History of Loathing (2004)

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These pages shall contain the history of the Kingdom of Loathing.

For an annotated list of changes to the game, see Changes.

Table of contents
2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025

January 2004 | February 2004 | March 2004 | April 2004 | May 2004 | June 2004 | July 2004 | August 2004 | September 2004 | October 2004 | November 2004 | December 2004 | See Also | External Links

January 16, 2004

  • There's a new council quest.

January 18, 2004

  • ATTENTION! A set of Policies has been drawn up. Please read them, and note the message beneath the Log In button.

January 23, 2004

  • A new PvP system has been rolled out. More options, more meaningful rewards and losses. I gave everybody their Hippy stones back and reset everybody's win/loss record. Have fun beating each other senseless.

January 25, 2004

  • I always said I'd implement character gender the first time somebody complained about it. Somebody complained about it, so now there's gender. It has no effects other than cosmetic ones. If you are one of "the ladies," you'll have to go into your profile and specify female if you want your gender to update. Even if it's already set to Female, just resubmit it and your picture will update.

February 3, 2004

  • Chat channels have been implemented. Everyone starts in the 'newbie' channel, but you can open up the 'normal' and 'trade' channels by visiting the Altar on the Right Side of the Tracks. Use the chat help command (/?) for information on how to move between channels.

February 6, 2004

  • The chat pane now has a macro system for creating shortcuts to frequently-used commands. The "chat pane" section of the documentation has been fleshed out, so check there for details.

February 25, 2004

  • Alright, there've been a few things added/changed since my last announcement. Let's see how many I can remember:

    There is now a "clan" chat channel. Being accepted into a clan grants you access, and when you're in there, you're talking to members of your clan ONLY.

    There have been some changes to the way the Mall works, largely to reduce database strain -- stores are now paginated, but are searchable on the "search the mall" page. You can also now mark stores as your Favorites, and they'll always show up at the top of the Mall list, above the top 10 advertisers.

    You now have the ability to save messages into a "saved messages" folder. Again, in an effort to reduce database traffic, any read messages that are more than 2 weeks old will be automatically deleted, unless they are moved to this folder. Which is not really a folder, but it's like a folder. This will start happening in a week or two.

March 2, 2004

  • You no longer gain stats when somebody PvP attacks you and you win.

March 8, 2004

  • I'm having some more memory put into the server late tonight, so it'll be down briefly, some time between 4am and 6am EST.

March 15, 2004

KoLCon!
  • KoLCon (this weekend, March 20-21, in the Phoenix, AZ area,) is just around the corner. So if you're planning on attending, please check in in the forums and let us know.

March 17, 2004

Clover.gif

March 21, 2004

  • A couple of changes -- announcements are now shown after login, and will soon disappear from the login screen. In a related development, you can now decide not to enter the chat after you log in.

    Also, KoLCon was a big success. Check it out!

March 24, 2004

  • Okay, due to popular demand, I've added the "Last Adventure" link to the character pane. It allows you to repeat your last adventure, no matter where you are -- skills, inventory, wherever. Notably missing are the Shore and the Barrel, but I'll make these work with it as soon as I can.

    Oh, in Compact Mode, you click on "Adv" to use this feature.

April 1, 2004

  • Here we are now, on the new server. There might be some unexpected turbulence. So buckle your safety belts, because if there's one thing the human body is not built to withstand, it's unexpected turbulence.

    The server will have to be referred to by IP address for a few days.

April 2, 2004

  • So, the transition to the new server appears to have gone pretty smoothly. I've set up kingdomofloathing.com to automatically redirect to here, but it'll still be a few days before the DNS records point to the right place.

    At this time, I'd like to extend the greatest possible volume of thanks to everyone who has donated to cover the cost of our blazingly fast new server. Without you all, none of this would've been possible.

April 5, 2004

  • Sorry about the weirdness over the weekend -- I was out of town. I'm paying more attention to things now, so the rollover tonight should go smoothly.

    Also, sorry about e-mail notifications failing to go out, in some cases. This will be resolved as soon as I can get DNS working properly on the new server.

April 13, 2004

  • The first 2/3 of the Sorceress quest is live. Those level 10 and above, visit the Council for details.

