chancellor

Honestly, soft launch doesn't feel as fair as a wipe for commercial launch. Having said that, I honestly don't think the servers could handle everyone creating a new character for launch day and trying to get into new campaigns as well. The servers would also possibly have troubles recognizing VIP status properly that first day as well, with everyone going from automatic free VIP to skin in the game VIP. So long as soft launch doesn't lead commercial launch by more than a month, I don't think the difference will be too big a handicap. It's just one of those things that we'll have to live with, or not if this straw (combined with other minor drawbacks) breaks the back of your game tolerance camel.

I expect that this will be the biggest (presently) hidden advantage to VIP status on an account.

Because it makes the account you care about the most so much more effective than a non-VIP account. Sure, many players will buy alt accounts for crafting and harvesting. Most of us already planned on it. But you're still going to use VIP tickets on your primary account. This change just means that those alternate accounts are less likely to carry VIP status after the first few months.

Woot.

OP, you'll have to recruit vassals by starting a guild or take over leadership in a guild. Once you have vassals, they can "craft" their crows by training skills, picking vessels (which can be crafted and leveled), and equipping gear (can also be crafted). It's sad that halite (rock salt) is difficult to obtain. Halite should be more common, and required in some cooking recipes, frost magic resistance, and witches' "nature magic" resistance.

I think it would be reasonable for the equipped vessel with items, but not backpack inventory to be on your crow when you return from a defunct CW. So long as it was on the crow when the campaign ended, whether the player was online or not, even in dregs campaigns. "To the victor go the spoils," of course; but players will have enough grief from losing the campaign. Feeling like their characters died with the campaign forever may be too much trauma for some players to handle.

Remarks like this ^ are how worlds get invaded by irate centaur legions!

Since heads are a resource that can be crafted into a vessel, please make these heads tradable and craftable for necromancy.

So long as you don't lose anything it would be no problem 4 them to go to the spirit bank. This should definitely be an exception to the spirit bank maximum, to curtail griefing behavior.

I think it's weaker because it still works while your group is fighting; ie. giving & taking damage.

You should really consider joining a guild.

From a standpoint of realism, I agree with the OP. Stealth is more like combat than {relaxation, sprinting, riding, crafting, or harvesting}, so players should reasonably be able to access the stealth tray from either combat or survival trays. That said, movement speed and stealth are inversely proportional, so an avatar's movement speed should drop his stealth rating in a linear fashion. If this suggestion is too much load on the servers, stealth can still be tied to movement by cutting stealth movement rates to half of combat movement speeds.

Good idea! In keeping with the specialization for harvesting theme I think it would be cool to have a certain type of jewelry stone associated with each ore and stone motherlode for gems, and a specific semi-precious stone associated with each ore and stone motherlode for soul gems. This would also cut out the confusion by naming each type of gem collected, putting its use in parentheses after the name. eg. Pearl (tier 5 Soul Gem), or Star Sapphire (tier 6 jewelry gem). The tier of gem drops could work just like ore or stone quality for how they drop, but a gemcutter should be able to improve or ruin either type, based on his skill, stat, and rng.

A Phylactery is a tiny book with scriptures or prayers written or printed on it. It's usually worn inside one's clothing and the print is usually too small to read, like the wearer might get holiness by diffusion. Students trying to cram all night, then sleeping on their books after an hour remind me of this.

JTC stated that we can collect heads and even display them in our EK's (Reddit stream).