January Letter To The Players

[Trekman]

http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=434

Welcome to the January Letter to the Players!

Last month we saw many changes to Dereth. With the passing of Antius Blackmoor, the people of Dereth quickly came to see that war was coming and that the time for action was upon them. This led to the people of Yanshi finishing their rebuilding process to once again become a vibrant town. But the question still remains... what action will the Queen take against King Varicci?

Last month we also unveiled the new timers for the Temples of Forgetfulness and Enlightenment. Although we were very pleased with the design, it appears there may have been some confusion on how the timers work. So in this letter we have decided to clarify how the timers work for those you who were unclear.

Untraining Skills
The first through fourth gems you can pick up instantly. That means you won't have to wait to pick up your first 4 untrain gems. To pick up your fifth through eighth gem you will have to wait one week per gem. On the ninth through the sixteenth gem, you will need to wait 2 weeks per gem. And everything after the 17th gem will require you to wait for 3 weeks per gem.
1st-4th gems: Instant
5th-8th gems: 1 week timer
9th-16th gems: 2 week timer
17th and above: 3 week timer

Specializing Skills
When specializing a skill, the timers differ from the untraining timers.
The first and second gems you can pick up with no timer. The third and fourth gems you must wait one week each to pick up. The fifth through eighth gems are on a two week timer, which means once you are trying to pick one up you must wait 2 weeks to pick up each gem. For the ninth gem and above you will have to wait 3 weeks per gem.
1st-2nd gems: Instant
3rd-4th gems: 1 week timer
5th-8th gems: 2 week timer
9th and above: 3 week timer

Attribute Gems
The Attribute gems seem to be the part of the interaction that causes the most confusion. You can pick up your first eighteen gems, either raising or lowering right away. Not eighteen of each but eighteen in total. Then you must wait one week to pick up your nineteenth through thirty-sixth gem. That means for each gem in this span you must wait a week per gem, not pick up another eighteen gems. For the thirty-seventh gem and above, you will need to wait two weeks per gem.
1st-18th: Instant
19th-36th gems: 1 week timer
37th and above: 2 week timer

I hope this helps to clear things up for those confused about how this system works. Now, onto what is happening in the month of January in Dereth! Please keep in mind that this list does not include new quests, or all of the new content going in to the game in January.

New for January

Higher Resolution Textures
These textures will be available for use when the event goes live. You will be able to activate them in the same way you would change your graphic settings normally. Simply go to your options tab and scroll down till you see the Texture Detail dropdown. In the dropdown, there is now a Very High setting. If you have ToD, you can enable these textures. Please note that in order for the textures to be seen, you must restart your client after making the changes. Everyone who meets the recommended hardware requirements listed on the box should be able to run these textures with a minimal difference to performance.

Friends Panel
New to Asheron's Call this month is an interactive Friends Panel. With this panel it will be easier to add and remove friends. You will also have the ability to hide your online status. We were unable to transfer your old friends list over to the new Friends Panel. You can however, enter the command @friends old and you will get a listing of your old friends list in your main chat window. In addition, your friends list can now hold up to 50 people.

PK Arenas
After getting some feedback from players, we have decided to add in PK and PK Lite Arenas. These arenas will be easily recalled to by either typing in @pkarena if you are a normal player-killer or @pklarena if you are player-killer lite. You will need to be in the state of being PK or PKL, respectively, in order to enter these arenas. For example, if you want to recall to the PK arena, you will need to be PK to do so. These recalls cost the player no mana. In future months, we will solicit feedback from our playerbase on how the arenas can be made better. The goals of these arenas are to not only give player-killers a place of their own to fight in and to also help get the combat out of the marketplace.

Billing Improvements
As most of you already know there was an extended downtime earlier this week. Part of what was being updated was the billing system. As a result of this update, you will now no longer need to contact our billing department in order to re-subscribe your account.

Darktide Server Crashes
Over the past several months there have been multiple instances where sub-servers on Darktide have crashed. We have tracked down the cause of this issue and resolved it. We will have more details on this in the coming weeks.

These are just some of the changes that will be taking place in the January Event, Reprisals.


In-Concept
These are some of the game changes we are thinking about for the upcoming months in Asheron's Call. We cannot guarantee when- or even if - any of these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items we'll be introducing in each monthly event. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.

-Additional Allegiance Improvements
-Player-vs-Player improvements
-Additional High Level Hunting Areas
-Story Driven Loyalty Decisions
-Rares system changes/Login Rares
-Title Management Tools
-Chat Filters for Global Channels

The items that are included in this section are just some of the things we are looking at for future changes. As time goes on this list will continue to change and expand. As always, all in-concept ideas are subject to change with scheduling and priority changes.

[Oof]

Hmm, not sure what to think about the LttP for January. I am curious to see how the high res graphics play out in the game.

Thanks for the post Trek.

[Phade]

I'm not so fond of the change to the skill/attribute gems, probably cause i'm already up to the 3 week wait on some of my toons

not that it makes much of a difference if you haven't logged on for a while heh