fixes posts

Wizard101 releases December patch

by Eliot Lefebvre Dec 14th 2009 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Patches, Player Housing, Free-to-play, Kids, Wizard101

Fast turnarounds are always nice. It's been a little over a week since we posted the first news about Wizard101's upcoming school-specific housing, and it's already moved from "upcoming" to "live." The December patch has just been released, and in addition to giving players the opportunity at having the literally hottest house around (among others), it brings a number of other improvements to the game's client. Most notable is the option to block chat from your opponents in PvP, a welcome feature to avoid the frequently non-stop boasting that seems to go hand-in-hand with the playstyle. It is an option that can be changed even in the middle of a duel, and while it's not game-defining it should be a welcome addition.

Much of the meat of this update comes in the form of the team relentlessly hunting down bugs and squashing them, with a long list of prior bugs that are no more. The team even notes that some of the killed bugs are ones the majority of players didn't even know about. While the update is a little lighter on actual content compared to the last one, fewer bugs and a better all-around experience are nothing to sneeze at, not to mention some exceptionally nice new houses. Wizard101 players still have a few days until the main event, but they still got a nice early Christmas present.

Tags: bugs, f2p, fixes, free-to-play, houses, housing, patches, updates, wizard-101, wizard101, wizard101-december-update

EVE Online Apocrypha patch notes detail a host of improvements

by James Egan Mar 25th 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Bugs, Game mechanics, Server downtime, News items

EVE Online's latest expansion had a fairly smooth deployment, particularly considering how many radical changes were made to the game. Premium graphics were extended to all celestial objects, with entirely new models for asteroids. The Apocrypha expansion also introduced a new, extremely deadly NPC race with an AI far more advanced than what's been experienced pre-Apocrypha. However, this huge list of new features has also led to a number of smaller issues that CCP Games will patch this week.

The patch was originally slated for today but considering the laundry list of fixes CCP plans to make, patch 1.0.2 will deploy on Thursday instead, with a slightly extended downtime. Downtime should last from 11:00 GMT to 12:30 GMT, and will fix issues with Epic Mission Arcs, the Skill Queue, and many other fixes are on the way, as detailed in the patch notes. Players into exploration (or hunting down other players) who've been taking advantage of the strength of Deep Space Scanner Probes should note that they've already been nerfed; tomorrow's patch will reduce their strength. Given that there are quite a number of minor changes being made, EVE players may want to skim over the patch notes before the end of Thursday's downtime.

Tags: apocrypha, bugs, ccp-games, epic-mission-arcs, eve, eve-online, expansions, fixes, game-mechanics, patch, patch-notes, patches, sci-fi, server-downtime, skill-queue

WAR's Mark Jacobs on fixes and holiday experience bonuses

by James Egan Dec 19th 2008 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Bugs, Game mechanics, Patches, Warhammer Online, News items

Fans of Warhammer Online will have noted a great deal of patching over the past few weeks. In fact, even the patches needed some patching. Some major issues Mythic Entertainment has been working to fix are the frequent crashes-to-desktop and other lockups players have been reporting. The latest word from Mythic's Mark Jacobs is that the client crashes have been drastically reduced, down by 75% (in North America). In fact, client crashes are now at their lowest point ever, either in development or since Warhammer Online went live, Jacobs said.

But he wasn't writing to the Warhammer Online player base just to talk about patches and crash fixes. Jacobs also announced a holiday gift for all WAR players that doesn't involve dwarves and debauchery. Warhammer Online players now enjoy an experience bonus, as of December 18th. Jacobs stated Mythic decided to increase the rest experience multiplier bonus, while "...reducing the time that it takes you to earn rested xp while logged out of the game, especially in Tiers 3 and 4. This will result in players' time to level being approximately 10% faster in Tier 2 and 20% faster in Tiers 3 and 4." Jacobs didn't state how long this revved up leveling curve will last, but stated it would be for "a few weeks."

