JUNE 6, 2002

Gameplay:

• In hopes of providing more things for more people to do, certain raid level encounters in the world now return to existence a small amount faster than they used to. This was actually included in lastnight's patch but was not mentioned.
• To address the competition between epic-seeking bards and other classes, the infamous White Dragon Scale is no longer used in the quest given by Karam Dragonforge in Rathe Mountains. The quest now requires a White Dragon Hide. We did not reduce the rate at which White Dragon Scales enter the world, but rather added new potential for the new White Dragon Hide to be found.

Focus Items:

• Spell casting time foci should report their new casting time properly.
• Spell duration foci designed to affect DoTs (the Affliction line) should now work reliably.
• Spell duration foci affecting beneficial spells are no longer random. They now always extend the affected buffs for their maximum. (We never wanted to make it harder to time your buffs.)
• The Affliction focus line should now only be affecting spells that do damage.
• Bards should no longer get focus item messages that weren't actually affecting them.
• We've re-assigned quite a few of the focus items to have their originally intended effect.

All of the same items have focus effects. However, as many people noticed, quite a few effects were mis-assigned due to a tools error. (Common, mid level items were frequently being assigned high level effects, and vice versa.)

This situation has been fixed, and the items now have the effects that we originally planned for them.

Firiona Vie:

• Your server should once again have Trivial Loot Code enabled. Sorry for changing the rules on you.

Chat Channels:

• Should once again work reliably for people who are using NAT or IP Masquerading via certain networking devices.