[2001-06-26] The world is coming to an end

All characters in the database have been upped to experience points equivalent to level 75 and credits to 10 million. This should get you a long way. To become level 75 you need to acquire at least 1 experience point on your own. Once you get your first experience point your character will level to 75. Have fun and remember that there are no PvP limits above level 75 so be careful on whom you trust. Omni-Tek is not always YOUR friend!

On behalf of the AO team and all of Funcom, thank you for making our beta a success.

- Tommy Strand
Producer and Lead Designer

"Turbine is very excited about the expansion pack, and our continued relationship with Microsoft. The Asheron's Call franchise is a very important part of our company," noted Jeffrey Anderson, President and CEO of Turbine. "We are firmly committed to developing and delivering high-quality online entertainment."

The Expansion Pack delivers on new additions such as housing and storage, two of the features most requested by our customers. Players will be able to purchase their own homes on designated plots of land, as well as use their residence for secure storage purposes. The Expansion Pack also kicks off the next chapter in the on-going Asheron's Call story-line by introducing the island of Marae Lassel. Marae Lassel is a sprawling new landmass which will contain new quests, dungeons, and treasures and will be accessible to all levels of players who purchase the Asheron's Call Expansion Pack.

Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty builds upon the epic, evolving storyline by paving the way for the return of an old nemesis. "We don't want to give everything away," says Nik Davidson, producer of the Expansion Pack, "but suffice to say that the name of the expansion pack is a big clue."

"Microsoft is making a significant investment in Asheron's Call with both the expansion pack and in the sequel to Asheron's Call which we announced earlier this year," explained Matthew Ford, Lead Program Manager for Asheron's Call.

