As you guys know, the servers are now back up and online - We want to apologize again for the extensions and any inconvenience the downtime may have caused. Going to close this one down - Have fun in-game! =)

Anarchy Online is now back online.

Well as I said, this is due to complications beyond our control. It happens sometimes and we are working with external partners to speed up the process.

The maintenance downtime has to be extended by 5 hours. This is due to some uncontrollable complications that cropped up during the downtime. We sincerely apologize for this extended delay and we are working with our external hosting partners to get things back up as soon as possible.

The new uptime for the servers is set at Midnight EST / 5am GMT.

The original posted extension was a bit misleading. The first ETA was supposed to be for noon EST / 17:00 GMT. Then we posted an extended downtime of 7 hours to put us at Midnight. Unfortunately, it was mentioned the extended period started at 15:30 GMT, meaning 7 hours from 15:30 as opposed from 17:00. When we extend downtimes, it's supposed to extend from the current estimated uptime, which in this case was 17:00

So, the current eta is Midnight GMT (17:00 + 7 hours extension) unless otherwise stated.

Just to clarify, the estimated uptime for the scheduled maintenance is at 7pm EST / Midnight GMT.

They are in game, but it's not possible to obtain them yet.
We have some plans for them, but you're looking at what is called work in progress!

Update Release Notes 18.4.15

Valentine'S Day Celebration:

• New Love themed missions is available from Adrienne Lefebvre in Borealis!

Encounter Alterations:

• "Amesha Vizaresh" in Pandemonium will now announce the spawn timer for this encounter.
• We fixed a small issue with Azi Dahaka's Reflect Shield.
• We removed the ability for some of the Vahman's adds to use actions such as DOT's and Fears.
• We reduced the amount of fires that will spawn during first phase of the encounter with Vahman.
• We fixed an issue with the mechanic that should allow Shrarosha to boost it's damage.

GUI, Art & Code Alterations:

• Characters can now enter into a solo instance of the Sector 10 boss area.
• We fixed a problem that was causing server crashes.
• We fixed various exploits.

Item Changes:

• 'Improved Nano Repulsor' and 'Improved Instinctive Control' can be used by Agents in False Profession.
• The 'Cerset Zapper Rifle' range is increased to match the 'Solar-Powered Rifle'.
• The cooldown of 'Shadowlands Recall Beacon' available from the Veteran vendor is lowered to match the Rubi-Ka version.
• We fixed various typos

Quest Changes:

• We have modified XP rewards for Shadowlands Quests to offer maximum benefits to players of the intended level range of the zone.
  Players beyond this level range will receive an appropriate amount of XP/SK relative to the overall difficulty of the zone. Displaying the reward from the mission window will tell you how much XP/SK you will get for completing the quest.
• Token rewards will no longer be available from the Shadowlands Garden and Sanctuary quests.
• Thanks to Docaholic, all all garden key icons have gotten some polish.
• We improved the drop-rate for all items required for the Dodga/Alvin quest line.

Update Release Notes 18.4.15

Valentine'S Day Celebration:

• New Love themed missions is available from Adrienne Lefebvre in Borealis!

Encounter Alterations:

• "Amesha Vizaresh" in Pandemonium will now announce the spawn timer for this encounter.
• We fixed a small issue with Azi Dahaka's Reflect Shield.
• We removed the ability for some of the Vahman's adds to use actions such as DOT's and Fears.
• We reduced the amount of fires that will spawn during first phase of the encounter with Vahman.
• We fixed an issue with the mechanic that should allow Shrarosha to boost it's damage.

GUI, Art & Code Alterations:

• Characters can now enter into a solo instance of the Sector 10 boss area.
• We fixed a problem that was causing server crashes.
• We fixed various exploits.

