chancellor

In the latest news thread, Path to Alpha, JTC seems to describe the Dregs as what we expected the Shadowlands (GvG) band to be, with POI capture points based on guild affiliation rather than faction, and friendly-fire so badly done that no one will want it. So, unless guild affiliation can be toggled off at campaign creation, the original Dregs concept is dead; as is the name, Shadowlands.

This still doesn't fix the problem of doubling-up on the specific promotion class advantages once you get the time in and train multiple promotion classes. Since Blair just said he doesn't want that possible, a simple, better fix is to lock the vessel into a specific promotion class. This way a veteran player can train and play different promo classes with the same crow, but he doesn't have an insurmountable advantage over newer players.

I agree. If ACE gets creative about certain recipes, super-rare resources, and artifacts; they can have fun with it and so will we. I think they should wrap this stuff into the game lore in multiple ways. That way the scarcity/availability of these things makes some sense, and players can get hints (and red herrings) from the lore.

1. Not gonna happen. Repeated suggestions of this have not piqued ACE's interest. 2, 3, & 4. These are already planned and ongoing. Some of that customization should keep going even after launch.

These animal environment hazards look great! Please take the gold off their loot tables, though. If they don't wear clothing, they don't value gold either!

You're assuming a fixed season change rate. The length of a season in a campaign can (and probably will) be dependent on player census.

I guess the race name, "Orc" was copyrighted? There's your Bacon Rune, Hillbilly!

Wolves are pack predators, so they hunt in groups. I think it would be cool, and dangerous, for the entire group of wolves to have a proc chance to focus on the target of a single wolf that has engaged. The pack could be defined as all the wolves generated and governed by a single monster generator.

Shouldn't they be hurling Axes, then?

A hurlBAT is piercing, not crushing? This is yet another reason why weapon bonuses shouldn't be so closely tied to class, IMO.

1. Maybe they are. High elves may be able to contest this if they were interested enough to share their records. 2. All the races seem to be enchanted in CF. 3. You may want to find a better phrase than "servicing the worlds". Someone will likely make sport of this target. 4. I already mentioned that Stoneborn are made of stone. I suspect that their beards just resemble tree roots rather than being wooden, otherwise they'd tend to burn up in the forge. None of this invalidates my statement, but you get points for sticking to your RP character.

Since the stoneborn are made of stone, I would expect them to get bonuses in blacksmithing, stonemasonry, gem cutting, ore mining, and stone quarrying. That's a lot of bonus areas, but it makes sense. Runemaking should, in fairness, be the province of another race. Please share your reasoning why it's so obvious that stoneborn should be best at yet another craft. Remember that ACE doesn't really want too many players in any particular race, for any of the 3 focus areas.

They aren't hard if ACE makes the entrance an interface to another server, just like they do with Runegates and Portals. Hopefully the dungeon servers would run concurrently with the source world server. Instanced dungeons are too easy for gold farmers to exploit. PvP > PvE

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.