Changes from 11.2 to 11.3
====================

RPG, Balance etc.
- Rebalance of cost of increase of skills for professions. (I'll explain this in some detail as to the major influx of new players lately J )
o We are preparing for launch, and have yet again gone through all the skills and abilities. This has led to a lot of minor changes to the characters. You might notice that the cost of increasing a skill has in/decrease. This might make your skill impossible to increase for some levels as your maximum has increase. Or, it might make you able to increase a skill a lot right now. This might lead you to lose some IP, or gain some, compared to what you would have at the same level normally. You will have to put up with these. The alternative would be a character wipe…
o The maximum amount abilities (strength, intelligence etc) can be increase each level is reduced from 4 to 3. I perfectly well understand this might seem irritating. Please remember we are still in beta, though. It also corresponds with the other changes made to armour.
§ The reason for this is that people spent too many IP's on abilities to wear high level armour too early. (Or to put in implants…) The reason players did this was to compensate for that armour was underpowered compared to what the damage the monsters did.
§ I want (I being Gaute) people to be able to "develop hobbies" among their skills. (Like trade skills...) When too many IP's was spent on "unnecessary" abilities, everyone was always short on IP's.
o Armour AC increased with 26%. All armour should have had its effect increased with 26%. This will make you no less effective against the monsters at lower levels and much more effective at higher.
- All special attack requirements in weapons reduced.
o All skill requirements on weapons due to special attacks (like burst, full-auto and dimache) have had their skill-requirement level reduced. The amount depends on how "powerful" and "Integral" part of a weapon the special attack is deemed. Full-auto is considered an important part of an assault rifle. Dimache is not considered an important part of a sword.
- Primary weapon skill requirements increased, secondary somewhat reduced. If a weapon demanded two skills to wield it (Long Range Energy weapons skill and Assault Rifle for instance) this patch will increase cost of the primary skill and reduce cost of the secondary. This means you might suddenly not be able to use your weapon any more, or that another might be usable all of a sudden…
- Some water exploits fixed.
- Some more cell scanners corrected. (PF 790, 791)
- Escort character missions should now work. Retrieve items missions should now work again after the last patch where they got broken.
- The same level trap as your character should no longer instantly kill nano-tech / nano-mages. Still remember to look for them…
- All implants changed. New information that should make it easier to see what nanoclusters you can add. Some broken skills removed. Names should now be consistent with enchantments.
- 2 Skills renamed. Entangle weapons renamed to "Heavy weapons". Climbing renamed "Adventuring". Skill costs updated.
- Changed difficulty of monsters in underground areas. The AI will try to make it easier for you if you are soloing, and not gang too much up on you. This should make missions easier.
- Reduced damage from toxic water. Lower level characters shouldn't die in a matter of seconds any more. You might just make it to the shore ;) (Self-illuminating green stuff.)
- Randomization of mission rewards increased. Mission reward "camping" should be more interesting :p
- The "Perminate" missions should now work. (Perm(anent) (T) erminate. As in locking NPC from respawning… Check your evil-slider :p)
- The level of the treasure reward should be the level of your character if you choose a normal difficulty mission.
- Bow special attack added. Fast attack special attack added. Sneak attack is back in. If you are "unseen" by the monster, you can sneak attack it. This gives a greatly increased chance of critical against the monster.
- A bunch of irritating item bugs fixed:
o The book of knowledge should no longer delete itself upon closing.
o The items with charges (ammo, healing kits) should have the correct number of charges in treasures.
o Map items no longer require you to target yourself to use it.
o The merits should level and delete themselves.
o Higher level merits should show "power effects" on use.
o The time to swap implants in the stationary implant enabler increased to 5 minutes.
o Two handed weapons should not be wieldable in left hand any more.
o The Burst of Speed Stim should not be stackable for ever.
o The Angel of Night should no longer freeze the opponent.
- Mission rooms should no longer be totally black. (Like in the old subways no longer operational on Rubi-Ka.)
- Mission areas should now always be open to the player. You should no longer wait for ever at the door, with nothing happening.
- Some mission styles have had their doors corrected to fit the look.
- The "missing rooms" inside the missions are fixed. No black holes in the world.
- Mission item cleanup should work more logically now.
- Several damage debuffs run on your character will not reduce damage below 0, and end up healing your opponent.
- New PvP system:
o A "free PvP limit" is now set to level 75. All characters lvl 75 to 200 can freely interact in Player Made conflict without level restrictions. (The low levels are still protected. And, remember, you do not have to participate in the conflict. Enough areas with suppression gas exists for everyone…)
o All items gained since last cell-scan can be looted off the body from a PvP kill. This means that you will never lose your favourite equipment. All else is since last scan is up for grabs. Note: if you lend your items to some other character, the item loses its insurance!
o Conflict PvP Ranking added. All characters get a ranking that corresponds to how successful they are in participating in the conflict. (This means that this PvP option is only available to Omni-Tek employees and clan rebels.) This ranking is loosely based around the Chess ranking system.
o Conflict PvP Rank Title added. If you are successful enough, your name will get a title when targeted.
o In teams the restriction of level apply as if the lowest level in one team is checked against the highest in another.
o You cannot enter a team after a team has entered a conflict PvP contest.
o Teams from different sides are viewed as neutrals. This means they cannot engage in conflict-combat. (In the political (25% gas level) areas) (They can of course defend themselves.)
- Removed a bug that gave the player a continuous resurrection shock.
- Made you keep your Maximum NCU count after you zoned.
- Fixed problem with client loosing track of the available belt slots after zoning.
- Removed a bug where execution of a nanoformula got broken if you where healed during battle.
- The gun can now be re-loaded manually (again). Both then, and during battle (with automatic reload) the correct timing of the reload will be shown as a timer on screen.
- The NPC's and monsters running nano-formulas will now randomize which one they execute more, not only chain-executing their favourite.
- Fall damage in water removed.
- Corrected the bug with the agent change-profession-nanos. You should now be able to access the other professions nano programs, and go back to being yourself afterwards.
- Corrected bug where NPC's interrupted their own nano-execution, and would never execute again…
- You are now able to refresh a nano formula without getting the "out of NCU's" message.
- Wearing of items, and taking them off now disabled in the Grid.
- Removed problem of ammo of weapons not being saved to the client when moving from one playfield to another. This would mean you gun would empty or fill up after zoning.

System and stability
- As you may have noticed there has been almost daily server patches that dealt with server stability.
- Removed crash bug where camera was no longer active. This resulted in a lot of client crashes.
- Removed a lot of client freezes where the client would hang not drop back to login when the server you tried to changed to was down.
- Optimized the displaying of clothes on the client. This should result in better performance on a crowded day. Still, remember to use your clod-settings if you have problems with framerate in the cities.
- In addition a lot of crashes relating to technical aspects of programming (memoryhandling and such) has been fixed. Just mentioning them here to give credit to the team working heroically to remove even more bugs!
- Fixed a crash when zoning with an open container.
- Fixed a problem when selling worn implants.

