Friday with Means - December 4th, 2009 - Who is not at the company party? ME!

[Means]

Today the entire company (Oslo office at any rate...with a remote Skype presentation from Montreal) gathered at a big cinema to present the progress and development of all the different projects in-house over the last year. As a busy group in our own floor of the Oslo office it is always very exciting to get a look at the progress the other projects have made in the last months...we rarely find the time to drop in on other projects. It was very exciting to get a sneak peak at the Conan expansion and a live look at gameplay in the Secret World. (Apparently I am a Templar already...I can't wait to play it myself!). It was great to share some of the progress we have made over the last year with the rest of the building...a lot of Funcom are AO players from long back...some will be back to try out some of the new systems and additions they hadn't heard of...things get as busy on other teams as they are on ours. With the weekly updates of this post often you guys are better informed than the rest of the company...unfortunately that means this week they are still at the company party and I am at home writing this. If a funeral didn't stop me I guess a party won't either. Any typos in this post I am blaming on foreign contaminants intentionally released into my bloodstream. Asking Kintaii to step in for me this week would have been the worst kind of abuse of my position...damn it was tempting.

German Server Transfer Questions from Shooorty and almost everyone else.

Hello Means,

i'm Shoorty from DNW and have a few question to you.

1st: Is it possible to implement a faction change for all the DNW guys that switch server?

2nd: Where will land the DNW server? Rk1 or 2?

3rd:How do you want to resolve the problems with ppl that have the same Names?

4th: Will there be a new Playfield where the DNW guys can buy/build City spots?

I'm sorry for my terrible English, i hope you answer to my questions...but its Ok if you say more in todays FWM too

Most of us are Happy about the Transfer (Merge ), i and most others will reactivate as soon as the Transfer will be implemented .

Goodjob Means, tank you very much, have a nice day. *Wave*

1. It is not really possible (very difficult) to implement a faction change for players changing servers. The balance of power is reasonably balanced on RK3 and should not imbalance the destination server too much...but I do expect the players of RK3 to make a definite impact on the Notum Wars PVP where they go due to the high level of experience the German players have.

2. It is currently the intention that RK3 players will be able to transfer to RK1 where some of the RK3 population have already made a new home. It is the hope to reunite the German community...not divide it further. It goes without saying that German channels for communication will be added to help maintain the community.

3. Transfering players with identical names will be able to choose new names soon after transfer. The exact method for this transfer has not been fully determined yet as we are early in the process. There will be a "name clean-up" before transfers start to free up some names that have been dormant for too long.

4. We are looking into this possibility...but I can't promise anything at this point. Creating this area would definitely delay the process...so if anything (and if possible) it would likely come some time AFTER the transfer was made available.

The decision to allow transfer (with the intention of moving the entire RK3 population at their own pace) was made this last week...it would have been wiser to perhaps wait until all the details were decided...but I felt it was in the best interest of transparency and clear communication that the minute the decision was made that the information was shared. Transfer from the German dimension was a difficult decision but in the long term I believe the right one.

Please feel free to share this with the RK3 community...I am writing this week's update far too late (due to a company event with presentation and too many drinks) to reasonably expect Walgeist to abandon his personal life to translate it now. I already disrupt his life to an unreasonable degree..his dedication to the German community is deserving of a medal.

The Engine

Work this week was spent integrating Dreamworld-Skybox technology and working through the 3 separate and different ways Self-Illumination is displayed in Anarchy Online (things that glow in game should now glow in the new engine..Whompa signs, ights etc.) I also had the pleasure of seeing Tracer effects work in the new engine for the first time....having most of the old effects working in the new engine without having to be redone (nightmare) is shaving months of the time needed to complete this integration...so it was great to see. Bloom turned on during sunset in Tir was also exciting to see. Unfortunately I returned the USB key from the presentation to Lindelu without thinking some of you would be interested in seeing the images. Again I blame dark rum and cola. I will add those images to this thread next week (new post not an update here...I know you all hate edits.)

Christmas Update

There is a nasty problem on TestLive at the moment..but we are still looking at a live release of the Christmas content next week. This year we will be running the popular 12 days of christmas Safaris that were popular in 2005...but with all new Christmas items to collect. The team have outdone themselves this year making new creative toys for the season.

I hope this all made sense.

Have a great weekend everyone

[Aiken]

Meep

[Effrit]

second...
Just tell us if the staff x-mas party is on a friday, so we know not to bother looking.

[Niles]

first?

page..

[Dagget]

2nd! beh!

So with the effects largely porting over w/o rework, can we maybe expect to see tuning and finish up on the engine in january?

As for testlive, I still don't see how adding x-mas content broke brawl....

[Jandorith]

2nd

[ajszbrekker]

6th

[Klanbear]

meep

[Ishap]

1st page!

[asavulescu]

first, err last but hey atleast first page :P

[Stigman]

Posted for once..and first page

[Iamkama]

8th

[Zadamm]

I guess it could make sense to change default starting server to RK2 ..keeping in mind
the potential people from RK3 coming to RK1.

Well only FC knows the real activity figures in each lvl range.

[Berserkmc]

I was here.

[meatybtz]

since you are moving DNWs pop to RK1, can we of the rapidly depopulating RK2 get a free option to also transfer to RK1 to find a larger community to play with?

[Siro]

sounds good

[Blonskmir]

first

[Body]

thats not good i mean we have wait for an free Transfer and not this ...

[majere]

500rd

[Chiririn]

1st page?