Patch Notes are Here!

The update's here. And that means a list of things that were changed. Here's what's new in the world of Ashen Empires.

OneEye posted in 10/25 Patch Notes:

New Store Items
-Halloween Pack. A mask pack to turn you into your favorite halloween monsters. Halloween themed house items.

-Wedding Set. Wedding themed armor and clothing.

-Thanksgiving Set. A mask pack to turn you into a turkey, indian and pilgrim. Thanksgiving themed clothing items.

-Advanced Skill Reset. Reset all skills from level 106+.

Features
-Low/mid dungeon. Dalvon Mine has been taken over by some pesky kobolds.
-Ryonkah has made a comeback
-Tailoring taskmaster is functional.
-Memorial to former TKO-artist Brian Smith added.
-One time city alignment reset
-Eggs are now purchasable in some stores
-Dairy Cow added

Bugs and Changes
-Several spawns adjusted, including many lower level SoC spawns
-Treasure drop tables adjusted for very high end creatures
-Several armor/weapons adjusted to be more inline with their level range.

Click on the link above to get the list of bug fixes. Happy hunting :)

Update for 10/25

It's about time we had another update. OneEye's announced it, so it's officially expected now.

OneEye posted in Servers down for update 10/25:

The servers (H, L and Dransik) will be down for an update on Thursday, October 25th at 10am CST.

Things we're looking forward to include:

• Eggs back in stores! [Source]
  

• Woodrow (Problems with Bats scroll quest) will move from Lotor's Castle to Lotor's Summer Palace. [Source]

• The ability to change your faction patron via Lotor's Steward (also in Lotor's Summer Palace) [Source]

• The Wurm spawn around the spawngate in Dragons has been decreased. Should make it easier to survive at that spawngate. [Source]

And, of course, a list of bug fixes. Don't forget the Halloween Event as well.

Downtime, and Why It's Been Happening

In case you haven't noticed, or you've been living under a rock (like me), Heroes has had quite a lot of downtime lately. Naturally this raises quite a lot of concerns and complaints. Luckily, there has been some dev response on this. And quite a lot of it as well.

Zarquon told us what the issue was.

Zarquon posted in You're not alone:

The raid controller was timing out on the writes to the drive, thus forcing the drive to go offline. Our vender said there was a firmware upgrade for the raid controller that directly addresses this problem. We are taking his word, I just upgraded the firmware before bring the server back online.

For those that don't know, a RAID is a group of hard drives set up in such a way that they work together. RAIDs can speed up the transmission of data, keep the data in a reliable copy, or a combination of the two. They're mainly used to keep a server up if a hard drive fails. If the RAID controller fails, however, then you're screwed.

Fear not, as the compensation fairy seems to be polishing her Wand of Blessing...

FujiQ posted in You're not alone:

Hey Everyone,

We didn't get a page last night/this morning so I was the unhappy first IWG to find out H was down again. Please let me be very up front when I say that you aren't the only ones irked about the situation. We know it's frustrating and we're doing the best we can right now.

We'd like to make it up to you. However, it would be a little pointless to give you any sort of in game compensation until we know that the problem is fixed. Our vendor told us to upgrade the firmware so that's the step we're at now. If that fixes it, we'll let you know how the compensation is going to work out.

I'm so sorry for the inconvenience guys, I know it's frustrating. Thank you for your patience on this matter.

Sincerely,

FujiQ

Pay attention to the second paragraph. No word yet on what this compensation might be. But it's coming.

The Deal With Faction Quests

Catherine Firemane is a new member of our community that's stirring up some controversy with his (relatively) well thought out responses and participation on the forums. He recently asked a question and raised some issues with the LK/CK and Patron quests, focusing on why they were so different. OneEye responded to these issues.

OneEye posted in Task Masters:

Catherine, 2 and 3 of your points are as designed. Point 3 for example allows for lower levels to complete these quests with the same effort as higher levels and get rewarded with nice items. Most of the very early faction quest items are in fact intended for lower levels.

You are new so you don't know that AE players gravitate onto certain pet issues while ignoring all of the things that have been added or fixed. There were no taskmasters at all until earlier this year for example.

That certainly explains why the early items seem so powerless and perhaps why there are so few people actively taking a part in these quests. I think The Freshest Diva, though, sums up this latter point well, though:

The Freshest Diva said in Patron / LK quests - fix please:

You can't cancel patrons at all, even if you get something that is impossible, and you can and will.

For those of you saying it should be this impossible, have you seen the set? It's for collectors. It's not for use. Just a bunch of decorational pieces to wear in pride of your home city, perhaps in parades or events. It's not as if it will give your character any increase of power or wealth whatsoever.

Interesting how such a thing is one of the hardest things in the game to obtain.

It'd be nice if these items were a little better for the effort it takes to acquire them all. I'm up to something like 160 quests done and I'm only up to the +5orb helmet.

Help IWG Track Down the "Mage Casting" Bug

As a mage, I've never personally experienced this bug. But it seems that several players have and constantly hold the DEVs responsible. The problem has (always) been that the DEVs cannot reproduce the bug, so it's incredibly difficult to fix.

If you've got a sure-fire way to crash your client, it's best to try and find a way to reproduce it and then post about it. These are the best ways of getting a bug fixed; not just for Ashen Empires but ANY program.

So, if you think you've got the skillz that thrillz, post your steps in $ Constant Reminders $. It looks like OneEye's keeping an eye on it. Now's your chance to be heard.

10/11 Hotfix

A small hotfix to address some small bugs. Even one that had to deal with a particular, mischievous GM

OneEye posted in 10/11 Hotfix:

-Added Runecrafting Taskmaster
-Tweaked Leatherworking Taskmaster values
-Fixed several Shadow Quest issues
-Fixed several spelling errors
-Fixed Body Spells so Rauric can't crash the server again :)

You can read about how Rauric crashed the server in this thread.

Keep Your Eyes Open for Pvp

Just a small nugget of info. In a discussion about possible Pvp tournaments, OneEye had this to say:

OneEye posted in Supported Ongoing PvP Tournament:

There is something new coming for PvP very soon (for both servers)

The Taskmasters Dilemna

It's been almost a year since the taskmasters were first introduced to Ashen Empires. At first, they were met with some resistance as some people believed that this would mean more people doing crafts and less people providing the "quality experiences" that fewer tradeskillers meant to the community. Now it seems that everyone's at least had some experience with the taskmasters.

The problem, however, is that the taskmasters still aren't complete. Sure, there are several major skills covered. However, there remain a few that aren't. And some seem downright too demanding.

OneEye commented on the taskmaster design.

OneEye posted in Task Masters:

I've learned my lesson - never put anything in the game as a 'to be done later' feature.

-the reason it was done this way is I am able to hotfix the script behind NPCs who are alredy in the world, but adding an NPC requires a 'take down the server' update.

The impression I'm getting from this is that, at the very least, getting the NPC's in was a goal. As long as the NPC's were already in the world, OneEye could add the logic while the server was running and then simply announce that the taskmasters were ready. The alternative would have been that we would have had to wait for an update to see a new taskmaster or two.

So you have to ask yourself, which method would you have preferred? I can see the benefit of both.

Eggs are on their way back to stores.

A long time ago, you used to be able to buy eggs from stores. This made cake and pie making a lot easier, since clicking on chickens and only getting one egg at a time was...well....not as egg-siting as it sounded ;) But it seems we're due for some love in the next full update.

OneEye posted in Eggs in provision shops:

added chicken eggs to provisioner shops for next full update.

