boards were traveling and didn’t ring the alarm earlier.

Q: When are you starting the class balance changes again?

A: After Labyrinth ships. Archers did not get their whole turn, and some classes have not had a turn at all.

Q: I want white dye. Can I have it?

A: No, because what we have isn’t a dye system. Crash course in art terms: All of your character’s armor, each suit, has somewhere in the game’s files a little rectangle with every stripe, rivet, and decoration painted on it. This thing is called a texture. Your character is made up of a bunch of polygons – little flat angled shapes like facets of a diamond, that, properly assembled, look like a single 3D shape. Each polygon is covered with a piece taken from the texture. To change armor, your items are not repainted. Entirely different polygons referring to entirely different textures are put on your body. When you dye your armor, you keep your polygons, and the game tints the polygons you already have. Metaphorically, this occurs by sloshing a bucket of paint over the texture of what you are wearing.

Now, here’s our art lead, Russell. People who have done web design will understand everything, but I think that even if you’ve never done any digital art, you can follow along:

"Dying something white in the way you mean (where something that is colored say, navy blue, simply becomes a white or cream color) will never work unless the dye system is overhauled. What she's describing is something akin to a texture swap system, not a tint system (which is what we have).

"Essentially, the way things work now is the dye color exists as an RGB value assigned by us and put into the spreadsheet, which is then applied by the game engine as an overlay to the texture. An overlay with a white (255, 255, 255) value simply lightens whatever it is applied to. The end result is a clumsy tint that somewhat washes out whatever texture the color tint is on. So in the case of a navy blue all it would do is make it a lighter blue, and nowhere close to white. Thus, white as a dye color was never added, because it could not be achieved.

"An easy way to see this in practice is to open any image in Photoshop. The image needs to be something that is not a pure white (or a blank file, or a new file). Almost any texture or digital photo will do for this purpose. Then create a new layer, perform a fill or paint bucket command with white as the color operand, and change the blend mode of that layer to overlay. What happens to the image is identical to what I described above. It simply tints the image and only serves to lighten it somewhat and wash it out.

"A texture swap system allows for the kind of "true dyeing" this person is looking for. However, this requires somewhere between 10 to 12 new color textures for EACH texture that currently is dye-able in the game. I would hazard a guess that somewhere between 900 to 1000 textures fall into this category, and hand editing nine or twelve thousand textures is something I wouldn’t wish on a death row inmate.

"Let's not even mention the kind of load and hitch nightmare that it would create inside the actual game itself. I would imagine DAoC would become virtually unplayable with that kind of overhead."

So, you see we’ve ruled out doing this by hand. We would need to solve this problem with code, and we have a whole lot on the list for the coders already.

That was a really long way of saying no, but I got this often enough to make it worthwhile.

Q: If I'm in a group and want to lose mob agro (assuming other people are attacking the same mob), is it more effective to simply stop attacking, or to use a detaunt style, if I've got one?

A: From Redbeard, a programmer taking a quick break from knocking out Labyrinth code: “It appears to depend on how long you have been fighting the monster, and specifically how much damage you have done to the monster. The more damage you have done to the target overall, the better detaunt styles will work. So, early on in the battle it may be more effective to miss a swing but later on the detaunt style should be better.”

(By “appears,” he means that it is thus in the three places he looked, but as all canny coders know, he refuses to rule out some lurking lines of evil in some random place.)

 ***

Berserker and thane TL positions are currently open. Missy would love it if you guys could go here and apply: http://www.camelotherald.com/teamleads/tl_available.php

We had a swell applicant for the Berserker spot, emailed him, and we even sent him the invitation, but he never wrote back – y’all, if you’re expecting an answer from us, check your spam filters.

I had an AMAZING time in Vegas this year. I really think it was the best one ever. I came back with a cold, or possibly Ebola, but the entire time I was down for the count I was hoisting my mug of tea and croaking “I don’t care, it was worth it!”

I would like to thank everyone who was on the Quest For The One Ring. Camelot has, no question, no doubt, the best community on earth.