The latest 'heave' notes (patch notes for those wondering why vomit is being discussed) have been posted at the official forums. This is a partial list of what will be available at heave time:
It's been a while since I've posted a formal announcement about what's coming down the pipe (if you can call these announcements formal). Let me jump right in to the preliminary patch notes for the heave...
Bling Gnome
Bling Gnome support for our retail box is going out in this heave. The retail box is planned for late June release! The Bling Gnome is a new passive skill that, when equipped, summons a little gangster gnome that picks up all your gold. You can occasionally activate the gnome to pick up all of your nearby loot (below Mythics) and convert it to gold. Each time your gnome does this conversion, he has a chance to poop out a mythic item. The more items he picks up at once, the better chance you have of getting a mythic. Items that have been picked up by you and later dropped will not be converted to gold by this skill.
The Bling Gnome will only be available to players that buy the retail box.
New Social Window
We've totally reworked the social window. You know the social window -- it's got your friends list and who's online. We've made the lists sortable, added more information to the friend's list and added a new group tab. The group tab shows all groups on your world and allows you to join any open group that is within your level range.
Noob Channel
We've added a Noob channel to the game. All non-members that are below 15 are no longer allowed to use World or Market chat channels. They can only use the Noob channel (/n or /noob) to reach the entire world. Other players can optionally join the Noob channel to help folks if they so choose.
New Items
We've added several new items to the game. New weapons... new armor... So nice! Some are even starting to have particle effects on them.
New Skills
We're putting the finishing touches on a couple of new skills. I'm not ready to spill the beans on what they are quite yet... but I will once I know for sure!
New Quests
We've added a tremendous buttload of new quests to the game... including a total revamp of the starting quests for new players. These noob quests introduce new players to the basics of the game. Huzzah!
We've also added quests to Shadow's Embrace and Balzack's Burrow.
Ad Changes
We've removed the login and logout movie ads from the game.
We've changed the rotation time on the banner ad to 2 minutes.
We've significantly reduced the frequency of zone change and death ads. Death ads now cap out at 40% after 5 hours of play (down from 100%). Zone change ads now cap out at 20% after 5 hours of play.
Membership Perks
We've made several changes to membership status to make it more valuable and attractive to you free players.
- Members now gain experience 15% faster than free players. This is implemented as a nerf of free player experience. In actuality, free players receive 13.6% less XP than members
- Members now find 15% more gold than free players.
- Free players pay 50% more King's Coin when buying items.
- Chance for a dropped mythic item to be usable by a free player has been reduced to 5% (down from 25%)
- Chance for a dropped rare item to be usable by a free player has been increased to 100% (up from 75%)
PvP Matchmaking
There are several changes coming for PvP to help with matchmaking, fair battles and gear guidance:
We're now displaying your PvP power rating on your tooltip as well as your character sheet. This is a percentage number that tells you how close you are to the top of the power curve for your level. Higher is better.
We've added a new rating system to the PvP game. Every player will start out with a rating of 1500. Winning matches will increase your rating. Losing matches (or quitting matches) will decrease your rating. Points lost by the losers will be gained by the winners.
We will use these ratings to decide how to match you in PvP. Your base rating (displayed on your character sheet) will serve as the starting point for your matchmaking rating.
Each player's matchmaking rating is currently computed like this:
MatchRating = BaseRating + (PowerRating * 4) + (Level * 2)
A group's MatchRating is equal to the average of its member's MatchRatings plus 200 for each group member other than the leader.
When a group enters the PvP queue, matches will be found based on a widening rating tolerance. This tolerance currently starts at 50 points and increases by 1 point every second. This will ensure that closer matches are favored early in the queueing process, but allows for further matches the longer you're in the queue.
PvP Rewards
Winners of PvP matches now receive 3 King's Coin (up from 1). Losers now receive 1 King's Coin (up from 0).
We've added an XML data feed for leaderboards in PvP. We have bracket leaderboards based on rating as well as win-count leaderboards.
PvP Duels
We've added the option for group dueling on a PvP world. Simply right-click the name of someone that you'd like to duel. Your request will be sent to the leader of their group. Once accepted, you'll be whisked away to a special PvP arena to commence the beat-down in a seven minute match for superiority! No rewards are given for this style of combat.
Optional Nameplates Added
We've added the option to show nameplates and health / mana bars for nearby players and monsters. The default key mapping is "~". Simply press that key to show player / monster names and status above their heads.
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This build should be going to QA on Monday evening. We've revamped our testing process to enable our testers to play the game while we're developing it (instead of waiting for us to make a build that's ready for release). This means that testing the final build should take less time!
This build will go to the PTS world once QA has finished testing it and we've fixed all the bugs. After a short stay on the PTS, we'll push it to live! I expect this to happen in late April.
I'll post more information as it becomes available.
Thanks for playing!!!
steve
Gotta love a game with a sense of humor. *g*
