July 26th Design Notes

Swamped-adin
July 26, 2010
Metrocon Report Tomorrow!

With Pictures of Miko in a silly hat...


Thank you so much to everyone who visited us at the Metrocon
Convention. It was a blast and a success! (Well, unless you are good at
math... because for every $1 we earned we spent $2 on anime, manga, and
silly hats.) Tomorrow I will post you pictures and stories :-)
Note: The ChickenCow shirt redeem page has been
fixed, please refresh it! Also, Codes for the Music CD will be emailed
in a day or two. We will be sending out emails as soon as we crawl out
from under this mountain of work that attacked us as soon as we got back
to the lab!
_____________________________________________________


Sock Of It All
July 26, 2010
The Miltonius Mess

Let's Try This Again


As you probably know, we "fixed" the issue if Miltonius selling quest
item turn-ins for AC this Friday. We did this primarily for the players
who were looking at their ACs and coming up short, then sending us
letters to ask what happened. We keep track of items bought and sold for
ACs so that we can provide you guys with the very best Player Support
that we can, but unfortunately, due to the database layout, we can't
track AC items that you turn in for quests which really messes up your
spending record, and damages Player Supports ability to help you if you
lose an item, think you lose and items or get hacked. Miltonius was
unaware of this fact when he originally designed these quests and
rewards.
Our solution was elegant. Replace all the items with copies that are
not worth ACs, leaving the originals in tact and still able to be stored
in the bank for free or sold back for ACs, while giving all new-comers a
shot at these famously hard-to-get items but without the AC tracking
nightmare.
We didn't want to you to feel like you'd wasted any money getting
these items so we made them pretty hard to farm for. Most AC items were
replaced with a number of Totems which one can only get by gaining
access to Miltonius' Secret Area and killing his minions until they drop
100 Essences of Miltonius, each essence only having 10% drop rate. We
did the math and found that it would take about 40 times as long to farm
for a Totem as it would take to get the requisite amount of ACs by
doing AExtras offers, depending on your luck in item farming.
We felt like it was a pretty fair deal. People who spent the money
to save hours of their lives farming for items that were much harder to
get now, got "Rare" tags on their items and got to keep them in the bank
for free, while newer players still had access to the items. Problem
solved, right?
Very wrong. Oh Cysero, will you ever get tired of being so wrong?
YOU did NOT feel like it was fair.
Quite a few players believe that NO amount of life lost farming can
equal spending $10 on ACs. You spoke, some of you more eloquently than
others, and we listened to all of you.
We really want you guys to be happy, and we don't want you to feel
like you EVER sspent money on AQW only to see it wasted, so here's what
we are going to do now.
We're removing these items and making them Rare. As of today, you will no longer be able to obtain these items in AQW.

• Betrayal Blade of Miltonius
  
• Dual Betrayal Blade of Miltonius
  
• Primal Saw of Miltonius
  
• Primal Dread Saw of Miltonius
  
• Dual Primal Dread Saw of Miltonius
  
• Oblivion Blade of Miltonius
  
• Shadow Orb
  
• Primal Orb
  
• Blood Orb
  
• Arcane Orb
  
• Coin of Miltonius Pet (300)
  
• Void of Miltonius
  
• Shadow of Miltonius
  
• Shadow Guard of Miltonius
  
• Fiend of Miltonius
  
• Fiend Face of Miltonius
  
• Blood of Miltonius
  
• Blood Guard of Miltonius
  
• Hex of Miltonius
  
• Hex Mask of Miltonius
  
• Dual Busters of Miltonius
  
• Spellbound Staff of Miltonius
  
• Skull of Miltonius
  
• Vestige of Miltonius
  

The Totem versions will not be tagged. If you happen to get one or more over the weekend, grats!
For those of you who feel left out in the rain, fear not. Miltonius
is working on a load of new armors, items and pets for his area all of
which/whom will be obtained with Totems, so your totems will not go to
waste. We'll start releasing the new items next week!
We really, sincerely appologize for this whole mess and hope that this will satisfy everyone.
Live and Learn (to never do anything like this ever again).