[December 23] Community Update!
Welcome to the second Community Update!
You can see the first update here: [October 2nd] Community Update.
The idea behind this series is to provide a summary of recently released information and events in the community. The main target is people who do not frequent all kinds of AO-related forums (including the official one), but I'm sure there's something here for those who are on top of things as well. Most information should have links to its source(s), which look like this: [S].
The Highlight: AOWiki
AOWiki is a knowledge base containing information on quests and tradeskills, guides for new and veteran players, lots of information about game mechanics, lore and player-provided content. AOWiki is community driven, which means everyone is welcome to contribute. Some interesting pages:
Special Notice
- Gridstream Productions presents: Ao Con 2012! This is a fan convention, and will take place in Grand Rapids, Michigan on August 10-12 2012. See the website for more information.
- ARK is running a party, "The Anarchy Online Winter Bash of 2011" on 29th December, and many tours on both dimensions the coming months, with the next one being Thursday 29th December on Atlantean and Thursday January 5th on Rimor. Please see this thread for more information.
- Announcement: Your romantic relationship on MTV? More information.
Summary of Information from Funcom
This section contains a summary of information provided by Funcom employees on the forums and otherwise. Some player-provided information where relevant.
New Producer and new Game Director
- Means bids us farewell and passes on the torch, describing his experience with AO, its community, and Funcom as a company. He mentions that his duo-role of GD and Producer will now be staffed with two people; Dave "Ilaliya" Williams will be producer, while Fia "lindelu" Tjernberg will be Game Director. {I'd like to thank Means for the wonderful job he has done for AO and the community, and wish him good luck with his future endaviours}
- lindelu says Hi guys!, with interesting stuff about her past and present, plus some of her expectations for the future. {Welcome lindelu! I'm really looking forward to your January update on what you have in store for us. And don't be scared... We may all look like sharp, pointy and hurts-on-the-touch trolls at the surface, but I assure you we're all tiny cozy cuddly teddy bears inside.}
Update Notes
- Update 18.4.10 (Oct 13th) contained several tweaks and bug fixes to the DB3 instance and loot, and some tweaks to the new healing kits.
- Update 18.4.11 (Oct 25th) was the halloween update, which involved the usual plus some interesting new content. [S]. It also introduced several tweaks to daily missions, new research huds buffing tradeskills, plus a boatload of Docaholic-crafted icons, and armor textures from Sezmra. The halloween goodies are no longer available.
- Update 18.4.12 (Nov 3rd) includes several tweaks and fixes to The Gauntlet, The Collector, and DB3. Some tweaks to daily missions, and introduction of new Sezmra-fied armor textures.
- Update 18.4.13 (Dec 12th) is the x-mas update, where our beloved Santaleet remind us of the season. However, Santaleet is having a serious problem in his workshop! Maybe you can help? Ringing In The Holidays. Some highlights:
- Shadowlands pocket bosses no longer reduce your health to 1 on spawn.
- Bureaucrats get a new reward from the penumbra questline while shades get new spirits from a new pocket boss in the shadowlands. New MA weapons and tradeskills added to The Beast.
- Several tweaks and fixes to The Gauntlet, Inside the Ruins (Arid Rift), daily missions, and Sector 10.
- There are known issues in the 18.4.13 update which will be fixed next patch. Most notably an issue with receiving rewards from several PvP daily missions. The missing reward can be reimbursed by petitioning the issue. [S]
Graphics Update
- Tir water: 1, 2 [S]
- Outzone: 1 [S], 2, 3 [S]
- Omni-1 Entertainment: 1 [S]
- Various: 1, 2, 3 [S]
- Solitus Female [S]
- It's uncertain when the graphics update will become available for testing. [S]
- New engine is largely 'feature complete', with a few significant exceptions. [S]
Rebalance (also known as New Player Experience)
- The first version of the Agent nano documentation was released. [S]. You may want to check out the following two very informational posts by Lupusceleri (agent professional): General summary and Summary of False Profession.
