Y'all may have noticed I've been rather quiet the past few days - I have been thinking a lot. Dark Ages originally started as a programming project and in that respect it has done its job. I have learnt a lot during the development of the emulator, but there has always been the question of legality hanging over my head. As the emulator took off and word spread this issue has come closer and closer to the fore until finally I cannot think of anything else. Not only that but a very smart person has opened my eyes to the ethics of what I am doing.

Long story short, Dark Ages will be shutting down permanently on 12th of January, 2004 at Midnight GMT. Due to the aforementioned legal and ethical considerations I will not be offering the source-code or binaries to the public. Nor will I have any further involvement in the DAoC emulation scene even at an advisory level. All ties to DAoC emulation will be cut.

Developing Dark Ages has given me a lot of respect for the programmers at Mythic. While it was easy making little design improvements to their game, it was a lot harder to make something that wouldn't crash every few hours. The live DAoC servers operate for months without problems. Some of the design decisions these guys made to bring DAoC to you are awesome! Reservations I may have about Mythic management, but the Mythic developers are way cool.

Lastly, big thanks to the Dark Ages community - you guys were what made this all worthwhile. Big thank you to Looney for keeping the forums in check, though it was a rather shortlived job. Big-ups to Wastrel for always being there and offering encouragement, and listening to me rant even if he didn't have a choice being my co-worker.

Sorry to everyone for getting your expectations up. But at the end of the day I'm the one that has to live with my conscience and the consequences.

As to the future, I will be turning my thoughts to developing my own MMORPG. It'll be a huge job, but someone's gotta do it.

• Fixed a bug that meant group members could not pick up gold from a player killed by the group. (Thanks capo!)
• Fixed the crash bug that has caused the server to go down a few times lately.
• Fixed a problem that occurred when someone with a very full pack tried zoning. The server would send packets larger than the client could handle causing them to crash. This should fix some of the problems people were having with client crashes.
• Fixed a bug that caused some funkiness when buying large quantities of items at once.
• Dropped damage output of all thrown/fired weapons except for the primary archer bows.
• Yet Another Experiment™: death in Thidranki now means you /release back to your home city and cannot re-enter Thidranki for three minutes. This is to see how having a penalty for dying affects gameplay.
• Combat hits on targets now separate out the weapon damage and critical hit damage. This is in response to the number of complaints about the power of certain classes, when the numbers given sound like they were the result of a critical hit. The target previously could not tell for sure which hits were critical ones.
• Upped Friar damage.
• Increased XP rate for killing other players.
• Due to the death penalty system added above, I have reduced the power costs of rezzing your realm mates.

• Fixed an issue with the Dark Ages visibility system. This has caused a server crash recently.
• Capped levels at 29. Beyond that level XP will not be granted. This is to stop players from getting carried away levelling up characters that will most likely be wiped when the server is more feature complete.
• Fixed a bug that, if not the complete solution, is at least part of the problem that caused the long-term crashes and weirdness with NPCs changing their names. Time will tell.
• Made an improvement to the visibility system that should lessen and hopefully eliminate the occasional invisible player problem.
• Due to some problems with Damage Add, I have disabled it for the time being until it can be reworked. On some players it was doing far more damage than it should.
• Guild formation through the /gc form andlt;nameandgt; command has been implemented (at lastand#33;) - guild management has not been very well tested, so be warnedand#33;