This might spell doom for those who enjoy clicking on chickens and selling quantities of eggs. But this, in turn, might mean more people getting into mixing again. And I'm all for not trying to find and trap chickens ;)

Got any reporting talent?

Looks like there's another opening for reporters. If you like to write for Ashen Empires, this is your chance to put your pen where your virtual parchment is.

FujiQ posted in AE Reporter Opening:

IWG will begin accepting applications to fill one spot on the AE Reporter team. To be considered, you must be an active and vocal community member with no past violations on your record. You also must be willing and able to write at least two articles a month, at a minimum of 250 words each, about various community and game events.

If you are chosen to become a reporter, you will receive a complimentary subscription. Your posts will appear on the AE Website as well.

Those interested in applying should send a sample piece of at least 250 words to support@ashenempires.com with the subject "AE Reporter Submission." Please tell us your player name in the same email. You may send plain text or an attached word document.

Good luck

Halloween Event set for October 30/31!

It's that time of year again. In a growing tradition, IWG will be holding it's 3rd annual Halloween event. This year, with more candy!

FujiQ posted in Halloween Event 2007:

Ready your weapons and clear your calendars, my friends, because this Halloween IWG invites you to a day of dungeon crawling, candy collecting, prize winning madness. It's going down at the Halloween dungeon which opens only once a year. New candy and new candy holders will be introduced to commemorate the 2007 event.

The Halloween dungeon, which is located in King Lotor's castle (not to be confused with Lotor's Summer Palace), will open twice on each server:

Tuesday the 30th
Legends: 10am-12pm CST, 3pm-5pm UTC
Heroes: 5pm-7pm CST, 10pm-12am UTC

Wednesday the 31st
Heroes: 10am-12pm CST, 3pm-5pm UTC
Legends: 5pm-7pm CST, 10pm-12am UTC

For more time conversions, you can use this website.

Hoping they'll do one on a Saturday...See you there! :)

No Server Downtime After All!

Remember that downtime we were supposed to have?

Burning Spear posted in No Server Downtime 10/4/2007:

We managed to update everything without having to bring down the game servers.

Assuming we don't discover a problem in the next hour or so there should be no down time.

Gotta love the new hotfix system :)

Look out for Thursday Downtime!! :(

One has to wonder what the impact of this downtime will be.

OneEye posted in System Downtime 10/4/2007:

Ashen Empires and Dransik will be down starting at:

09:00:00 Thursday October 4, 2007 CST / 14:00:00 Thursday October 4, 2007 GMT

This downtime is for routine maintenance. Stay tuned to the forums during the downtime for periodic updates on when the servers will be back and available.

Maybe while the servers are down, they'll give us some details on what they've been working on. I'm especially interested to find out if they have another Halloween event planned and what it might entail. :)

A Hotfix for the BFD!!

Another hotfix with glorious hotfix goodies...

OneEye posted in 9/17 Hotfix:

-Dungeon logout timer fixed
-2nd confirmation option added when rebuilding your house from a deed
-Increased Broken Finger Lever Boss chance.

I have no idea what the "dungeon logout timer" is. But points two and three are good news.

Beware of Deeds (bltn edition)

Tempester started a sort of "help the homeless" topic when Dell accidentally had his house rebuilt when he clicked on a deed in the middle of his home.

By the way, if you have a house and you click on a blueprint, you're asked if you want to rebuild the house. If you click yes, you lose everything in the home and you start back at an empty plot. This just goes to show you that you need to be very careful and read before you click.

There was some confusion over whether this was a bug or a feature. OneEye did comment (and further down in the thread) gave us some input on a solution to keep this from happening again.

OneEye posted in Donations for Housing Fund:

The clicking deed to rebuild house was a feature that users asked for awhile back. It says something like "are you sure you wish to destroy your house?"

For a future update I have added a "are you really sure you wish to destroy your house?" 2nd step.

I'm not sure how this could be considered a bug.

---

Later on...

i tested it the other day when i saw the report and then looked at the code. Before this change to the deeds, you would get a message that said "can't use deed here". A bug was put in that when using the deed it would not show that message but give you the prompt to rebuild instead. It seemed like a reasonable request as most people do read the warning messages when they come up - but like I said, I've added a double warn message for a future patch.

Whether or not this extra message will actually stop people from accidentally bulldozing their homestead remains to be seen. Personally, I wouldn't mind a timer between the time when you schedule your house for demolition and when the house is actually demolished. I mean, it would be pretty hard to make a mistake if you have time to correct it, right?

What's the deal with "bltn edition", Nwellyn?

Oh, you noticed that, did you? "bltn" stands for "Better Late than Never"--meaning that I'm covering this a few days (or up to a week) after the fact. Sorry I couldn't get this posted sooner. Life has a habit of taking the time you've got and investing it in stuff you don't want to do. :p

Some interesting stuff about the Broken Finger Dungeon

Midnight started a thread not too long ago about how the bosses weren't spawning in the Broken Finger Dungeon. Well, it's not necessarily about how the bosses weren't spawning. It's more about how you're paying extra to get access to premium content and not receiving all the content. Naturally, this upsets those players who regularly go.

Both FujiQ and OneEye had some information on the matter. Quite a few players have asked that the timer count only when you are in the dungeon. FujiQ responded on that.

FujiQ posted in Broken Finger Dungeon: The Ingenious Scam? (Page 2)

We've been asked if the BF dungeon worked so that the 8 hours only counted for time spent in the dungeon but the way the game is architected keeps us from being able to do that.

Lara Orcsplitter responded to this and asked why a second NPC couldn't be added to stop the timer. Perhaps this can be looked into. But I keep thinking that people would still complain because they forgot to talk to this NPC.

A real shocker (at least to some people) came in the form of OneEye's input on the content there.

OneEye posted in Broken Finger Dungeon: The Ingenious Scam? (Page 3):

BF was designed as a 1 hour experience, if the dungeon was changed to a in-dungeon experience, the timer would be reduced accordingly.

So what we're really getting for 15 tokens is the ability to experience "everything" in approximately 8 opportunities. In reality, it's probably more along the lines of a little over 6 times. It's almost like getting 15 pulls at the nickel slots except the jackpot is some exclusive items.

Hotfix and a couple of bugs are fixed.

Proof that they're still alive in Austin comes in the form of a couple of quick bug fixes.

OneEye posted in 9/7/2007 Hotfix:

-Mukkarama portal bug fixed
-Lloyd Dogen quest bug fixed

Probably related to this thread.

Bit of an editorial...

I normally don't do this. And my goal for this blog wasn't to do any commentary beyond what's been posted by a DEV. But the latest responses to the new expansion just seem to be off the wall.

Here's what we know about the current plans by the DEVs. We know this, because they've been posted. I've even blogged it in my previous entry, Another Expansion in the Works, and You Can Name It! But some members of the community seem to think that this new expansion is going to mean that there will be no more updates until the expansion hits.

Now, keep in mind that over the past couple of weeks, we've had several updates to the program. Lag issues are being addressed, quests have been fixed, and so on. But, naturally, people want to believe that the DEVs are doing nothing. We often fall into this fallacy when we focus on specific bugs that we think are important but aren't necessarily important to the overall game. Issues like hair, taskmasters, etc., while important to some people, rank lower than issues like lag or missing items. Lag effects us all. Taskmasters effect those who regularly take advantage of them.

The only thing we know at this point in time is that there will be an update to the game to fix some bugs and issues and that an expansion is in the early planning stages. Beyond that, there's only two camps that can make a prediction about what actually will happen--IWG and Psychics. So all of these claims that IWG will do nothing while they plan and work on an expansion that's still in the planning stages are mostly hot air. They know just as much as the next guy. And we've all been told what IWG is working on.

