What's up? (June 20th 2003)

Oh, what a week. Plenty of stuff for the update today, so I'll jump straight to it.

The GameSpy / FilePlanet beta deal
For those who haven't seen it yet, we have made an arrangement with GameSpy / FilePlanet for the Shadowlands beta. While I won't discuss business deals with people outside Funcom, the result for you is that you'll have to register at FilePlanet to download the beta client and get a key for activating beta access on your account.

The downside is that FilePlanet is not a free service. It costs you $6.99 to register, and having to pay this for access to the beta (if you didn't happen to have a FilePlanet account already) is something some find hard to swallow.

On the other hand, you're guarranteed to get into the beta if you do this. No need for crossing your fingers hoping your application will be noticed among all the others saying they of course want to test, not just have a preview. No random selection by an evil computer in the darkest corner of the Funcom offices. You register, download, and you're in. Simple.

Good and bad sides, seen from a player's point of view. Seen from our point of view we still fill the beta with people, get a good agreement with GameSpy / FilePlanet, and don't have to host the client ourselves. We also have an invitation system (no application) which we use to ensure dedicated people, and those we work closely with, get to participate in the testing.

The feedback has been here and there on the bulletin board, and I try move most of it to the Reet Retreat forum. I'd like to have it by e-mail though, as that ensures I'll see it, and it doesn't create flaming and ranting (which really isn't allowed on the bulletin board, but I'll get back to that later). So, e-mail me (I'm the one who reads all e-mails to that address), and keep the bulletin board calm. Please. :)

Shadowland beta progress
First of all, a thank you to all the testers providing feedback on the Shadowlands beta forums. I have read a lot of it myself, and it's both of great help in making Shadowlands a superb expansion, and inspiring to our dev team to get as much nice comments and seeing that people love it.

The number of testers has increased dramatically after we opened up the access through GameSpy / FilePlanet. I would like to add that there is a limit on how many testers we'll let in, so don't wait too long if you want to get access. ;)

Exploiting, bans, suspensions, and the bulletin board
Several accounts were closed this week due to exploiting. Some were closed permanently, others only temporarily, depending on the severity of the offense. I've heard some outrageous numbers circulating on bulletin boards about this, and just wanted to let you know the number of accounts affected was below 50. I won't be more specific than that.

Exploits is not my area, and neither is closing accounts. However, this bulletin board is my area, and there are some very specific rules concerning exploits and closed accounts here.

No exploit talk is allowed, whatsoever. If you want to ask questions about exploits or possible exploits, e-mail exploits@anarchy-online.com. That's the only channel for exploits in Anarchy Online, and there's no need to take any exploit matters to this bulletin board. Note that this goes for old, dead and gone exploits too, so even after it's all fixed, it's not a topic for these forums.

Customer Service policies and their enforcement is not a topic on this bulletin board, not even in the Reet Retreat forum. Nor is this bulletin board a channel for complaints about GMs, ARKs, the exploit team or any other Funcom employees or volunteers and their actions, including the closing of game accounts. E-mail support@anarchy-online.com, and they'll forward it to the appropriate people. (Concerns about moderators and moderation should go to me though.)

While you are free to disagree with these rules as much as you like, I expect you to abide by them. The social guidelines for the bulletin board exist to ensure these forums stay operative, so please respect them and those of us who want to keep these forums.

Social guidelines and moderation
As I mentioned last week, I hope to update the social guidelines for the bulletin board soon. If you have any feedback about the current guidelines, and suggestions for the revised ones, please e-mail me directly at thomasj@funcom.com. I won't have time for discussing with everybody, but all input you might have is greatly appreciated.

I hope to move moderation more and more over to volunteers (ARKs), taking a purely administrative role myself, thus freeing up more time for other things. If anybody would like to be moderators on these forums, note that it will most likely continue to require you to be a member of ARK, as well as being found suitable by the main moderators.

Waiting for 14.9
The 14.9 update is still not out on the test-live dimension, and this is as much of a concern to us as it is to you, as we'd like to just get it out and have your help in testing it. Our programmers and QA (Quality Assurance, in case you didn't know - the testers) department are doing their best to get it ready, while also working on Shadowlands. The best estimate I'm able to give is "any day now".

Professionals
The only task I currently have for the Professionals is particopating in the SL beta. Most of them (at least covering all professions) are in, and provoding feedback to our devs about the professions and other aspects of the expansion. They still bring topics from the profession academies to the Professionals forum, and I also have more time for reading the profession forums myself, so we know what's up. :)

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That's it for now. Have a nice weekend folks. :)

{Edit: Corrected a link tag.}