[AC] May LttP

[Kezz]

May 2006 Letter to the Players

Hi there and welcome to the May 2006 edition of the Letter to the Players. It has been a tumultuous time in Dereth this month as Count Dardante has been seen around Dereth with his experiment, Commander Jared Kurth. These sightings have caused many to choose sides it what appears to be an impending epic war between King Varicci and Queen Elysa. Which side are you on?

In the midst of this great conflict an old but familiar sight has arisen from the ashes, yet no one is quite sure where this Spire came from or why it is here? Does it mean that a dark evil is rising? Has the great conflict between kingdoms awoken something sinister? Or is there something else happening here? Have the magic's that Count Dardante continues to toy with finally made some force greater than him aware of what he is doing? There are alot of questions that need to be answered.

As we settle in to the summer season, what is in store for Dereth? With a great conflict on the horizon is Dereth about to be thrown into something it is not ready for? Will the brave warriors of this land once again step up and save the day, or does this mark the beginning of the end for Dereth as we know it?

Let's find out what is new in Dereth this month!

New Content and Functionality
This month we are introducing the allegiance changes that have been proposed for some time now. These changes include more allegiance officers with more control, including being able to name the different ranks of officers. Monarchs and officers will also have the ability to name the allegiance and the ability to lock the allegiance, so that monarchs and officers can have more control over who gets into an allegiance. Here is a more detailed explanation of the new and improved allegiance system.

Allegiance Names
The first aspect of the improvements we will cover today is the ability to give your allegiance its own unique name. The monarch of the allegiance or an officer with the appropriate permissions may set the name of the allegiance once every 24 hours using the command @allegiance name set . The name of the allegiance may be changed once every 24 hours, by a person with the appropriate permissions, which we will cover more in the allegiance officers section of this report. Allegiance names may be 40 characters long and may consist only of characters that can be used in character names: that is, alphabetic characters, spaces, and normal punctuation only (' and -).

Allegiance Officers
For some time now players have been asking us for more structure and control over what goes on in allegiances. These requests include giving allegiance officers more abilities and a better system then what had been in place. Well, ask and you shall receive! Below I will list the officer ranks and the powers that go along with them.

Level 1: Speaker
Allegiance chat kick.
Allegiance chat gag.
Allegiance broadcast.
Set/clear the MOTD.

Level 2: Seneschal
Promote/demote members under own rank
(i.e. can promote/demote speakers).
Allegiance boot.
Allegiance ban.
Access allegiance info.
Lock/unlock the allegiance.

Level 3: Castellan
Promote/demote members to any rank, including other Castellans.
Change officer titles.
Set/clear the allegiance name.
Set allegiance bind stone.
Change mansion allegiance access/storage permissions.
Bypass allegiance lock with own vassals.
Bypass allegiance lock by approving particular vassals.

The monarch and officers with appropriate permissions can appoint officers or remove officers as described in the table above. In other words:

3 The monarch can appoint or remove any officer of any level.
3 Castellan (level 3) officers can appoint or remove any officer of any level.
3 Seneschal (level 2) officers can appoint or remove Speakers.
3 Speaker (level 1) officers cannot appoint or remove anyone at this time.

Any member of the allegiance may become an officer. An allegiance may have a maximum of 12 officers at once (not counting the monarch, who is not considered an officer), but those 12 officers may have any level of permission. For instance, there may be 12 speakers, or 6 speakers and 6 seneschals, or what have you.

In addition, at any time a member of the allegiance can find out who the officers of that allegiance are by typing in the command @allegiance officer or @allegiance officer list.
Either command will display a list of allegiance member names in no particular order followed by their officer title.

Custom Officer Titles
In order to help customize allegiances, the monarch and officers with appropriate permissions can rename the officer levels in whatever fashion they desire – so long as those names meet the following two criteria:
3 The new title must be no longer than 20 characters.
3 The new title must consist alphabetic characters and normal punctuation (namely ' and -) only.
3 The new title must not be profane, as determined by the chat language filter.

Note that officer titles may contain spaces and capital letters. If an allegiance has not set a custom name for an officer level, the default title is used.

Allegiance Chat Gag
As you may have noticed, there are some abilities listed above that were not available before. One of these is the allegiance chat gag. The monarch or any officer of Speaker level or above may temporarily prevent any allegiance member from participating in allegiance chat by entering a command. By default, this gag will last 5 minutes and then wear off. An officer or the monarch may explicitly end this gag early, if they so choose. Note that officers may gag each other or even the monarch, but that a gagged officer can always just turn around and ungag himself immediately.

Allegiance Lock
Another ability that was once not available is the ability to lock an allegiance. The monarch of the allegiance or an officer with the appropriate permissions may lock or unlock the allegiance. In addition, any member of the allegiance can see the current state by entering in a command. Allegiances are unlocked by default, to match existing behavior. When the allegiance is unlocked, new players may swear into the allegiance in the normal fashion. When the allegiance is locked, however, only the monarch and officers with the appropriate permissions may accept offers of allegiance. If a player swears allegiance to a monarch or Castellan-level officer in a locked allegiance, the action proceeds as normal. But if a player attempts to swear allegiance to a lower-level officer or non-officer in a locked allegiance, then the swear attempt will fail.

Higher tier weapons
This month will bring in the next tier of the Runed weapons that are found around Dereth. These weapons will have the same cast on strike abilities as the previous tier, but they are intended for characters around level 120. This of course means the damage these weapons do is increased from the last set that was released in the April event. These new weapons will appear in chests that are found in areas geared towards the same level range as the weapons.

In Concept
These are game changes that we are thinking about for upcoming events. We cannot guarantee when or even if these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items we will be adding to the game. With each monthly event we will be discussing an in concept topic, in order to give you as much information about the item that we can.

Equipment Sets
Equipment sets are just what they sound like. A set of equipment that when equipped will cast certain spells on the wearer. So if a player equips two pieces of a set he gets certain spells cast on him, but when he equips more items in the set, the spells are increased. If the person wears the whole set, they will then receive a bonus spell or effect that is cast only when the person is wearing a complete set.

As we get closer to implementing these features, we will be giving a more detailed description of what these equipment sets will involve.

So there are just some of the things we have in store for Asheron's Call in May and beyond. Please remember that along with everything listed here, there are several new quests and exciting things going into the game for the May event.