AFTER HOURS BETA OPENED

On October 1, 1997, A beta version of After Hours was opened on ra2.randomc.com 3000 for all players to come and bug the new combat system and spell classes. The new combat system, written by Huma over the course of the last year, uses new attributes and formulas to expand and enrich mud combat.

A lot of the changes that have taken place are rooted in the new method that player attributes are organized. Gone is the point system that many players are familiar with. In it's place is a new percentage system, which is increased by a half a percent. New players start at 0 percent across the board (as of the beta), so they must increase their attributes 200 times (half a percentage each time). This allows for people to advance more points since the old system only allowed for stats to be advanced 100 times. Also the maximums of the new system will be more powerful than the maximums of the old system, so that anyone who does have one or two stats maxxed should do quite well. Also the new stats seemed to have lost the incredible cost that the old system had. Under the old system, someone reaching the 100th point could spend between 20 to 30,000 experience points on a single point. Under the new system (as of the beta), it was 10,000 experience points for me to go from 66.5 to 67 percent. While it does seem that it would be more expensive than the 66th point on the old system (perhaps 6,000 experience points), one has to factor in the increased firepower, and thus increased experience in the new system, which will make the new stats more of a bargain than under the old system.

The other major visible changes that new and old faces will see is higher maximums to level and class, and the addition of new skills (which are, of present, under wraps). The new maximums of levels is both 30 for levels and class levels. Where the old demi-god was 20/20, the new one will be 30/30. This, however, will be difficult to attain, because the new required experience tables have not been altered. Instead, they begin where they left off on the old game so that the 21st level should be something after 2,250,000 (perhaps 3.25 million experience points?), and the classes will be (presuming the same scale of advancement:

For those pessimists who wonder how they are going to gather 2.5 million experience points to make 20/30 and beyond, new spells and 3/1 attacks for the fighting classes added to the increased damage should make any player a virtual carnage machine. Players who tested 30/30 maxxed stats reported triple bone-crushes, or double bone-crushes and a massacre against animals and Evo's Mistress of the East Wind was easy to defeat. Don't believe, however, that the new After Hours will be a cake walk. Expect new areas to open up with even harder monsters to challenge the best of the best. Only these will sate the exponential amount of experience required to make the next level.

As of last week, the Beta was taken down after a mere 10 days of being open, but the wizards have plenty of repairs and tweaking ahead of them. Some of the classes weren't working properly at last report. The new mud boasts of great challenges and great bounty, but the road will be hard for both players and wizards as one strives to attain 30/30 and the other strives to create a vision.

Well I'm not sure what to say. As a monk on the beta of After Hours, everything seemed pretty much the same to me, which was cool despite I lost 8 off my permanent hit points. I heard some other people complaining about the barbarian and mage classes saying that it was crappy for them and they couldn't kill a thing. I figure that's a bug right now, but I didn't get to test any of the 30/30 with max stats (or, for example, does class level 25 come with 5/2 attacks?). I suppose I can only pray for an immediate, visible difference at 20/21 and beyond, but I really doubt it. It seems plainly to me that 3/1 will be, as in the old system, a trophy. Something acquired once you have already reached the top :-)

To be honest, I've heard a lot of negative feedback on the new After Hours Beta. Some of it was logical content or things like bugs, how come Boreas killed a 20/20 mage, mages can't make experience. That I will leave to the Gods to debug, and when another beta opens, they can be tested again. Then again, there was the other stuff. You know, the "there's nothing new to attract new people or that the mud was going to die.

Well, the truth is, no there is nothing all that new that will attract new players. The thing that attracts players is other players, so for this theory, wizard efforts should be focused around keeping the ones they have. And I think, for the most part, they are trying hard and working furiously to provide new entertainment for the old players. Still, it is hard to believe that when you log on at 11am in the morning and you are the only person on. Of course, at 10pm at night, there are 9 players and 3 wizards on and the question is asked, how can this mud be dying?

So what is the point behind the angst, the panic, the paranoia? I guess the point is old hands will have things now to spend that extra 5 million experience points on. There can be a point to your lives after level 20 -- you need not go to the big retirement pub in town. And that is almost a miracle, because for a long time, it was wiz or retirement pub. For the Gods, it is a new and exciting era of bugs, debugging and tweaking! And that is not so bad.