• Altered Critical Strike formula. Before Critical Strike styles were doing too much damage.
• Increased melee damage slightly. Hitpoints have also increased across the board.
• Power pool size is now based on level and not casting stat.
• Increased range of throwable weapons to 1500.
• Fixed a problem with duration spells not sticking when cast on mobs of a higher level than the playerand#39;s.
• Due to the growing number of players playing and as I never learnt to count beyond ten, Iand#39;ve added a player count to the player listing on the portal page. The playerand#39;s level is also displayed.
• Meh. Fixed a bug that meant resist buffs actually made you _more_ susceptible to spells instead of less. (Oh the difference a sign makes)
• Fixed a bug that allowed bleed damage from styles to be resisted.
• Fixed the issue of players andquot;swimming in midairandquot; for those with Trials of Atlantis clients.
• Heros now actually turn into mooses when they trigger Spirit of the Hunt as they should, instead of the giant rat of the Berserker.
• Added missing merchants from each capital city. This means Scouts will finally be able to buy their gear.
• Fixed bug that would cause players to retain the last mob they selected even after zoning, which would cause some funkiness if they did something that targetted it.
• NPCs now know about ground height so there should be less of the NPC weirdness and disappearing that was occurring previously. This also affected PBAoE spells.
• Added /tell command.
• Reduced range of combat messages.
• Fixed bug where items such as arrows werenand#39;t being sold in stacks but still cost the same price. They are now sold in stacks. (For those that were buying these one at a time; donand#39;t forget the /mbuy commandand#33;)
• Stealthed speed now varies with your specialisation level in Stealth.
• Stunned/mezzed players can now no longer block, parry and evade.
• Can no longer style while strafing.
• Line-of-sight added for buildings only. You can no longer attack someone through a wall.
• Specialised stealth abilities (Climb Wall, Safe Fall, Danger Sense, Detect Hidden) added. Danger Sense and Safe Fall donand#39;t do anything as yet.
• Critical shot icons have been added to archers, but they have not been implemented yet.
• You can now enter stealth closer to enemies depending on your stealth specialisation.
• Can now stealth and cancel pulsing spells while sitting. Attempting a melee style while sitting will cause you to stand.

• Fixed bug that prevented all pulsing spells from working on everyone but the caster during combat.
• Players killed by pets should now credit the owner of the pet.
• The pet window now displays spell effects active on pet.
• Added the new 1.67 group window colour indicators; cyan=mezzed, orange=diseased, green=poisoned. Older clients will continue to use the old system.
• Added messages when player stats are raised through spells and when they drop.
• Concentration buffs now have a range of 2000. They do not drop altogether if you move out of range, but they lose their effectiveness. This is to combat the already common use of buffbots. This also affects pets.
• Similarly concentration buffs cast on someone (not the caster) involved in a duel will no longer be effective.
• Fixed it so a player cannot invite himself into a group (hehehehe... *cough*)
• Chants running on mezzed/stunned players will no longer continue to pulse for their group mates.
• The group window now displays the buffs active on your group mates.
• Fixed bug that meant you had to be facing your realm mate upon completion of a spell for it to work, or you would get a "You cannot see your target!" message (Thanks Citra!).
• Fixed a reported bug where DoTs were operating rapidly on high level mobs. (Thanks Kotomoto!)
• Fixed a crash bug related to aggro applied to pets in a group.
• Fixed problem where if you /release straight after dying, from then on you would auto-release every time you die.
• Reduced DoT damage by 75%.

Okay the server is now up for testing. All classes are now implemented except for the Shrouded Isles classes and Theurgists. But please remember that most classes have abilities missing. Remember to check this thread for what is missing from each class:

http://www.unitywars.com/darkages/index.php?showtopic=61

For those classes not implemented you will not find any trainers for. I know I've said this before but I still get the odd question asking why a trainer doesn't exist.

Now also bear in mind that this is beta quality software. There are bugs, lots of 'em. Though I'm aware of quite a few of them, please report any you find using the /BUG command. Thanks! There's still quite a few bugs reported from last time that I haven't fixed yet - it's not that I ignored them, but I was wanting to get the remaining classes done first. The server may crash from time to time. I'll try and fix it as soon as possible but sometimes that's not an option (like the last time we had a server crash).

There are some issues you should be aware of... Pets are still dodgy, NPCs that are attacking or following are jerky and they fall behind, throwing weapons do not currently use up the supply, archers are missing their crit. shot ability, sometimes your opponent disappears from view after a /duel (walking out and back into their bubble fixes that), and prolly more I've forgotten. The list endless.

Lastly, enjoy yourself! Oh yeah, the safe-zone has been moved from the central keep to the Albion ruins. Once again the only zones available are each realm's main cities and Thidranki.

Note: New forum accounts are only imported once an hour so you may need to wait for a while before you can play if you've just created a forum account.