OwnedCore Report #44: No Diablo 4 at Blizzcon 2018 BibleThump

**Kenneth** · 10-21-2018

Welcome welcome to the 44th OwnedCore Report. This week we have an interview with Veritable who has created a really cool website for Shroud of the Avatar, gaming news including Diablo 4 likely not happening at Blizzcon, and of course community highlights. Also apparently WeakAura got those ridiculous sub numbers from an API shared on here yet the thread was never found deleted or active anywhere...weird. Before we get on to the report I want to remind everybody that we have been using our social medias to interact more than ever so if you have a Facebook or Twitter definitely give us a follow!

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Community Interview

This week we were lucky enough to get a 1 on 1 interview with a long time member, Veritable, who has developed a website for Shroud of the Avatar called SotAssist. The thread he made describing what SotAssist does, how you can use it, and all the little details can be found HERE. Anybody who comments on this thread has a chance to win 1 of 3 keys for SotAssist, ends in 1 week.

Q:Let's start with who Veritable is, what games you have played and play now, and you're history with OC

A: I am a Canadian who loves Music, Programming and games. I have been with OC since when it was MMOwned, around 2007 ish according to my profile. Back then I was a big time lurker, but I was just starting to learn how these MMO's worked from a programming perspective, so I started learning early scripting things, like ACTools macros and such. Never really got into software develoment for hacks or anything, but I did do about 7-8 years of POL Scripting for private UO Shards back in the day. I did get a 3 day ban from fish botting with my own macro once though.

Q:Now Shroud of the Avatar is a newer MMO being announced in 2013 with an official release date of 2018. How would you say this MMO compares to the likes of titans such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XXIV and so on? What makes this game stand out?

A: I think Shroud's initial appeal with me personally was that it was made by, and in a similar feel to Ultima Online. Ultima Online was the first MMO I ever played, and I have many fond memories of developing free shards with it. One of my friends from those 7 years actually found me on twitter and told me about the game and to come play it. So I did.

As far as comparing to the big AAA titles, I don't think you can. It's not a theme park MMO, though lately they have been adding a few things that make it sort-of themepark-ish. No classes, similar to say Skyrim, so you can kind of relate it to Guild Wars where switching weapons would mean different play styles, and FFXIV where a weapon switch just flat out makes you a different class. But here, you basically can be a mage tank with healing skills that uses a polearm to tank.

Q:SoTAssist. At first glance this looks like a massive undertaking. How many people worked on this and for how long?

A: SotAssist has had input of a few close friends of mine and Hemswal Genis, who is my friend from UO. We have been working on this for ... 6-8 months for the final product that it is now. Probably over 5,000 hours of coding into it. I am the sole developer, though he does have a hand in helping me with some of the details, especially when it comes to the game mechanics (Like Farming). The first Farming tab was done from an brief explanation and was completely different than it is now. So he went into further detail, and that helped make it what it is now.

Q:5000 hours is a lot. Has the SotA community been having fun with it so far? What has the response been like?

A: I think the finalized version with the way it works right now, probably has taken the last 6-8 months. But I have been fiddling around with the Public API for over a year now, which is why it is so high. But the last 6-8 months have been a lot of sacrificed nights of gaming to get it done. The response from the people who have tested it thought it was amazing, and have actually purchased it already. That and members of the Shroud development team have actually said that it looks amazing when we demo'd it at DragonCon this year for them. In fact, there is a video I highlighted a week or two ago on the official twitch stream they do every week, and Chris (Atos) who is the lead developer, completely starts to geek out explaining it. He is really excited and happy that we made it. He can focus on other things instead. The video is on the SotAssist twitter: SotAssist (@SotAssist) on Twitter

Q:Being that this game isn’t a theme park MMO have you taken interest in other similar MMOs like Ashes of Creation which got a big backing on Kickstarter? I think it’s labeled a sandbox MMO.

A: I have been following Ashes of Creation and Chronicles of Elyria. I think the thing that is making me not buy them right now, is the cost of entry, and the fact that the pricing scheme really looks like "Star Citizen". Where they have a low cost entry point, but nothing really 'in-stone' yet about what the game is actually going to be like. Although Ashes of Creation has done a lot better job with press releases than Chronicles.

I think over-all, I am trying to stay away from "Raid Games". I enjoy world bosses, rare hunting, but with MMO feel. I don't like Monster Hunter, and I got bored with Dauntless. So I think I enjoy the social aspect of MMO's.

Q:Have you ever worked on a project of this scale before for a video game?

