After our last news we received emails from 117 players. Finally we have evaluated them and sorted them by categories, starting with the most mentioned topics.
Here are your top 10 topics:

1) Completion of the classes (42%)
2) Clarification about the future realm abilities and patch level (21%)
3) Making the frontiers more interesting (stronger keeps, more levelspots, ...) (16%)
4) Re-testing of the archery damage (16%)
5) Re-testing of the twohanded damage (15%)
6) Missing market explorers (housing) (11%)
7) Implementation of classic dungeons (9%)
8) Alternative skins for items wanted (9%)
9) Viper being too strong for the current setting (7%)
10) Implementation of Shrouded Isles (7%)

The topics are marked as bold, our comments on them are italic.


Classes

- Completing the classes (Cabalist, Necromancer, Bonedancer, Animist, Enchanter)
This is indeed something that should have happened long time ago. We will focus on this now. (The order isn't fixed, but depends on the availability of certain developers.)


Realm abilities

- Missing statements regarding the realm abilities (new/old)
As you can see, there are a lot of different opinions about this within the community. It's exactly the same in the staff. However we are all aware of the problems caused by this, for example players being unsure about what to do with their characters. We will discuss this again to find a final solution soon.

- Still some bugs in realm abilities (Ichor of the Deep, Static Tempest, Theurgist RR5, Reflex Attack, ...)
Whether they get fixed or not depends on the decision of the ra system we're going to use in the future. It would be wasted time to spend hours fixing them now, if we'd switch to old realm abilities soon.

- Viper is too strong for the current setting
- Charge (RA) is too strong for the current setting
- Physical Defense is too strong for the current setting
The power of these realm abilities is caused by the imbalance which we have in our current setting. The realm abilities we're having are from the new frontiers, a ToA era. On the other hand we do not have ToA stuff (like 3000hp tanks or overcap-attributes) that would normally be a counterbalance.


Setting

- Missing statements about the aimed patchlevel
Unfortunately this topic is, like the ones before, dependent on the decision about the realm ability system. (As you can see now, this is not an easy issue since it has influence on many other topics. This is why we did not yet simply say A or B.)

- Casters are too weak compared to tanks in the current setting
This is a really general statement. Casters do at least suffer from missing castspeed bonuses, but they do have the advantage of other realm abilities like Physical Defense. This is a topic that should be reviewed later on. In case we'd decide for the old realm abilities, this topic might be obsolete.

- Buffcharges and -potions should be removed
It is indeed somehow paradoxical to forbid buffbots on the one hand and throwing stat-enhancing charges and potions into the game. We tried to find a solution for this, the tradeoff was to cut down the buff values. We might discuss this again.

- Casters suffered the most from the charge nerf
That's true. We'll check this again.

- Instant teleporters between borderkeeps and capitol cities/housing should be re-implemented
We'll discuss that again.

- The power (mana) pool is too small
Needs to be tested.

- Nearsight is too strong
Nearsight always had a duration of 2 minutes on live servers. During a late patch, new spells were introduced to cure the nearsight effect. We do not want a custom solution for this.


Calculations

- Archery damage too low
- Twohand damage too low
- Mob damage too low
- Bladeturn gets penetrated too easy by highlevel mobs
- Bolt damage too low
- Different bleedings should stack
- Blockchance calculation flawed
All these issues have to be tested.


New implementations

- Classic dungeons
We have been thinking about this. Although we are lacking reliable information about mob spawns and loot. If we have collected enough, it should not be a problem to grant access to these zones.

- Shrouded Isles
Would be amazing, but currently there is too much left to do in the already existing regions. Later!

- Classic battlegrounds instead of NF battlegrounds
This was under discussion lately and we don't see any problems here. The only thing that's still not clear is the level range. We need some more time to discuss this. If we start working on the implementation, we'll let you know.


Mobs

- Missing pathing system

- Missing stats on mobs (buffs and debuffs are not working properly)

- Respawn timers for mobs are too high
A growing community needs more mobs for sure. We'll see what we can do.

- Camp bonus not live-like

- Tajendi 2: Mob resistances against magic damage are too high

- Missing spells on the empyriean elders

- Levels should be higher, e.g. in Avalon Marsh
We are planning to implement the classic starting locations later. When players start their journey in Avalon Marsh, they will need those mobs.

- Pet speed too low
Not sure which pets are meant here. A detailed report would be helpful.

- Bosses should drop at least one item
Our worldbuilders will take a look. We agree that it is frustrating to organize a raid and even getting one item.

- More levelspots in the frontiers needed


RvR

- Harder (roaming) keep guards

- Keeps are too weak

- Keeps need to be made more attractive

- Keeps should have more influence on relic guards

- RvR tasks should have higher rewards
We'll see what we can do to encourage more players joining the battles.

- Global siege messages for better keep defense

- Stealthers should be able to seen for their group


Housing

- Missing hasteners

- Missing horse routes

- Missing market explorers

- Prices are too high
The prices are still lower than on the official servers and will not be lowered. If you cannot afford a big house, choose a smaller one.


Items/Crafting

- More loot, worth to be farmed, should be added

- Crafting grey items should have a 100% chance of success

- Missing different weapon and armor skins ("reskins"), craftable
This is an interesting topic. We had the idea to bring some more skins into the game. We'll figure out what will happen.

- Characters should be able to learn more than one profession

- Epic armors should be usable under level 50
We'll see what happens here when the epic quests are completely implemented.

- Alchemy crafted items should have 95% sellback value instead of 50%

- Spellcrafting: Chance to fail and explode is too high

- Crafting speed bonus for capturing keeps
We decided not to provide these bonuses anymore since they used to make players leaving RvR for crafting instead of defending what they've got.