One final note: Stop acting like IWG doing these expansions and so on for money is a sin. We all pay for a subscription to this game. Most of us have bought expansions so we could enjoy more of the game. What I truly find funny is that those people who are on the "IWG just wants to make more money" bandwagon have purchased many things from the store, either with their own money or trading for tokens. So what's the point of trying to levy that attack? We all know that this game isn't free to play (yet). Why complain about a fee that you're already paying? Honestly, if $6.00 a month is putting a strain on your pocketbook, consider that the fees you'd pay playing the other major MMO's are over double the amount you pay for Ashen Empires. How is paying $15.00 for an expansion in AE worse than paying $40.00 for an expansion? Someone explain that one to me.

Seriously folks, stop posting about how we are all screwed nearly a year before anything actually happens. You might just start having fun again.

Another Expansion in the Works, and You Can Name It!

FujiQ let us in on some key information. It's been some time since we've heard any word about what's going on for AE.

FujiQ posted in What has IWG been up to?:

Hi Everyone,

A lot of questions have been raised lately and I'm here to answer some of them for you. First, just to keep you in the loop, we've been spending a considerable amount of time on an update for Dransik. It's coming along very well.

We've also been working on the next AE update which will be released after the Dransik update. More information will be forthcoming about that over time.

While I'm at it, I'd like to invite the community to help us out. You see, a few AE players mentioned something about the sea and boats...well, it seems that all that commotion got our attention over here at IWG. I'm very excited to announce that we've just started breaking ground on the next AE expansion. The details of the expansion are still being finalized. What's in it, you ask? Islands to discover, sea monsters to battle, underwater dungeons to explore, and more!

You know what this means? Wake up those sea legs because it's CONTEST TIME! Today we started the Expansion Naming Contest which you can access on this forum thread. All are invited to enter suggestions for the name of the next AE expansion. The winner will receive the expansion free of charge! Remember, it's a sea themed expansion.

You asked for it. You got it!

See you in game soon!

Sincerely,

FujiQ
Marketing Manager

So besides the update for Dransik, there's at least one more coming for Ashen Empires before work begins on the new expansion. There have been quite a few people who have vehemently argued for the right to sea travel and now it looks like they're going to be able to do it. The only thing I remember about boats in AE is the old menu icon at the bottom of the screen that never worked. :p

Scammer Alert

Seems the guy behind the now infamous GC scams is at it again.

OneEye posted in selling/buying account posts:

There have been a rash of "im buying a 100+ level account!" posts. Please note, that the person posting this is a known scammer, both in game and out of game via credit card and paypal fraud. Do not fall victim to this scam.

Buying and selling accounts in general is not allowed. Accounts that can be proven to be bought or sold will be banned.

Folks, don't try and play this off like it's got nothing to do with you. Very likely, if not you then someone you know will fall for this. And they will likely get no money from it either. Be smart and don't sell your account.

Who says they don't listen? :p

So I come home today and see this little nugget on the Announcement forum:

OneEye posted in 8/13 Hotfix:

-There is now a 5 minute grace period from when you logout/are disconnected from the game before you are teleported out of the various higher-end dungeons.
-Alignment message should no longer be displayed if you have alignment lock enabled.

Seems like an ordinary hotfix, right? Well, here's the catch. A couple of people have been posting recently something along the lines of "the DEVs don't listen to the players" etc. etc. Well, the cool thing about this hotfix--both of these were suggestions by the players.

Telarin posted in Boss Campers:

They could put some kind of timer on it. If you log out, and right back in, as in a DC, you stay where you were. If you log out for more than 5 minutes, you get kicked out.

Mecia posted in Ummm, so are rep goes down for healing yourself?:

Also, I locked my rep at 10000, I killed a RT, my rep whent to 9998, why does my rep go down when Its locked, Also, I stayd at red aling with 998 rep when I healed MYSELF I whent to 10058..

Well, maybe not so much #2 :p But it is proof that they are paying attention to what we tell them.

Hotfix!

Just a couple of bugs fixed today. Haven't seen a hotfix in a while!

OneEye posted in 8/11 Hotfix:

-Alchemy bug where only a single item was created
-Proudblood Traitor should once again talk

The New Guy Finally has a Name

There's been talk from the DEVs regarding a new DEV. But they kept referring to him as "the new guy" or "him" or "he". Well, apparently he's been properly jumped in finally earned a name of himself!

FujiQ posted in Welcome Dev Alanzo!:

Hi Everyone,

Please give a warm welcome to our newest Developer, Alanzo Dragor. He is training up on Dransik right now and will be moving to Ashen Empires soon.

If you happened to read the Q&A, this must be the guy whose first "major" task will be to find out a way of doing Quest Logs without killing the 1000s that are already there. A hearty "Good Luck" to Alanzo :)

Got Hotmail?

If you use msn hotmail, then you have a problem (other than using MSN hotmail). According to the DEVs, hotmail's been bouncing support emails. So if you have an issue with support and you have a hotmail account, you'll never get a reply. FujiQ explains:

FujiQ posted in Attention Hotmail Users:

On behalf of the support team, I just want to remind everyone that we tend to discourage the use of Hotmail email accounts.

For one thing, Hotmail accounts are not very secure. Also, we recently discovered that our support emails to Hotmail have been bouncing because Microsoft has blocked our servers. If you use a hotmail account and haven't heard back from support on a problem, please try to email them again from a different address. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it doesn't look like there's much we can do about the Hotmail problem.

Thanks!

Just another good reason to switch to GMail.

So you say you just bought a 6 month subscription, eh?

I think everyone pretty much knew what kind of fallout to expect from the price reduction. Well, maybe not the exact type of fallout. But definitely we all knew someone was going to say something. Well, good news for those who did. IWG listened. And they've left a little sumthin sumthin for ya.

FujiQ posted in Price Reduction Gift:

Hi Everyone,

We evaluated the commentary and opinions stated on the forums this week about the price reduction. In the original announcement about the price reduction I said that we weren't going to reimburse tokens or money because, plain and simple, we can't. However, we feel that there are some loyal players who got the short end of the stick during that process.

Here's what we've decided to do. Players who purchased a 3 or 6 month subscription any time between July 1 and July 30 will receive a gift of appreciation from IWG that is equivalent to the difference between the respective old and new subscription prices. Those players will see the gift appear in their AE store. They may use it on whichever character they choose. Those who purchased a 1 month subscription have not been included in this compensation for technological reasons.

IWG always makes an effort to respond as best as we can to player opinions and suggestions. Thank you, as always, for your patronage. I hope to see you in game soon!

I wish I could get the same service from my Gas Station! :)

OneEye responds to some of the "tougher" questions.

Quite a few people thought that the DEVs were pulling a fast one by shying away from the tougher questions. So they started asking them in the forums. And they got some answers.

If you follow the forums pretty regularly, you'll get to know who the people are and what their prime concerns are. Leah, for example, usually talks about two major subjects: Hair and Quest Logs. Both of these questions have been answered before (and we've covered the answer to the hair question here). But this response went into some more (or oft forgotten) detail. There's even a bit about the concern of "Pay to access" dungeons.

OneEye posted in Meeting with devs on servers ....:

Hair - The paperdoll data we got from TKO when we bought the game was corrupted. There is no source art available. That means we have to re-create the paperdoll system from scratch to 'fix the hair'. The original system at TKO took 2-3 artists 2-3 months to get to the state it is at now (about 90% complete - this was never fully finished before TKO shut the Austin team down). That is alot of man months of work - something we haven't had the luxury of doing up until now - we have 1 artist.