A: The only thing that might have come close, was when I was helping a guy named Muad'Dib work on re-writing the POL Script files for POL Core back in the day. That was probably one of the worst tasks, but I feel it prepared me in some way to what it is now. But when we started I had no idea that it would be THIS big of a project as far as actual content. Originally it started as a simple Item Sales tab only.

Q:Now a lot of players on OwnedCore are familiar with the workings of MMO's being that we have a lot of WoW players/content on the website. With SoTAssist you are stating things that it does such as tracking the death of monsters by players, loot from players, when they buy/sell items to vendors, and so on. What advantages does all this information provide the player? In other words. What are some of the best ways to use all this information to our advantage?

A: So yes, SotAssist is like an assistant. It can give you details on things like you said, item sales and notify you of monster kills. One of the best ways to give an example, would be the Overseer Tab. Lets say you hate some player, and you know for a fact that they frequently go out pvp flagged to farm (more xp). So you would basically search for that player in the last 72h, and see a timestamp outline of how they have spent the last 3 days. Where they farm, what they kill (so you know where to stealth and wait for them), and then you can (especially over time) farm them for XP and loot. (When you die in PvP you can lose items).

Other than that, we have actually been using the Loot Tracker to find items we thought were no longer accessible in the game, but suddenly appeared on the loot tables again, and so figuring out an average drop rate of super ultra rare items like Creepy Dolls, because they only drop off of a specific spawn of mobs in one zone.

Q:"We are also working with Potalarium to facilitate PvP Seasons in Shroud of the Avatar. Currently we are on Season 2." Can you go into detail on this? I see you mention a prize pool that may be implemented into the game itself via tokens?

A: Yes, absolutely. So we are partnering with Portalarium so that we can provide more incentives other than our existing methods. Right now, we are getting sponsors for each pvp season from the playerbase. These people give either money or some in-game currency, that we evaluate the value at the end of the season. Then we divide 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th ranked players overall and divide 50% of the pool to them. The other 50% is given to the top in each bracket, with unclaimed brackets carrying over into the next season.

This came about, because there was a bot at one point in discord (private bot) that tracked kills already, and also had a 'ladder' type system. But it got shutdown very suddenly. When that happened, we basically put together a new Discord Bot called Shroudbert Steinbot (who is now on over 20 servers including the official Portalrium Discord), who does what that bot did and much more. The major issue, is that there was no ladder system that Portalarium had, so we just made our own which we pulled ideas from a lot of different sources. The ideology behind this ladder system ("Eladdo") is that it aims to promote Active PvP in the game. So you can't just get to the top rank and not play, you will drop down in brackets of no activity very quickly if you don't participate.

It's still a constantly evolving ladder system as we find loop holes based on the way the game works, but we are working with Portalarium to find ways to plug those holes, by making changes to the actual game mechanics and the system itself to combat gaming of the system.

Q:So with the PvP system. Was there no sort of ranking system on any level before the original discord bot that did it was active ?

A: No, they never had a PvP Ranking system before. The guy who wrote the original one didn't even work for them when he wrote it, but then got hired (though not as a direct result of making the bot).

Q:Also on the topic of PvP. Is SotA a very PvP focused game?

A: I think that it is just a slice of the game. Some people enjoy it, some people don't. The PvE aspect and farming/crafting plus the extensive housing system is enough for a lot of people. But even so. Those who like PvP but not the "losing my items" aspect of it, have recently received a new in-game system called Obsidian Trials. It is a free for all PvP environment, last one standing with a 10 minute timer on the match. And then it resets. You do not lose items when you die here. We also do not currently have rewards for Obsidian Trials participants, but their kills inside do go into the global pvp. So people can particpate in both to rank up.

Q:Now you took this Public API and did something great with it and even worked with the developers but on the other end does a Public API, especially in an MMORPG, open the flood gates to negative things being built? Things such as better bots, hacks, etc?

A: With the Public API that Portalarium put out, they actually restrict information viewed. Including fudging timestamps so we can't build super accurate loot tables. To this end, we can only do what we can to make it as accurate as possible. That being said, there are ways that we know about that CAN be used to gain an unfair advantage if you use the API this way. I mean, a game company that makes these kind of details public probably knows (hopefully anyway) the costs of potential cheaters using the data to evil ends. I think games like Guild Wars 2, who's API is awesome, and also Eve Online did their API almost perfectly. You have to have a token to use it, or some sort of access key. Otherwise, you only see general data like item sales or auction house listing prices etc.

I don't know of anyone that lets you PUT data on the API. All the public ones seem to be read only at least. That would be a huge mistake to openly let people change
data in this way I think.

Q:What's the next step? Are there things you are possibly adding to SotAssist in the near future? Any new projects on the horizon?

