Grab Bag - September 14, 2007

Q. From the BAF post: 'If you are an active player and have already referred at least one friend, then you will receive a free month of Dark Age of Camelot automatically." Does this mean if I have referred 3 and received one free month already, will I be now receiving another 2 months free?

A. If you already received a free month prior to today, those bonus credits (3) wouldn't be on your account anymore. It is only unclaimed bonuses starting Thursday, September 13.

Q. I play on Tintagel. Awhile ago, I had my name nerfed because it didn't fit into the RP setting. When we get clustered, can I get my old name back?

A. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Name changes are only made if the name is a violation of the user agreement. Otherwise, it's against our policy to allow name changes.

Q. If there is no one left in a guild due to inactivity and several people re-activate their accounts, how does the auto promotion work? Does it take the first activated account and promote to rank 0? How long does it normally take to see a promotion?

A. According to The Man, 'The autopromoter bases its promotion off of the highest rank character that has been online within the last 14 days at each point checked. If more than one character of the same rank has been online, then the most recent of those characters is promoted.

The logic is that any leader is better than no leader, and a guild has the ability to set its own succession (to some extent) through guild ranks. If two characters have the same rank, there's really no way to determine which would be the better guild leader, but at least the one online most recently has the better chance of being around.

The system scans '100% idle' guilds (guilds with no active members at all for the last 30 days) every 10 days. It gives 14 days notice to any existing GMs that a promotion is about to happen, so the promotion should occur 14-25 days from your return.

For example, if the auto promotion process begins on 9/13, promotion should occur on 9/27 as long as there are active characters from 9/13 - 9/27.'

Q. I checked my account status per the news on the Herald this morning and I see I have 1 Total referrals, 1 confirmed referral, 2 required until next free month and 0 total free months earned. Date last free month was awarded is Never. Is this change not yet effective?

A. The change is effective now but we're encountering a display issue that doesn't represent the billing status. We're working on a fix for this asap.

Q. I was wondering what will happen to the Killibury and Tintagel servers when they are clustered. Will Killibury become RP, or Tintagel become normal?

A. Before I answer, I want to explain that this one of the main reasons we had such a hard time making the decision to cluster. We understand how important the role playing aspect is to so many players, and we really wanted to be able to maintain this aspect. The problem was that the population was very low on Tintagel, and we also wanted to continue to provide an exciting RvR experience, since that is the major feature of Dark Age of Camelot. In the end, the decision was made to allow the cluster. We added the /roleplay flag to help roleplayers keep a sense of community. This will require that Tintagel is made a 'normal' ruleset rather than a role play ruleset.

Q. After the icons were originally updated, I downloaded the old icon sets. Now with 1.90 having gone live, I see my old icon sets are gone. Is it possible to reset these back to the old icons, or are we now stuck with the new ones? Sorry, but all glitter with the new icons makes individual spell or style icons nearly impossible for me to distinguish at a quick glance.

A. This is probably because the interface reverted back to Atlantis. He can go back to the Options at the character selection screen and choose "Custom" to see his downloaded icons again.

Q. Do the tools granted for crafting quest work with siegecraft? If not, can they be made to?

A.The Bearded Wonder says: No, each quest's reward is geared to the specific tradeskill. For example, the Tailoring skinning knife only works for Tailoring. The good news is, thanks to your question, we're looking into making new quests with tool rewards to support Siegecrafting.

Q. If the dragon campaign is over why is Huginfel still getting raided and why do cuuld and gole come to help gjal in the fight now that the storyline has ended?

A. The Dragon Lady: The continued raids were a bug that we fixed very shortly after this feedback was submitted, and there shouldn't be any further raids on those three towns.

The three-dragon encounter was held over for a while to allow people to finish the campaign. Eventually it will be a triggered encounter, with the solo dragon encounter becoming the norm again.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Anyone who keeps up on Warhammer news already knows that Richard Duffek has parted ways with Mythic. Richard did some work on Camelot, too, taking over the Grab Bag and other duties of mine while I was away on maternity leave. We wish Richard well in his future endeavors.

The next Roundtable Road Trip is going to be October 13 in sunny Orange, CA. If you live nearby and would like to meet up with some devs and our very own Joanne, be sure to RSVP so we order enough munchies to go around.

School has started and that usually means a small exodus from the Team Lead program. We have openings in Hibernia and Albion now and we're taking applications. Come and brainstorm with devs and other fans of the game. Send in your application today!

The devs are hard at work this week planning and working on 1.90a to implement some code changes to address certain concerns. We know the past week has been a roller coaster ride with all of the siege tower changes and Heretic class changes. We want to make sure that everything is working in a balanced, reasonable way and we're working toward that now.

The Bring a Friend Bonus Program has been reduced from three to one! Now, you can earn a free month of play for every ONE friend you refer. If you are an active player and have already referred at least one friend, then you will receive a free month of Dark Age of Camelot automatically. Read here for more details.

In last week's Grab Bag I made a joke that adding an O to the end of a mob's name made it Italian. Some players were offended by that. It was a JOKE, everyone! i didn't mean to upset anyone, and if anything it was making fun of Americans who don't know how to speak Italian. Anyway, if I offended you I am truly sorry.

Those of you who guess that this week's Patch Notes song was 'Jump' by Van Halen, grats! You get a cookie. Have a great weekend everyone. I'm going to go find me a hot fudge sundae.