This is old news by now, but patches 1.91b and 1.91c are on Pendragon, and make a lot of major changes to melee styles. Mythic has put up a guide to some of the changes here, but it doesn't come close to covering all of the changes, so look through the notes closely to see how your class will be affected.

Secondly, there's a note on the Herald about a 'fix' for an exploit - people were using bounty points to purchase house deeds, then selling these deeds. That wouldn't really be a problem, except for a bug that sometimes awards insane amounts of bounty points. Now you can no longer buy deeds with bounty points.

This exploit came to light after a number of people were banned for flagrantly abusing it, infusing a great deal of money into the economy... which they then used to jack up the prices of a lot of good gear.

The lesson here, I suppose, is that one shouldn't exploit, because it will eventually catch up with you (on top of being wrong). And if you discover a bug of this severity, don't just appeal it, or report it in-game (though you should do that, as Missy noted): also send an email to Missy about it, and you could get a free account for life.

Because the term 'kill task items', while fairly commonly used, is not at all accurate, I've renamed the post-20 kill task pages. You can now find them in the navigation menu under 'Exp Items'. The pages themselves have not changed except for the addition of a brief description of what these items are.

Chris Rabideau, the newest producer of DAoC (and, strangely, the Producer of UO as well), has posted a combination Letter From the Producer/Yay For The Sixth Anniversary post on the Herald.

The more notable statements in the letter are:

• We are currently in the process of improving our housing system to expand on and make storage more readily available and to add value to higher tier houses which cost more to buy and maintain. We are also developing some new player mounts – I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but they’re not horses.
• I’d like to tell you more about our new test environment: In the coming months, we are going to be deploying a new ‘experimental’ test server to our gaming community (to accompany Pendragon). This new server will house code changes to highly complex game systems, which will typically require more than one patch cycle to implement. Changes to or additions of major systems, such as the UI, in-game mail and auction house (to name a few) will be deployed out to this new server ahead of all other servers, including Pendragon. This will allow the community to log in and see what we’re up to, as well as allow more time for the community to react to and make suggestions about whatever major systems we’re working on. This will also provide us more time to consider community feedback, and make adjustments where best for the game and its players.

This is the first time we've heard of most of these plans (mail being the exception), and good plans they are.

Most exciting, to me, is this new server on which they can alter 'major systems', with the hint (or flat out statement) that only a few of the systems they plan to change were mentioned. While the other changes are nice, and could improve the game substantially, they're not going to save the game from the slow death that is currently DAoC's almost certain future (which may or may not become much quicker when WAR is released). Drastic changes are the only thing that might change the game's current course, and now Mythic has a server on which they can put that kind of drastic change for testing and feedback...

From the WAR Herald:

Greetings all!

Recently, all WAR Beta participants received a letter stating our plan to end this phase of the closed beta test this Wednesday, October 10th. We periodically close Beta, our last closure being in March of this year, to focus on major improvements and polish. The next phase of Beta will reopen in early December with plenty of new and improved content, art and systems for our beta-testers.

We are very proud to have reached this point in development. Beta has been going very well and the testing community is extremely active. Excitement around the game continues to grow and the team is looking forward to enhancing many features already in the game as well as continuing to add new features to an already great game.

Based on player feedback, our own observations and our current schedule, we have set the following major development goals:

• Improve open field skirmishes and battlefield objectives with major enhancements.
• Provide players with even more options to customize their character both through their abilities and visual appearance.
• Continue to enhance Public Quests and the PQ System.
• Prepare the elves for their release into the world!

When the beta reopens, we look forward to welcoming back all of our current testers, as well as many new faces. Shortly after re-opening the doors, we will be inviting the first wave of guilds into the beta to really get things rolling.

Being in the beta, I can't comment on this development as fully as I would like. Or at all, really. However, I put this question to everyone: Is this type of development schedule unprecedented for an MMO beta? I've been in a number of betas, and phased development is normal, but closing down a public beta for a long time while developing the next phase is new to me.

Did you think the Heretic roller coaster ride was over? Not yet, as patch 1.91a on Pendragon brings more change to the Heretic pulse spells. This time they speed up the ticks, but reduce the max damage on the Arawn's Heat line, and reduce the base damage but drastically increase the tick damage on the Glistening Blaze line.

Oh, and the Reaver's lifetap line got a small boost.