April 15, 2004

  • Okay, so I finally found the Ancient Tome of Annoying SQL Quirks, and fixed the problem whereby multiple copies of the same accessory only gave you one "copy" of the enchantment.

    In other news, there is no other news.

    Oh, wait, yes there is -- the chat pane should now behave correctly when it's resized, in both IE and Mozilla/FireWhatever.
  • The chat pane now works a little better in Mozilla-esque browsers.

April 16, 2004

  • The multi abuse section of the Policies has been updated.
  • Trivial updates now have dates. Y'know. Flea Market revamped, divided into sections, optimized to perform a little bit less database-hammery.

April 18, 2004

  • The skills page (and the skill combo box in combat) now remember the last skill you used. Buffs also remember the last target.

April 22, 2004

  • Okay, so now we've got more RAM in the server. I'm hoping this will stem some of the nightly lag and crashery.

    I'm still working on the DNS problems, but I think they're almost solved.

    Also, PayPal donations are now processed automatically, so you can get a Mr. Accessory even when I'm asleep.

April 23, 2004

  • The Forums are currently down because of a DOS attack on my hosting provider. They're working on it.

    In other news, what flies around going "zzzub, zzzub?"
  • I'm going to be making some changes to the way skills work (technically, not in game terms) today, so don't bother reporting any bugs about skills.

    In other news, it was an eeb.

    In other other news, how many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol Hordes got bored?

April 25, 2004

  • The way skills are stored has been changed. It's now much more flexible. I also fixed a bug where putting double quotes in a familiar's name would cause it to vanish when you put it back in the terrarium.

April 26, 2004

  • I changed the way the alternate-stat weapon skills (Crossbow Fever, the effect of the Special Sauce Glove, Spirit of Rigatoni) work. You should hit quite a bit harder if you're using these skills now.

    In other news, never mind.

April 27, 2004

From the Forums:

Okay, there've been some changes to the way the Adventures / Drunkenness / Fullness are calculated with food and booze.

Here's the way I did it before:

1) Make the new food or booze item. 2) Pull some numbers out of my ass and put them in for the adventure range and "size" of the item. 3) Profit!

This had some lame implications. One was the implication that it looks like I make important game decisions based on whim and whatever the noun form of "arbitrary" is. This is sadly still true, but it's more cleverly hidden now. It also created a situation in which cooking and/or cocktailcrafting things often made them worse, instead of better. This was no good.

Now there's A System(TM)!

Base food / booze items have a certain Size (the fullness or drunkenness you acquire on consumption) and a certain Quality (which translates, in game terms, to the average number of adventures you get for your Size buck.)

The Size and Quality of cooked and cocktailcrafted items now depend solely on the Size and Quality of the items' components -- you lose some Size, and the Quality is additive, so that crafted items are never worse, in terms of what they give you, than their ingredients. The beneficial effects are increased as the number of ingredients increases.

The cool thing about this is that now, the more complicated items are the more effective ones. Few things are better than the Key Lime Pies, except for the stuff that requires both dry noodles and Reagents, which are now da bomb. This is as it should be, since they're the most difficult to create. The spicy and extra spicy burritos are also now a lot better, which should put a lot more beans into circulation.

This is going to change some things, in ways I'm not entirely willing to attempt to predict. Some stuff undoubtedly got worse, some stuff got better, so the food economy might be a little weird for a while.

One other consequence is that since the cocktail recipes are fairly similar, you don't get as drunk as you used to for drinking most things. You also don't get as many turns, but c'est la vie.

April 28, 2004

  • Every place that you can go should now have a link back to its "container" location in the main pane -- let me know if there are any missing.

April 29, 2004

  • The problems with the Donate popup window should be fixed now. In other news, Gatorade is delicious.

May 2, 2004

  • Sorry about the "delete all messages" problem and the Hall of Records not updating -- they're fixed now.

May 6, 2004

  • Over the course of today/tonight I'll be migrating stuff to the shiny new second server. There might be some weirdness with images, and there will very likely be an hour or so of downtime while I move game data over.
  • The transition to the new database server seems to have gone pretty smoothly. 500 simultaneous players tonight, and nary a connection error in sight.

    Again, my thanks go out to everyone who has donated, and made these perpetually necessary upgrades possible.

