Asherons Call: Frelorn's Weekly Update - 11/28

Hi there everyone. I hope that everyone had a great weekend. I know I did as I gorged myself on as much Turkey as my body would allow. Since this was a long weekend I figured that on top of the update on what we are doing this week I would answer some of the questions that were brought up. So without further delay, let's get right to it.

These questions are in no particular order, so don't put any meaning into the order that I answer them.

When will ToD be an online download with a CD key?
I spoke to our marketing team today about this and the ball is now rolling on getting this done. While you can download the actual game client already, the ability to purchase CD keys online is coming. As soon as I have a solid date, I will let you know.

Why don't monsters level anymore?
This was changed a while back when the skill system was redone. A creature having the ability to level was a side-effect of the old system. When we redid the skill system a long time ago the side-effect was lost. When it was brought up it was decided that due to the fact that some boss creatures could level beyond the player abilities to kill them, it was best to just leave that ability out.

What happened to the Darktide Hardware? Any update on this?
At the time this was announced to the community the makeup and personnel of the team was entirely different, and I wasn't in on these discussions. I have put the question out to the appropriate members of the staff and as soon as I have an update on this I will let you know.

Will there ever be a Dev chat again?
We would love to do this again. Right now the biggest obstacle for doing something like this is time. The team is very busy and free time is in short supply these days. It is something we would love to do in the not so distant future. With that being said, as soon as we can find the free time to do something like this, we will give you all plenty of notice.

Weekly Update
And finally let's get to the update for this week. During any cycle we do things can change as new issues or goals come up, so this will be a rough idea of what we have planned for this week without getting too much into the specifics of things.

This week the team is working on resolving issues that popped up for December. This is a week that a lot of testing gets done. The team puts in lot of work to make sure that when these events go live, they are as good as they can be. As some of you may know, when you introduce new code into existing code a lot of interesting things can happen, sometimes in unexpected places. So a lot of time is spent checking out everything we can to make sure that there are no surprises when the event goes live. Unfortunately this process isn't perfect, but we are always trying to find ways to improve on this so that things that have gotten through in the past don't get through again. The process of working on the January event will also begin this week.

That's about it for now. As always if anything important comes up we will make sure to update you on it. Have a great day!