After a week of VPN being in beta, there has just been the first major update. Lots of new features, and bug fixes, of which I’m sure your favourite is the decrease in energy renewal time from 20 minutes to 15. It’s not a lot, but definitely better than before.
Quick summary of updates straight from the VPN home page:
- Ability to create up to three characters.
- Delete characters.
- UNIQUE character names (you can request a name change if you want).
- Energy refill down to 15 minutes. Timer shows how long left to wait.
- No level restrictions on pets.
- You can add friends by just typing in their name.
- You can boost a friend’s energy levels once every half hour.
Entire patch notes as of Saturday March 28th 2009: (Prepare yourself for a lot of reading)
IMPORTANT!
- You can now create up to three characters on your account. One pirate, one viking, and… maybe another viking!
The link to the character creator is through the “Your Character” page. You can also switch between them at any time! - By popular demand character names are now UNIQUE. We’ll still give you some fun suggestions (all of them will probably be taken), but you’ll be able to choose your own name.
- The time it takes for your energy to be restored has been lowered to 15 minutes from 20.
Features
- We have uploaded new map images. They’re much better quality and have a lot more detail, but they may take longer to load. Remember to use the support form if you get any weird technical issues!
- You can boost the energy of a friend on your friends list. You can do this every thirty minutes and it increase their current energy by 20%
- You can now delete a character. Don’t do this though, we really can’t get them back once they’re gone. Our stern, emotionless support staff will be unmoved by your tears.
- We’ve implemented mod_deflate on our servers, that basically means that all the web content is zipped up so pages should be loading about 40% faster!
- You are now able to update your attributes. You’re allowed to increase Strength, Intelligence or Agility by one point per level
- The energy bar will show you a timer to the next time you get energy back
- You can equip any pet regardless of level
- The ‘Your Character’ page has been graphic designerised and things are where they are supposed to be.
- The friends list has been blessed with the gift of … Pagination! You can also sort your friends by level.
- Flash movies now have a preloader!
- You can switch audio on and off using the audio icon in the Meteor Bar and on the front page
- You can add a friend to your friends list by typing in their character’s name
- Restocks will now happen about 6 times an hour on average
- You can now view the contents of your bank from any page, wherever you are in the world
- We’ve set up a page for Buddy Icons, you can find it from the media link on the front page. More coming soon!
Game Changes
- Faction zones are now open to players with Neutral Reputation or higher.
- New armor pieces are available from faction quests for tokens.
- Added Friendly faction chain quests for all factions. These quests will become visible in the faction zones when players reach the Friendly reputation level.
- Added a quest so Pirates can now get Silk Cloth and Logs.
- Added quests so faction tokens can now be obtained for all factions.
- Added new quest art.
- Added Pet Worm.
- Fixed an issue where faction tokens were not being spent correctly on turn ins.
- Significantly increased the amount of reputation given from the quest “Refreshing”
- Slightly increased the amount of reputation given from the quest “The Undead Dance”
- Fixed an issue where you could travel from Neko Sister Clubhouse to Misty Lake.
- Fixed an issue where you could equip Silver Boat Race Trophy as a hat.
- Lowered reputation rewards on a few quests which were giving too much reputation per energy point.
- Changed a few low level quests to make the chance of success slightly higher.
- Changed the required items on “Friend of Cat, Enemy of Rat” from Logs to Bamboo.
Bug Fixes
- Most of the other links in the Meteor Bar work, ie. the makewords one
- The dropdown in the Meteor Bar is fixed now, the links work
- Fixed a bug where the layout template wouldn’t render when you tried to access the site