May 10, 2004

  • Clan Signup page is no longer bandwidth-wastetastic.

May 12, 2004

  • You can no longer apply to a clan if you're the leader of another clan.

May 13, 2004

  • Fixed a bug in the "run away" option that made it so the faster a monster was, the more likely you were to be able to get away. This was obviously backwards. Also fixed a bug that was causing occasional SQL errors in the Flea Market.

May 14, 2004

  • The Trollbooth cost calculation bug is fixed now.

May 17, 2004

  • The fifth 1/6 of the Sorceress quest is now available.

May 24, 2004

  • I came to the realization today that people who never use the chat weren't ever getting any event notifications. Now, if you don't enter the chat, it automatically switches you over to the old-style message notification.

    In other news, as of tomorrow or the next day, you will no longer be able to e-mail me at kingdomofloathing.com. All places that used to have an e-mail link now have a contact form instead. See My post in the forums for a more detailed explanation.
  • The send message window now truncates to 2000 characters as your message is being typed. Also, messages can now be 2000 characters long.

    You can now quote the original message when replying to a message.

May 26, 2004

May 27, 2004

  • Some changes last night -- you can now purchase items from the Mall in quantity. You can also now disband a clan if you're the only person left in it.

May 28, 2004

  • That bug whereby having part of an outfit on made it so you couldn't auto-equip the whole outfit is now fixed. Also, non-buff skills can now be used in quantity.

May 30, 2004

  • The Inventory page now keeps track of the last section selected, and automatically loads that section.

June 1, 2004

  • The form for putting stuff in your Closet is now above the items, rather than below.

June 4, 2004

  • Lots of minor bugfixes and typo corrections. The profanity filter now works properly for private messages.

June 9, 2004

  • A much-requested feature has finally been added: the ability to define a Custom Outfit, to make switching between item sets easier. Hitting the "Save Custom Outfit" button in the equipment section of your inventory will create an Outfit out of the items you currently have equipped. Selecting "Custom Outfit" from the Dress Up menu will reequip all of those items.
  • Putting on an outfit with an accesssory as part of it no longer needlessly unequips other accessories if there is an available slot.

June 10, 2004

  • Sorry about the downtime earlier -- there were some hardware problems at the facility where the servers are kept. Everything should be fine now.

June 11, 2004

  • There are some problems with outgoing e-mail right now, so if you don't receive an activation code, please be patient. I'm working on getting it resolved, and all of the queued-up e-mails will go out as soon as it's up and running again.

    In other news, I finally fixed some long-standing problems with the clan rankings system. If you were having trouble (unable to assign certain ranks to clan members, weird ordering problems) before, you should be able to redo your rankings now in a way that makes sense. Thanks to everybody who reported these problems.

June 12, 2004

  • The problems with activation e-mails should now be solved. Sorry for the inconvenience.

June 14, 2004

  • Okay, so maybe the e-mail problems AREN'T entirely fixed. I'm still looking into this stuff, and I'm sorry about the continued activation delays.

June 15, 2004

  • From out of the eldritch mists and sinister vapors of the nether regions of the Kingdom, The Spectral Pickle Factory has emerged, in a fog of adjectives. Look for it in the Nearby Plains.

June 16, 2004

  • And as quickly as it emerged, the Spectral Pickle Factory fades back into the mists. And fogs.

June 21, 2004

  • I think all of the glitches involving Custom Outfits with more than one copy of the same accessory are fixed now. Thanks to everybody who reported them.
  • Names of people who send you PMs are now clickable to view the sender's profile. A bunch of other changes have been made, too, but I don't remember what they were.

June 29, 2004

  • I've changed it so you can no longer PvP somebody who isn't EXACTLY the same level as you. It will be like this until I either a) get some sort of retaliation system in place, or b) decide not to do a).

July 4, 2004

  • The burrito bug from yesterday has been fixed -- thanks to everybody who reported it.

July 5, 2004

  • Started striping commas from offer Meat amounts.

July 15, 2004

  • A bunch of little changes and improvements were today. See the trivial updates page for details.
  • Lots of little changes today (and yesterday):

    The gourd quest now requires 5+x items, where x is the number of times you've done the quest.

    A bulk price-management feature has been added to Mall stores.

    You can now search for only the cheapest X instances of a given set of items, in the Mall.

