Asherons Call: A huge Tusker sized NANA of Q & A (Bunch #4)

Question: Emov - Sean, we need an update on basinets ! Almost no one is using them. They look like you have a condom on your head.
Answer: Sean_Huxter - I think one reason "no one" wears basinettes is that they're not the uberest of armor.

Question: The_Korrigan - The "please put back the old corpse decay system" petition.
Answer: Sean_Huxter - Speaking as an avid scavenger, I understand that the old system was causing a noticeably large hit on the servers, and am willing to live with the change, despite the fact that I can no longer run through some of the dungeons and loot stuff others have left behind. I used to do that quite often, then lifestone home and sell. I used to make quite a profit off the deal. Yet I know that this change was for the better of everyone, so I'm not complaining.

Question: westgates - Turbine, can you make individule patch download (vs. a big fat 99Mb portal.dat)?
Answer: Sean_Huxter - Since the data is cumulative, having downloads for each patch would be completely pointless. There would be no way to knit them all together. You do that every month when you log in after a patch. The program adds the new patch to your PORTAL.dat. If at any point that becomes corrupted (you should always keep a backup after a monthly prop just in case) you have to get the whole data again. Providing the patch download for, say, March, 2001, would do nothing for you.

Question: Pack_Cow_Mistress - Whats the Wi flag?
Answer: Sean_Huxter - A little background.

There never was a "Wi" flag. Wi jokingly blamed Turbine for maliciously flagging his character with a variable that would mean he would always be attacked when encountering creatures.

The fact is that the problem was based upon your character ID, the distance from other creatures, but, and this is the most important part, the people you are with. Because your ID and theirs were all entered into a table. If you always hunted with the same people, you were all entered into the table in the same order each time. That table, combined with distance from a critter was used as a way to determine which one of you a creature attacks next, a combination of these two pieces of data meant that creatures SHOULD have picked people in the area at random, with distance playing a factor.

The problem came in the fact that the ratio of distance had to be inverted, so that the closer you were, the more likely you would be chosen as a target. The original coder(s), rather than inverting the fractions that came about, did an incorrect math calculation, and it ended up that of any part of people, only a small number of them were really in the attacking table.

After looking for this complex bug many many times, we just could not find it, and declared it not a bug at all. Srand dug deeper than anyone, and found out exactly the mathematical mistake that allowed this problem to occur. No one was ever "Wi" flagged. But if you always hunted with the same people, you would all be entered into the attack table the same way, so it would certainly appear that the same people would always get attacked, while others rarely did. Had that person fought with different people, with different IDs, he might have been placed in the table differently, and not suffered under the bug.

Since srand finally nailed the bug, we put a flag in the game as a commemoration of this peculiar bug, and all the mirth surrounding it.

The moral of this story, kids, is that MATH IS IMPORTANT! Don't gloss over it in school! One day you may need it!