Item Changes:

• 'Improved Nano Repulsor' and 'Improved Instinctive Control' can be used by Agents in False Profession.
• The 'Cerset Zapper Rifle' range is increased to match the 'Solar-Powered Rifle'.
• The cooldown of 'Shadowlands Recall Beacon' available from the Veteran vendor is lowered to match the Rubi-Ka version.
• We fixed various typos

Quest Changes:

• We have modified XP rewards for Shadowlands Quests to offer maximum benefits to players of the intended level range of the zone.
  Players beyond this level range will receive an appropriate amount of XP/SK relative to the overall difficulty of the zone. Displaying the reward from the mission window will tell you how much XP/SK you will get for completing the quest.
• Token rewards will no longer be available from the Shadowlands Garden and Sanctuary quests.
• Thanks to Docaholic, all all garden key icons have gotten some polish.
• We improved the drop-rate for all items required for the Dodga/Alvin quest line.

My "great read" comment was directed at the post made by the AO producer...not the article..which I haven't read and probably won't.

In your capable hands I don't doubt that at all. Great read. Thank you for taking the time to share that with us.

This is a valid concern and we're taking it into consideration. We're investigate our options at this point so I'll let you know when we have a workable solution.

You didn't miss it, I will talk more about it in the next monthly update. The new player experience was my pet project up until now, and the other designers are picking up where I left off. They will get some time to have their own input in the design before we start the implementation.

It's my first time doing something like this so please bare with me! I've done a lot of preparations for this update to give you a fair insight into what we're currently working on, and I can see us sharing some good times ahead.

Graphics Engine
One of the things that we really want to focus on right now, is showing you the progress of our new graphics engine! We feel like it's about damn time, and thanks to Parsed and also Cube we're finally ready to produce our very first video!

Our artists have been preparing a couple of playfields to a standard that is very close to what we're aiming for. The focus features for this video will be showcasing what we feel look fantastic; grass, shadows, skydome, self illumination and, drumroll... godrays! (Water looks pretty neat too, but what do I know I'm not an artist (: )

I'm hoping to produce more videos when more features and areas becomes available, and I'm expecting that this first one will hit you sometime in february!

New Bug Report Forums
Another thing we want to focus on is making sure that we keep the communications line open with you. It's an important part of what makes AO special, and something I definitely want to maintain. To help with this we've gotten a few cool new things up and running. Kintaii has been setting up our new Report a Bug and Report an Exploit forums. Thanks to our amiable volunteers - This is now open and ready to be used!

If you post a new thread in this forum the development team can see it immediately, and only the people handling your report (the development team, quality assurance and bug hunters) will be able to see your post. This will allow you to bring these issues to us in confidence, and that you can help ensure we have direct knowledge of the things that effect you day to day.

We also wanted to make it easier for you to contribute on the test server. So as an extension to this new system, I present to you our new Test Live robot ”Auto” – who can boost your character up to any level free of charge on the Test Live Dimension, so you're ready to help us indentify bugs immediately without having to transfer an existing character. Test live is an essential part of our development process so we want to try and improve the ease with which people can help us out if they want to. I think there has previously been a barrier here, and with this addition we wan't people to just get into the action immediately and have more fun while testing.

Please keep using the ingame petition for any issues that disrupts you while playing. That is still your primary communication channel with the good people in customer service.

Character Heads
I'm very happy about us getting additional Funcom resources to aid us in the production of new Solitus character heads. This is greatly going to speed up our work, and once they have all been polished and approved by Flap and Mstr we will share some of them with you. These Solitus heads are in the last batch of heads we're re-making, and judging by the quality examples we've obtained I think you're going to find them hot! (:

Profession Changes
Many of you have asked me about the balance act, and ideally all of the things we want to improve would come at the same time, but in reality things will have to be prioritized. So right now we are working on approving the suggested changes, making adjustments here and there, and indentifying in which order the changes should be released. Genele is currently buried in piles of documentation, and she is doing a great job leading these meetings and I definitely feel that we can do this, a little bit at a time.

We all want AO to use it's full potential. That's why we are doing this, we want you to understand what all your tools do (yes I'm partly speaking about LE procs), and we want you to be able to use all your tools no matter where you are in the game world. Right now this is not the case because of how several systems are built on top of eachother. Improving this will also allow us as designers to make new fun content more freely.