It is something that is important to us however and we are constantly trying to come up with solutions - I personally don't like the look of any of the current paperdolls and would love to re-create it.

Quest Log - All quests are in script code - not in some kind of quest editor. Dransik/AE have had several different designers write quest code over the years - all of them without standards. There are literally 1000's (there are about 90,000 lines of script code in AE now) of quests now in the game. So, in order to create a quest log, all of those quests would have to be standardized in some way. Doing so is a giant undertaking and would more than likely break tons of current content.

Last week a new programmer started for us. We have him kind of training up on Dransik right now. When he moves over to AE, one of his first taks will be to try to figure out how to solve this problem.

Dungeon - over the last 6 months we have reduced the monthly cost of AE by 33% - from $8.95 a month to $6.00. In order to keep reducing the price we have to do some creative thing like the broken finger dungeon.

Reducing the price is important to us to bring more players to the game. We have made the game basically free for anyone to play for as long as they want with some 'premium' benefits.

BF is just a premium content feature. And lets face it, even with spending a full day of online time in this dungeon every month (3x.75) you are still spending less money per month than you were 6 months ago. AND - this dungeon isn't something that is required to enter. You can choose to go or not. Over time there will be other 'hot' areas which will make this dungeon less attractive - remember for example when VF was the place to be. Now it is rarely used. This is a cycle in all MMO adventure games.

OneEye also gave a response to another question about Pvp.

OneEye posted in Meeting with devs on servers ....:

changes were made to balance the 'classes' of the game to address PvP concerns. Changes were also made the the alignment system both on the overall alignment scale and how alignemnt was recovered.

The big change that small segment of the community wants is non-alignment based inventory drops. The people that want this are very vocal, but are a minority. This is an issue that will never make everyone happy and thus right now it is better to leave the system alone until some kind of compromise can be reached.

This and a couple of other responses on the thread made me think. Just how many people are satisfied with the PDD system as it is? And what changes, if any, would the "majority" agree to? Flat PDD rates? No PDD? PDD only when wanted?

Dev Q&A

AE's first "House of Commons" in game seemed to go off without many problems. People got to go to party island and meet the creators of the game.

Leah was kind enough to go through her chat logs and pull out the questions answered by the DEVs. She's posted it on the forums. Here's a sample:

Posted in Meeting with devs on servers ....:

(Shout) (*GM) Wintergreen: OE - Nith asks when will the tailoring, runcrafting, and Farming taskmaskets be functional?

(Shout) (*DEV) OneEye: they will come online with the next major update. I also have a cooking trainer inline as wel

Definitely worth a read if you're interested in what's going on with the game.

Subscription Prices Lowered

It's finally happened! The DEVs said that the price would slowly and gradually come down. Well, this is just the beginning.

FujiQ posted in Subscription Price Reduction

Hello Everyone,

For the past couple of months, we've been talking about lowering the subscription price gradually until Ashen Empires is completely free to play. Today marks the beginning of that process! Check out the website to see the changes we've made to monthly subscription prices. 1, 3 and 7 day subscriptions have remained the same. The price changes went into effect this afternoon and will not be applied retroactively.

Some expansion prices have been changed as well. The Talazar's Revenge and Sands of Creation bundle has been dropped from 599 to 499, and the single Talazar's Revenge expansion has been lowered from 350 to 299.

Thank you as always for your continued support.

Sincerely,

FujiQ & The IWG Team

On the website, you can see that the subscription prices for 1 month, 3 month, and 6 month subscriptions are now 120, 345, and 660 tokens a piece respectively. This equates to new prices of $6.00, $17.25, and $33.00 now. That's $2.00 per month off of the old prices.

This should make buying tokens a little easier for those who don't directly pay for tokens. And for those of us who do pay for tokens, now we have a little extra spending room in terms of extras.

More info on the Q&A

FujiQ updated the website with a bit more information about the Q&A mentioned in the newsletter. Most importantly, it shows the location of the portal to "Party Island".

FujiQ posted on the Ashen Empires Website:

Want to get some one on one time with OneEye? Have a burning question for Burningspear? Wait no more! We'll be holding a DEV Question and Answer session next Tuesday, July 31st, from 3pm to 4pm CDT (8pm to 9pm GMT).

The following developers will be attending: OneEye, Zarquon, Burningspear, Madmax, TheTyrant, and our newest developer, Alanzo. The support team (Wintergreen, MonkeyFist, and myself) will also be in attendance.

The session will be held on Party Island, which is accessible from a portal located just north of the central chamber in Lotor's Summer Palace (see the red block in the picture below).

Please come prepared with your questions. We'll have our GMs moderating questions (and spammers).

We look forward to meeting you in game!!

See you there :)

Free Weekend! Woot!

Oh yes! What's better than free? You can't beat free.

FujiQ posted on the Ashen Empires Website:

The update and patch last week were quite time consuming. We'd like to make that up to our community and thank you all for your patience with a free weekend!

Here's how it will work: If you're already a subscriber, we'll add three days to your subscription free of charge. Subscribers will receive their 3 free days on Friday at 2pm CDT. These days will be tacked onto the current subscription balance.

Non subscribers will see their subscription start on Friday, July 27 at 2pm CDT and last until Monday, July 30 at 2pm CDT. To see what benefits you receive as a subscriber, please see the section under subscriptions on the Item List page.

Enjoy!

So if you're a new player just starting out or a returning player looking to go hunt with old friends, this is the weekend to do it! FREE! YEAH, BABY!

Found this little bit of randomness while perusing the boards. 420 brought up the old Quest log issue and this seemed to attract a post from FujiQ.

FujiQ posted in Can We Have Quest Log PLZ?:

we know the game needs a quest log. it's a huge project, worse than the hair fix. perhaps our newest employee can start out by tackling that project :)

/me goes to hunt down this other announcment....New DEV?!?

More Website Updates

Updates galore! It seems that the website is really getting some use after all. With the new look and the new stat pages, you'd think everything was done. Well, almost. Check this out.

FujiQ posted on the Ashen Empires Website:

The website got cleaned-up this week and is feeling shiny! Here's a list of what's changed:

• Guilds and Combat pages are no longer empty.
• AE Reporters Tempester and The Freshest Diva now have their own section on the website.
• The skills page now shows you the list of skills for each profession/class.
• The Item List in the Store Info section now describes the benefits of having a subscription.
• A new fan site has been added: AE Server Status by Jonny Hunter
• Left navigation bar has been universally applied to all pages.
• Website has been tested in Internet Explorer and several formatting issues fixed
• The Player spotlight on Onix and Celtico has been corrected (originally flipped)
• The Rules of Conduct have been updated to their current version.

It seems we'll actually have a reason to go to the official site now other than for the download. Now if only they added an RSS feed ;)

Wedding Reception Set for Sunday, July 29

Remember those wedding bells? Remember how there was no cake?!? Oi! What's a wedding without the big cake anyway? Well, Lotor and Anne will make it up to us.

FujiQ posted in on the Ashen Empires Website:

King Lotor and Queen Anne would like to extend their gratitude to those who attended their wedding in June. The royal newlyweds would also like to thank you in person at their reception, which will be held on Sunday, July 29 at Party Island. Party island is accessible from the portal inside the northern most central chamber in Lotor's Summer Palace. The GMs of Ashen Empires will also be running various events leading up to the reception.