A: I have a list myself on our git repository that Hemswal has been adding to in the recent months, that is around 5-15 tasks. He said he has pages of thoughts
and suggestions from other players and testers of the app. Sponsors of the PvP Seasons have also done stuff. The first thing we are doing, is working on the clock.

The game time is wonky, and there is no 'digital' time display. You have to have a silly grandfather type clock in your house to watch the time. Otherwise you only see the Day, Month, Year, Season, Moon Phase etc. No hour and minutes etc. As well as the same person that did the original bot, also created a mostly accurate Cabalists clock, which told you what Cabalist (Mini-Bosses in Sieges on the world map) were in what town and what time. So you could actually predict and farm a specific Cabalist for their super rare Hoods. Like <1% drop rate.

For the time being, the clock is my bane, but we have also had some suggestions from the RP community and I think we're actually going to do it. The idea is some kind of custom button / hotkey system (dunno how it'll work yet) that lets you do text + emotes in game without having to type. The emote system is extensive, but the use of the emotes is kind of lackluster if you don't know what the command is.

Community Highlights

With Red Dead 2 on the horizon I wanted to re-highlight the thread JCollacchi14 made that is basically an all you need to know about Red Dead 2 up to this point. This game will be a game changer I have no doubt.

Thread found HERE

There is nothing better than a solid exploit with a video included. Dougy4t has given us both in this "Invisibility Exploit". Get it while it's hot.

Thread found HERE

This is an oldie but a goodie by the legend Smitten. Bugged weapons for PVP at level 100 but some still work today and are hilarious.

Thread found HERE

A newer member Huntelaarr has made a very detailed guide on how to Quick Farm Island Expeditions. A well formatted guide is always an A+ in my book.

Thread found HERE

An exploration guide with video included. Great for farming Archimonde's mount. All thanks to Combusted.

Thread found HERE

Gaming News from Around the Globe

Diablo

I have good news and I have bad news. Diablo 4 is 99% confirmed....but we are most likely not getting an announcement at Blizzcon 2018. Recently, in a blog post on the official Diablo 3 website, Blizzard stated:

BlizzCon 2018 is almost here and we’ve seen a lot of rumors flying around about our plans for Diablo at the show. These are very exciting times—we currently have multiple teams working on different Diablo projects and we can’t wait to tell you all about them . . . when the time is right.

We know what many of you are hoping for and we can only say that “good things come to those who wait,” but evil things often take longer. We appreciate your patience as our teams work tirelessly to create nightmarish experiences worthy of the Lord of Terror.

While we won’t be ready to announce all of our projects, we do intend to share some Diablo-related news with you at the show.

When Blizzard hit us with the "when the time is right" you know they are trying to take down the hype train of D4 and have you more prepared for realistic announcements like D1/D2 remastered, the Netflix Series announcement, and who knows what else.

At the same time stating "We know what many of you are hoping for and we can only say that 'good things come to those who wait'" is basically confirming Diablo 4 is a thing (which has been known for years) and that it won't be at Blizzcon. This also states that there are multiple teams on multiple projects so I wonder what else could be coming from the Diablo universe. (Plz no mobile)

In other Diablo news we have the Legendary Hunt going on. I made a totally separate thread about this explaining it all but the gist it is that there are hidden QR codes across the internet and every one you find and submit gives you an entree into a prize pool including real life legendary Diablo items made by Volpin Props. There are clues given out on their Twitter to find the codes. Now on my thread I am constantly updating it with all the QR codes that people have found and shared. This thread can be found HERE. So if you're interested in wielding some dope Diablo weapons IRL than be sure to check in every now and again on that thread.

A Red Dead Recap by Tim Rogers
A lot of people are excited for Red Dead 2 without having ever played Red Dead 1. This is understandable because Rockstar and their games are worthy of hype because rarely are they ever bad especially after that massive success GTA V. Red Dead 1 as good as it was kind of flew under the radar of the main stream audience. Now Red Dead 2 is going to be a prequel to Red Dead 1 so you could go into the upcoming game blind and be alright but as they say 'knowledge is power'. Plus Tim Rogers does a great job telling the story in the video above. So if you're on the hype train and need something to watch to kind of hold you over for the time being I highly recommend the video above.

Lastly I wanted to include this video by Preach Gaming on the topic of Titanforging in WoW. The cool thing with this video is that it reminds people why Titanforging was implemented in the first place and why that reason to implement it is no longer in the game therefore making it not as necessary. Titanforging is a hot debate across the World of Warcraft community and even though all of it falls on deaf ears with Blizzard this video is still a cool history lesson that could help people understand more about the systems origins and it could possibly impact their opinion of it in the game today.