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Just saw this news today, it seems that they just posted this up this morning. The fact that Flagship Studios is allowing more and more of what appeared to be “subscriber only features”, to be made available to non-subscribers caused quite an uproar in the official US / EU forums. Funny people, first they complain about not enough character slots for non-subscribers, then the subscribers complain when the non-subscribers gotten their fair share of character slots. In this world, you just can’t satisfy everyone, aye?

Source:
http://hellgatelondon.com/underground/new-update-coming

 

New Update Coming

We’re gearing up to release what we internally refer to as Patch 0.5. We intend this update to resolve many of the issues players are having with Hellgate: London.
In preparation for our 0.5 launch, we’ll be…
1) Wiping our Test Center tonight.
2) Placing copies of all US characters into the Test Center tomorrow.
If you’d like to see Patch 0.5 early and help us perfect the update, please login to the Test Center over the weekend. If all goes well, the 0.5 update will be made available to everyone next week.
Curious about what you can expect? Here’s a draft of our 0.5 patch notes:

General:
• All players now have 24 character slots.
• Fixed a known issue with the inventory user interface that caused the client to lock up.
• Fixed a bug which caused the Mini-game to sometimes become stuck.
• The Mini-game now resets every 15 minutes.
• Added a /help command to provide assistance using available / commands.
• Some new posters have been added to stations, so check them out!

Connection Issues:
• Fixed known issues which sometimes caused players to be disconnected and receive an erroneous network error message.
• Fixed an issue where some home routers would disconnect a user due to an inactive connection.
• Fixed known bugs which sometimes disconnected players during multiplayer quests.
• Fixed problems with NetLimiter 1.30 and some older versions of Norton Antivirus and McAfee Antivirus which would make the user entirely unable to connect to the game.

Chat:
• Made several chat interface improvements and the text entry more intuitive:
• Chat window is now open by default in multiplayer.
• Fixed chat window closing when traveling between zones.
• Fixed several cases where the chat window would obstruct other UI components.
• Chat context (such as Party and Guild) is now more clearly defined in the text entry window, including a color-coded border.
• Chat window is now more transparent.
• Added /g command. This is equivalent to /gchat command (guild chat).
• Whisper text now shows up on all chat tabs.
• Whisper messages and admin announcements auto-open the chat panel.
• Auto-switch to the appropriate tab (such as Party and Guild) if you type text to that channel and are not in a tab that shows the text.
• PageUp/PageDown cycle through chat tabs when text entry is active.
• Chat panel now auto-opens if you type text and press Enter while the panel is closed.
• Chat text entry deactivates after entering text.
• Chat panel no longer closes if you press Enter on a blank line.
• Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Items:
• Fixed known bugs that caused players to sometimes lose items.
• Fixed a bug with the Nanoforge that caused it to inaccurately modify the stats of higher-quality items.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Unique items to drop without special properties.

Quests:
• Fixed various known issues which prevented players from being able to continue interrupted side-quests.
• Quest items should no longer remain in the player inventory after the associated quest has been completed. Players with old quest items (such as Train Parts) associated with quests they’ve already completed or no longer have should find these items removed upon logging in.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from receiving credit for killing the “5 Lies” in The Hellgate quest. Players should now be able to properly advance in this quest.

Engineers:
• Fixed known bugs which prevented Engineer Drones from saving properly.
• Fixed a bug which caused Engineers to receive an erroneous “unable to meet requirements” message when entering a new instance with a Drone that has a weapon equipped.

PvP:
• Fixed an incorrect modifier causing Special Effect Attack Strengths in PvP situations to be much higher than intended.

World Movement:
• Fixed known issues which occasionally prevented characters from being able to load or switch instances.
• Fixed several issues with players getting stuck in the world.
• Fixed a bug related to St. Paul’s Nightmare mode progression.
• Portals to party members should now automatically close if the associated party member leaves the game.

World Events:
• The Guy Fawkes event has ended. Characters that have completed the NAME Quest that did not receive the Trinket reward should find this item in their inventory.

See you online!

Posted by: Ivan on Sat, 11/17/2007 – 01:41 Talk About This Story!
Filed under: Patch 0.5, Test Center

I find it interesting that Flagship Studios likes to announces its patches before they actually implement them. Do they actually have completed the patch, or it is just a to-do list for them?

ArenaNet implements the updates first, then only they announce the update notes on their site . Kinda like “Do first, talk later” style, while Flagship seems to be like “Talk first, do later”, since they always like to announce what their patches will attempt to fix.

The “fix” that every non-subscriber would be happy with is probably the increase of character slots from 3 to 24.

Engineers:
• Fixed known bugs which prevented Engineer Drones from saving properly.

I thought they already fix this in Patch 0.1? They were supposed to fix this bug in Patch 0!