Monday, July 13, 2009

FW: Wizard101 July 14th Downtime

Professor Greyrose just sent this message through! Looks like some needed fixes will be going into the game tomorrow morning!
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Wizard101 the game will be offline from 3am to approximately 4am on Tuesday July 14th*.

This downtime is necessary to address the issues listed below:

▪ Wandering creatures in Dragonspyre will no longer gain Power Pips naturally, however the bosses of the Spiral still maintain this ability.
▪ Sgt Skullsplitter will be taught another lesson by Merle Ambrose and will stop casting interrupts on players.
▪ Baby Drakes will once again appear for the Break An Egg quest.
▪ Scarl Soomhowler will appear more frequently for the Clean Them Out Quest.
▪ Players will get a message after they complete Trade Voyage to seek out Merle Ambrose and gain access to Grizzleheim after level 20.
▪ Scarsnout will now properly resist Myth spells and be weak to Storm spells.
▪ Reagents in your Reagent section of your backpack will now be alphabetized.
▪ The creatures in Raven Fortress will be less aggressive and won't pull Wizards into combat as easily.
▪ Krokotopian Scarabs can properly be bought and sold from the Bazaar
▪ Yardbird Quest goals will be more clearly defined.
▪ Veil of Verdancy will no longer be bright pink and can now be dyed.
▪ Hood of Ashes will now have a level 45 requirement.
▪ Amaranthine Staff will no longer be eligible to sell at the Bazaar.
▪ The following house items will now work properly in your house:
◦Dogfish Statue
◦Dragon Wall Bust
◦Dragonwing Bust
◦Stone Fireplace
◦Brick Fireplace
◦Soda Barrels
◦Tiny Arched Door

If you do not see them where you placed them before tonight, you may need to go to your attic and pick all items up in the house for it to appear. We apologize for this slight inconvenience, but it may be the only way to ensure you can retrieve the item.

▪ The Eye will once again be an item players can interact with for the Eye of Truth quest.
▪ Tall Wooden Shelf & Rough Wooden Shelf can now be picked up once they've been placed in a Castle or Dorm.
▪ PvP Ranked Match results will now be correct after PvP match completion.

Please know this downtime only addresses the issues listed above, and we are working diligently to fix others that players have brought to us.

Watch the message boards and the Ravenwood News for upcoming information about additional updates and fixes.

*please note this downtime may be extended without notice, but we will try to message any extensions on the Wizard101 game launcher.
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Thank you!

8 comments:

Tesh said...

They also seem to be changing items to No Trade/No Auction at random times. I was playing for a few hours Saturday night, and early on, I scored a Dark Fairy pet from Lord Nightshade, which I almost sold at the auction for 500 gold, but ultimately held onto because I didn't have another one.

Two hours later I scored another one, and suddenly, *both* of them were No Trade/No Auction.

I still detest this system. It doesn't make these things valuable, it *devalues* them. What was once something I could sell to another player via the Bazaar (say, someone who valued it more than me) is now something I can't even give to an alternate character of mine, and is only good for 50 gold at a random vendor.

Bleh.

On the bright side, though, now I earn experience once again for the Temple of Storms quests. It looks like the "diminishing returns" of instance running have been revoked, which makes me very happy. I don't earn any gold, and stuff I get is almost as likely to be vendor trash (thanks to the No Trade/No Auction flags), but at least I'm getting experience again.

...I'm not sure the change is worth the significant reduction in my earning potential, though. Perhaps this is a way they are fighting economic inflation? Was that even a problem?

Unknown said...

Oh goody. A couple of those really needed to be fixed. Btw, I used copy and paste to put it on my blog, LOL hope ya don't mind. :)

Stingite said...

@Tesh: Really strange about the Dark Fairy Pet. As someone who never did well at playing the Bazaar or the Auction House in previous MMO's, I have to say that I'm pretty unaffected. But, yeah, 50 gold for an uncommon pet doesn't sound "fair."

