It must be Friday again, which means time for another weekly update.
Friday is typically patch day, so I would be discussing the patch-notes, but there are a few updated being rolled into one big one for later. The main issue is a number of databases will need to be reset after each one, requiring all the characters to be reset, so we’ll delay the patch until they are all ready to minimise disruption for the alpha testers.
So, let’s go over the new entries in the change-log. (not on the live server yet)
- Avatars now wear the correct armour and weapons.
This is one of the big changes. Previous avatars were static, single-layer images which vaguely resembled a fantasy character; the new avatars actually wear the armour and wield the weapons that you select. Some armour types now include a shield, such as the Albion Plate and Maille including a kite shield, some weapons include a left-hand weapon like the Venetus rapier which comes paired with a main-gauche. Left-hand weapons have priority in these cases, which adds to the variety of appearances you will see.
Here is a wizard avatar, using the old system on the left and the new system on the right.
old vs. new 
- No more dwarves or elves. There are lots of heroic human cultures, so who needs dandelion-munchers?
This was a decision not made lightly, but we realised that we had a range of heroic human cultures. We have Picts and Cimmerians, Albion pirates and mighty Teutons, so non-humans were vaguely unnecessary. I think we were overly influenced by Tolkien / Dungeons and Dragons, where I had been pushing Robert E. Howard and George R.R. Martin in many of the other aspects of the game.
It’s okay though; high magic survived, with all of its flappy robes and exploding fireballs.
- Spellbooks for mages.
The current system of class powers is a hack, a quick way to get the spells and abilities into the game. The mage spellbook represents the first of the updates to this system, letting mages choose the runes they want to use for building their spells. Essentially, players choose a single elemental rune and a formation rune to make the spell; a ‘fire’ rune and a ‘ball’ rune makes a ‘fireball’ spell, while ‘fire’ and ‘enchant weapon’ makes a ‘flame weapon’ spell.
Players start with one elemental rune, one formation rune and a choice of one more element or one more form. This allows them to choose two spells of the same element (say, ‘fireball’ and ‘firebolt’ for instance) or two spells of the same type and different elements (e.g. ‘flame weapon’ and ‘frost weapon’) if they want.
This system is the basis for all spell-casting, so cleric spells will also use this and (once implemented) bards and paladins will use this system for their own spellcasting. Fighter and rogue powers will work slightly differently, but that will be the topic of a future update.
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