It's been awfully hectic here lately, I'm sure you can imagine. People have been working odd hours - some have been working all hours, and going home has not always been possible. I'd like to especially thank QA and Operations for their work this last week, testing and updating both internal servers, test-live and the live dimensions constantly.

There's really just one thing to talk about this week: Shadowlands and the launch.


The launch
We kept you waiting for a while on Tuesday, doing a last update, and testing to make sure things were working properly. While this was tiresome to some, I hope you have seen the value of this, as I'm sure most people with experience from launches of this size will say this has been a rather smooth one. The activity in the game has been good, and it seems to me that people enjoy Shadowlands, Jobe and the new apartments.


Downtime
Yes, there has been a lot of downtime this last week. This is due to corrections and tweaks we felt necessary to move to the live servers as soon as possible. While some could have waited, the downtime would still be needed for other things that day, and so we added it. We never took the servers down without careful consideration to make sure it was needed, and with the downtime today we hope to give you all the weekend to enjoy Shadowlands twenty-four hours per day. There will be more updates, but probably (and hopefully) not until next week.


Choking points
The high-level players have noticed they almost have to stand in line to get through some of the missions required to get through to the higher-level playfields. This is surely only to begin with, when "everybody" need to do those tasks. It will spread out over time, and I hope you'll be patient and remember to be nice to each other (no griefing!) this first week.


Current focus
We're working on several more corrections and tweaks for Shadowlands, and expect to update the live servers with these during the next couple of weeks. I'm not sure how often these will come, as that depends on a number of factors, like severity and you players' playing pattern (often very unpredictable ).

The things we're focusing on now is correcting bugs, like the bug with Spirit Siphon that Shades rely on to get spirits off their opponents (already fixed, but a little too late for today's update), and making sure all quests work properly.

Ensuring all quests work properly is a major task, as there are so many things involved in it; NPC systems (faction, chat system, trading, etc), monster spawning and loot (to make sure items are available), trade skill processes, etc.

Oh, and we're also working on letting people without a luxury apartment of their own be able to visit others' luxury apartments. We didn't intend to lock them out from the party.


Council of Truth and ICC Peacekeepers
On September 18th, six days from now, it's one year since the Council of Truth (led by Henry Radiman) disappeared, and ICC Peacekeepers arrived on Rubi-Ka.

This happened after a long period of silence from the Council of Truth, several clans questioning their ability to lead the clans, and a failed attempt at finding a peaceful solution to the growing tension between Omni-Tek and the clans. No speech or explanation was given for the Council's disappearance.

The ICC Peacekeepers were stationed in neutral territories, and entered Tir upon the Council's guards leaving the city. They were later ousted from Tir by the Sentinels, who currently control the city, and have a less-than-friendly attitude towards neutrals.

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That's all for this week. Servers should be back up in an hour, and the build notes will be posted on the Live Servers page on the main site in a bit. Enjoy!