Brought to you by the POL 099 WoD test server

[Agata]

I haven't slept in 20 hours. I went to the deepest parts of the abyss to bring this to you, from the Gargoyle Queen's Palace. Now I will have some rest.

Good night.

[michella]

Lovely!

[Laephis]

Outstanding!

[Agata]

Now I have been in Heartwood, the elven city found on the top of giant trees. I am riding a Cu Sidhe, a beautiful giant fairy dog.

[Randell]

Nice work.

[Vincent Tel'Imoen]

I'm looking forward to this! When might we get our hands on it?

[Agata]

There is no specific date, but we will be adding the content slowly. If things go as planned, the AoS content will be arriving by the end of december along with a change of client, counting that most of our player base uses AoS or UO Gold, it would be a matter of no longer using wodclient and running on Razor. Later on we will upgrade to a newer client, probably Stygian Abyss 7.0.7.1, or even the latest High Seas from OSI, if POL supports it by then.

[Vincent Tel'Imoen]

A little late Christmas present then ! What client are you running in the screenshots? Will we be able to continue running the 2D client?

[Edison]

Nice job.

Out of curiosity, what client version is that, I don't remember any of them having shadows.

Also, if I am remembering right, at some version the clients stop using the verdata.mul file, is there a workaround for that or will the custom art stuff go away.

[Agata]

The client I am using is the Classic (2D) 7.0.7.1, as that's the latest Stygian Abyss installer I could find. The latest client version is the High Seas expansion version 7.0.19.0, but at this time POL doesn't support any of the High Seas client versions. Anything higher than 7.0.8.2 (the last Stygian Abyss client patch) won't get past the character selection screen. The idea is to make the transition as smooth as possible, and patching to the latest currently breaks compatibility, so if POL doesn't support the latest client version by the time we do the client migration, then we will use 7.0.7.1 so people doesn't have to go through messy trial and error about how far to patch. Time will tell.

As for when will the client migration take place, that will depend on when I think everything is ready, since there are some drastic changes in the map. Magincia is completely destroyed, and in 7.0.7.1 it is an island with nothing but grass, or if we use the latest client, the town of New Magincia is being built, with well defined roads but just a few buildings there, so before client migration we will most likely warn the players who live there, so they have time to find another place to live. It shouldn't be hard to find a nice spot with the HUGE housing space provided by the Malas map. Once players have moved, we will do a quest about the destruction. As for players who live in Magincia and haven't come back, we will see what we can do about it.


I am already reviewing what to do about the verdata.mul. There are lots of stuff that are no longer necesary, for example OSI added artwork for jack-o-lanterns, christmas stockings, gingerbread men, canes, Santa's sleigh, snowmen, various present boxes, and many other stuff. We will see what to do about the stuff that has no equivalent in the UO data files.