Patch 1.0.3 - Arrives 10/15/08!

Another eventful week is flying by here at the studio. As always the team has been working non-stop to bring you updates and make the game you love even better.

Tomorrow morning (10/15/085) at 6AM EDT all North American Servers will be coming down to begin the update to version 1.0.3.!

Oceanic servers will follow at 9AM EDT, we anticipate all servers to be back online by 2PM EDT.

While these notes are subject to change they'll give you a taste of what you have to look forward to as 1.0.3 approaches!


Highlights

* We're pleased to announce the addition of a new regional chat system. This item has been one of our most requested features, and you can find the details below.

* We have made additional improvements to the functionality of the /ignore command. This command should now work more consistently.

* A “new mail” icon has been added to the edge of the minimap to alert players when new mail messages have arrived.

* We have made some additional improvements to the handling of NPC speech and action text in an effort to reduce the amount of chat players see from NPCs.

* In order to provide a more challenging and rewarding experience, we have adjusted the overall speed at which players can gain control of zones and move the campaign.

* Pet behavior has been improved and should act more naturally when changing between passive and defensive modes while the pet is fighting multiple enemies.

* The war against the gold sellers continues! We have introduced a new "report gold seller" command that works as follows: when you type /rg, the game will automatically fill out a gold seller appeal using the name of the last player who sent you a tell. If you get an unwanted /tell from a pesky gold seller, type /rg to start an appeal and get them busted!

* We have added a new option to the user settings that will allow players to enable or disable shader caching. This is a graphical performance option, and for a full explanation, players can hover their mouse over this option in the user settings window. This should help improve performance on many systems.


Regional Chat System:

* Chapter-based chat channels have been replaced with a farther reaching chat system, referred to as Region Chat. A region is defined as the contiguous zones that make up a tier-based racial pairing area. For example, Blighted Isle and Chrace make up one region. Region Chat consists of two channels, Region and Region-RvR.

o Region encompasses the entire region area.
o Region-RvR encompasses the RvR-focused areas, such as the Plain of Bone.

* How to use the Regional Chat System:

o To type in the Region channel, use /1 [message]
o To type in the Region-RvR channel, use /2 [message]
Note: You must be in the RvR-focused region to use the Region-RvR channel. Players on Open RvR servers will have access to Channel 2 at all times.
o To disable these channels right click on the proper chat tab, go to "Tab Options" then "Filters." Scroll down to Region and Region-RvR and uncheck the channels you no longer wish to view.
o If you have disabled either channel and wish to re-enable them simply return to the "Filters" menu and re-select the appropriate channels.

General Changes and Bug Fixes

* In order to ensure that the Apothecary skill remains a valuable crafting profession potions will no longer drop as frequently.

* Seeds for Cultivation will no longer drop as frequently throughout the world.

* Monsters should no longer disappear and then reappear when attacked at range by players.

* In some rare cases, the game would leave "ghost images" of NPCs who had moved away or de-spawned. As a result, players would see NPCs that were not actually there. We have taken steps to correct this issue, and players should see far fewer of these phantom NPCs.

* We fixed an issue that would sometimes cause monsters to break off in mid-combat and attempt to walk away.

* We have made some additional improvements to the pathing and behavior of monsters. These fixes should reduce pathing issues sometimes seen when pulling monsters at range.

* Nurglings will no longer continue to make aggressive sounds after they have been killed.

* Fixed a crash-issue that sometimes occurred when entering city dungeons.

* Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when searching the Auction House.

Content

* We have made some adjustments to the Hydra boss in the Sacellum dungeon to bring this encounter more in line with the original design and difficulty.

Realm vs Realm

* Reduced the interaction time required to deploy a guild standard

* Reduced the interaction time required for players to pick up standards that they own. Please Note: This does not include the capturing of enemy standards.

* Capturing an enemy standard will now reward the capturing player and his nearby allies with renown.

* Players can no longer be queued for a scenario while they already have an invite pending to a different scenario.

* Attempting to join a scenario that has already ended will no longer send players to the character select screen.

* Renown gained from healing players was granting more renown than intended over long periods of time. Players who heal other players will still earn renown for aiding their friends in combat, but large heals or repeated heal-over-time spells will result in lesser renown gains than before.

* While going over the data collected for renown gained by healing, we discovered a few incorrect values that led to players earning far more renown than designed. To ensure equal renown gains for players regardless of their chosen career and whether they group or not inside scenarios, we have made several adjustments to the way renown is granted from healing other players:

o Earning renown from healing players was erroneously granting renown while outside of RvR. This has been adjusted so getting renown for healing players outside of RvR or from a player that is not RvR flagged will occur less frequently.

o Healing players will grant renown correctly if the healed player has earned renown from killing other players recently.