Glamdring - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
Glamdring - Tonight's chat topic is "In Testing and In Development"
Glamdring - I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Destiny, Jerrith, Rainman or Drax_I.
Glamdring - Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone from OSI, or myself--these questions will be ignored.
Glamdring - Remember that OSI may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the Dev Team feel that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
Glamdring - In addition, please do not submit any questions that have already been answered during past conferences. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com.
Glamdring - Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions. Glamdring changes topic to "/msg or /query Destiny, Jerrith, Rainman or Drax_I - "In Testing and In Development""
Glamdring - *Aljebra* Hiya! Umm..can we get rid of ghosting? Such as making ghosts only able to see guildmates/party and NPC's? Right now its annoying to have 'scouts' telling their guild over ICQ what people are saying, so plans are foiled.
Sage - That is not in the plans at this time, but we understand the concern. Actually, when ghosts were first conceived
Sage - one of their roles was going to be that of spy. With the faction system, it may be disruptive, but then again
Sage - it may be a good tactic.

Glamdring - *Yamamama-Itsui* How will the changes to allocating pts on kills (esp karma) effect going red? Will you get karma loss and murder count if you make first hit and do damage but not kill the victim? If so, what can be done about people who get hit accidentally the commit suicide?
tOAD - That's what the 4 Murder count grace period is for.

Glamdring - *Tygress* Is anything being done to prevent people from using moonstones to get into castle courtyards or the open areas of keeps?
Sage - The design is that people should not be able to use moonstones in a castle, or to get into a castle. If this is not the case, please let us know.

Glamdring - *Zixhwizs* Am I reading this right? Will bards finally get fame for things they kill by provocation?
Jalek - Yes, bards will be put on the monsters "hate list" and get fame and karma if they are in the Top Rankers for the kill

Glamdring - *scrappt* hello I was wonder if there any tweeks for resist like resisting the poison spell is really hard even with 100 resist when the caster has 0 eval?
Sage - Right now we are evaluating all PvP enhancements and possible needed tweaks. Although the poison spell can be used to great effect, it does not currently look like it is overpowering.
Sage - Should we start seeing data to the contrary, we may reevaluate it. However, I am not sure making it more resistable is the way to go.

Glamdring - *Riparian* why are the upcoming modifications to poisoning nessisary (i.e. needing to wipe the weapon with an oiled cloth to prevent it from breaking)? Is a Deadly posioned blade that big of a problem? With the pioson wearing off after a few hits anyway... it seems to be a moot point.
Sage - Good question. In the simplest terms, it would not be necessary as the game is now. However, with the new curing before healing changes, there would be no reason for a warrior not to use poison.
Sage - It gives a very good advantage without the player having to make a choice or allocate skill points. With the new changes
Sage - assassins will benefit because they will have made a choice and they will be able to use poison to greater effect.
Sage - Therefore, it really goes to a matter of choice, you can use the poison and get the upper hand, but you have to be cautious when making that choice.

Glamdring - *ELEK* will monsters be able to do the special move that the charecter will be able to like, the damage with 2 handed weapons
tOAD - No.

Glamdring - *Willard* Will the housing rules be the same as they are now for the New Lands?
Sage - The placement rules will be the same. There will be a staggered placement of houses as mentioned, but otherwise the rules will be the same.

Glamdring - *Arislan88* Regarding defensive spells such as Reactive Armor and Protection now on TC, could we get some estimates of how each contributing skill (in this case Evaluate Intelligence, Meditation and Inscription) will affect the effectiveness of these spells? Some specific numbers would be nice as well as getting an idea what the dev team envisions for these.
Sage - I would rather not ever post specific numbers. I think the value of discovery is very important. I can say that EI, Med, and Inscription weigh equally
Sage - in terms of strength of both spells.
Sage - That is all you will get out of me. ;)

Glamdring - *Tatters* Do all monsters with the new ai attack hidden players?
tOAD - Actually, no, that's an issue that is being worked on. Though some of the smarter monsters may start casting reveal.

Glamdring - *me5000* About items getting moved under the house sign when you place a house over them -- What about when a house has just collapsed, do you have to click the items to "unlock" or will they just move under house sign too??
SunSword - they'll move under the house sign.

