Unhelpful

UO has UO:R to look forward to. EQ has Ruins of Kunark. AC has yet another patch. AC players are the big winners here.

Turbine’s spoiling us. Not only do we have a patch day we can look forward to instead of fear, but Turbine’s idea of a six month plan is six updates, each with bug fixes, content, and eye-candy rather than being only 50% done over a month after the deadline.

Here are just a few reasons I wish I were home right now:

Removed the “You have been saved” text messages because they were, well, wrong.

Anything that lessens needless spam is good. Add a mage “words of power” filter and I’ll giggle like a little girl.

Introduced restore-character functionality. Deleted characters may be restored up to the hour time-limit as was previously given to the temporary slot.

Characters are now invulnerable to all attacks for a minute after they die. They forfeit this immunity if they are teleported, cast a spell, or attack. We also added an @deaths command that prints out how many times your character has died. We thought players would be curious to know this info.

This change, in particular, is a lifesaver when you have three corpses to retrieve and your lifestone resembles a Gold Phyntos Wasp Union, Local 285.

Added multiple tabs to spell-cast panel — players can now sort their spells in nice, tabbed panels.

Early reports from the field are very positive. Multi-school mages have long had to pick and choose which spells they wanted handy. Now they can have 50 key-bound spells instead of 10. Precasting is back, biatch. It’s just not where you left it.

Magic defense divide-by-10 divisor way too big. It’s now divided by 7.

Fighting liches just got a little bit easier.

AIs will no longer use self-targeted transfer spells to boost stats that are already full.

Fighting liches just got a little bit harder.

Perch eliminated. Some rock pillars still had physics. Removed it months ago, but somehow it didn’t get checked in. People were using these as perches to plink Olthoi. Now, the object has no physics. No more perching!

This is what’s going to cause some people to go through boxes of Kleenex. You know, because risk-free experience gain is like heroin: good while you’ve got it, but miserable when it’s gone. This is only going to affect the more unskilled archers; they’ll have to learn the game the rest of us have been playing. Here’s your first hint: when you see Tusker Guards closing in, run.

Hide PK’s level if appraise fails.

On Darktide especially, assess other and decieve other might actually be worth learning now.

Hot kimchi mass and encumbrance swapped.

I thought mass WAS encumbrance. In any case, kimchi is delicious. Take my word for it though, if you’re ever invited over to a Korean home and are offered several kinds of kimchi, and one has these stringy rubbery strands that seem like really chewy noodles, don’t ask what it is, you don’t want to know. Stick to the regular hot kimchi, it’s wonderful.

All of this, and a new fledgling town is sprouting up in the direlands. Can I call in sick after I’m already here?

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