- Crafting should be adjusted to live-like (no more inlays needed)

- Items for special alchemy should be dropped in stacks of 5


Styles

- Flexible weapons: Asp should have more range

- Scythe: Nature's Shield is not working

- Hand to Hand: Style effects missing

- Leftaxe: Aurora Borealis still has a wrong info displayed for Shadowblades (DD-Proc)

- Celtic Dual: Only Blademasters should get the sidestun


Misc

- We need more events
Events are always a nice experience, but it's always a lot of work to prepare them. In addition, currently we aren't that many game masters and therefore we focus on support and bugfixes. This might change in the future of course.

- Penalties on abuse and cheats should be higher and abusers should be traced even more

- More quests needed, especially epic quests

- Auctioneers should order the offers by expiration
There have been many bugs in the past and the auctioneers won't get much more attention. We're planning to remove them as soon as the market explorers are working fine.

- Horse bardings missing

- /gc demote for offline players

- Better integration of the community for bugfix issues, more transparency
We're always trying, but unless you apply as game masters, the only thing you can do is writing excellent bugreports and perform tests.

- Experience system is too restrictive for high level differences in groups
The question is: What is a high level difference? We have seen differences of +-10 levels in groups working fine. Of course at some point there is a penalty to the experience gain.

- Experience bonuses should be re-implemented for battlegrounds

- Mail system to message other players when they are offline

- Missing chat channel: /region, /area

- Tajendi should be accessible with less than 5 players

- Tajendi: It should be possible to invite others to join the instance later (replacements)

- Buffbots should be allowed
No way!

- Bugs in starter quests prevents players from finishing them

- Special bonus for the underdog realm

- /played is broken

- /ignore is not working for /lfg

- LFG window missing


Support/Website

- Staffmembers don't reply on IRC often
Even staff members have real lives. If you need support, the correct contact point is appealing in the game (/appeal) or asking in the forum where all supporters can take a look.

- Website missing a lot of useful information

- More moderators needed for forum and irc


Thank you for participating. We will try to solve as many of these issues as we can.

Your Uthgard-team.

- Nearsight is too strong
Nearsight always had a duration of 2 minutes on live servers. During a late patch, new spells were introduced to cure the nearsight effect. We do not want a custom solution for this.


Cure nearsight was given through the Perfecter ML2 ability way before 1.80 ^^.

It's a shame you're still set on degenerating the server to 1.65 further creating more imbalances and issues for yourselves to deal with. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Thanks for the detailed explanations Nayru. I really like that Staff is working on completing the classes now.

A question: How did people deal with Nearsight at version 1.65 (the last patch before ToA)? They had to purge it or what?

purge.. and the fact that most people thought it was useless and it hardly got used

player attitude/daoc information is alot different now than it was 1.65 on live, so going back to that patch for *roleplay* reasons is just silly imo

Thanks for posting this. I'm glad people will have a place to look when they wonder what the priorities are for the server.

Although I will be sad when the BD gets the healer pets as everyone will roll one and everyone who hasn't will cry OP. Oh well. I'd be fine with all the other pets besides the healers, tbh.

Rector wrote:A question: How did people deal with Nearsight at version 1.65 (the last patch before ToA)? They had to purge it or what?

NS was underrated back then, and barely ever used. When people realised it's potential, of course it was balanced out by giving counters ^^

oohh OLD RAs would be fine

- Buffcharges and -potions should be removed
It is indeed somehow paradoxical to forbid buffbots on the one hand and throwing stat-enhancing charges and potions into the game. We tried to find a solution for this, the tradeoff was to cut down the buff values. We might discuss this again.

- Buffcharges and -potions should be removed

Would mean: No more annoying bufforgy for soloplayers. But I hope healpotions (health, endu, mana) and all reactives would stay in the game.

Rector wrote:

- Buffcharges and -potions should be removed

Would mean: No more annoying bufforgy for soloplayers. But I hope healpotions (health, endu, mana) would stay in the game.

I think so, its normal today die a semi full buffed assasin on rvr, 60+str cons or similar are too strong to solo and non buff bot server like this

You guys are awesome! Thank you for listening to us. This is very encouraging!

Rector wrote:

- Buffcharges and -potions should be removed

Would mean: No more annoying bufforgy for soloplayers. But I hope healpotions (health, endu, mana) and all reactives would stay in the game.

That would be really bad for group balance. Hib should run casters/hybrid groups without any possibility to get pom or spec AF ? I don't think they need more nerfs tbh.

- Still some bugs in realm abilities (Ichor of the Deep, Static Tempest, Theurgist RR5, Reflex Attack, ...)
Whether they get fixed or not depends on the decision of the ra system we're going to use in the future. It would be wasted time to spend hours fixing them now, if we'd switch to old realm abilities soon.

The problem is that, even if you decide for old RAs I guess it will take a while to get them implemented... which means a very long time playing with unbalancing bugs, while some of those fixes have been waited for years already. And I don't think they would cost a huge amount of time for fixing since there are already detailed bugreports.

Glad to read the classes will be completed though ^^ I just hope the patch level won't be lowered...

Rector wrote:

- Buffcharges and -potions should be removed

Would mean: No more annoying bufforgy for soloplayers. But I hope healpotions (health, endu, mana) and all reactives would stay in the game.

yes! i agree 100%! (infi here^^)


the only problem is that rangers have self buffs!

Hunters, too. That's not a problem

Will more answers be edited into it later or is it all you got to say for now? I want to know more