Server Merge
I've seen a lot of discussion about doing a server merge, and we are infact looking into the possibility of doing this. The server capability now compared to ten years ago is a little more buff, so the hardware can definately handle an increased population. It's too early to give our verdict, but Macrosun is doing his thing and as soon as I know the result I will talk about it more because we feel like this is a natural step that will allow us to have more enjoyable team based content no matter in which time zone you live in.

Summary
So, to summarize our vision for 2012; for the next couple of months our combined efforts will strive towards three major goals: shipping the new player experience, the balancing act and the new graphics engine.

These are large tasks that will involve most people in the team at various points, but with good planning we will still be able to release content patches, continue to eradicate bugs and exploits, optimize and improve ao and deal with all the new and creative ways in which fate decides to mess with us.

Finally, as a more long time vision, I'm seing us planning for the next expansion or booster pack once we are done with what we're already working on. It's a little early yet to say when, but it's definitely on our horizon!

In the next newsletter I will amongst other things talk about my thoughts on the new startup experience, the battle station (and pvp in general), and the item shop. I need a chance to roll up my sleeves and get some more work done first.

The Next Game Update
The next patch should be released on the 8th of February.
This includes new fun content for Valentine's Day, created by the designer that brought you the Christmas missions - Michizure, and it will be available until the 27th of February!

By your request: Amesha Vizaresh will be greeting you on the platform leading to The Gauntlet, announcing the countdown timer until next Vizaresh spawn!


Please keep being the wonderfully unique community that you are, and I will do my very best being your advocate.

Kindly,
Fia ”Lindelu” Tjernberg

Ps. Hi Means (:

Waldgeist edit: German translation

I was never here.

We are still here.

bookmarked.

Some of you have been asking me what sort of things I have been responsible for as a designer, and I think answering this will give you more insight in what sort of direction I will guide us in.

The most memorable enemies I made were the aliens in Arid Rift.
Since I enjoy very fast-paced and actiony combat, I decided to give them less hit points and more dangerous tricks than any other enemies had at the time.
I think this worked out well, it was challenging to attempt to solo, and one was always kept your ones toes.

I am however not a fan of the snare towers mechanic, just because I think it punishes people who do not deserve to be punished. They do serve their purpose, but I will use my thinking hat twice in the future to avoid this mechanic.

The most memorable boss fight I made was area X in Neretva Canyons.
Me and Flap (artist) initiated the design on a Sunday afternoon at a cafe in Oslo, and the first concepts for it was drawn on a napkin.

When this area hit Live it dawned on me that the formula for spawning adds was flawed, and I think Live ended up with something like 278 adds. I learned a lot about all night debugging and why to avoid it that night.

I think the revised version fits well in my portfolio as being a very intense fight where your toolset matters. You can debuff, snare, root and taunt with appropriate results. And you need to keep awake in order to succeed.

The most memorable dialogue I wrote was in Arid Rift (LOX). As a player I was very curious about the alien story, and it was mindblowing to learn this story from the development team and writing it myself. I especially enjoyed working with the Awakened Xan.

The most memorable bugs and annoyances that I fixed was those quest lines with previously bad reputations. Bazzit quest, scheol sanctuary and garden quests and nascence garden quests spring to mind. These all used to contain kinks which prevented you from progressing if you did something in the wrong order, and the right order wasn't very well communicated.

The thing I'm most proud of is the Daily Mission system. I feel like all the effort and love that went into designing and implementing over a hundred missions payed off, people have been enjoying having new and varied things to do to level up.

Although, my colleagues think it's important for us to direct more of our focus on team gameplay right now, and I agree with them.
To be honest with you I did not consider the fact that some people are leveling up a LOT of characters at the same time when I made these missions - but I realize now that it makes it difficult for you to have time for anything else but daily missions, and this is something I that consider to be a drawback of this system.