Graphics, Sound and Gui.
- Mouse turn added! You can now use the mouse to turn while you move both in 1st and 3rd person. Use ctrl+right-mouse button to access old "look around while you move" mode. (Many people liked it…) This effect now also works while flying. You go where your nose points…
- Camera mode indicator added. This will show your current camera mode.
- Remember to use F8- to toggle 1st / 3rd person and ctrl+F8 to "triggle" modes in 3rd person. (Yes, there is a new 3rd person camera mode. A totally rigid camera mode…) All indicators found on lower bar.
- Battle mode indicator added. Sometimes it might be difficult to know if you have actually entered battle.
- Connectivity indicator added. The amount of lag/latency is shown in a simple icon on the bottom row.
- New Field of View added. Now sporting the normal "1st person" Field of View (90 degrees) for better overview inside buildings.
- Camera "mode reset" default key swapped with "camera save" key. The new setting is numpad-5 for reset, and numpad-7 for save. Delete your client preferences for this to take effect
- References now correctly transmitted through text. When someone tried selling an item, it showed the wrong Info-Item. It should now be correct.
- Nice clouds now on as default. They should also be visible (if not disabled) even though the visibility range is set to minimum.
- Removed the sliding characters if you tried executing a nano program while running.
- Added more help on how to access the various loot modes. They are found I "/teamhelp". You can also type "/team loot" to get something meaningful about your current mode of loot access.
- Boots and glows now showing even if you wear a trench-coat.
- Giving more output when items are added to your inventory while it is full. (30 items is maximum. Put more into containers.)
- Fixed so that closed doors actually open visually when you move close to them.
- Locked doors should stay locked. This may result in some missions being difficult to resolve. Then again, breaking and entering will become a more useful skill.
- Type of government / leadership will now be shown in the clan information.
- Your team-level will now be shown at a correct level.
- Ctrl-c will copy last 20 lines of chat into clip-board.
- A lot of stats, modifiers and weird stuff now have their correct description in the information window. (Like your "energy damage modifier").
- Grenade Ammunition added to some weapons.
- Information about No-droppable and Unique items available in inventory view.
- Function of the planet map updated, and improved.
- Jumping animation improved to include landing from jumps.
- All weapons should now have sound.
- Dimache and brawl got sound.
- Fixed timer on client so that night-music will come during night. Tweaked also the "day and night periods" of music.
- Changed the formula for deciding which types of battle music will play when. Should result in a bigger range of music being played during battle. (Music now changes as the client tries to decide how the battle is turning for you.)
- Added an option setting which lets you disable only the battle music.
- Added proper fog parameters to cards that do not support W-Fog. This shall remove a LOT of crashes on clients running Voodoo cards.
- Changed the way the sound of the character feet is played. The sound of the bridge should be heard when crossing it, not "splat" from the water below.
- Mission coordinates from an uploaded mission now kept when going from one playfield to another.
- The bug of losing items from toolbar when going from one playfield to another fixed.
- Fixed the bug of banks and remains of characters only showing the first 16 items.
- Overhead damage and other overhead text now visible (again) on the left hand side of the screen. (Just above the chat window).
- You now get a message when trying to stack to items of same type, but of different levels. This is impossible, you see.
- The cost of insurance now added to info-view when you select the cell-scanner.
- Changed some of the rendering options.
- Added game statistics to include references to GMT for easy inter continental communication and also ingame time.
- Added new chat way to switch your chat channel typing. You do it like this:
o /channel vicinity (/ch v)
/channel team (/ch t)
/channel organization (/ch o)
/channel whisper (/ch w)
- More feed back in the client when a transition failed from one playfield to another.
- An item not removable from wear view (like the "luck ring") can now be traded or sold to remove it.
- You now get more feedback when your nano-points are increased.
- Items are now automatically stacked on loot if there is another item in the inventory it can stack with.
- You now get output of the number of bullets you hit with during an full-auto special attack.
- The "travel" effect between the executor and the target will not show if the formula is interrupted or fumbled.
- The running effect of a nano-formula will now disappear correctly when the same nanoformula was executed twice or more times on the character. (No more permanent "frozen" glass effects when you run around, in other words…)
- Made doors not close when someone is standing in the doorway.

Now the world's very first MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game) Construction Kit™ can be yours!

Fans of pen & paper RPGs, game hobbyists, aspiring designers, and anyone interested in building the fantasy world they've always dreamed of, here's your chance!   Introducing the world's first MMORPG Construction Kit™  v1.0. 

Create and host your very own massively multiplayer online world. It's simple and easy to use and comes with everything you need to build, edit, and host your own persistent online world.  With the MMORPG Construction Kit™ you can:

• Build your own world maps using over 4000 tiles for limitless combinations!
• Populate the world with hundreds of NPC's, weapons, armor, items, magic, and monsters!
• Create your own quests!
• Make your own monsters, spells, weapons, armor, magical items, and more!
• Make player friendly or player killer worlds!
• Customize all character stats!
• Includes in-game chat system so communication is quick and easy!
• Includes an entire pre-built world and sample game (Trinity of Darkness™) so you can begin play immediately!

System Requirements

• Windows® 95/98
• 233 MHz Pentium II
• 32 MB of RAM
• 4 MB video card
• 16-bit sound card
• 650 MB of free hard drive space
• Multi-Player: TCP/IP, 56 kbps modem(Internet Service Provider required for Internet Play)