Asherons Call: Another Helping Of Juicy Q&A

vanyaul asks: Why does the new shadow armor have majors and the new mage armor have the same old spells that the old wma had yet costs alot more mana?
Orion gave another long, detailed answer that's just not summarizable. Instead, if you're considering the differences between the new Auroic Plate and the new Shards for Greater Shadow Armour, take a look here.

Xonto asks: Please allow black fire atlans to be ivoryable, or droppable.
srand: I think we got this in for June.

Jojji_DT asks: "ACD3DSETUP.EXE Has generated errors and will be closed by windows." Launching from the zone page (clicking on game room) Generates the above error. If I'm not running Decal I can just click paste it and go in game. If I'm using Decal I will then get the "cannot enumerate DirectDraw Object" error. Have been unable to find anything on this error. Suggestions folks?
srand: Is that a dual proc? There's a known issue with ACD3DSETUP.EXE and modern dual proc machines, but I am unaware of any issues with single procs. We're working on getting the fix out for those people using dual procs.

NBKMage asks: Your killing blow nearly turns The Black Breath inside-out! For 1 XP. Did we forget to tweak this monster? I believe he was level 666+, and hit my uber self (both baned and buffed for acid) for 30-65 points acid damage melee style.
Orion-Turbine: Wasn't touched...yet. As others have said though it was not meant to be a creature for which you were given a palpable reward.

Kai-Ken asks: How's this: a virindi augmented olthoi that casts magic? You stick it in olthoi north and then you have some diversity instead of pure melee. Or connect it to the queeen making her olthoi overall more intelligent.
Orion-Turbine: Wow, even I am not that cruel...well yet.

_b0o asks: Any plans to nerf reedshark slasher loot? If so, can we have warning before hand. I love these things and wonderin, cuz of like what happened to plat golems, if these r gonna be nerfed or anything?
Orion-Turbine: So I'll state again, No their loot profiles are not a bug, they however are missing a good chunk of health that should be coming back to them soon enough.

Maddy asks: Something else that needs to be fixed: Sing Troves. Nothing like running around looking and finally finding one, only to have it way up in the air where you can't loot it.
srand: Woking on it.

Graybeard asks: There have been any number of posts on various AC boards regarding the housing issue, both pro and con. Personally, I do NOT think more RQs are needed. I do believe however, that more of the "upper class" dwellings need to be made available, i.e. villas and mansions. As for storage, it's simple: We need additional storage. Maybe an extra chest per dwelling is asking too much, but, there are two equally viable alternatives. 1) increase capacity of housing chests and storage packs, or 2) allow the existing chests to carry increased capacity, say, fifty to one hundred percent more.
Orion: At this point we don't have plans to add more housing to to the game, nor are there any plans to add more storage to existing homes at this time.

Kryminal asks: Is there any possible way to change my in game names, my original names are kinda dumb and i would hate to make new toons just to have the names i want.
Orion: At this point the answer is no. Names are something that we cannot change easily and it's unlikely that we will be handling this in the future.

Pattat asks: Earlier someone at Turbine (don't remember who) said that in the future, props will be pushed on ac2 on the second week and on ac1 on the third week of each month to let players that play both games enjoy both episodes. This month, the two props are announced with only 31 hours interval between them, so I would like to know what prompted this decision.
Orion: This is the closest together that we can comfortably have the patches released, and AC2 will always need to be updated first. As to the why we are posting them both in the same week, Test believes that both of the updates are in a state that they can be released this close with confidence so the decision was made to go ahead and do a multi-update week.

Pentele asks: Simple wish: Make gem of stillness stackable. Tech is already there. Mana/stam/etc potions can be stacked and used when stacked, so should not be a problem to allow stacking of stilness gems.
srand: Unfortunately, the way that our code handles stackable objects makes stackable magical gems pretty much infeasible. So it's unlikely that we will be able to make gems of stillness stackable anytime soon.

illusion24 suggests: Unpopular idea time! Please make it so level 50s can't fellow level 100s anymore!
Currently, everyone level 50+ can fellow together and share xp equally. This was originally put in place as a level 50 could do anything a level 100 could do--at the time. No longer! A level 50 doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of hitting stuff on VoD, or stuff on the west dires shore for that matter.
So what's the problem? VoD is supposed to be where the toughest players go to hunt--and they do. But VoD is crowded these days with level 50s, 60s, and 70s who somehow always manage to get into fellows and die constantly, beg for buffs, and just generally bug those who actually belong in the VoD.
Since VoD is a landscape location, you can't restrict them for going there. But if they could not get into a fellow, they would stop going and would go hunt stuff more level appropriate. Therefore, I propose the following fellow change: levels 50 through 69 may fellow and share xp equally, and levels 70+ may fellow and share xp equally.
Orion-Turbine: We have bandied about this idea a few times but we haven't made any conclusions on what to do yet. We have been focusing on adding more hunting for higher levels, and continue to do so.