    Some places (The Shore, the Hedge Maze, etc.) have been given "Last Adventure" functionality.

    Familiars will no longer act in combat if you're running away, or fail to select a skill.

July 18, 2004

  • An exploit/scam involving mall price changes has been plugged up. Shame on all y'all who abused it, and know that The Eye is on you.

    In other news, /exit will now let you leave the chat.

    In other other news, the player search feature has been modified a little. It now shows win/loss records for PvP-only searches, and if you leave the name field blank, it'll return 100 players in random order. This should make PvP a little easier on the players whose names start with A and B...

July 19, 2004

  • The message system has been revamped. There's now an Outbox, and the interface for managing messages has been enhanced quite a bit.

July 21, 2004

  • UPGRADE! The new servers are all online, and stuff seems to be working quite a bit more quickly. The way it works is that when you go to www.kingdomofloathing.com, it figures out which of the three web servers has the fewest people logged on, and redirects you to the login page on that server.

    Apart from the speed, it doesn't matter which server you're on. Everybody's still in the same world, the same chat, etc.

    Enjoy, and be sure and use the report bug link to let me know if there are any problemswith the new setup.

    Again, my heartfelt thanks go out to everybody who has donated money. As I've said before, without you, none of this stuff would be here.

July 26, 2004

  • The Clan interface has been revamped. There are a lot of little enhancements and improvements, designed to make your clan administration day just a little bit brighter.

July 27, 2004

  • Minor change: Stat requirements for zones now check against your modified stat, rather than your base. This means you can now get temporarily powerful enough to adventure in places you otherwise couldn't.

    Speaking of places, there's a new one. The Limerick Dungeon has been added to the Dungeon full of Dungeons. It's appropriate for levels 3-4, but there's some new stuff that I'm sure the higher-level players will want to see, as well.

July 28, 2004

  • Hippies everywhere! Protestors at Mt. McLargeHuge!

August 1, 2004

  • The McLargeHuge event got slowed down a bit by some hardware failures on my end. Everything's back up and running now, though, so expect more happenings on the peak starting tomorrow.

    In other news, I think I fixed the problem with chat messages dropping out randomly. Please use the "report bug" link if you see this still happening.
  • If you click on the name portion of a message notification, you'll now get the sender's profile rather than the messages screen.

August 3, 2004

  • You can now specify a per-item price when making offers.

August 4, 2004

  • The Penguin Mafia has reportedly sent scouts to the Icy Peak, hoping the recent turmoil will make it easier for them to set up a base of operations there.

    In other news, August 4 is only one day later than August 1. Seriously.

August 5, 2004

  • Player names in your message boxes are now clickable.

August 6, 2004

  • Multiple copies of the same accessory now show up correctly when you view another player.

August 8, 2004

  • I'm still reviewing my options as far as what to do about the massive influx of bugmeat and duped items. Thanks to everybody who has offered suggestions, and please know that I'm trying to figure out a way to solve this with the least possible negative impact on the innocent. It might be a few days before I arrive at any conclusions about what to do, but I feel that the current economic problems are not too high of a price to pay to avoid making a hasty decision that might have horrible unforseen consequences.

    Rest assured that one way or another, things will get squared away.

    UPDATE: Mall Store owners can now specify a daily per-person limit on individual items for sale. This should make it a little easier to lower your prices without having to worry about being completely bought out by people reselling your stuff at a profit.

    In unrelated news, the Penguin Mafia has begun ramping up their operations in other areas of the Kingdom. Tensions are running high as the council tries to come up with a plan of action.

August 9, 2004

  • Even as the Penguins are driven out of the Hole in the Sky, their operations increase in scope. A shady-looking antiques store has just been built on the Wrong Side of the Tracks...

    UPDATE: In an event ostensibly completely unrelated to the economic turmoil, Clan Armies all across the Kingdom abruptly came to the realization that they haven't had anything to eat in months. Luckily, they found a couple of days' worth of oatmeal before anyone was forced to desert. Gert Slacarach, A La-Z Archer spokesman, said of the situation: "Wow. This oatmeal makes me feel approximately twice as powerful as I was yesterday..."