Server times for the reception are as follows:
Legends: 1pm CDT / 6pm UTC
Heroes: 3pm CDT / 8pm UTC

More time conversions can be found here.

Let the celebrations commence!

15 Tokens and What do ya Get?

Lara Orcsplitter has (attempted to) open a discussion about the new Pay to play dungeon we got in this update. Of course, this has proved to be a very hot topic among the players. Some people see it as a ploy by IWG to get the players to pay more money while others see it as another option to enjoy the game for literally less than a dollar.

All this discussion seems to have stirred the attention of at least one IWG official, though. So here's some official words from FujiQ regarding the decision.

FujiQ posted in broken finger with no flames:

Hey Everyone,

First, thanks for posting, Lara. This is an important topic that concerns everyone. I'm sorry I didn't get to this earlier. This matter is extremely important to us. As with any business, yes, we are trying to make money. But we also care about this game and our players. The developers whose names are sometimes cursed on this forum literally broke their wallets trying to save this game so more people could enjoy it. That has been the goal from the beginning. Expect to see the subscription cost coming down slowly but surely.

We by no means wish to roll over our players with sneaky pyschological tricks, but please realize that AE is a difficult sell. It's a fun game, our players know this, but in this world graphics (and a huge marketing budget) are very helpful in getting the marketer's foot through that first door. Of course, the game graphics has its own charm, but do you see where I'm going with this?

I know (very painfully even) that the recent dungeon has sparked some debate about the current system. We're piloting new waters with this type of pricing strategy so the feedback we've been receiving from all of you has been taken into consideration. We promise to work through these issues if you promise to be a little patient with us. And please be patient with each other. :) As always, thank you.

Sincerely,

FujiQ
Marketing Manager
on behalf of the IWG staff

Keep in mind some of the important aspects of this post:

1) IWG wants to lower the cost of the subscription fee.
2) IWG is experimenting with what pricing models will best accomplish #1.
3) AE isn't an easy sell, thanks to issues like Graphics and a smaller marketing budget.

When you think about the 75 cents you're going to spend to check out the new dungeon, remember that you're not obligated to spend it. It's an option. And apparently it's one worth trying out.

Statistics Page is Back!

This has been a long time coming. Many people have been asking for the statistics pages for a long time. Finally, those people have an answer. And it's in the form of statistickey goodness.

FujiQ posted in Statistics Page:

---

The stats pages are live again! You can check them out here. Thank GM Siyone when you get the chance for working so hard on this for everyone.

I have been asked several times if we are going to put the stats back on your account home page. We have been considering fixing that as well, but no decision has been made yet.

You might notice that on the web site stats is only linked from the index/home page. This is because when I updated the site I had to put the complete header/footer files on each page. However, Zarq just taught me what a master page is so now I get to go back and fix that on every page! But I haven't done that yet so in the meantime bookmark and remember to go back to index to find stats. Sorry for the inconvenience, I hope to have that fixed within the next few days.

One thing I noticed right off is that this statistics page combines what used to be two separate pages. Originally, quests and character rankings were on one page and skill rankings were on another. Putting it all on one page is a nice touch. Also I noticed that they're using GET strings in the URL. Can anyone say "Bookmark" ? ;)

Another Patch Scheduled for Thursday

I have to apologize for the lack of updates here. There's been a lot going on during the update process and I've managed to miss most of it. I'll spend some time later on (probably this weekend) compiling what's come out of IWG.

For now, it seems that due to continued issues with the current update (and if you've been away like me, a visit to the forums will definitely enlighten) the servers need a quick patch to resolve a few bugs.

FujiQ posted in Patch Tomorrow:

Hi Everyone,

Tomorrow morning at 10:00am CST (4:00pm GMT) we are taking the servers down to do a patch. We estimate that it will be a quick patch. This should tidy up some of the bugs from the update. In the mean time, you can add AE on MySpace and Facebook or check out the new website!

After a Tuesday update that went all day, I can only imagine what the response will be Thursday morning. Let's hope this update does go up as planned and we can all get back to having fun.

Dev Said talks with OneEye and Gets Details about the Update

I managed to get an interview with OneEye about today's update. Honestly, this is my first interview with a Game Developer and I tried my best to ask questions that both you and I wanted to know the answers to. Personally, I don't think they turned out too bad :) Though if I do get another chance to talk with OneEye, I might try and get a little more insight into what goes on in the brain of a Mono-optic Game Designer ;)

Don't worry, though. DevSaid does not disappoint. With all the rumors and the hype surrounding the update, I focused on what you guys wanted to know more about--what's in the update?!? I managed to find out some info about why the delay in the update as well as what new content to expect. Masks, a party island for Dev Q&A, and even some info about where some of the new items may come from. By all means, read on! You know you're curious ;)

DevSaid (DS): Thank you, OneEye, for taking the time to sit down and answer some of our questions. Let's start with the most obvious question. You said that you were ready to release the update just before your vacation. However, the decision was made to delay it since you didn't want any bugs from your additions to hurt the game while you were gone. Now that you're back, we were kept waiting for just a little while longer. Why the additional time?

OneEye (OE): There were several things that we wanted to further test and we had to schedule the update around some other things we have going on around here.

DS: In our last update about the update, we were told we could expect new quests, new monsters, more taskmasters, lots of new items, and even some new book quests like the rock trolls near josody one. Were there more things that you've added since then for this update?

OE: We've made a new Party Island accessible all the time from Lotor's Summer Palace, increased the party size to 20 and of course did lots of work tracking down the server lag issue. Player stat and ranking pages were also revamped and should be deployed shortly after the update.

Party Island will be used for several upcoming events, including an in-game Developer Question and Answer session.

DS: What about those new quests? Any hints about those that you might want to share? Quest-specific goodies, for instance?

OE: As always, I'll say that you'll just have to go out and explore :) . I will say that as well as adding new quests we've also fixed several issues with older quests that may have been blocking players from finishing them. If you were stuck on a certain quest, go back and try it again.

DS: In a recent post, you've said that you've been able to track the lag and server stability down to an issue in the memory garbage collection.

How has the progress on that fix been? What kind of improvement to the lag can we expect?

OE: We've done a lot of work to track down where the server is doing the garbage collection. For those who don't know this is the process of a program cleaning up memory. With a 'managed' language, the developers don't fully control when this happens, so the clean-up can happen at inopportune or non-appropriate times. The work we did controls when the collection, making the server much smarter.

DS: The token special during June was a nice and unexpected touch. Will there be more specials that we can look forward to?

OE: Sure, we are always looking to provide more bang for the buck. We talk all the time about how to reduce the average users cost to play the game. I hope we can make an announcement regarding our long term plans in the very near future.

DS: You mentioned that we could expect some monster masks to be available in the store. Besides the masks, are there other things that will be added to the store this time around? What about in the near future?

OE: Right now there are 4 monster packs, the basic pack, the deluxe pack, the avatar pack and the Dragon pack. Each mask has really cool creatures the player can polymorph into. The deluxe for example has an Ettin, a Horned Devil, an Ogre, a Rock Troll, an Eye of Valekar a Giant Skeleton, a Demon and a Storm Giant. Cool Stuff.

In the future I'm sure we will have more fun items, for example, I'm pretty sure we will do some more holiday themed house packs - Halloween and Christmas are right around the corner!

DS: A few players have been concerned about the end-game content. Will this update bring more content to those high levelers still looking for a challenge?

OE: Yes - there are also 157 new items in this update, many aimed at the high level players. Dragon drops for example have been enhanced with many of these newer items.

