April news!



Spring arrived and the Staff has awaken from it's winter sleep!

So it is time for some news again! A lot has happened since last time we announced something so there are some infos we want to share with you!

Let's get started!


Staff changes

Atasi has decided to retire from the staff due to RL issues. A very sad loss but we thank Atasi for his work and his share of opinions in our internal discussions. They will be missed for sure.

On the brighter side of staff changes, we have recruited a few new GMs.

Abydos, has joined us as the first US GM and we are happy to announce that we are very glad for this addition to the staff as this give us the opportunity to support the US community a lot better. He has been an enthusiastic DAoC player since early beta and was a major contributor on VNBoards with over 45000 posts. As we have already seen, he is a great addition to our team and will help to push Uthgard forward.

Storm, has joined us too and is our second US-TimeZone GM, he is still undergoing training so be gentle with him.

On the european side of the staff we have recruited Casinii to join the staff, he is brand new so once again please be gentle to him. Casinii speaks both English and German. (I hope it is obvious that our US GMs do not speak German, so if you have need for support in the late evenings, or US primetime as some would call it, then please make sure to appeal or callgm in English.) He was a volunteer on EU live servers, organized events on live and worked closely with official GM's.
Casinii is a creative person who likes to create events. So you will most likely see him team up with Eleras in creating some exciting events for you!

Also we have gotten ourselves a new developer called Ahrimaan, Ahrimaan is still not up to speed due to some personal issues, but he should be brought well into our organisation and start fixing some bugs. His knowledge in C# is excellent (its his RL job) and we hope to get through our open issues a bit faster in the future.


Recruiting

The Uthgard staff is still recruiting! So if you have decent knowledge of DAoC, want to help to make Uthgard a success and work with us in improving the server please write an application and send it to either Nayru and Blue on the forums.

We also have room for more developers, however please understand that to join as a developer you most likely start as a GM first, learn Uthgard internals and won't see any Uthgard code in that time. As developer you should have a feel for quality and experience in C# or Java. Taking you as a developer is a sign of trust, so you should be aware of that.


Market Explorers

Finally! Long awaited and now they came to Uthgard! Currently you are still not able to buy items at the market explorers. This feature might be implemented later in the future, however at the moment it is not a priority.
Please let us know if you find any bugs with them.

On this note we will start phasing out our auctioneers and send them back to their home and family for retirement. They made a good job as replacement in the time they were here.


RvR revamp

It has begun! We have started making baby steps in revamping the rvr zones, first by making mob spawning faster in emain. This will be a step by step process and you will slowly see all zones get an overhaul. Also we have plans on changing the xp bonus system to make it easier to understand where each bonuses apply.

RvR dungeons, are being implemented as we speak too and we hope to have these up and running as soon as possible. These should give a good leveling / farming place within the RvR world and bring some PvE oriented people into our RvR zones, just like DF does at the moment.

Regarding keeps we have planned some changes. These you will eventually see when they get implemented, but overall you will see an effort in making keep raids more attractive and for keeps to be a bigger part in the RvR scene.

But why not spoil some of the secrets:

Keeps will be looked at regarding the influence on relic keeps. Details of this is again a bit uncertain however they will be similar to how it worked in the classic areas with keeps spawning guards at the relic keep. Details like how many guards, etc. is still unknown at this point though.

Also we will work on a dynamic port timer system which influence the port timer according to how many keeps your realm owns. This should also improve the desire for taking keeps. How much it will influence the port timer is an unknown as of now.

A support line system like seen in NF will be worked on too, so it will be possible to port to keeps directly. The full details of this is still in the work. So feel free to share your thoughts of how this could work out best.

Also we will be looking at our port system, to make it more attractive to go in RvR in the late evening hours where action might be slowing down. This will most propably result in a lower port timer compared to primetime hours.

We will be looking at tasks too, we will look at implementing realm tasks, and dynamic timers on tasks so tasks can be run through quicker with low population in RvR zones similar to how our port timers will work.

Many of these changes are still in the blueprints and might be tweaked a bit during the implementation process, however the goal at the moment is to get these things implemented asap so you can start to feel the effect.


Old RA

Bad news here I am afraid. Due to a major setback in the way they were being implemented, we are basically back to start regarding the implementation of old RAs. We will of course look into getting these fixed as soon as possible however please do not ask for a release date soon. To be a bit more detailed we had some issues with old RAs overriding our current RAs which was not intended. Also we want to make both, the old and new RA's coexist in code, so if it doesnt work out as thought, there would be a fallback possible. On top of that Nayru, the main developer of the RA's, is currently quite busy in RL.

This of course is still high priority for us! At the same time you also notice that Uthgard is plagued by old annoying bugs which most of you want to have fixed too. So we have to keep a good balance which is not easy sometimes.


