I've been deep in the Developer Woods and haven't had much time to post about the upcoming goodies. I thought I'd take a moment to let you know what's on the way and, more importantly, when we think it'll be ready for you.

First, let me talk about the when... we're wrapping up the new features and should have a build to our internal test department by Monday. They'll be testing the build for at least a week before we put it up on the public test server for you to check out. The amount of time this will be in our internal test department depends on how many bugs the testers find. Once it's on the PTS, we'll gather some feedback from you for a few days before we push it out to live. So, in the best case, this build will be live within 2.5 weeks.

Our desire was to have this ready a bit sooner, but we won't rush these features out the door half-baked. I'm sure we can all agree that better quality beats faster delivery.

Alright, now that's out of the way, let me give you a taste of the sweet stuff in this new build:

Multiple Characters Support
We've added the ability for each account to have three characters. This has included reworking the character selection and creation interfaces to support this awesome new feature.

Item Linking in Chat
This new build adds the ability to link items in your chat window, allowing other folks to see the name and attributes of items that you can see. Here's how it works:

Hold CTRL down when clicking on an item or item name anywhere in the game to have a clickable link show up in your chat box. Anyone receiving a chat message from you with this link can click on it to see the tooltip for the original item.

This new feature required us to totally rework our text-entry system. The improved system is nice, but this additional work has caused some unforeseen delays.

Regional Server Support
We've added support for regional servers to the game. The world selection screen has been adjusted to show a regional flag for each world. Example regions are: USA, UK, Germany, France. Just select the server that best suits your location and preferences to log on! We will be opening up European servers once this is deployed.

The game is still not yet localized, so the only supported language is English.

Membership Required Servers
This new build has support for worlds that require membership to access. You will know which worlds require membership from the handy "Membership Required" tag you'll see for them on the world selection screen.

PvP Worlds
This feature is one of my personal favorites! We've added PvP Worlds to this new build. You'll know which worlds are for PvP because it says as much on the world selection screen. PvP Worlds are different from "normal" PvE Worlds in several ways:

PvP Worlds are for PvP only. You cannot access monster-killing dungeons on a PvP World. We've taken this approach for the first pass of PvP to maximize the number of players that are available for matching. Without PvE dungeons on the world, we can increase the user limit dramatically.

"Townston" is replaced with a darker "Pwnston" on PvP Worlds. Pwnston provides access to the bank, skill trainers, vendors and new PvP access point NPCs.

Clicking on a PvP access point NPC will allow you to enter the queue for available PvP session types. This coming build provides two PvP session types:

Group Practice - This session type whisks your current group off to a small PvP free-for-all map where you can practice killing each other to hone your skills. This session type has no time limit.

Group vs. Group Deathmatch - This session type automatically matches your group against another group of similar strength in a 7-minute match for supremecy. At the end of the match, the side with the most points wins!

Matchmaking is performed based on sophisticated wizardry and number-crunching which takes the overall strength of groups into account... not just level. So, it's entirely possible for a level 50 solo player to be matched against several lower-level players. It's our hope that this style of matching will help minimize waiting times while also providing variety to the combats and strategies involved!

We've also made many balance changes to make PvP work well. Here's a list of some of the balance changes that only apply in PvP sessions:

1. All players are "Pumped Up" in PvP, giving them increased health.

2. Knockdown effects between players are replaced with a knockback and movement speed debuff. For example, having Butcher used against you will not knock you down. It will only knock you back and temporarily reduce your movement rate by 30%.

3. Level difference has no effect on hit rates, critical hit chance or resistances in PvP.

4. Damage reflection percentages are significantly reduced in PvP.

5. Fear effects are modified in PvP as well. For one, all fear effects have a chance to be interrupted when the target takes damage. Also, when a fear effect wears off of a player, that player receives a temporary immunity to fear.

6. Potions cannot be used in PvP.

This PvP is fun, and I'm looking forward to you guys getting in on it!

Lag-free Movement
We've been working hard on our movement code this build to remove the ever-present lag with character movement. The results are great! This new build allows you to move your character immediately, without having to wait for server feedback.

New Dungeon!
There's a new dungeon in this build... complete with new monsters and a new boss! It's specifically built for level 75-100 characters. Enjoy!

More Quests
Yes, even more quests are in this build!

More Items
Several new weapons and armor sets are in this build... as well as a bunch of new mythic items.