WAR has gone 1.1! Check out our full coverage of the 1.1a patch, along with our interviews exploring upcoming content and the open RvR changes. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Tags: breaking, crash-to-desktop, ctd, experience-bonus, experience-multiplier, fixes, holiday, holidays, mark-jacobs, mythic, mythic-entertainment, patch, patches, war, warhammer-online, xp-bonus

The Daily Grind: What does Mythic have to fix to make Warhammer truly great?

by Michael Zenke Oct 1st 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, New titles, Patches, Warhammer Online, Opinion, The Daily Grind

Despite the launch of Warhammer Online being so recent, Mythic is not sitting idly or letting up the energy level in the wake of their title's release. Yesterday they announced the addition of cross-pairing queues for RvR scenarios. Judging by reactions in guild chat last night and in comments to the post, this change has been very well received. But, of course, nothing is perfect. It only make sense that they're moving ahead with the game's framework and design. From our point of view, and the view of a few other bloggers, there are still issues to be ironed out.

Snafzg at the Greenskin Blog offered up a list noting issues he'd like to see addressed by the developers sooner rather than later. Snaf primarily runs down technical issues and crunchy design decisions; he'd like to see Alt-Tabbing made friendlier, for example, a sentiment we wholeheartedly share. Meanwhile over at Nazgum's blog the author has a more 'high-level' to-do list for the Mythic designers. He wants more incentives for open field RvR, and even laments the absence of a third faction to do battle with.

We want to hear from you, though. What does Mythic need to fix in the next few weeks to ensure that you're going to stay a subscriber next month?

Tags: fixes, launch, mythic-entertainment, opinion, patch, tdg, the-daily-grind, war, warhammer-online

City of Heroes patch tweaks, refines, and fixes

by Samuel Axon Aug 6th 2008 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, News items

NCsoft released a new patch for City of Heroes/City of Villains and published the update notes on its website yesterday. Like this post's title implies, most of the changes are tweaks, refinements, and fixes. For example, the patch fixed a rather annoying graphical glitch that occurred on the very popular GeForce 8 series video cards.

It's not all about bugs, though; there are lots of balance changes to character abilities (like slight nerfs to Fire Control/Cinders and Plant Control/Roots), and a few tweaks to badges (for example, Ourobos missions "will now issue a gold star and the proper badge"). Also notably, you can no longer drag-and-drop items into an allied super-group's storage. This change was made to address an exploit which allowed folks to grief by completely cleaning out others' storage. Various class changes are buried in the notes as well, including further changes to Mastermind pets intended to improve their combat performance.

So if you're a player, you'll want to read the notes to make sure you're up to speed. Maintenance is better than nothing, right? The complete notes are included after the jump.

Tags: abilities, balance, bugs, city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, cov, cox, fixes, geforce, ncsoft, notes, nvidia, patch, patch-notes, update, update-notes

Patch report for Age of Conan's July 17th update

by Matt Warner Jul 19th 2008 at 6:30PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Bugs, Classes, Forums, Game mechanics, Patches

Yes, it's time again for another edition of undocumented Age of Conan patch notes. We briefly mentioned them in the invisible hotfix edition that took place shortly after the latest Age of Conan patch. The list maintained on the official Age of Conan forums has grown since then. We know some of our reader's favorite Age of Conan moments were canceling their accounts (very funny guys) but not everyone is a quitter, and this time around there are a lot more fixes reported.

There are two forum threads that players maintaining the undocumented changes from the latest patch. One on the US player forums and a bug thread on the EU player forums. We took a little heat last time we reported on the last undocumented changes so please keep in mind that Massively can not confirm or deny the submissions reported in the undocumented patch note threads. The reports and feedback presented are done by the Age of Conan playerbase and their intentions are their own. The full list from the US player forums continues after the cut.