DS: What about low to mid level players? What things can they look forward to in this update?

OE: There are several new quests and item that target the mid-level player as well.

DS: The Warden Mage armor set and the Ancient Sword of Agon are two of the most powerful and contraversial possessions players can get in the game nowadays. Since they have been introduced, there's been many threads and many posts about how they impact gameplay. How do you think these items fit in the overall balance? Do they need to be adjusted or are they just right?

OE: Both the Warden and ASoA have been adjusted slightly with this update. This adjustment brings them more into line with their difficulty to be acquired.

DS: Pvp has always been a hot button issue concerning updates. Are you satisified with the pvp game? Are there things that you may want to change to the way Pvp works in the future?

OE: A PvP battle always has a winner and a loser. The loser is never going to be happy with the situation - so you are starting from the standpoint of 50% of the people involved in PvP being unhappy. I think that players are as balanced as they have ever been, but I also think there is room for improvement. We may have a few things up are sleeves to make PvP even more fun and exciting in the near future.

DS: How's Mukarramma? We haven't seem him lately.

OE: Check him after the update. Good luck in trying to beat him :) .

Remember, it's just an Update.

It's been a month and a half since the update was supposed to be released. All the delay has seemed to kick up new hopes and new possibilities. But remember--it's just an update. A few bug fixes and a few new things to play around with. But no new landmasses, towns, etc. OneEye clarifies:

OneEye posted in woooot update is ere!:

We concentrated more on bug fixes and lag fixing. This isn't an expansion, just a game update. There are over 150 fixes right now - im hoping to close a few more tomorrow.

150 bug fixes and everyone still has their favorites. Looking forward to the build notes. :)

Ashen Empires Developments to be phased out.

Looks like the original AE blog is going the way of Ol' Yeller. With the changes in the AE website, it looks like the aim is to put all the news and other bloggable bits right on the homepage.

FujiQ posted in woooot update is ere!:

Once the website kinks have been worked out, which should be soon, we'll be posting all announcements on the website/forums and will be no longer using the AE Dev blog.

One less place to look for info makes it easier to compile exactly where the new information is all coming from. Though I think it would be nice if the DEVs had a place where they could post stuff like "Y'know, I worked on this for the past week and it still pisses me off."

Lots of stuff planned for July

According to the newsletter, we've got quite a few things to look forward to this month. Besides the update, there's also the continued event with Lotor's Wedding (for you RP fans) and some new masks in the store (which we've covered in a previous article). But here's what really caught my eye:

Posted in the July 2007 Newsletter

Developer Q&A
Want to get some one on one time with One Eye? Have a burning question for Burningspear? Wait no more! We want to give you the chance to meet the Devs in game and ask them some questions during a special Dev Q&A session to be held in Lotor’s Summer Palace. Server times will be announced on the AE Website.

Looking forward to that one. It reminds me of the old House of Commons chats. Except this time, it will be done in game. I'm not sure this is a good idea, though. At least on IRC, you can mute allow only certain people to talk. Can you imagine how many mutes they're going to have to do in game?

Update goes live on Monday!

The long wait is almost over! Just a couple more days now.

FujiQ posted in Update:

It is my pleasure to announce that the much anticipated update is almost here! On Monday at 10:00am CST / 6:00pm GMT, the servers will be down anywhere from 2-6 hours while we make the update live. More information to posted soon from OE about what's new and what's been fixed.

Diamond accounts starting to appear.

It's been about four (or five, depending on where you started counting) months since the update that brought our subscription changes. Since then, we've seen a host of people with bronze, silver, and gold pips beside their names. Now the first Diamond subscribers are starting to appear.

OneEye posted in IMPORTANT: Ashen Empires Service Changes (UPDATED):

What are the subscription levels?
Ashen Empires accounts will be separated into four levels. All levels will be represented by an in-game icon next to a player's name.

• Gold - A gold icon indicates a player with a current active Ashen Empires account with 30 or more consecutive days paid.


• Silver - A silver icon indicates a player who has an active account, but has paid for a period of less than one consecutive month.


• Diamond - Player has been a subscriber (at gold or silver level) for 6 continuous months. Rock on!


• Bronze - A Bronze icon indicates a player who does not have an active paid account (Silver or Gold). Bronze players may explore the entire world, including the 2 expansion areas (if they have those expansions active on their account).
  
  Bronze player do have some limitations once they leave Valinor. Bronze players will be limited in experience they can earn per day and items they can loot and craft. Bronze players will not be able to trade or party with other players and they will not be allowed to engage in player vs player (PvP) combat (unless they are attacked).

Maybe the Diamonds are showing up a couple of months early, but it's nice to see which players are truly the loyal die-hards. And now they've got the pips to prove it.

Read more about it on the forum topic Yus ! I have my diamond now :D

Picture Interlude

Wonder what all OneEye saw while he was on vacation? Well, we get lucky. There's a post over on the official AE blog with a link to the Europe trip through the eyes of a mono-optic. :)

OneEye posted on Ashen Empires Developments:

Here are some shots from my recent trip to Holland, Germany, Czech Republic and Austria. I'm working on labeling them.

The Link

Go check em out. It's a nice break from the daily grind. And for those of us who have never been to Europe, it's a good start for vacation planners.

Bug Reporting the Right Way

Apparently, there's a few issues regarding players and their ability to report bugs. :D Well, it really should be no surprise. :p After all, it is OUR community after all. But in true AE fashion, someone who works with bugs all day came forth to help us in figuring out just what the AE bug report and resolution process is like from the DEV side:

GM Timaeus posted in Bug reporting:

This is a thread to give a kind of guideline on bug reporting. I've been receiving some annoying reports about the same bug from the same people, so i thought I'd make a thread explaining a few things.

1. Always report new bugs that you find.
2. Never tell your friends to report the same bug. that will NOT make the fix any faster.
3. Do NOT report the same bug more than once.
4. If you're not sure if something is a bug or not, feel free to post about it on the bugs forum or let me know.
5. Don't leave the body of the bug report empty. Even if the subject line explains the bug fully, write something in the body of the report. You can even copy/paste the subject line but leaving it blank can make searching for some bugs harder than it should be.
6. Try to make a subject line that is as descriptive as possible. Things like "construction in bugged" or "the TM is not working" are really vague.
7. Do not report multiple bugs in the same report. Different bugs get assigned to different DEVs and get different priorities. Reporting more than 1 bug in one report makes things harder and may result in the bug taking longer to be fixed. Of course, related bugs could, at times, be combined into one report. For example not being able to plant rose and cherry seeds don't require 2 reports but things like "I can't plant rose seeds. And btw, I crash when i try to heal" is no good.
8. Personal char/account problems should be reported to support via email.

This is just a small explanation on how bug fixing works. Hopefully it'll help some players when reporting bugs.

Player reports a bug. The bug goes into the database. A DEV gets assigned to this bug. Once fixed, the bug is marked as fixed and waits for the update to actually be fixed on the live servers (unless it's one that could be hotfixed).

I wanted to give this brief explanation due to the numerous "I reported this bug 3 times now!!!" reports. Most bugs only get fixed when the update is released. It doesn't matter if you reported the bug 2 or 3 times or if it's been 1 or 2 months (assuming there has been no updates in these 2 months). Please follow the following procedure when reporting a bug:

1- Send bug report
2- Wait for update
3- Check if the bug you reported is under the list of fixed bugs.
4- If it is in the fixed list and the bug is still not fixed, send in another report (preferably with the bug # that is shown in the fixed bugs list).
5- Wait for the next update.

