Hello community,

the last weeks have offered many tempered discussions. Today we are going to put our cards onto the desk and give you an extensive look on what we have planned for the future of Uthgard. Please note these planned features mostly result of community-polls and analysed information we collected over the last weeks. Enough chit-chat, let's dive into the details ...


RvR-Zone:

We know that the removal of our Agramon Supply Camps was not well accepted. As we have already stated within forums, these camps were from the beginning on meant to limit the space of the actually used rvr-zone. Some of you probably remember that back in these times only about 20-30 players were roaming within Agramon.

Instead of taking a step back by reinserting these camps we want to make a step forward! In our opinion the things needed to improve the gameplay for groups, small groups and soloers are features that encourage you to actually move into our RvR-Area by offering interesting benefits. These benefits will be ...

Exp-bonuses:
- OdinsGate, HadriansWall and EmainMacha receive an exp bonus of 25%
- OdinsGate, HadriansWall and EmainMacha receive more interesting level spots
- The overall possible exp bonus for Agramon is being adjusted to a maximum of 60%

You can see the bonus areas on this map: http://staff.uthgard-server.net/nfmap.jpg

Additional Features:
- Introduction of advanced horses achievable via quest
- Introduction of PvE-tasks within OdinsGate, HadriansWall and EmainMacha
- possible introduction of more interesting features such as ressource nodes (under discussion!)

These features are meant to support our vision of a rvr zone that is able to offer you the feeling of good old DAoC in a compact 4-zone design offering the tension of great battles or for our soloers the feel of hunting their prey!

The adjustment to exp-boni become effective after the next server reboot while the friends of furry horses may instantly start their quests for advanced mounts. The following quests have been added and the a categorisation to horses has been made ...

lvl45 Horse Quest 1: Bring home the steed! (PvE horse)
lvl50 Horse Quest 2: Riding to War! (RvR horse - quest1 is a prequisite)

The quests are given by your capitol cities horse merchants:
Albion: Edwin Gentry
Hibernia: Maegwyn Brayan
Midgard: Brefyr Laugrsson

Horses: lvl35 standard mount; 135% speed; only usable in PvE zones; no armors or bardings
War Horses: lvl35 standard mount; 135% speed; usable in PvE and RvR zones; no armors or bardings
Thouroughbreds: lvl45 advanced mount; 154% speed; usable in PvE zones; bardings and up to light armor may be equipped
Advanced War Horses: lvl50 RR5 advanced rvr mount; 154% speed; usable in PvE and RvR zones; bardings and armos up to medium armor
Epic Mounts: lvl50 RR10 epic mounts; 154% speed; usable in PvE and RvR zones; bardings and up to heavy armor may be equipped (only unicorn type)

Please note that currently neither bardings nor armors are available. The reason why we decided to only offer unicorn-type epic mounts is the fact that we do not believe that undead-, ice- or clockwork-horses really fit into the classic setting of DAoC, but if you ever hit RR-unbelievable 13 and manage to break Blues "whine-resistance" you probably have a chance.

*addition* Please note that the Quest "Riding to War!" may only be done by one player per realm at a given time due to the fact that there is only one quest horse at each RvRstablemaster in Agramon! This issue is based on a technical problem and the fact that we want to limit the avaiability a bit.


RealmAbility-System and GameMechanics:

Lately there have been a lot discussions about RvR balance, caster balance and other balancing issues. Many of these issues seem to result of our currently used NewFrontiers RA-System. We spent a long time discussing this issue and agree to the proposal that the Classic RA-system is the solution to these balancing issues. Furthermore to say we believe that the classic RA-system will offer a more classic feeling of gameplay due to the fact that each realm would have it's own RA-specialities.

This statement is not yet a valid "go" for the old system, but a promise that we are going to check the possibility of implementing the old system ... you know we love testings and while testings on old RAs are no longer possible, we will have to do research on the camelot herald and a lot other ressources. The implementation of the classic realm abilities would of course in addition force us to set patch 1.65 as standart for character changes!


Tajendi

The work on Tajendi is still in progress and for those who are not that much into reading forums, we are offering a small glimpse on the current status and what exactly you are going to experience. The zone build (zone and monsters) was finished about a week ago and we already did some internal test-runs. Unfortunately this does not mean that Tajendi II - The Lands beyond the River will be released within the next week or month, but we are pretty close. We are currently working on implementing whole new sound effects (effects and vocals!) while inspiriting the zone with quests and encounters, but let's hand out some facts ...

- 4500 objects (thats about 4times more Mythic used to use)
- 6 epic encounters
- a main story that helps you in your progress
- about 20-30 additional quests


We hope you enjoyed our todays glance into the magic orb.
Have fun in game and to be moviemaniacally up-to-date

Live long and in prosper
Your Staff

Wow... these are realy good news. The last 2 changes werent the best, in my opinion, but now I think it will be better again. Higher XP Bonus in Hadrians, Odins and Emain sounds nice.

