Announcements - 2010/05 - Celebration
May 2010 - Patch Page
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Rollout Article
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Release Notes
Original Link - http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=566-may-release-notes&catid=81-2010&Itemid=68
May Release Notes
Greetings and welcome to the May Release Notes! Love is in the air as we finally get to attend the wedding of Hoshino Kei and Prince Borelean. Almost all of the dignitaries of Dereth will be there, and so should you! After the big April update we had some adjustments that needed to be made, and the team has been hard at work making they got as much done as possible. So Let’s see what is new and exciting in Asheron’s Call this month!
Updated Content and Functionality
- The new armor we previewed here is now in the game. It can be found on the same loot drops as the Olthoi Armors.
- Shadows who may have been missing 2 skill credits will find they once again will have the correct number of skill credits.
- Creature Types should now be displaying properly on all of the creatures of Dereth.
- Item XP now has commas in the XP amounts. This should make these numbers much easier to read, even for Ulgrim.
- The Fury Sigil armor set now has an Endurance boost.
- Wisps in the Aetheria Dungeon should no longer fall into the holes throughout the dungeon.
- Viamontian Laced Boots should now show up the proper stats.
- Monster corpses will decay even if someone is holding them open. This should reduce the issue of corpses staying locked open and not rotting. (Decay takes longer then if the creature corpse were not opened)
- Chest should no longer spawn with just one loot profile.
- It is a time of Celebration in Dereth! Make sure you attend the Wedding and the Reception. Make sure you check out the Dereth Wedding Developer Diary that we put together for this event.
Dereth Wedding Developer Diary
Original Link - http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=567-dereth-wedding-developer-diary&catid=81-2010&Itemid=68
Dereth Wedding Developer Diary
Join the AC team as they discuss the creation of the Wedding of Hoshino Kei and Borelean Strathelar!
Art imitates life. That’s the saying anyway… but we’re inclined to believe it after our hard work on the April update “Shedding Skin”. What started as a plausible story reason for some of the great changes coming to Asheron’s Call in Spring 2010 quickly evolved into all the trials and tribulations that come with traditional wedding planning!
It’s not often that this sort of topic is broached in online gaming. Usually updates tend to present cataclysmic dangers or the vilest and most diabolical of enemies. Next to those kinds of menace, a wedding may not seem like the sort of event that can be highlighted in an MMO, but why couldn’t a wedding be the focus of a major game update? After all, “weddings” are important social events of great significance in countless cultures – especially when the pair to be wed holds a prominent place in the society! Asheron’s Call is more than just a “game,” it’s a community; in that sense, a wedding between important lore characters is an important occasion for our community. It’s an excellent time to celebrate, and it’s the perfect vehicle to introduce new additions to the game!
“It kind of started as a ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…?’ and pretty soon it took on a life of its own. It’s been nice to go in a different direction.” – Frelorn, Community Representative
In our 10 years of operation, we’ve had 118 updates. You’d think that this update would be like any other update, if not easier, because it’s not one of those “doom and gloom” types of updates. Our work on this event has highlighted the amount of effort that has to go into a wedding, even if it’s a wedding that only lives in the 0’s and 1’s of our game.
Getting the bride and groom of the wedding together was the first – and arguably simplest – task. We needed to look no further than the lore of Asheron’s Call to find characters we could work with. Players will recognize Borelean, Queen Elysa’s son, the helpful black knight and now husband-to-be. We hinted at the identity of the bride with some subtle lotus flower references, so it may come as no surprise to players that the bride is Hoshino Kei, the Sho Archmage apprentice who helped the players open the portal to Bur.
“The Lotus is more important to the Sho culture in general, as it is part of the symbolism of Jojiism, one of the two religions of the Sho.” – Kintani, Content Designer
From there, however, the update started to take on a life of its own as more and more “wedding-centric” talk proliferated around the office. We needed a “venue” that was the right size for the “guest list” and we had to figure out how the “ceremony” was going to happen and so forth. At least we didn’t have to suffer through color swatches and vendor comparisons!
…Or did we?
The “Venue”
Hosting an in-game wedding shares the same pitfalls and challenges as one in the real world, particularly the common problem of finding a place to have the wedding. The aim is of course to find a wedding venue that will accommodate everyone, but also be within your means. Just because we’re operating in virtual space doesn’t mean these aren’t primary considerations for an event like this.
We needed somewhere that was conveniently located for our guests and could accommodate a crowd. Yanshi was a natural choice with its central location and pre-existing festival grounds. Then we had to consider what we could get away with in terms of performance. The wedding location had to look nice while keeping details simple. Simple and elegant can be a classic look for a wedding, so team members spent some time researching pictures of “outdoor weddings” looking for inspiration. Ultimately a gazebo style area proved out as the most effective in both performance and style.
“An outdoor space has much more of a wedding feel in our game. Also - continuing on the ‘uniting the world’ concept - it feels more accessible than being put in an indoor area that people must portal into. It makes it seem more inviting. It also gives players more room to move around and hang out, whereas if it were indoors players would be forced to be within the bounds that we create.” – NoWorries, QA Lead
Decoration was an important aspect of the wedding location, since it couldn’t just be a lone gazebo gleaming white on the horizon. Some elements worked really well with very straightforward effort, like the stone benches, hedges, and the colors of the gazebo itself. Others took some… fussing.
“NoWorries liked making flowers. There was one point where he was complaining because his flowers kept falling out of their planter boxes." – Kintani, Content Designer
Once you have your venue set up, the next challenging part of a wedding is typically the guest list. It was no exception for our virtual wedding either.
The “Guest List”
The natural inclination for planning the guest list of a wedding is to include everyone you can who would want to attend. This presents a challenge when you’re dealing with an MMO where players may span a broad level range, but they’re all interested in participating. We wanted to keep to the theme of “unifying the land,” so much of the questing and tasks were designed around encouraging players to come together and help with the wedding preparations, no matter where or what level they were – such as constructing the ceremony location on their servers.
“It’s difficult to make an event that will seem ‘cool enough’ for all level ranges.” – Severlin, Producer
Developer Comments
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