August 10, 2004

  • In an effort to test out the new clan army mechanics, and stir things up a little bit, clans are now allowed to attack every 3 hours,instead of 12. This will taper off after a little while.

    There's also now a "Most Clan Warfare Wins" table in the Hall of Records. As always, don't touch it.

    Also, thanks, everybody, for your patience, suggestions, and words of encouragement. We're getting through this.

August 11, 2004

  • Fairly significant change to the Mall: Price caps have been raised from 99,999 to 999,999,999.

August 12, 2004

  • The Penguin Mafia appears to have introduced a new kind of booze into the Kingdom, and the pirates of the Obligatory Pirate's Cove seem to be involved in its trafficking.

August 14, 2004

  • Like thieves in the afternoon, the Penguin Mafia have infiltrated every last nook and cranny of the Kingdom, and have stolen every last sober pill that occupied those nooks and crannies.

August 17, 2004

  • You've probably already noticed that Trophy Hut went up on the Right Side of the Tracks. Trophies are like tattoos, only shinier.

    Also, the stat gains from booze have been adjusted, slightly, to more closely correlate with the quality and rarity of individual booze items. Fermenting powder has also been made available in the Demon Market, since nobody ever bothered with it when it was at the Hermitage.

August 18, 2004

  • Okay, so I've done the same thing with food that I did with booze. Some food items got worse, with respect to stat gains, but most of them got considerably better.

    Also, you may have noticed the pre-rollover downtime. I'm trying to reduce the amount of time the rollover and the backup (the thing that causes the hour or so of downtime in the middle of every night) take, and the best way to do that is to kick everybody off while it's running.

    After the weekend, there'll probably start to be a period of about 15 minutes every night where you can't log on. I realize this is somewhat annoying, but it's a lot less annoying than what happens to all of the Europeans when they try to play between 4 and 5 CDT now.

August 19, 2004

  • Mystery Raffle #2 went off with very few hitches, and tickets are on sale for the third one!

    Also, you can now attach multiple items to a single message, up to (you guessed it) 11. Hit the little plus sign next to the item dropdown to add another dropdown.

    Also also, I finally fixed the Cobb's Knob Lab Key bug. Y'know, the one where you'd adventure and adventure, but never get it? Yeah, sorry about that.

August 22, 2004

  • Okay, so Mall Stores now have a link at the bottom which will repeat your previous search. Sorry for the goofiness while I was rolling that out.

    In other news, the They Might Be Giants show was great. A good time was had by all.

August 26, 2004

  • As you probably noticed, a new dungeon was added last night. Thanks are due to Xenophobe and Ayndin for their creative input.

    Third raffle down, fourth one ready to start.

    To anybody who's gonna be at PAX: See you at PAX.

September 3, 2004

  • Chat text limit has been increased to 200.

September 8, 2004

  • Sorry for the long period of announcementlessness. We got back from PAX, at which point I immediately got sick just as every single electrical system in my house shot craps.

    I'm back on track, and a number of minor things have been accomplished in the last couple of days.

    Due to popular demand, the offer system has been changed to allow item-for-item trades as well as item-for-meat trades. It even allows multiple-items-and-meat for multiple-items-and-meat trades, in case anybody wants to do that. It's now a two-step process: offer and respond. The offerer can include a note telling the offeree what he/she wants in response. Note that the system only works for hermaphrodites.

    All items that were floating in the old system have been returned to their original owners.

September 9, 2004

September 10, 2004

  • Some repairs have been made to the flea market code. Nothing you'd notice, gamewise, but it should operate quite a bit more quickly now.

September 13, 2004

  • Cynn's Boys of Loathing Calendar is now up. Everybody thank her. Clan Leaders can switch between the Girls and Boys Calendars on their administration page.
  • Fixed the problem with rings of aggravate monster whereby they didn't do anything at all. Also made them a little more effective (5 instead of 3.)

September 15, 2004

  • You can't use the Arena if you're drunk now, and you're notified when your familiar gains a level there.

September 16, 2004

  • There was a problem with the daily script today that caused people to not get their extra 3 adventures from Clan Calendars.

    I went ahead and gave everybody 3 extra, whether they were in a clan or not, because... well, because it was easier.
  • The problem with player store favorites still taking up space even after the stores were deleted should be fixed now.
  • Prices set when managing Mall inventory now ignore commas.
  • If both you and the player you're viewing are active in PvP, you'll now have a link to attack that person when you're viewing their profile.

