Jay Talbot’s Ramblings

After months of waiting, the 1.81 patch is off the test server and on the lives servers. woot! I wasn’t even looking for it today, er yesterday, but I’m glad it’s out. I’ve been playing WoW so much, so it might be time to test out the changes in 1.81 they’ve promised.

An small overview of the more important 1.81 changes are:

1. All TOA artifacts now level off of every kill made in RvR and PvE. Great news! No more grinding in certain areas or dungeons!!!!
2. Encounter credit and the three scrolls are all that’s needed to recieve the activated artifact. No more farming the artifacts multiple times so everyone gets one!
3. Many of the Master Level encounters have been reduced in both requirements and difficulty.
4. Starting towns are getting a facelift and new buildings added on. Hibernia’s Mag Mel has already made room for the improvements, and Albion’s Cottswold and Midgard’s Mularn are soon to follow.
5. Heavy tank classes Armsmen, Heros, and Warriors get new special abilities and raised HP and magic resistance stats. These are a much needed change.
6. All main Healer classes (Clerics, Healers, amd Druids) get new abilities for their groups. Definatly something to look into since I have a Rejuve spec’d Cleric, I’ll be able to review the changes first hand.
7. Raised the Realm level for all battlegrounds.
8. You can now turn on and off realmpoints buy the /rpoff command. Effective in the BG’s where if you max your realm level, you may not port back in if you port out (also a new change).
9. You may now use the /xpoff command to turn off experience gain. Perfect for not leveling out of the BG’s until you want to. This also makes it easier to cap before moving on.
10. Realm points are now given for killing the Necromancer pet and/or Necromancer. Before, if you killed the pet and someone else killed the now one-shotable Necro, you recieved no realm points. This is a much needed fix.
11. If you die during a 1 vs. 1 battle, your credit will remain, and if the enemy that killed you dies, you recieve your share of the realm points.
12. Breaking objects, e.g. keep walls, will now give realm points. Re-breaking objects will give reduced realm points.
13. Repairing doors and walls now gives realm points.
14. Raised Realm Rank cap from 12 to 13, giving 120 realm ability points to be spent.

You can find the full patch notes here.

Ok, that’s bout all the big stuff. Definatly a huge patch! If you left DAoC because you were mad about TOA and NF, I suggest you come back and take a look. It seems as though Mythic actually has been listening to their customers all along. It’s possible that these changes weren’t able to be made earlier in the games life, which may be only a partial truth. I believe they saw a deminished impact of making things easier as the higher end game gets, well, even higher. I hope they will raise level caps at some point. It would be neat to see the dragon as orange instead of purple +++. You know what I’m talking about.

That’s it for now… Maybe more later….

Tags: DAoC, Gaming //