Most importantly, do NOT send multiple reports about the bug during the waiting period before the update is released.

I'm making this topic sticky for a while so everyone can see it. I'm also leaving it open for discussion if anyone has any questions or concerns.

Staying on topic here, Siyone later posted a response in another thread regarding bug reports. In this one, Siyone's responding to Lara Orcsplitter's complaint about disappearing items:

GM Siyone posted in two things that sux:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lara Orcsplitter

1. YET AGAIN i move something from BP to crate in bank and it vanishes. This tiem it was 550 iron ingots. Whats the point of gathering resources when all your time and work is wiped out because of badly game written code. Sort this bug out once and for all ffs. ATM theres a not-to-insignificant chance that something vanishes when you move it, which is stupid stupid stupid (and yes i checked all the container in the bank, relogged etc etc etc)

*edit* 5 mins after posting , Black Dragon has a stack of pie vanish in the same way. You gonna DO something about this IWG, or just ignore it ?

---

The problem with this report is that several times a day, many people move things from their backpack to a crate in the bank and the item does not vanish. Testing this just now showed me that I could move an item into and out of a bank crate from my backpack, backpack containers, and other bank crates. So as it stands from these details alone, I can't reproduce the bug. That's not to say that this doesn't happen. It just means that there are circumstances that you and your friend are having that I'm not.

When the devs get a bug like this where they only have a symptom and not the full diagnosis, there's only so much that they can do to "fix" the bug. Some people may remember that the April 5th patch helped a little. Several new checks were introduced to help keep the items from disappearing. But these were based on the same type of report we have here. And while these checks may not have completely eliminated the problem, they do help to prevent it in some cases.

What we need is a clearer understanding of what's going on when an item disappears. You need to include other details. Did you experience a pause in play while the transfer was occurring? Were you dragging an item on top of a container or directly into a slot in the container? Was the container open? What slot in your backpack were you dragging from? Did you have a separate stack of these items somewhere else in your bank? All of these may be factors in determining the cause of this bug.

Remember. The devil is in the details. And we need you to be as detailed as possible when reporting a bug.

So there we have it--two GMs on the same subject. That's rare in itself, don't ya think? But all in all, if we want the bugs to get fixed we need to do more than just complain about the issues. We need to go about reporting bugs the right way. If we do good reporting, then we've done our part. We can only wait for the DEVs to do their's. After all, they're the ones programming, not us.

Answer to the Lag Question

I've been out of it a couple days--not the best thing to be when a DEV comes back from vacation. They usually want to talk about stuff :)

For instance, OneEye did have an answer to what the current culprit to our lag is all about. He was responding to Dark Master, who thought it may be the connection. Well, it's not.

OneEye posted in Just to clear this up:

good guess, but wrong.

the current server lag is happening due to an coding issue called 'garbage collection'. If you want to read a bit about what that means this is a good place to start, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science).

The next update should see a major improvement/elimination of this phenomenon.

So it's not something dealing with the connection (although, we probably shouldn't say that as a definitive "it's not"....it very well could be just one of many issues). Chances are that this will bring more discussion about how the server handles memory (i.e. mobs, bank space, etc.). But for those who love DEV details, this is definitely going to be a talking point.

The Vacation's Over

OneEye's back from vacation. Just in time to watch the fireworks in Austin (or wherever's close to his home). And he announces in so few words just as much:

OneEye posted in yay - I'm back:

Good to be home...

I kid you not. That's all he says (for now). Fanfare? I guess we'll have to wait for the update.

Yes, we'll even blog that.

I had a bit of hesitation before posting this. But seeing as it's in the Official announcements...and because I'm a little curious how often this will happen...I figured I'd blog this too. So yeah...database maintenance.

FujiQ posted in Database Maintenance:

Hi Everyone,

We had to do some database maintenance this morning, but it took longer than expected. The servers are back up and running now. Sorry for not announcing this earlier and for any inconvenience it may have caused you.

Hope you had a nice break from AE in the mean time :)

Sincerely,

FujiQ
Marketing Manager

It'll take less than 5 minutes.

FujiQ's starting to show a little of her marketing colors by asking the players to participate in a small survey.

FujiQ posted in 5 minute survey:

Hi Everyone!

I'd like to invite you to participate in a short marketing survey. The survey will take only a few minutes but will be extremely helpful.


Click here to take the survey, and be sure to pass it along to your AE friends!

It doesn't take too long to complete. It's completely anonymous and it's only 5 questions.

Get them while supplies last!

A while back, in myReporters Announced in the First Newsletter post, we got a little surprise. A Summer bonus was announced. Well, all good things must come to an end, eventually :)

FujiQ posted in End of June:

The end of June is drawing near which means the token special is about to expire! Take advantage of this deal before Sunday, July 1st to get the 10% token bonus on all token purchases made through the Iron Will Games website.

Our international players will want to plan accordingly for the difference in time zones. IWG will be using CDT time. To calculate the time for your specific time zone, visit this website.

Now's a good time to stock up on tokens. You might as well get some while the getting's good.

It's a sneak peek of...what is that?

No, it's not a slow news day (relatively) ;) We even got a sneak peek at some things in the update. TheTyrant came through with his 3DStudio render...but...well, you'll see.

FujiQ posted in Update Sneak Peek:

Tyrant pulled through for you guys and was able to make a little sneak peek preview of the update. Be sure to thank him for putting this together! Remember: What you see on this preview is a render in 3D studio, so the content will look different in game. Enjoy!

Do yourself a favor and click on the original post link to view it at full resolution.

There's a lot going on in that picture...and the darkness is definitely not helping it. But from what I can see, there's a 3-headed dog, a black beast, and a couple of new winged things there in the picture. Clarity, no.

Tyrant does help us out a little in the response thread, though:

TheTyrant posted in update sneak preview:

I was working on a dark angel/succubus monster, but i couldnt get the female face and body right. So I'm still working on it. Those "gargoyles" are pit fiends that i made, there are 3, i only pictured a 80% of the mobs, and like 10% of the items. There is alot more.

That really does help sort out what all's going on there. And we did get at least one new type of monster--pit fiends.

Sure enough, some people took the render to be the Gospel truth on what the game will really look like. Hence my little comment in Okay..so maybe a peek? :) about 3D renders and real game art. Remember, folks, the game will render it much differently.

No more server restarts!

A little joy for those who hate the server restarts.

GM FujiQ posted in About Lag (updated):

***UPDATE***

We have found a better fix for the lag so there will be no need for server resets every Monday as previously announced. We are still monitoring the servers to make sure that everything is running smoothly.

Please keep in mind that lag is not always a problem coming from our side. Some players may find that their lag is much worse than other players. More information about lag and what causes it to differ can be found here.

You have to appreciate the link to the Blues News guide to lag. If you're like me, you'll stop after that point where it lists what kind of connection you can expect based on your ping. Though without a way to get your ping to the server (the servers eat ping requests, after all), the only way to get a decent idea would be to use a route tracer like Ping Plotter or pathping.

So here's the real question. Is this something the DEVs can hotfix or will we have to wait for the update to come? Or, is it something that is half and half? Is it even that "Golden egg" solution to end all lag? ;) Don't hold your breath, folks. But any improvement in lag will definitely make playing a lot easier to deal with.

Okay..so maybe a peek? :)

Well, I was cruising the forums and saw this little tidbit from TheTyant. Originally, he posted on the original preview thread

I could give a sneak peak of some of the art for the update.
Maybe if the players say pretty pretty please.