September 20, 2004

  • The (count) in the sell stuff dropdown has been moved to after the name of the item, to make it easier to use keyboard shortcuts.
  • The picture of the Hellion has been edited, since it apparently wasn't an ion at all, the way it was pictured. Thanks to Mantaar for noticing this.
  • Also, the Dice have an accessory now. Thanks, Fnord7!

September 21, 2004

  • The Council has finally ended its fund raiser, and handed out 8 bottles of Time Juice to each and every player.

    In completely unrelated news, there are a couple of new items for sale at The Bugbear Bakery.
  • The chat no longer automatically does a /who when you first run it. This should make the busier channels easier to deal with.
  • Rolling pins and unrolling pins (thanks, Xenophobe) have been added, to facilitate the mass processing of wads of dough and flat dough.

September 27, 2004

  • The bug where /w and /? would screw up the scrolling of the chat in Mozilla (and its ilk) has finally been fixed.

    Also, I changed something that I meant to change a long time ago -- maximum MP is now based on your modified Mysticality, rather than the base. So, yeah. You now can hold a lot more MP if you're buffed up.

October 2, 2004

  • Due to popular demand, I changed it so that Mall limits reset at the nightly rollover, rather than on a rolling 24-hour schedule.

    Also, search results that point to items you can't buy because of these limits are now grayed out.

    Also also, you can now use MP-restorative items directly from the skills page. It's convenient, and it's fun!

October 3, 2004

  • Because of a dumb typo, the "using MP items from the skills page" thing was only appearing for buffing classes. This is fixed now.

    More to come...

October 5, 2004

  • Small change to the way the familiar arena works -- each time you win a prize, there's a 25% chance it'll be a lead necklace, and a 75% chance it'll be an accessory that the familiar you're using can equip.

October 6, 2004

  • There's a new store in Seaside Town, on the Right Side of the Tracks, in which you can trade Mr. Accessories for various other groovy gifts.

October 8, 2004

  • Alright, so the host took the database server down for maintenance, and one of the tables got corrupted. I'm rebuilding everything right now, and everything should be back to normal by 9:30 or so, PST.

    UPDATE: Okay, so everything should be fixed. Sorry about the inconvenience.

October 13, 2004

  • Clan attacks no longer affect the defending clan's win/loss record in any way.

October 15, 2004

  • Fixed a bug whereby Golden Mr. As were able to be improperly used to give way too many buffs per day.
  • Made the clan training and buff purchase interface remember the last thing you selected.

October 24, 2004

  • Made it so stat gains from monsters no longer cap out at 40.

October 25, 2004

  • Fernswarthy's Basement has been placed in its temporary home,the Dungeon Full of Dungeons. It's sort of like the Daily Dungeon, only it doesn't reset each day, it's much, much deeper, and each room is more difficult to pass than the previous.

    There's also a new section of the Hall of Records for the deepest Basement delvers.

    Everybody give mad props to Riff for coming up with a lot of the monsters.

October 26, 2004

  • There have been some changes to the way the chat works. As of now, the Altar of Literacy test is required to enter the chat, in ANY channel. Once you pass it, you're granted access to newbie, normal, clan, trade, and a new channel ("games") created for trivia and other contests.

    Keep all trade offers in trade. Keep all games and contests in games. Newbie is now a place for new players to ask questions. Trading in newbie is no longer allowed.

    If you already passed the Altar, you'll have to do it again before you can enter the chat. Sorry about the inconvenience.

October 27, 2004

  • The site may go down for maintenance sometime in the middle of the day today, while I work with a MySQL consultant on tuning and optimizing the database.

October 30, 2004

  • Trick or Treat! Check the main map for the special Halloween event. The event will last until the rollover on Monday night.

October 31, 2004

  • Due to my being out of town for an appearance on TechTV's The Screen Savers (November 1st at 4PM Pacific, I think,) November's familiar of the month will not become available until the 2nd.

November 3, 2004

  • Sorry about the downtime this morning -- some weirdness with the mail server brought the whole thing down.

