Friday’s dev “Webinar” was beset by a number of technical problems — for the first half hour, all I could hear was the software repeating in a pleasant voice that the organizers hadn’t yet joined the webinar, though I could see them moving things around on the screen. After two restarts, I finally was able to hear what was going on.
Discussion centered largely around a few questions. First, what should the new max level for the free content be? Almost everyone agreed that 7 was too low; between levels 10 and 12 seemed to be the new ‘sweet spot’. Second, should Spellborn allow auto attack? Currently, unless you are mashing buttons, you are not doing anything. This would let you do a certain amount of damage automatically. There was violent opposition to this.
Mounts are coming, as are cloaks with your guild symbol on it.
Transcript of the text portion of the chat below. Enjoy!
Audience Question:
Q: Do you have any plans to have a retail release? Or how do you intend to market the game and get the attention of a mass audience?
A: Not at this time.
Audience Question:
Q: is there a plan to integrate a "last on" tab to the guild window?
A: we’ll continue to improve the UI, so any suggestion is welcome
Audience Question:
Q: Are there any plans to have guild/house cloaks/capes or shields?
A: We are working on several of these implementations, one is a full set, showing guild logo’s
Audience Question:
Q: With a few tweaks this game would work very well as a single player rpg, So any plans for such a game. Maybe a prequel?
A: Cederique Saubain has a question
Audience Question:
Q: Are there any plans to increase the amount of players in one party?
A: raise your hand to ask questions
Audience Question:
Q: How soon will credit cards be usable?
A: probably end of next week
Audience Question:
Q: for the last 20 minutes i keep hearing…. sorry for the delay, the organizer has yet to arrive, please hold
A: do you still see this ?
Audience Question:
Q: is the dowload time going to be reduced any time soon?
A: We are thinking that we could have a download for the free zone and then one for those who choose to subscribe. What do you think about this ?
Audience Question:
Q: feedback on the gotomeeting software, a generic chat area for the audience would be good, so we can chat when waiting for the webinar to start
A: will find out and see if we can get that feature
Audience Question:
Q: I would also really like a general shoutbox where we can imidietly react
A: ok
Audience Question:
Q: Just a commen. LFG functionality is more important the longer you get from launch the more a LFG function is needed because that critical mass of people going through the quests diminishes… I know I geat REAL freaked out when there is no LFG functionality.
A: With House and Guild chat available it shouldn’t be difficult to find people to group up. But it is an interesting suggestion.
Audience Question:
Q: What about the plan to use irc to communicate with people ingame?
A: we’ll be working on expanding functions from the game towards the website, like chat, mail and skilldeck setup. A direct irc connection poses a lot of issues with security as well as spammers etc.
Audience Question:
Q: ppl will h8 me, but is there a plan to make casting able to be cast on the move, to make dodging eaier for the casters who sometimes have to sit and take the hits?
A: being ‘frozen’ in place during an animation is currently being counterd by the usefulness/power of the skill. We shortened it in the past and keep an eye on it as players progress.
Audience Question:
Q: seems like a very good start, im very impressed, will there be more improvements with the framerate?
A: Our tech team will continue to work on optimizing the game
Audience Question:
Q: Do you have any plans to add mounts or a faster means of travel?
A: Yes.
Audience Question:
Q: Player created chat channels, any word on those?
A: Maybe, not for now, but this might change if we receive this request a lot from the community
Audience Question:
Q: Are there any short-term plans to add some content for level 45+ players?
A: Yes, we’re adding features with every patch and try to provide equal content across the level ranges
Audience Question:
Q: can i speak?
A: yes
Howard Marks (to All – Entire Audience): please raise your hand if you would to talk. wait time is about 15 mn
Audience Question:
Q: Is there any way to volunteer to GM for the game? Or is that all behinds the scenes stuff? And will the unanswered questions asked via text be answered on the forums? The question about House Betrayal has a bunch of people wondering.
A: We will be setting up a Vomunteer GM team, you can drop me an email at community@acclaim.com if you are interested. I will try to get responses to the unanswered questions.
Audience Question:
Q: Are you guys doing anything to combat gold sellers? A easy way to promote reporting these players to GM would be a right click or in-game command. Also, blocking of certain URLs from being typed out would be a temporary solution, as gold farmers always seem to find a way to go around this.
A: We are actively seeking out an banning the gold spammers and an ingame way of alerting a GM is under consideration. As far as the urls, we could.. but then they would resort to vvWW.Acc1aim.c0m. It would be us updating the filter, them getting around it.
Audience Question:
Q: Are there any plans for House Betrayal quests? Currently House Rune is by far the largest on the PVE server which seems to cause issues in HvH content — will this be addressed with any way to switch houses?
A: When the influence and progression of the High Houses increases, we’ll make sure there will be mechanics available to the player to balance it as they want. We’ll keep a close eye at how this develops
Q: Is there a way to SKIP the tutorial? It’s not useful the second time.
A: At this time, no. However we are looking into adding a skip after you complete it once.
Audience Question:
Q: Any plans for Pvp gains and losses or nice stuff such as Guild cloaks to give a sense of "pride" that is present throughout other MMOS
A: Lots of plans, we’ll present the details when we get closer to patching these in.
Audience Question:
Q: rakning system is coming with arena and pvp patch no?
A: Yes, specifically for the Arena rankings. This won’t cover outdoor pvp
Audience Question:
Q: will dual weilding ever be added to the game?
A: Yes
Was there any updates when they are going to release the game for real on the Acclaim side?