Well, I sorta ignored it. After all, TheTyrant seems to be the more joking DEV, compared to the other three. Apparently, he was serious :)

TheTyrant posted in Pleeeeeeeeease Tyrant!:

I worked on a buffed taser shot for you guys, but it might have to wait til monday. The one i made was way to dark, and i will work on it this weekend. I hope you guys will enjoy

Now, keep in mind that Tyrant works on the art. The last time I remember some teaser art from him was when we got a preview of the valentine's day armor. And while the armor was absolutely beautiful, it was a 3D studio render. Great visuals, but don't expect it to look exactly like that when the game renders it. Anyone else remember the topless women walking around? ;)

But hey! New stuff, new stuff! Yay :)

Small Blog Update

If you notice, I try to put a label on each post to try and keep things a little organized. I.e. if you want to see just "Official Announcements", you click on the tag and it just shows you posts that were officially announced.

Well, in the beginning, I originally had an idea for just two labels: Current Rumblings and Past Rumbling. The idea was that current rumblings were more current events and past rumblings were tidbits about things said in the past. But, as it turned out, all of my blog posts (with the exception of one) turned out to need the "Current Rumblings" label. And personally, that kind of defeated the purpose of having the label at all.

I've since gone back and redone the labels by the DEV or GM who said it. As I was going through it, I realized that this is truly the way to go with labelling. So I hope the new feature will make this a lot easier to read. :)

There is no preview!

Venant started a thread asking for a preview of the upcomming update and it got quite a few responses. But ultimately, no preview came. FujiQ tells us why:

GM FujiQ posted in Update Preview: Request to Devs:

aww that's no fun! It's like getting a sneak peek at your presents before you open them!

On the realistic side, though, there'd be no way to give you a sneak peek anyways since OE is out of town.

Remember, OneEye's on a European vacation (lucky guy :p). I'm sure many people were expecting him back this week so that's maybe why there's a few threads on the forum asking where our mono-optic DEV has gone.

OneEye's absence aside, there will always be someone who wants a peek at *something* in the update. Curiosity is definitely part of the human condition.

By the way, DevSaid has been getting a few mentions. Tempester's posted it on the forums under Ashen Empires News Center (AE Report #2!) and even FujiQ's given us an honorable mention in this post. I guess this is a project that should probably be stuck to, no? :)

Yes, Virginia. They know about the lag.

A little announcement about the lag:

GM FujiQ posted in About Lag:

Hey Everyone!

We've been listening to your forum posts and know that the lag has reached epically unbearable dimensions recently. First let me say thanks for being so patient!

We have identified the problem and are working to correct it. We hope to have the fix for the lag in when the update comes. In the mean time, we'll be doing a manual server reset every Monday morning at around 9am CST.

If the lag starts to become a serious problem, please let us know by sending an email to support@ashenempires.com.

Thanks again!

Sincerely,

FujiQ
Marketing Manager

Now, I'm not going to pretend I'm not a little pessimistic. But if only because we'll see an improvement but not the improvement people thought it would be. Thing is, every update has addressed the lag in some aspect. But the lag hasn't disappeared completely. And while the DEVs are making progress, I don't think we'll see "due praise" until there's absolutely no lag at all.

Personally, I'll take what I can get. Happy to see they've identified another cause and are going to nail it. ;)

Volunteer Profiles Released

Have you ever wondered what they look for when they hire a new GM? What about VWC? Or forum mods? Well, now those questions have been answered.

GM Rauric posted in Ashen Empires Job Profiles are now live!:

Hello everyone!

Today we take another step towards transparency by publishing both the profile for every volunteer position available as well as the selection process involved. It is our hope that this answers some of your questions and perhaps even awakens some curiosity in our ever increasing community volunteer force.

The profiles can be downloaded as .pdf here:

• Tech Wizard
• Community Moderator
• Valinor Welcoming Committee
• Quality Assurance
• Game Moderator

A big thanks to GM Siyone for compiling this information for our knowledge database.

As usual, please feel free to discuss, give feedback and ask any questions that still remain on the Community Blackboard.

What I think is really of particular interest is the Quality Assurance position. After reading it, I'm under the impression that this goes above and beyond what has traditionally been termed as "QA"--namely that in the past, players simply tested and reported bugs during major expansions. Now it seems that IWG is actively interested in recruiting people to look directly at the bugs they get. This could be potentially dangerous. Let's hope the selection process is tight-fisted.

Anyone else find this disturbing?

As I thought, it didn't take long for some people to take the news delay in a not so good way. That happens in these games, so I'm sure the DEVs are used to it by now. But I kept reading on in that player's response post (mostly because the OneEye was actively responding to the community--something that most MMOs don't do anymore) and came across this nugget:

OneEye posted in The postponed update:

we have hired a full time marketing person and she will be doing all the announcments about future updates. You will never hear another word from me about them.

Of course, he's talking about FujiQ. And honestly, I'm not too worried about having another person dedicated to being the liaison between busy DEVs and uppity community. If anything, I'm hoping it doesn't turn out to be another Obi Wan.

But it may just be that I'm worried about change. I don't want to see less of the DEVs interacting with us. To be honest, it's refreshing to see a DEV respond to criticism both well and well-deserved. I'm not saying OneEye should take on a Derek Smart persona. But it's nice to see a DEV not take it on the chin when the argument's really stupid.

It's a Wedding!

It's already been hinted at from the previous announcements. But Lotor's getting hitched and IWG wants you to be there.

GM Wintergreen posted in Lotors Wedding Saturday 6/9/07:

Join us at the wedding area of Lotor's Summer Palace Saturday 6/9/07 for King Lotor's Wedding.

Server Times:
Heroes - 1:00pm CDT (20:00 GMT)
Legends - 3:00pm CDT (22:00 GMT)

Rumblings are that they wanted to do this with the update (see previous entries), but with OneEye going out of town they decided to do the bits that didn't require code changes. At the very least, it's an official event. And that's something we haven't had in a long time.

Update postponed indefinitely...

Well, I get home looking forward to an announcement about how the update's going. Instead, I get a bit of a downer...it seems that technical issues are really hurting the update going in.

GM Wintergreen posted in Update postponed - sorry folks - wedding is on:

Due to scheduling and some other background technical issues, the update that was promised for June 4th has been postponed. The new date will not be announced until we are 100% sure that it can go in without a hitch, but we are pretty sure we are looking at another month. We’re very sorry to push this back especially since you all have been so excited to see the new content. Please bear with us.

The wedding of King Lotor and Lady Anne will go forward this Saturday. Expect some really cool serverwide events in early July as well. We will announce server times for the wedding later today.

Naturally, I think we can expect some backlash from the community (there always seems to be someone(s) who think delays in an update are right sinful).

Luckily, though, OneEye did have a response to why this delay was happening:

OneEye posted in The postponed update:

It's pretty simple. I've added tons of new content for this update and next Monday I am going out of town for a few weeks for a planned vacation. It wouldn't be fair (to the rest of IWG) for us to throw an update up and me not be here if bad stuff hits the fan. So we are delaying until I get back. We tried to hit the date of 6/4, but due to several factors we missed it. You can blame that on me. I tried to add too much new stuff.

We are still moving ahead with the Lotor wedding and the storyline that will follow it.

So, long story short, they don't want to push the update while the main Designer is out of town. This is actually a pretty good thing, since OneEye's the guy in charge of new quests and items. If he's out of town doing his own thing, and it turns out that a new quest or item has a major bug about it, we wouldn't see anything until he got back. Could you live a week with a major bug in the NEW stuff?