I hope you find enough "data" for OF RAs, because OF RAs will increase the server population again.

sounds like some good plans, exept im totaly agenst the old ra system. Not just its a big bonus for only some classes, but you also have to mod alot of the classes for the ra system. Like for example, rangers get volley in bow spec, but in classic ra they got it as a ra, that also could volley threw and pop BTs, but was changed in the new RA system since volley was a spec ablitiy and not a ra. You also have to implement working icons for the old ras, and revert any classes that got new changes because of the new ra system. That sounds like alot of work, and mythic did some of these new RAs , to balance them out , since some where OP, like MoA.

There is some i do like in it, but even if you do this, all i can see is issues to come from this. but its up to you guys. If you do it, youl have to move your patch goal from 1.8 to much lower to match the ra system. HAVE fun lol.

The patch goal would be lowered to 1.65 (right before ToA introduction) if old RA's come. And you are right. Its very difficult to research everything about old RA (icon, effects, damages, ...). I think some things have to be guessed until we find more information.

Sorry, missed the 1.65point. I edited into the news.

As forthe old RA system - that would be the worst mistake you have made since the archery nerf in March 09 or the fact that you wont do anything about AOM and EM not affecting viper allowing zero defense against it.


Furthermore why on gods earth are you discussing caster balace when they function just fine? Why you ignore the Bow?


Happy about RvR horses finally but old ra system is a terrible idea. You just making more needless work for yourselves and you would ultimately speed up the death of your server.

Silverleaf wrote:...or the fact that you wont do anything about AOM and EM not affecting viper allowing zero defense against it.

How can you know that we dont want to do anything about AOM/EM affecting poison damage? There is an internal thread for that and its investigated and tested on live. It just takes time.

@M00n: You don't have to understand everything. Behind every of our decisions is a reason. Maybe sometime you come to the conclusion that horses offer anytime speed to classes that normally dont have speed when running solo.

And another note. If we introduce old RA's don't ever tell us we don't communicate with our community and do all decisions ourself: http://uthgard-server.net/modules.php?n ... ic&t=10096

i didn't believe that uthgard could disapear one day, but now i see all the changments i think that could happen very quickly...

i hope you know what you do, but i doubt

Pana, you know it best. We both know that you have the indepth knowledge.

Deleted moons trashtalk ... and again.

Blue wrote:Pana, you know it best. We both know that you have the indepth knowledge.

yeah you have a design of the server in mind i am sure...
but i know that lot of people leave at every "bad change" that happens... if it's a rvr area change, a class nerf, a bracer fix...

everytime some people that were icones of the server left. i saw lot of my guild mates and realm mates leaving one after the others.

and with the recent changments lot of people play lesser or no more ( even me stoped to play more or less except to help my guild). and i fear the next changments could be fatal.

but on another side maybe just the old players will leave and the new ones will take them place... and some of us would come back after a break and see that the server is better than never...

it's what i hope ...

Panach, we managed to achieve 600-700 players. I'm sorry that you lost friends that did not want to wait for things to change. I believe that the current number of players is at least a hint that we are not so wrong. We listen to our players and we react upon fair and objective criticism, but doomsday-calls are not the right way! Maybe the question: "Why do you believe that OldRAs would change something?" was the right way to initiate a discussion.

Blue wrote:

Silverleaf wrote:...or the fact that you wont do anything about AOM and EM not affecting viper allowing zero defense against it.

How can you know that we dont want to do anything about AOM/EM affecting poison damage? There is an internal thread for that and its investigated and tested on live. It just takes time.

@M00n: You don't have to understand everything. Behind every of our decisions is a reason. Maybe sometime you come to the conclusion that horses offer anytime speed to classes that normally dont have speed when running solo.

And another note. If we introduce old RA's don't ever tell us we don't communicate with our community and do all decisions ourself: http://uthgard-server.net/modules.php?n ... ic&t=10096

Do you think only one minor change (and just a possible one) will change anything on the rvr state? Maybe you already have long term plans, but who care? We want get fun today not a year later.

You were promising time after time the final rvr sensation for 3 years. Never came and was never successful. Take a new twist to your ideas and to those who take the decissions instead of walk like blinds pseudo-developers.

@Haldan Take care of your fingers

first of all: omfg good job staff - this is exactly what was needed to bring action up - esp at low peak hours since people can get rvr horses with 2 quests and boom every class has "castable" speed - good!

now..

Old RAs - I know this is wanted by a lot of people and I kinda like the idea of old RAs as it bring some old memories back and some "balance" to the arch types of classes

however... dont.. there is just sooooooo many values and things thats impossible to test which would bring a whole series of nerfing and love giving - which im really not a fan of

also - the timers would be waaay too big on active RAs to be viable in the "fast" rvr setting we have in NF - in OF you waited for port (15 mins?) + you ran a long way to get to action - that meant that 15-30mins RA timers meant that if you lost they would be up again when u got back to your rvr point and if you won you had to do next couple/many fights without RAs

however - in the current settings this would mean 1/30 fights would allow RAs used which would make them pretty pointless over passive RAs


just my 2 cents glad to see you listen to player feedback about horses and a bit of increased XP in zones too so people wanna go there more

@M00n you are invited to discuss improvements in the appropriate forum. The server is always in an evolving state. So give it time and don't complain about every step forward we do. We have 600+ active players and not everybody can be satisfied at the same time. Thats normal.

The note was not directed to you but to all players who always want to complain we do everything without asking the community.