Asherons Call: A Little Weekend Q&A

dugfromthearth asks: The shard of the herald event was PK only. I know this caused a lot of people to be upset because PK is supposed to be voluntary but they missed out on a major event because they were not PK. Will PKL change that? Would you like to see PKL storyline/events?
Ibn responds: There's a parallel thread going on the Vault, and someone there brought up this point: If we make PKL-only content, no one on DT will ever see it. This seems problematic.

Gharuvy asks: Has a dev checked the Imbuing Dynamic for correct %? Can we get dev confirmation that this dynamic % is set properly and the success rate is being achieved?
Orion responds: Actually Gharuvy, we have stated that it is working correctly. srand has verified it several times. During the first month of implementation we stated this often. So to reiterate. Yes it is working correctly, it is as random as it is meant to be.
Ibn responds: Yes, srand's checked it a few times.

NBKMage asks: Shadow Sprites, why do they look like Zephyrs? Is there some strange lore behind this?
Rojon respons: They originally appeared in Tufa during the Shadow Spire arc. I believe there was some lore about the Shadows beginning to corrupt other forms of life on Dereth, but that was over three years ago and my memory is hazy on this.
Ibn confirms: Rojon's got it right about the corruption, but I believe they existed prior to Tufa getting blown up. The "new" creature at the bottom of the Tufa crater was a Grievver if I remember right.

Earklearbear asks: Please make all weapons ID'able. This goes for Monsters mainly... but especially now that item spells will be linked to the monsters magicD. We can no longer train "Assess Weapons", so just make it that everyone can see them
Ibn responds: The only weapons that you can't ID are designed to be that way. So I doubt that this will be changed.
Que2 responds: I would have to think, that because monsters lack the ability to Blooddrinker there weapons, than the dev team has to give the weapons crazy stats. Along with those crazy stats would come complaints? So they intentionaly block it? All speculation, but I can see how it might be the reason.
Ibn confirms: Que2's exactly right.

Borderline-Case asks: A request/challenge for the artists of AC... It's awsome how you have been creating new artwork and what not... but as cool as all the monster make-overs have been, there has something that has really, really been bothering me... the trees!!
Scenario responds: As the link a couple of posts up illustrates, we have to be very careful with our landscape fixtures. They appear frequently on the landscape, and they are low poly for the very reason that we want to keep game performance up as opposed to bogging it down with eye candy that will negatively impact the ability to play. Say, for example, we have this new tree model. It weighs in at roughly 150 Polygons. Now, we could place that, or we could place 3 50-polygon trees and better fill the world. Yes, I am looking for ways to beautify the world, but I do not want to sacrifice performance for beauty.

Borderline-Case asks: Would it be possible to make it so that it was an option like the "disable most weather effects" option - where you click it and the trees switch to the higher polygon version?
Scenario responds: Doing this would require more work from our Engineers and would likely necessitate a bit of engine overhauling to get it work right. As it stands right now, this is not something we can do easily, if at all. Disabling Weather Effects is only really turning off certain particle effects. Replacing objects, especially objects that are integrated into the landscape is a bit trickier

Driftor asks: Could you make it so when people unsubscribe their housing is released and all allegiance is let go. People abuse this by creating accounts to buy up housing and create rank chains and then unsubscibe. This defeats the intent of those features.
Ibn responds: There is the issue of players who need to take long breaks from the game -- such as military reservists -- but don't want to lose their housing. We're not sure yet how this is going to be addressed.

Perrin Ay'bara states: I'm sorry but I think it's time for the elementals to vacate the premises in GW. Either that or the tent for advancing trade skills should be moved.
Ibn responds: You are assuming that there is no way for you to get rid of them. That may have been the case in the past... have you tried recently?

smokin' hippie dewd asks: is there any way,... possibly,.. of us (homeowners) being able to purchase additional chests for our place of residence? or would this cause a latency problem somehow?
Ibn responds: Adding more storage to the game would add unacceptable load on the servers currently. So it's something the team would like to do, but no plans with current tech.

Eddie the Crazy asks: Are the Execs on ML supposed to still be casting VIs?
Ibn responds: I just checked with Orion, yes we know about this. No plans to change it in the near future.