Because You’ll Hear It Soon Enough

Hi. My name’s Dan “Walrus” Myers, and I’m the Producer and Community Relations Manager for The Matrix Online.

For anyone listening to the upcoming Split-Infinity Radio interview, that’s part of what you’ll hear. My dual role may or may not come as a surprise to most of you. While I’ve been keeping it on the down-low, there have been plenty of hints as to what I’ve been up to around here.

There are a couple reasons I haven’t made any official announcements about my position. For most of the time since becoming part of the SOE family, I’d been acting as an associate producer to Andy Kaplan, helping take care of a lot of the day-to-day details. When Andy decided to take a new job back in February, it was decided that I was in the best position to continue developing the game.

As we were heading into the final stages of Combat Revision 2.0 implementation, we decided it wasn’t the best time to announce a changing of the guard. After finishing that up and getting CR2.0 into the game, things have simply been so busy that I hadn’t gotten around to an official announcement. Some folks found out at Fan Faire or E3, but overall I hadn’t given much thought to letting the community know.

Since I state it in the upcoming interview and am in the midst of a producer letter, anyway, I figured now was the time to confirm what many people have figured out. So, if I haven’t been as active on the forums as previously, maybe you can understand why. ;)

Now, let’s get down to business.

Archival Missions: The Details

We’re still working towards implementing the Archival Mission system in Update 45, which is scheduled for early/mid July, depending on testing. Since there have been many questions about exactly how this will work, let’s talk about the details.

Subchapter Mission Tickets

Each subchapter’s missions will be activated by a ticket item, which can be purchased from the same Archivist Vendors that sell the books that let you into the Constructs. Each Organization’s missions will be available its specific Archivist Vendor.

Tickets will cost 50,000 Information and will launch an Organization’s critical missions for the entire subchapter (1.1, 1.2, etc.). Once you finish the first, your ticket will be replaced with one that launches the second mission, and so on.

Mission Rewards

Missions will grant normal Information and experience for successful completion. However, any special rewards originally granted in a mission have been removed and there is no reputation gain or loss.

When you complete all of an Organization’s subchapter missions, you’ll earn a token. Each token is a unique item for that Org and subchapter. We’re currently working to make these items so you can email them to yourself for temporary storage and will let you know their status before launch.

Chapter Rewards

If you earn all nine chapter tokens (three subchapters and three Organizations) you can turn them in for a chapter reward. Each chapter reward is related to the storyline in some way. These are strictly collectible items—each generates a specific graphical effect, but has no bonuses associated with it.

Tokens can be turned in to any Organization Collector for a chapter reward.

Organization Rewards

Organization rewards will be available every four chapters. If you earn all twelve tokens for an Organization (three subchapters and four chapters), you can turn them in for an Organization reward. We’ve already shown the Red-Eye Beret (Zion) and the Demon-Army Trench (Merovingian) and you’ll get to see the Machine reward in next week’s Image Retrieval. These items will have some bonuses on them, although they won’t be “elite-class” items.

Each Organization’s Collector will have that Organization’s reward available for trade. Any player completing an Organization’s archived missions—regardless of their own Org affiliation—can earn the reward.

Archival Mission Rollout

The first batch of archived missions will become available in Update 45, which will include critical missions from chapters 1 through 4. A new batch of archived missions will become available at the beginning of the next full chapter. For example, the Chapter 5 missions will become available when Chapter 6.1 goes live.

A Note on Last Week’s Article

While I know you look forward to hearing about upcoming game development, The Other Side of the Looking Glass was never intended to focus solely on the game. Instead, it’s a chance for me to address community issues and to give everyone a glimpse into what things look like from our side of the mirror.

From time to time, I’ll talk about other issues that are important to a healthy community. Things like exploits, account security, and player activities are just some of the topics you may find here. Feel free to express your feedback when a particular article doesn’t deliver in your eyes—that’s one reason for the Broadcast Depth threads. But try to keep in mind that other players may get something important out of it.

And with that, I’ll see you next week on the other side.

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