Design Notes : Feb 24th, 2009

Chaos-adin Feb 24th, 2009
What is a Lord of Chaos?
Not sure... but guessing it is not good!
All we know is that Drakath picked (or is in the middle of picking) 13 Lords of Chaos. What do you think they are? What can they do? Who are they? See you on the forums!

Character Pages
Round 1 just went live!
That is right, character pages are finally here! You can now click on another player's portrait and open their character page! Here is a link to mine. We are going to add background art, icons, and better design in the next version. This page is being developed by Ai No Miko (Her name means priestess of love in Japanese... we call her Miko). She is also the one who is building the Facebook and Myspace pages. We want to do a few new things with your characters pages. First, we want to link all of the items to encycolpedia pages that will tell you where the item comes from (Monster drop, Quest, etc.) Also we would like to make your page customizable. It should be easy to have a good or evil background for your character depending on your alignment. That is a good place to start.

Also Happening
New Game Engine Update
Yay! Being released as early as tomorrow... we have a new engine coming your way. We are replacing "Rep" with "Class Points". Not only does this make more sense, but it comes with a new balanced experience curve that will make it easier to level up your class all the way. This change is paving the path for us to add "Factions". The first two factions, obviously, will be Swordhaven and Shadowfall. See my example below:

Class: Paladin - Rank it up with class points to unlock skills
Faction: Swordhaven - Get rep to have the city like you more and access more special shops and quests.

The Book Of Lore
The Lore Grimoire is 85% finished. The code is finally working, it just needs the text added which I will try to finish and have ready for tomorrow's push.

On TV!... at Target?
I was asked today if I could supply 3-5 Minutes of High Definition game footage by Friday. This would be be chopped down to... <chuckles> 3 to 5 seconds of video that will air on those TV screens at Target during a Game Card commercial. I am going to record it from my desktop on a few different characters tonight. So if you see me running around in game tonight, be sure to give a hearty "Battle on!" and do something interesting :-) Keep in mind that only 3-5 seconds of footage is going to be used... that is probably a few swings of combat and a a few frames from a cutscene. But still... how cool!


Martial Arts
In completely unrelated news... just in the off event you were interesting in hearing -- Thyton, Zhoom and I have started taking Muay Thai Kickboxing. It is sooo much fun! (Thyton and I have been seen battling through the hallways here at the lab) It is at the same martial arts school we are taking Krav Maga at, so we can continue our training there too. I think martial arts is a great way to improve yourself both mentally and physically. If you are not actively involved in any sports, I highly suggest looking up a local martials arts school and scheduling a demo lesson.

Note: If you are an adult, Krav Maga is, in my opinion, the best self defense system for both men and women. If you have never taken a martial art before, or are under 18, I strongly recommend Tae Kwon Do. It is the art I trained in first and earned my 3rd degree black belt. For the record (and if you need help talking your parents into letting you train) my training there is the reason I do not smoke, nor drink, no use drugs to this very day. Of course, <smiles> Martial Arts did nothing to help my spelling or grammar... (and neither will Zhoom punching me in the head at class tonight with his shiny new gloves.)

This Week's Release
J6 just built a very interesting new dungeon! As Swordhaven and Shadowfall are recovering from the way, a mysterious enemy gains power in the distance... and good guys will finally get their shop!