General

Custom-made saddle listed in the patch notes did not make it in. 1 Update: Saddle in game

GUI

Right clicking to someone's name on chat will result in 5-6 duplicate system spam, including the info about that person. 1
Mouse autowalk with mounts doesn't enable other controls. 1

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, aoc-forums, aoc-player-report, aoc-update-july-17, bugs, conan, fixes, forums, funcom, patch-report, stealth-nerf, undocumented

AoC developers get specific about coming fixes and features

by Adrian Bott Jul 11th 2008 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Bugs, Patches, Crafting

A little developer communication can go a long way. Today we see two substantial communications from the Age of Conan developers. Twicer has posted a hefty account of what's coming next in the ongoing drive to patch up the game. In the spotlight are tradeskills, resource playfields and massive PvP. Not all of what's here will be welcome - rare resource drops, for example, are actually working as intended and not bugged - but Funcom do seem to be keeping the player base more in the loop, which is a positive step.

Meanwhile, Gaute Godager has issued a new letter to the players, expanding upon (and revising) what he said last time. We learn the he new PvP changes are expected to come out in early August, and the DX10 part of the engine is now scheduled for this fall, with a preview at Leipzig in August. To our surprise, buddy keys are scheduled to be activated next week (at long last) in apparent contradiction of Ellingsen's denial that a trial program is coming any time soon.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, bugs, fixes, funcom, patch, testlive, tradeskills

AoC mount bug fixes and speed boosts on the way

by William Dobson Jun 9th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Bugs, Game mechanics, Patches

If you already own a horse mount in Age of Conan, you are probably extremely unimpressed with your new companion's speed -- it almost seems like you don't move any faster at all. According to this post at AoC's official forums, this is in fact the case. One of the game's designers has confirmed that, currently, even the mighty horse trots along at regular run-speed. A proper fix for this is coming in a future patch, but a temporary workaround is shared for now (which a lot of people in the community had already figured out): simply sheathe or unsheathe your weapon while mounted, and enjoy the mount's speed boost as it was intended.

Also included in the post is the fact that the speed boost itself will be increased very soon. Horses will be slightly faster, and Mammoths and Rhinos will get a smaller boost. As well as this, to address a complaint that those with Mammoth/Rhino pre-order privileges have, the riding skills (charging, attacks, etc.) associated with these mounts will be given automatically with the "/claim" command after a future patch, and those who already have the skills through buying Basic Riding will need to perform the command to receive them again.

EDIT: Going by this forum thread, the mount speed increase is already in effect as of today's patch. Some in-game testing of our own shows that at the very least, the bug requiring weapon sheathing/unsheathing is fixed. More on these other undocumented patch changes shortly.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, bugs, designer, fixes, forums, funcom, horse, mammoth, mounted-speed, mounts, patches, rhino, run-speed

New AoC patch brings important fixes

by Adrian Bott Jun 9th 2008 at 9:30AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Patches, Server downtime

Continuing with their policy of frequent medium-sized patches instead of intermittent colossal ones, FunCom are bringing a welcome new patch to the AoC servers today. As well as the all-important 'more client and server crashes resolved' and a host of alterations such as a sound effect for levelling up (what's a ding without a ding?) and fixes to quests, there are significant changes to Demonologists that should make the class more balanced.

Many spells have had their damage buffed, their casting time reduced, or their splash damage increased. The hated cooldown for wide-scale Area of Effect damage spells, Inferno of Amher and Shockblast, has even been shaved back down.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, buffs, demonologist, demonologists, fixes, funcom, patch-notes, patches, server-downtime

PotBS gets patch 1.0.44.0 before launch

by Mike Schramm Jan 16th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Historical, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Culture, Exploits, Patches, PvE

Pirates of the Burning Sea has received its first patch (and whaddaya know, even before it actually gets released). Preorder-ers got to start playing last week, and apparently there are already a few fixes that need to go in.

As you might guess, it's mostly a stability patch, although a few exploits were fixed as well (there was one where you could stack buffs and become invincible. Lower level missions were also retuned-- apparently there were too many missions in the beta that were too low, so FLS has tweaked those up a notch. Bam! Keen loves this change, but he would-- he loves everything PotBS (I kid! Keen's actually been doing a great job covering the game).

The only other change of note is that FLS "removed text we thought might offend the ESRB." That's not piratical behavior! When you're a pirate, you don't worry about what landlubbers think! You say what's on yer mind, and damned be the consequences!

Tags: fixes, flying-lab, keen, patch, pirates-of-the-burning-sea, potbs, stability