Dark Age Of Camelot: We're Gonna Walk Down To the Grab Bag Avenue

And then we'll take it higher:

Q: In the last patch you added bonuses for underpopulated realms. Last night some players on the alliance were arguing as to what is calculated to figure out those bonuses. On one side of the argument, players were saying it was calculated entirely by realm population comparisons. On the other side of the argument, a few players said that it was calculated by Population, the number of keeps under our realm's control, and possibly even the Realm Points gained by our realm that week.

As the latter group was saying it was 'against our best interests' to take back or defend keeps in our realm, I need to ask...

Can you clear this up for us?

A: The people who think it's calculated strictly by population were wrong. Many factors were considered while we were creating the formula (which is regularly reviewed and tweaked as necessary). Also, we look at the overall history of the server - we do not make decisions based on one night, or even one week.

The... special and unique snowflakes who, if I've understood you correctly, don't want to play the game because they'd rather have the population bonus instead of the relic bonus, are the reason why we don't release the exact formula. We don't want people to avoid one action or take another in an attempt to influence our bonus designation. Just play the game, and do whatever you'd most enjoy that particular evening. It'll all work out in the end.

Q: What happens when a class doesn't have an active team lead?

A: We ask people to apply for the position :) Okay, seriously - each realm has a TL responsible for RVR. That TL tends to cover the major issues for classes as well as provide an overview of combat. We also have here on the Herald team Miss Missy, who lurks at the Vault and helps gather feedback from people without a spokesperson (and from people who have different opinions than the spokesperson they have). I personally lurk at a number of class/archetype specific boards such as The Safehouse. Finally, the Camelot Herald feedback forms are another way for players to express their feedback.

Spells, styles, items, and so forth are shared amongst multiple classes, and thus issues tend to be brought up by multiple team leads. Every class has its own unique issues, of course, but while we're waiting to fill a position, no class is without the ability to report feedback, and the most obvious issues are covered by the other TLs.

Q: I recently had a conversation with a fellow realm mate(s) regarding mob raids. These raids I am referring to are those in which the mobs raid our towns and cities! The ones I have witnessed were quite an event and most players were laughing hysterically when it was all over.

Some players even wondered if this jinni was perhaps controlled by a dev. or c.s.r. because of its insane power and the episode was great entertainment, for sure.

So my question is, are these programmed raids? And if so, will we be privy to more?

A: Sorry, we can't take credit for that. No CSR or employee can do the sort of thing you described in your letter. We have very strict rules about doing anything on live servers. In fact, what you've described is a firing offense at Mythic.

For every player such as yourself who enjoys these impromptu raids, there's a dozen who bitterly resent their play time being interrupted in any way. Anyone employed by Mythic and working in an official capacity (as opposed to just playing like everyone else with no special powers) will appear on the live servers as a floating gemstone.

The Herald team is working on more events to take place on the Pendragon server, though, if you're interested. We've had Hide and Seek, Tag, Capture the Flag, and most recently, a cake and wine reception to honor our anthem composers. If you like the idea of developers turning themselves into monsters for you, keep an eye on the Community page.

Q: I need to get this question cleared up because I'm getting mixed answers. Can a pet make a raid not get credit if it gets the last hit on a ML or Artifact raid mob?

A: No. That's the short answer. Long answer:

- A monster that has been confused can steal credit on an encounter if the monster gets the killing blow. (Confused creatures will attack other monsters.) This used to happen a lot on dragon raids, so most players above a certain level remember it clearly. The problem is that the confused monster isn't and can't be linked to a player the way a pet is, so the server doesn't realize that the actions of a human player led to the death of the computer generated target.

- There was a bug with TOA, where encounter targets that died to a particular kind of weapon proc damage would not award credit. It took what felt like forever to figure out the common cause. Since most raids do employ pets as supplemental damage dealers, it was thought for some time that the pets were the culprits.

So the convergence of those two facts, combined with the fact that pets do take some experience, may have led to the rumors that the pets steal encounter credit. Rest assured that they do not.

Q: (From the Pendragon boards): "For Trial 2.9, there seems to be a cap of players who will get the encounter credit for the step."

A: From one of the encounter designers, who will probably not need a clever nickname until the next Mythic game launches, so we'll call him "Roy": "There is no cap but there are several rules. First, you must be in or very near the room. Second, you must have directly participated in the combat in some capacity. To be more precise, you must have made an appearance on at least one of the named statue's hate-lists by having attacked them directly or indirectly.

"If someone parked their character in the room but did not participate in the combat, they will not receive credit."

Q: I had a couple questions about artifact powers.

1. Does the bonus spell range from items like Jacina's Sash and Erinys Charm affect the radius of chants such as run songs and pulsing bladeturn?
2. Does the permanent health and power regens from items such as Erinys Charm and the Eerie Darkness Lightning Stone necklaces stack with cast power regens, realm abilities, and fonts?

A: 1. No. In general, spell range bonuses only affect targeted spells, as opposed to chants or songs.

2. The persistent regens from artifacts stack with casted regens, realm abilities, and fonts. In other words, item bonuses for regen are completely separate from other regens and stack just dandy.

(Code Ed and the Item Mistress both contributed to this answer. Thanks, you two!)

Not much for announcements tonight, gang. Thanks to all those who turned out to honor our Anthem composers - check out the community page for the details.

Last week's "groovy" reference was intended to bring up the answer "The Mindbenders" - the group that originally recorded "Groovy Kind of Love" before Phil Collins went all goopy on it.

I'm going to be digging through this Feud survey database for weeks! Over five THOUSAND responses in less than a day, and only a few hundred were less than totally filled out. While I'm only going to use the first hundred for the game at the Roundtable, I'm going to put the rest into a spreadsheet for the dev team. Thanks for participating, everyone!

Have a good weekend.