Gang Spawn Woes

I'm going to have to keep things short this week, as I'm working with the team to figure out what's going on with the missing gang spawns in the Slums and Barrens Districts. This is one of those unfortunate cases where nothing we did in Update 46 should have affected the spawns, yet that's when reports started coming in. At this time, we don't have any solid leads, but we're keeping at it.

Whatever the resolution is, it's likely we'll have to restart the servers at some point to fix it. This may happen with little notice if we have to do it over the weekend. So, if there's an unexpected downtime, that's likely the cause.

Death Effect Mechanics

As pointed out on the forums, the Death Effect is applied to any Abilities used while under your character is subject to it. When the Death Effect expires, any running Abilities will not automatically update to correct the penalty. Therefore, things like your combat Style and Upgrade Abilities need to be re-applied when the Death Effect expires. Make sure you re-up your buffs after the penalty expires and you should be good to go.

Buddy Key Progress

It seems we've made some progress on re-emailing Buddy Keys this week. I'll hopefully have an announcement for everyone next week on when we will be re-sending them.

A lot of folks have opted-in for emails from The Matrix Online Team and we're looking forward to seeing new faces in the game. If you haven't done it yet, make sure you opt-in for emails from your Account Management page to get in on the next round of Buddy Keys.

Continued Forums Revamp

The current condition of the forums is a major community concern, with good reason. While progress seems slow, the team is doing a lot of work on the backend to improve performance. This is the top issue and, once resolved, they can focus more on functionality.

As you all know, we're not the only SOE game to have the new forums system and, over time, all SOE games will. I'm constantly working with my other Community Relations Managers to make sure the dev team understands our needs and concerns. We have a high standard for what we want out of the new forums and we're holding the dev team to it. It's going to take some time, but we will get there.

I'll also do my best to get update notes from the team when we have updates to the system. Even when nothing seems to change on the front-end, it's better to know that things are improving that aren't as visible. I apologize for not being more diligent about this.

Teaser Time

The team does have some things in the works that I'd love to chat about. However, we're in the initial phases and checking feasibility right now to see if they're possible.

One of the things will be something added to spice up the Halloween event. I think I said this before, but if what the team says is true, we're gonna have some serious fun.

I know a certain number of players don't enjoy our holiday events. They're not meant to be part of the Matrix cannon and have nothing to do with the storyline. That being said, a lot of players do enjoy them, and so do we. It's always fun to do something a little different and it gives our brains a bit of a breather.

Mmm...brains.

Another is a new object type that we'll be able to build some gameplay around. It's something that was started on back in beta, but was never completed. Now, we're seeing if we can finish it up and do some fun stuff with it. (No, it is not melee weapons.) Hopefully, I'll be able to talk more about this in the next few weeks.

Hopefully we'll get the gang-spawn issue fixed soon and I can get back to...er...everything else I have to do.

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