One thing that is definitely different about this game compared to those games is that there's actually a gold cap on the amount of gold you can even have on your character. Imagine a 99,000 gold cap in WoW? Unthinkable! I mean, pretty much everything that you really *need* you pick up along the way since quest rewards are very healthy. It's not necessary to farm for gear to beat Malistaire. (Positing yourself with good gear for PvP is another thing all together though) Your sole expendable in this game are tough and accuracy cards . . . and maybe PVP treasure cards from the library.

I guess you don't ever have to worry about gold-exploits either since . . . what's the point? I'll never forget my friends telling me how they duped items in Everquest for cash. What a waste of time that was for them. I'd hate to look back at my MMO and concentrate on how I had to farm this or that to get an edge rather than the actual fun I had playing the game. . . . and twinking is so unneccessary.

On the other hand, the "rusty dagger" vendor loot has been in these kinds of games for a long time as you know. (Appearance slots might actually make some of these garbage drops worth having btw if you liked the look of something.)

Unknown said...

I probably shouldn't post responses at night when I'm tired as they tend to make no sense whatsoever the next day.

Stingite said...

And I should probably comment with my regular handle so you know who the heck Tom is.

Tesh said...

Oh, yes, trash loot is nothing new, but a high end fancy doodad that I can't use (or auction or trade) is a very different thing from a rusty dagger. I expect low level critters to drop trash (if anything), but when I wind up beating a boss, it should mean something, and decent loot is one standard payoff. When that loot is useless as anything but vendor trash, it undermines the reward paradigm.

Thankfully, the game is still fun to play, but if I'm not getting XP for instances, having diminished them into irrelevance, and if what few "special, rare and valuable" loot drops I get are really just vendor trash to me, the "rewards" of playing have been considerably nerfed. I can live with that, since I still enjoy actually playing, but it's not good game design if you're asking for people to buy into the loot lust paradigm.

Hrm, and scratch the experience reset notion. It looks like Marleybone instances are still not giving me XP (I've bled them dry, apparently). The Temple of Storms XP is also dwindling again. The "diminishing returns" is still in force, I guess I just ran into a glitch.

Stingite said...

. . . but usually that vendor loot from a boss sells for a little bit more at the vendor than the regular rusty dagger loot, right?

And instead of where you kill one "named" in an MMO and then have to have all in the group declare their need, greed, or pass, you each at least get "something." I can't tell you how many times I've been deep in a dungeon where I will never get to go again only to have someone else win the "roll" and all I leave with is a repair bill. That is better, right?

I mean, I sympathize with you, I do. Because, let's be honest, the system isn't really about making items more rare and valuable as pitched . . . it's about delaying you so the company has more time to put out new content. LOL. ;-)

It would be nice to hand the Malistaire healer ring I have on Thomas down to Amber . . . just as you had noted on your blog since it is a cool "need" item for her.

You know, a comparison of a typical Malistaire run and a night in CD in LOTRO might be an interesting read . . .

Tesh said...

"it's about delaying you so the company has more time to put out new content. LOL."

*chuckle* Indeed. I'm never at the cutting edge, so I don't notice it, but I know more than a few players who are sitting on a level 50 wizard, twiddling their thumbs. ;)

Y'know, I'm not so much against making rare items in and of themselves, it's more that there's this shiny new Bazaar, and it's not even serving its function. I mean, it would take time to earn the gold to buy stuff on the Bazaar anyway.

Beyond that, I'm oversensitive to spin, and when devs say one thing but reality teaches quite another, that doesn't sit right with me. Even something like Bind on Equip would be OK with me, rather than the effective Bind on Pickup, since you would have more choices.

I'm also oversensitive to changes that they make because I thought they had an exceptional system set up, but the changes aren't maintaining that. I'm a bit saddened, and less inclined to buy more Access Passes.

W101 is still a fantastic game, one I recommend highly, and should blog more about... I'm just a bit disappointed, that's all. ;)