Q: I recently called Gamestop asking if they had any copies of DAOC Epic Edition and they all said no but that a 5th anniversary edition was coming out soon.  What is going to be in this 5th Anniversary Edition?

A: Everything up to and including Labyrinth. If you want to know how lame I am: I’ve got a new computer at home (translation, not attached to the network here at work), and I’m going to install the 5^th Anniversary edition rather than download a gazillion patches, or burn a DVD here at work. It’ll be faster.

Q: (Insert question here about free level timers changing)

A: Hoo, boy. My friend down in CS had an earful for me on this one. The population bonus display here on the Herald had been inaccurate for quite awhile, as you all know. We think we’ve got things fixed, as regular readers know from Missy’s post some time ago.

But it seems I had failed to mention a very important detail. Here, from Customer Service, is an important announcement on the relationship between free level timers and population bonus changes. I have taken the liberty of removing the comments on my parentage:

“Every time you change the Population Bonus, it alters every Free Level Timer on the Cluster. Please advise players that when we change the Population Bonus, their Free Level Timer may change, and the in-game support team cannot verify their old timer, or alter their current timer.”

Q: What the heck did I just download? The Herald just says something about prepatching.

A: Oh, heck. I violated the first law of community, which is “never assume.” Well, technically, the first law is “never say something is working as intended unless you just tried it yourself on every server with every character of every level,” but anyway.

Prepatching is something we do before every expansion, and sometimes before a really big patch, to try and keep the actual patch day from being the day the forums catch on literal fire.

In other words, rather than having you download 40 MB of art files on the day we bring 1.86 live, we’ve broken the art files and other things that were finished last week into four roughly equal piles.

This way, patch day will just make me want to rip my hair out and pound the slushies, instead of ramming my head through my monitor.

Q: What will happen to DAOC when WAR launches?

A: Nothing. Two different teams, two different server farms. The CS team will get bigger before launch, though.

For perspective, UO launched a pretty meaningful patch this week. Did it affect you as a Camelot player? Because the UO team and the Camelot team are currently coexisting with the WAR team, and they all report to the same boss, so if WAR was going to affect DAOC, then UO would be currently affecting DAOC. And it’s not.

Q: I know this question has been asked before, but I can’t seem to find the truth by the information given. Rumors are out in the realm that use 2 ability works for Warlocks on the Egg Of Youth. True?

A: The artifact database there on the left sidebar has two columns, “full use” and “partial use.” The warlock is listed under “partial,” which means the warlock cannot use the second stage ability. I do apologize if that was not clear.

Q: There are lots and lots of purple mobs in PoC, none of them are granting MLXP at the moment. Is this intentional or a bug? Seems foolish for lvl60+ mobs to not award MLXP, especially in such a dangerous location.

A: As those of you who read patch notes already know, the Wise and Powerful Encounter Prince already made the change granting MLXP to the PoC. But the answer he sent before making the change will explain why a level/color does not guarantee anything.

Before you read his answer, remember that what he’s talking about refers to the way monsters in a particular area spawn at different levels. I have loads of swell memories relating to farming a camp of fairies, trying to get a particular named one to pop yellow to me, and having her continually pop up orange. She only popped up yellow to me when I complained at work and got a dev to come watch over my shoulder. It is our game’s mission to make me look like a total monkey.

Prince: Only a few monsters in PoC are set up to give MLXP. Some examples are Prince Oar and Captain Khallus and Busiv.

Only monsters that have a base level of 61 or higher have a set amount of MLXP. Monsters that have a lower base level don't have MLXP (except for a few rare cases) though it's possible at times for those monsters to spawn at a higher level through level variance.

As of right now we don't have a good way to make all dynamic monster spawns to automatically set their MLXP value based on the level they spawn through variances, only a way to set MLXP value on their base default level. In the long term it's something we'd like to do some day if possible.

In the short term we'll look at making the PoC monsters worth MLXP, despite their lower base level, due to being in a higher risk area.

Q: Why do heroes get Tactics, where the other main tanks do not?

A: From the RedHeaded Stepchild, my pet designer: “Tactics was the old hero RR5. It wasn’t very good, so it was replaced with a better RR5. The same thing happened to Armsmen with Snapshot. Because we didn’t want to take these abilities away from them completely, we awarded it at a certain spec in shield, just like we awarded snapshot at a certain crossbow spec for Armsman.”

I love the Redhead, because I love candid answers.

 ***

I got some great feedback about the Relic Event yesterday, and we will use it to make our next event better. Please don’t worry about the event dictating too much to us, though. The bugs you turn up by accident just running through the events are the bugs we’re actually looking for, if that makes any sense. Some balance decisions can be made based on one fun night on Pendragon… but not many.

If you were one of the winners at Missy’s event, we (aka “Andrew”) are in the process of flagging your accounts, and you will get instructions on Monday.

There’s a new Herald Team minion on board – E. Jeremy Dalberg. Her specialty is UO, the way Richard’s is WAR, but if you see her around the forums or posting on the board, be sure to say hello. Yes, Jeremy’s a female. It’s not that weird. I get email from men with names like Starlight Angel and Gwyndylan all the time. (I made those two names up, by the way, so don’t go laughing at your friends with those actual names.) I think we’re just special, here in the MMO world.

Have a swell weekend.