Friday with(out) Means - March 19th, 2010: Every Day I'm Hustlin'
Hi!
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So today was supposed to be one of those days where I got stuff done. I had a plan. I had a mission. I had Stuff to Do™.
Then Means rings me up this morning to let me know that he's gonna be out today.
****.
Anyhoo, here we are. Another Friday with(out) Means. I love doing these, honestly, but he always seems to be conveniently ill when there's not much to actually write about. Not that this matters, as I can blab on about pretty much anything under the sun, but still - It'd be cool to do this when there's some major stuff to show off or announce. Even without anything huge this week, though, we've still got a wee bit of content for you guys.
First off and foremost, it looks like the name cleanup has gone off pretty smoothly - Over 780,000 names were removed from the servers yesterday, giving people plenty of new nicks they can pick and choose from. It was actually really amusing watching some of the new nicknames rolling in on n00b island yesterday - Always good to see folks out and about regardless.
Work on the Daily Missions is slowly starting to come to a close, and we're hoping we can have them out for the live servers Very Soon™. There's a lot of really interesting, fun, cool content coming in with the daily missions that I think you guys are going to enjoy - We've really tried to think outside the box with some of the missions, and hopefully you'll be happy with the end results. One of the cool things about the daily missions system, too, is that it's a very modular design, meaning we'll be able to easily add in new missions for the system in the future, keeping variety up and hopefully ensuring that nothing gets too stale. Doing these missions has also given us a good chance to go in and tweak/fix a bunch of various little things that annoyed the crap outta us (like some floating rocks, weirdly-dressed NPCs, ect. ect.) so there's been much, much more done than just the actual mission implementation itself. In a way it's given us a chance to do a little bit of tweak 'n polish to oldskool Rubi-Ka, which is always nice.
Meanwhile, the Collector instance has received some additional fun over the last few weeks, with Means putting in some hard work on the encounters leading up to the main boss area. The Collector instance is designed from the ground up to be very, very different from all other content in the game, and I really think it's coming together. The initial feedback we've gotten from people on Testlive has been exceedingly positive, and I'm seriously looking forward to watching people mess around in there. Let's just say we've got a few nifty tricks up our sleeves with this one.Was actually hoping I could show some more screenshots from there today, but Means forgot and left the playfield open on his computer yesterday, which unfortunately means no one else can get into it at the moment. Hooray for the AO tools. ><
Engine work continues to come along quite nicely - Unfortunately I don't have anything to show there *either* (holy crap worst fw(o)m evar), but I can say that it's looking pretty good over at Parsed's desk at the moment. We're also going to be shipping out Flaptoot in the next few weeks and sending him over to our Beijing office where he'll be overseeing and helping with the new head model production - Macrosun tried to convince the top brass that we should all be sent over with him, but no dice. . We got the new Atrox head you guys saw a few weeks back into the new engine earlier this week and... holy crap. It's so cool seeing stuff like this come together, particularly as an old AO fanboy myself - Watching the new shinies come together and breathe new life into the old familiarity of AO is really something spectacular.
I'm trying to think if there's anything else I really should write about... feel kinda bad, as this isn't really my usual wall 'o text. 'course, I'm sure that'll make Waldgeist (our German community manager) a bit happier, as he usually threatens resignation/suicide when he gets word that I'm writing a Friday with(out) Means. What can I say? I like typing. Just... when I have something to type about. Or show. Or something. Ah well - I guess they can't all be barnstormers.
With that said, I am about to go get very, very inebriated. Today just so happens to be MstrBstrd's birthday, and we are going to go celebrate in serious style. And by "style" I mean "with lots and lots of booze". Hope everyone's weekend is awesome, and with any luck Means will be back to entertain you guys next Friday.
Later!
Edit!: Looks like the fates have smiled on me! I wrote this up earlier today, but since then not only did we manage to get into the Collector playfield for a few new screenshots (thank you, Means), we've also got a peek at the new Atrox head inside the new engine. Bear in mind this is just the new head, with nothing altered to the body at all. Enjoy!
Originally Posted by Wrangeline
