A Shadowlands update - September 15th 2003

[Cz]

Hi everybody,

I just thought I'd give you all an update on a few things with Shadowlands.

Dev focus
The things we're focusing on right now are the things frustrating people and slowing down the progress. These have high priority, and I believe the first update is scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Do not expect everything to be corrected or tweaked then though. Some tasks take more time.

Some of the issues:
- Camping for quest items: This is extreme right now, due to the number of people doing the quests, but it's nonetheless too much. We're going to increase the availability of certain quest items, to allow more players to proceed to Adonis, and start working on getting to Penumbra.
- Killing quest mobs: Quest mobs will be made non-killable, and those quests requiring another quest mob to be killed will be changed to have another target to be killed.
- Spawn on Rubi-Ka: The number of mobs on Rubi-Ka was reduced too much when we introduced a "spawn on demand" system to ease server load while spawning mobs in the playfield housing players. The number of mobs will be increased, and we'll continue to track this closely to see whether we need more tweaking.
- Tough mobs in Shadowlands: Note that most mobs in Shadowlands take into account that you get access to better equipment, e.g. through killing these mobs. However, we don't want whole teams to fall to every "grey" mob they encounter. We're monitoring the situation, and can tweak both difficulty and reward as we go.
- Mobs using all kind of nano programs: The big nukes, grid nanos, etc are not supposed to be usable by NPCs. We'll go through the nano programs lists and remove those. This will take a while, and might happen in stages, with the most dangerous programs being removed first, and the more annoying ones later.


Bulletin board
We've cut peope some slack on the bulletin board lately, due to the Shadowlands launch. Naturally people are frustrated, and want to bring attention to their problems, but the bulletin board is not the place for it. I'll post more about that later today, or tomorrow, depending on when I get time (Mondays are hell - reports, statistics, tons of feedback from the weekend, etc ).

We're not going to continue this line though. The social guidelines exist for a reason, and if something isn't covered there, just think "be nice", and you'll get the picture of what's allowed. Ranting (blowing off steam), trolling (provoking), flaming (attacking), spamming (e.g. "bump this" threads) and fighting (taking conflicts to the forums) is not allowed. If you need to blow off some steam, or send us some chosen words, send it in an e-mail to feedback@anarchy-online.com.

Note that volunteers operate this bulletin board, and it's meant to be a place for players to talk with players (with the exception of a few forums), meaning you should not expect to be able to reach the devs or Customer Service through it. E-mail feedback@anarchy-online.com if you want to give feedback to the devs. If you need to get hold of Customer Service, please use this form (or the e-mail addresses posted in e.g. the New Arrivals forum).

Messaging me
I wish to thank all those who have sent me private messages and e-mails lately. I appreciate all the feedback, good and bad, and forward the feedback that is for other people.

However, some seem to think I'm community, Customer Service, designer, programmer, tester and marketing, not to mention those who think I'm with Digital River. I'm not. I hope that doesn't come as a surprise to anybody. I also get tons of messages and e-mails, and have no chance at all to respond to it all, even though I of course read every word of it (even if it starts with "f*** you" or something similar).

Thus, please do not expect a reply, even if it was a question. And please do not resend it if you don't hear from me. I can't answer all questions, and I can't carry on a private conversation with everybody. I'm only one person. I take everything, also questions (it shows what people are wondering about), as feedback. If you need to contact somebody else than me, I will try point you to the correct place. That's all. I'm sorry, but I can't work as a go-between for you.

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That's all for me this time around. I'll be working on weekly statistics and reports most of the day from now, but I'll make sure to check the forums now and then. Thanks for being nice. Have fun.

[Cz]

Originally posted by Cz
However, some seem to think I'm community, Customer Service, designer, programmer, tester and marketing, not to mention those who think I'm with Digital River. I'm not.

Oh, and before anybody comments on that, I'm of course community, just not all those other things in addition to it.