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.

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.

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.

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?

June 4th becomes June 5th 6th

Keeping in classic AE history, the scheduled update lives on a special "Dev Time". But the good news about the delay? Now we know what those "Book quests" are. And we even see that wishes for first aid and leadership becoming epool skills have been granted. Yay Devs!

OneEye posted in 6/4 update delayed till 6/5.:

The servers will be coming down at ~9am CST tomorrow morning for an update.

The update will include:

-several new creatures
-a new large dungeon
-new quests
-new book quests (like the rock troll quest)
-New store item - masks that allow you to change into creatures
-bug fixes
-first aid and leadership will be epoolable.
-further server updates to help alleviate the lag issue.

I know, my post a little late (i.e. this post was made 2 hrs before the servers are scheduled to go down). But more will follow as I have time to read the forums.

Edit: Wintergreen made a correction to the original post:

UPDATE: 6/5/07 - We had to push this until tomorrow. Sorry for the churn folks.

-WG

Just a little more of a wait. After all, the last "update" was tokens, and that was back in March. No, hotfixes don't count. :P

Some things to look forward to in the next update.

Ask and ye shall receive. Finally, we get some details about what's going to be in the next update.

OneEye posted in New Update Wish List:

This update isn't going to be of the major orb/race changing variety. It will have:

• Bug fixes
• more taskmasters
• more items
• more monsters
• new dungeon(s)
• more quests
• more book quests

I am also thinking about a few new spells, but i am running out of time, so those might have to wait.

it will also have a few new store purchases, including a few sets of masks to let you change into various creatures. masks will only change your looks.

The[re] is also a story twist coming with Lotor getting married and all...

Perhaps this means that all the taskmasters will be working now. I'm interested to know what he means by "more book quests" myself. But this really looks like a really worthwhile update if you're into hunting, tradeskilling, or questing.

It still makes me wonder, though...what are we going to see in terms of the big Warden discussion?

Well, that's one detail about the update.

A lot of my friends who hang out in Meroven complain about the Chaos Knights there attacking them. I've seen a few screenshots about it and I thought it was funny--the Knights there had Good Alignment. And, naturally, they started acting like Good Guards.

Well, Fugi posted about this and got a response from one of the DEVs.

OneEye posted in If you know theres a problem...:

It will be fixed with the update on 6/4. That isnt something that we can hotfix.

There's lots of rumors going around about what's going to be in this update. Hair, Quest Logs, new weapons, nerfs to old armors, new armors, etc. To be honest, I've found that it's a lot easier to just sit back and expect nothing. That way, when things don't happen, I'm not mad that they didn't happen. But, hey..whatcha gonna do. At least on this detail, you've got something to look forward to.

Update, June 4

OneEye posted in Next Update:

As an FYI, we will be doing an update on June 4th. More info will be forthcoming in the near future.

Shortly after that, theTyrant posted:

And I must say, its going to be awesome ;)

which probably means that their sticking to their terms about what an "update" truly is. For those who haven't heard:

• a "patch" is a general bug fix
• an "update" is a patch + some minor additional content (new npc's or quests)
• an "expansion" is a patch + major additions (npc's, quests, landmasses, towns)

DemonSpire qualifies as an "Update", since no new landmasses or skills were added (well, except mage weapons). Talazar's Revenge and Sands of Creation are the only expansions to Ashen Empires.

Expect some downtime next week. Don't try logging off at the last second ;)