More Skills
We've added several new skills to this build, my personal favorite being the new "mana shield" skill.

All-in-all, this build is looking to be an awesome addition to the game. We're working like mad to get the bugs out of this new update and will get it into your hands as soon as possible. I hope you're as excited as I am about the total sweetness that's in this build!

Back to work for me!

steve

I hope you didn't think I've forgotten about you!

Build 84 has been in testing for a while now. Those QA guys are doing a good job at finding all the new bugs we've made with the new build.

In fact, too good of a job. Eeek!

It's been two weeks and a day since I posted my last update about the coming build. If you have a moment, let me bring you up to speed on where things stand:

All of the content for the new build is in great shape. For once, the designer's aren't holding up a build's release. The new dungeon is awesome. Man, it makes me want to be level 75.

The new movement system overhaul is working very well (lag-less movement FTW!), but there are all kinds of little animation artifacts that keep popping up. It looks like we're putting the final nails in the coffin on these issues and that system should be cleaned up enough to send back to test by Tuesday!

Geek Alert! Let me tell you... reworking a synchronized simulation to have asynchronous movement is no small feat. The engineer working on this new feature, Scott Stevens, has been putting in some crazy hours to make sure it's well-polished.

PvP is also working well. Only a few issues with grouping and match making have been found. There were also a few ease-of-use issues found with the scoring sysem that have been addressed. I'm having tons of fun trying to whip up on Mark Tucker in our personal PvP grudge matches. The combat is fast-paced and is already fairly well balanced. I will be seeing you all in Pwnston soon!

This new build contains some major changes to the particle effects in the game also. There's been a major infusion of brand new particle effects from our art contractors. These new effects look great, but put quite a strain on our inherited particle engine. I've put many hours of personal effort into optimizing the particle system. It's performing much better now.

Multiple character support has been somewhat flawlessly implemented. Besides one character deletion problem, this feature has shown no issues... until today. This morning, we found that some of the changes made to our "DB Cache Server" could cause character data to be improperly saved in some cases. Boo! This problem was promptly fixed and the engineer responsible for this feature, Matthew Weigel, is giving the server a scrubdown for other potentially related problems.

Let's see... what else is there? Oh, we've added the ability to filter loot shown with the ALT button by quality level. We've also disabled spell use in towns. And, if you can imagine this, we also found and fixed some bone-headed code that would cause the framerate in Townston to drop by 30% in some cases. How about that?

Only one crasher has been found in this build! That's gotta be a new record!

Alrighty, I think that about covers it. We should have an updated build to QA very shortly. I give a 80% chance that the build will be ready for PTS deployment by end of next week. I hate that this build is taking so long to get to you. But, on the upside, we're making sure this thing is running good before we dump it on you. That's gotta count for something!

Thanks for playing!

steve

Alrighty! Good thing I said 80% chance last week!

The new build is looking very good. However, it won't make it to PTS today. Boo!

90% chance that it's on PTS by Tuesday morning. If all goes well then it'll be live by the end of the week.

It's worth the wait... promise.

steve

Build 88 is being deployed to the PTS now. Please head over to the Public Test Server forum for more information.

steve

Thanks to everyone for helping us test build 88!

With your help, we've found a handful of issues that we need to resolve before pushing this out to live.

We'll have build 89 ready for the PTS by Friday. This means that the live push of this new build will be Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Let me tell you the bugs we found and fixed:

1. A bizarre issue with point & click movement was discovered that could make your character do annoying things.

2. A sync error in PvP was found and fixed.

3. An issue with knockdown and knockback animations was found and fixed.

4. A bug with fear effects in PvP was found that allowed someone to get Bravery even when they weren't feared.

5. A bug with the PvP matchmaking code was found that would allow matches between vastly different level ranges to take place.

6. A bug with chests was discovered that caused loot not to drop in all cases.

We've also made several PvP balance changes based on your feedback:

1. Duration of fear effects has been reduced by 30% in PvP.

2. Bravery now starts as soon as you are feared, instead of after the fear wears off.

3. We've removed the ability for players to stun each other through normal damage (i.e. getting a big crit).

4. A fear resist passive skill has been added to the game.

We look forward to your feedback on 89... Thanks for all your help!

steve

Build 89 has been sent to our internal QA department. I expect it'll be clear for release on the PTS by Friday morning. Check out the PTS forum for more details.

steve