The thing I am least proud of is all the times when I broke the game.
Means did a really good job both catching these mistakes and shielding me from the fire, but I am absolutely responsible for breaking the game on multiple occasions and I think at least every time I learned a lesson.

The first official newsletter will be released on Tuesday 31st of January (:

The problem is that we can only have one announcement thread per-forum, and any sticky threads would follow the same route as all the other threads posted in the forums and be invisible to anyone save the poster (and the people handling said forums).

In terms of not being able to see what's already been posted, this is actually kind of a design decision - I'd rather encourage people to post what they come across, instead of worrying about whether or not someone's already made a thread on the subject. That way we gain more potential coverage on an issue - One poster may include details that the others haven't, for example. It also keeps anyone from feeling potentially 'shy' in terms of feeling like they're being watched/judged by other members of the general forums population; no one has to feel weird or like their posts are being dissected by everyone else lurking around.

I agree, though, that there probably should be a better solution for the "known issues" section, and if we manage to come up with a good work-around we'll definitely lean in that direction. =)

i do loves me some screwdrivers

It's nice to keep 'em up closer to the top, though, to increase visibility. We've discovered that the lower a forum is in the relative order, the less traffic it tends to get - With these being directly under the "Current Update" forum, they're more likely to be seen and (hopefully) used. =)

I should also say that both forums are proving to be a great success thus-far, and I want to encourage everyone to check the new forums out and utilize them if they should come across a bug or exploit to report. =)

As per the sticky thread up toward the top we did discover an issue with the Break Through Bundle pack and have removed it from the shop while we investigate. Our apologies for any inconvenience this might cause.

Yes, but there is still a wide (and extremely important) gulf between "generating" credits and "trading" credits. If a player trades OFAB to another player for a credit amount, no *new* credits are injected into the economy; the amount of credits available on the server remains precisely the same. If a player were to sell the OFAB items purchased with their VP then they would be able to generate, per month, around 15k credits - This is what is a potential concern, and what we naturally want to avoid. However, distributing credits among differing players brings absolutely nothing new into the game outside of the armour itself, ultimately *lowering* its total price point on the open market. Either way you look at it the economy itself takes no discernable hit, and things overall remain relatively the same. =)

The Break Through Bundle can only be claimed x-amount of times per month per account (currently I believe it's 10 total, can't recall off the top of my head) - The ability for a player to purchase VP-related items and sell them to in-game shops to generate credits is limited and, in this case, viewed by us as extremely trivial (unless you just really, really, *really* need to save up to buy that XL Backpack in-game, there are much better ways of getting 15k credits a month :P).

vvvvvvvvv Yes, standard Victory Point packages purchased in the shop (IE: not the ones included in this bundle pack) may be traded or sold to other players. We've never denied this in any fashion, and have stated as much on several other occasions - One such quote from Means was reposted earlier in the thread. This is becoming more and more standard across the industry, with even Blizzard and World of Warcraft recently having implemented a similar system. However, this thread's topic is regarding the Break Through Bundle - Any discussion on trading or selling Victory Point packages or any other in-game shop item precludes the bundle, as the items contained within said bundle are not tradeable.

Suggestions for the Vet Vendor and similar stuff should continue to go into Game Suggestions - We'd like to keep this area purely dedicated for topics and discussion regarding the in-game shop. =)

You get 2x per character when claiming the items - This can be claimed on any character on an account, so no difference from other account-wide options.

Previously, yes, the items offered in the Break Through Bundle were not flagged as being no-drop, which is a fairly large part of why we removed the offer until now. As it stands currently, all items included with the Break Through Bundle are flagged as no-drop, preventing the scenario outlined in the first post. =)

We have pretty staunch anti-sock-pupperty internal regulations/rules, so I can assure you that any opinions posted here by FC-employed individuals will be posted under FC accounts. We can let you guys speak for yourselves, and let... er... ourselves speak for ourselves. So I promise you, anything posted in here without a blue name/background is not from a Funcom employee. =)