- Rebalance will hit live after the graphics update. It's uncertain when it will hit live, but most likely not before April 2012. This does NOT mean it will hit live at April 2012. [S]
- Runspeed will be reduced for high level characters, and increased for low level characters. [S]
- Gray hecklers will run away from people once rebalance is introduced. [S]
Various information
- Q&A with Means (November 11th). This thread contains a lot of interesting and useful information. Definitely worth the read! Some highlights:
- CoH chests do definitely not open. [S]
- Mentor system is worked on, it's delayed but it's not forgotten. [S]
- The AO website will be rebuilt by an external company next year. [S]
- At some point in 2012, there will be more options for free players to access more of the subscription content. [S]
- Hires: Michizure was hired[S] as a designer. Cube was hired as an artist. [S] Ilaliya was hired as producer. [S]
- Once again, Means is caught in office being a teletubby. [S]
- lindelu mentions she would like to introduce elite PvP daily missions sometime down the road. [S]
- Reasoning behind the changes to Ancient Novictum Refiner have been explained. [S]
- Michizure informs us that the test server will receive a system replacing the now-defunct bugsy system, but doesn't know when it will be ready. It's a work in progress, however. [S]
- Lots of information about The Gauntlet is available in the Gauntlet Information Megathread, provided by players and developers. You might also want to check out Gauntlet Tradeskills.
- The Anarchy Online launcher now displays a useful tip of the day.
Interesting stuff over at Anarchy Online Universe
- Community Interview (Oct 6th): Morten Fjeldstad, creator of Anarchy-Online Items Assistant.
- Community Interview (Oct 13th): Snarfblatt, project leader of AOFroobs.
- Communitiy Interview (Oct 27th): Doctorval/Docaholic, creator of many new AO icons.
- Community Interview (Nov 3rd): Sprklygrll, director of Gridstream Productions.
News from the 3rd party development community
- Vha.Chat version 1.3.1 was released, fixing some bugs and adding support for new aoml tags. Vha.Chat is a free open source chat client for Anarchy Online, compatible with Windows and Linux (through wine).
- Anarchy Online Implant Level planner was released. It identifies the buff levels for classic implants with options to help in selecting implants and swapping them.
- More projects added to the AODevs Projects Summary, totalling at 15 up-to-date AO-related projects.
- Anarchy Online Items Assistant v1.1.3 was released, fixing some issues related to getting information from Anarchy Online.
- The incredibly basic AO skill emulator v3.04 was released. This tool lets you find out how a certain combination of buffs, items, IP and perks will play out for your character, without ripping your character apart first.
- DCDump 1.0.57 was released. This is a damage dumper, useful for benchmarking your characters performance, amongst other things.
- Java AO Chat API received some updates. This is a Java library which allows Java applications to connect to the AO chat servers.
Recent news
Report from the Front Lines
Notum fields, notum mining, notum wars. Ah the joys, the incredible effort we put into controlling these parts of the land. After several years of fighting - with several major defeats - it looks like Omni-Tek have finally managed to regain control of Rimorian Rubika. Multiple reports
(1, 2) state that Clan have been vanquished.
But is this the truth? Are we sure the Clans were not simply taking the day off? It's hard to tell, but judging by the
current status of things, it looks like the Clans have woken up and want revenge. Did Omni-Tek wake a sleeping bear? Only time will tell.
Atlantean have seen a fair share of tower war activity recently, with an average of 799 assaults and 213 captured tower fields per month since October.
Rimor saw an average of 1231 attacks and 371 victories in the same time frame.
Timelapses of all recorded tower war activity for both dimensions are now available:
Atlantean and
Rimor. Remember to enter fullscreen mode when watching the videos :)
For more information and live updates on notum war activity, visit
Demoder's Tower War Tracker
Happy holidays everyone!
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Comments, corrections, ideas or other feedback? Reply! Unable to post here? Send me a PM over at ao-universe. :)