    Also, you've probably noticed that HP and MP didn't get restored at rollover last night. I forgot to announce it when I did it, but this was an intentional change -- the first step in a series of changes to the way MP and skills and buffs work that we're hoping will fix some game balance issues.

    UPDATE: The second step in this process has been rolled out -- the amount of MP gained from restorative items has been adjusted to reflect the difficulty of obtaining the item. All items that previously restored MP in its entirety have been toned down to reasonable levels.

    ALSO UPDATE: MP restorative items can now be used in quantity from the Skills screen. I'll add this feature to the regular inventory screen when I figure out a way to make it not completely clutter everything up.

November 4, 2004

  • Okay, so starting tonight, the nightly rollover willregenerate a flat amount of HP and MP, that amount depending on your campsite equipment. Better housing = more recovery, and there are a couple of other items that impact MP specifically.

    Also, the beanbag chair, which lets you Relax instead of Resting (which heals double MP but no HP) can now be created by combining two items. Which two items? You'll just have to guess.

November 11, 2004

  • (11/11 -- it's ridiculous.)

    Short Notice Extravaganza: Tonight at 7:00 MST, Mr. Skullhead and I will be broadcasting, live, the third episode of 120 Minutes of Misanthropy with Jick and Mr. Skullhead, on Radio KoL. For those of you that haven't listened to the last two episodes, here's what we do:

    First, we spend about a half an hour trying to get the audio set up correctly, during which you hear a lot of silence and the occasional hemiconversation. Fun!

    Next, we take calls from people using Skype, (username: radiojick) and we answer their questions and/or talk to them about the weather. We also field questions from people in the chat, via private messages to our faithful servant, radiobugbear.

    This week, we're hoping that we can skip the first portion of the show and get straight to the good stuff. So tune in! 7PM MST, right after Vida Londres's show.

November 12, 2004

  • For those of you who missed it, or those of you who want to hear it over and over, last night's broadcast of 120 Minutes of Pumpkin Pie is available for download at Coldfront.

    Thanks, Coldfront!

November 14, 2004

  • Due to the potential for multi abuse, Mall store purchases no longer add to the store's advertising budget. The only way to increase your ad budget now is to directly contribute Meat to it.

November 15, 2004

  • The bug that made the graying out of search results on stores with limits act all weird has been fixed. Thanks to everyone who reported it.

November 16, 2004

  • Shady new dealings are taking place at Uncle P's Antiques. The Council has called an emergency session to formulate a strategy for dealing with this new crime wave...
  • Doing a /who in the chat should now only show people who are actually logged in to the chat.
  • A bug where putting a slash in a familiar's name would cause it to disappear when it was put back in the terrarium was fixed. Thanks to Arbitrage and the others who reported it.

November 18, 2004

  • The Council has unveiled its plan for dealing with the Mob Penguin menace, and has taken up a new collection towards that end.

    Also, be sure and tune in to 120 Minutes of Dada with Mr. Skullhead and Jick, this evening at 7PM MST on Radio KoL.

November 21, 2004

  • The breeding Yetis have arrived from Distant Lands. See the Council for details on the next phase of the Icy Peak Reintroduction Project.
  • Recreated a limited multi-use feature for items. This is hardcoded on a per-item basis, so it will roll out slowly over time.

November 22, 2004

  • The Council has sent the first batch of Knott Yetis to the Icy Peak. Sparks have begun to fly.

November 23, 2004

  • The Icy Peak Reintroduction Project continues, as another batch of Yetis is sent to the Peak. This phase was not without its problems, however, as a brief stampede caused some damage on the Wrong Side of the Tracks. See the Council for more details.

November 26, 2004

  • As you probably noticed, the promised Thanksgiving event did not occur, owing to my unexpected lack of Internet access while visiting my family. Here's what we're gonna do: We're gonna pretend that Thanksgiving is actually next week. Probably on Tuesday.

    The recurring KoL Calendar holiday will fall on Boozember 7th.

    Also, if anybody recorded Mr. Skullhead's and my radio show on Tuesday, could you get in touch with us in-game? The guys at Coldfront didn't know about it, so they don't have it archived.

    Also also, the Hall of Records now updates every hour, instead of every day. Also also also, clans must now have at least 5 members before they show up on any of the boards that list average stats.

November 29, 2004

  • Some changes have been made to the PvP system. I explain them in detail in This forum post.