Poison change

This has been discussed a lot on the forums, in IRC and in game. And we decided to follow the live version of this which results in only assassins being able to use poisons. We hope this gives a better RvR experience and a lowered bar for what is required for going out to RvR. This was done for 2 reasons:

1. To lower the bar for what was required for participating in RvR
2. To handle an exploit in which a player was able to get benefits through switching between 2 characters.

Buff barrel / charges

In future buffs will be limited to 2 max at a time. We could write a huge essay of why this will be done, however to keep it simple we felt this was needed to be on par with our no buffbot policy. Players who do not have buffs should not run full buffed (or close to) without grouping a character with buffs.

WARNING: APRIL FOOLS INCOMING!
We do however acknowledge that alchemists will suffer from this and we plan to implement some new potions to make alchemy more attractive. These potions will increase stat caps by 30 for 2 minutes.
WARNING: APRIL FOOLS FINISHED

Buffshears

Will be implemented as they were in 1.69 when we revert to this patchsetting. No custom solutions will be made. Until then do not expect a bugfix regarding this issue. Yes, this means damage components on shears too. If any player has a good source of the damage output on shears, please support us with this information.


Tajendi Items

Will stay as they are. We will however look into improving the loot of Legion to make him more attractive.


Shrouded isles

Is on hold as we have a huge load of mob / item / quest implementation at our desk. However when the RvR revamp is done and the workload is reduced we will take this up again. SI is a huge but also fun challenge for us and we hope to see this on Uthgard. However we are short on (wo/)men who are willing to create thousands of mobs, quests and items. (So apply for worldbuild if you want to see SI sooner!)


Kind regards

Your Uthgard staff

Very nice news!

The poison change is a good one!
Welcome to all new GMs/Dev

I hope it's not an april fool

Yepee !

This is just to great to be true

Since you didn't post any news latley and it seemed that you didn't make any progress, this news will hit like a Bomb.

I have to say I'm pretty amazed and want to thank the Staff for this piece of work!

Thanks for the News! Looks like you guys have your hand full, kuddos!

Now, what are the new medaillons for???

Finalement wrote:This is just to great to be true

Since you didn't post any news latley and it seemed that you didn't make any progress, this news will hit like a Bomb.

I have to say I'm pretty amazed and want to thank the Staff for this piece of work!

Well, not to be Johnny Raincloud here, but the news pretty much shows little to no progress and is, again, full of promises of things that should come, one day, hopefully soon. So in that respect it is good to hear that the staff is still working, but from a news-point-of view it is somewhat disappointing. Still hoping all the announced changes will be realized in the not too distant future *fingers crossed*

The buffpot change is great, however could you please explain these new cap increase potions in a little more detail? Will these pots also fall in the 2-buff limit? What stat cap exactly are they raising? The SC +75 cap, or the base buff cap or the spec buff cap? IMO the additional potion is not needed.

Oh, and WHEN exactly will the pot changes be implemented?

Hi, nice to have some news again and welcome on board for the new staff, good to see you ramp up a bit but sad to see that the main developer seem to be inactive Thanks for the statement regarding Old RA, now there is at least no hope to see it in near future, but we can plan with it which is also quiet important. What do you mean with 2 Buffs from Barrels / Charges, is it like 2 of each or 2 in sum?
Regards and keep it up

To the portsystem: sounds good
buffpots/charge limiting: top!

Well, I hope some of the other news are april fools (especially OldRAs)..

We will see (as fast as posible I hope )

no info about DT fixed? anytime soon please?

Thank you so much for the update! It really does make it feel like big and GOOD changes are incoming!

Gratz to the new staff...we will be gentle I promise.

Well at least I will .

SO happy about buffpot changes! And all OF changes!!

WONDERFUL NEWS!!

Ok, if the medaillons are an April Fool's joke, you got me I got in a fg of 8 and Glasny cast, not once, but twice and NOTHING!!If not, a little more info?

my personal opinion reading this news.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BePvPYv7bb0

Edit: imo, try to make a great daoc free shard... new or old patches its not a problem, new or old ras are not a problem, new or old frontiers ar enot a problem...

just take a decision and do a nice DAOC free shard...


I really dont like all that custom changes...
Daoc is a nice game as it is.. dont need to change it in that way.

great RVR ideas

Im not impressed with the buff changes we dont need another button to mash for a 2 minute buff.
the buff change also is in favor of melee rangers who already have a str buff in PF and just have to pop a str/con charge to dominate more than they already do because others will be limited

Personally if rather see a buff all barrel or a summon buffbot gem and be done with the abomination of buffs and buffing issues in DAoC

Im very excited to play with the rvr ideas. awesome job guys