Glamdring - *Troxini* Will factions work on Siege Perilous? Since town guards will stay and since a huge number of players are perma-red, will these players essentially be unable participate in the system?
Krelin - Yes.

Glamdring - *Styx* Will all of the new features (esp. faction sytem, the new lands, skill updates and housing policies) be made available at once or in steps?
Krelin - Yes, basically all of that code will be applied at the same time to each shard that is published.... It's difficult and painful to trickle features in...

Glamdring - *Ghosty* How come Towers are not considered large buildings? They are just as big as a keep, if not bigger.
SunSword - It's based on foot print, not height
SunSword - Our real estate is limited by foot print size of buildings, not actually volume or height
SunSword - that's the reason for the limitation
Sage - Yup

Glamdring - *Metal* My question pertains to Monster AI.. Why dont you add interuption to spell casting for monsters??
tOAD - Mostly because the spell casting monsters don't use magic in the same way that players use magic. Fictionally they are magical creatures who are bound to the same effects of spells that players can use (mostly).
tOAD - Realistically, interruption is more for PvP than PvM. Players don't need more advantages against monsters.
SunSword - yup
Jalek - uh huh

Glamdring - *Al_Bundy* will dragons/wyrms/nightmares/drakes heal/cure themselves when they're tamed?
tOAD - Yes.
Jalek - yup
SunSword - Firedog says "Yes." All hail Firedog.
tOAD - Can you dig it?

Glamdring - *SC_Miriamele* On the subject of the party system, could this lead to a sort of anti-social behavior if you can speak only to your party no matter where you are in the game? I have noticed on EQ that due to the ability to "speak privately" there is very little communication between players who do not know each other, could this happen with your system?
tOAD - The fact of the matter is, the game is as social as you want it to be. If you don't want to talk to other people, you're not going to. Having a party system that let's you communicate with your select group of friends doesn't make you any more or less social than you would be in any other situation. It just gives you more freedom to talk to who you *want* to talk to.

Glamdring - *Dun* In the consent only areas, since players cannot harm one another, what would happen if a player opened a tinker (player) trapped chest?
SunSword - Well, we changed traps so that to take damage, you have to enter the act consensually.
SunSword - By picking the lock, you are accepting the possiblity of being harmed.
SunSword - That's why we made that change. So you will take damage.

Glamdring - *Quartz* I tried Test Factions today.. but how are we supposed to test them unless we plan to spend hours raising stealing to 80 just to get the sigil ?
Jalek - When Test Pacific comes up, it will have the ability to set skills/stats the way you want. We want the faction system really pounded when this comes up :)

Glamdring - *Jeg* The Party messaging is grat, but the comm can get lost in other messages on your screen....can you move it to a different part of the screen, or even jsut change the color?
Jalek - It is in, I believe in the best part of the screen. However, if you are worried messages will get lost, you can open the party chat gump
Jalek - All messages will be logged to that window then you won't have to worry about missing anything :)

Glamdring - *Caerwyn* What about the other spells that the AI currently does not use. Spells like the Summons, Chain Lightning, & other high level spells aren't used by Monsters. NPCs like the Evil Mages could use the summon spells, for example. A big surprise would be a demon appearing and guarding them, wouldn't it?
tOAD - Actually, some of the spell casting monsters do summon other things to guard or protect them. And some of them have learned the ability to polymorph as well...:)

Glamdring - *Senith* In regards to Haven, will Companions possibly be allowed access to a few more abilities, with which to craft quests for young players? Maybe have a Senior Companion be able to create temporary items or encounters?
Sage - Right now, that will be up to our Companion coordinators. If they believe such a thing is valuable, they may decide to do that, but I am not aware of any plans for such now.

Glamdring - *Sandrella* Some of the new house designs have outdoor patios and balconies, will you be able to lock down items there just as you can inside houses?
SunSword - You bet. That's a major reason their there. The other reason (aside from the fact that they look nice) is that you can have many vendors outside.

Glamdring - *Emonious* With all the changes to bards, and the whole idea of a renicance, with bards finally be able to REALLY play player made music? IE write something on parchment and have instrument play it? Renicance had a lot of music to it :)
SunSword - No.

Glamdring - Well folks, that wraps it up for tonight...I would like to thank everyone for coming