From the Forums:

  • You have probably noticed, as a PvPer, that you now have a Rank, in addition to your win/loss record. The Rank system works the same way that chess rankings work.
  • The initial Rank given to you was calculated based on your total stats, and your win/loss history in prior PvP performance. When a person breaks his or her hippy stone at this point, it ranks them according to the sum of their stats.
  • From the campground, you may now attack people whose rank is between 50% and 200% of your own.
  • If you beat somebody, your rank will increase and theirs will decrease. The amount of this increase/decrease is based on the difference between your rank and theirs.
  • Attacking somebody at your rank has the same penalties for losing as the reward for winning, rankwise. As the ranks change, though, you start to get increasing rewards and reduced punishments based on the challenge -- attacking higher level players and winning gives you a lot of ranking points, but losing to them doesn't cost you much (or give them much in return.)
  • The way combat is resolved has changed, too. A given PvP fight consists of five individual fights. Here's what they are:
  1. Buffed stat of the attacker's choice compared to the same buffed stat of the defender.
  2. Same as #1, but unbuffed
  3. Same as #1, but one of the other stats.
  4. and 5) are mini-contests associated with various game states and accomplishments. Stuff like the drunkenness contest in the old PvP system. Lists of these "mini-competitions" will undoubtedly be generated on the forums within minutes.
  • Other than that, everything works the same as it did before.

November 30, 2004

  • The 10-fights-per-day PvP restriction has been changed to reset at the nightly rollover, rather than on a sliding 24-hour clock.

    Also, I fixed a bug where the second challenge (which is supposed to compare unbuffed stats) was using buffed stats, instead. Thanks to everybody who noticed this and reported it.

December 2, 2004

  • Better one day late than never, the Crimbo Elf is available in Mr. Store.

    Also, to correct a gap in the distribution of the Scrumptious Reagent potions, the papotion of papower can now be made by Saucerors. Thanks, ShadowsLight!

December 9, 2004

  • Added links to chat PMs. Also fixed some time issues with /last, /reply, and clan message boards.

December 16, 2004

  • By popular request, Hippy Stones are now reconstructable by players who have gone two weeks without initiating a PvP attack.

    In other news, that first sentence was sort of awkward.

    In additional other news, I think that the reconstruction might not actually start working until Sunday -- I've evidently been keeping track of the attack records for a few days fewer than I had initially thought. Sorry 'bout that.

    So, yeah. Pretend I didn't say anything.
  • Mall searches are now exact-match-only. Asterisks can be used as, umm, whaddyacallit. Wildcards.

December 17, 2004

  • Added multi-use to a bunch more items. Stat boosters, bang potions, other random stuff.
  • Made the name of a Mall store's owner a link to that player's profile.
  • Fixed some word-wrap issues with the Mall search results.
  • Made it a little harder to make derivative/msg-breaking names. Now, if a player named "The Dude" exists, it will not allow a new player to create an account named "The_Dude".
  • Fixed that problem whereby changing clan ranks and titles would always think people with apostrophes in their titles had been changed.
  • /whois now no longer incorrectly reports people being in the chat if they're not.

December 18, 2004

  • Now that the PvP rankings have had some time to work themselves out, I've made a slight change to the limits on selecting PvP targets. As of now, you cannot attack anyone ranked more than 50 points below you, that being the point at which you wouldn't get any rank points for winning, anyway.

    The upper limit has been removed completely -- you can attack anybody more powerful than you, regardless of how much more powerful they are.

December 23, 2004

  • The profanity filter now works in a slightly different way. Rather than replacing entire lines of chat or messages with [profanity] it just !@#$s out the naughty bits.
  • Chat no longer accepts high ASCII characters in input.

December 25, 2004

  • Like the opposite of a thief in the night, Father Crimbo swung by each and every campsite in the Kingdom and left a little surprise. Check the miscellaneous section of your inventory.

December 28, 2004

  • A couple of minor changes today:

    The closet has been revamped. Thanks, BoozerBear! It now allows for multiple items to be inserted and removed from it with one form submission.

    Those of you with custom avatars can now turn them off from your account menu. This change also allows the handful of people who have expressed an interest in getting multiple custom avatars to do so.

See Also

External Links

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