I am currently aware the shard is having connection issues, and am working to isolate what's wrong.
Right now i do not believe it is the game itself having issues nad i believe it's the server connection, which is really unusual.
Will post when i know more.
-GM Bob
Update: Seems to have passed for now but i'll try to keep an eye on it. Post if it pops up again with details of time both when it's happening and stopped happening.
Reply || Read Comments (0)
Surprise is comming up in around 5-6 hours. Hope ya'll are online when it happens. 
Hint: It's the results of that poll from a few days ago
Updated: The surprise is now here.
For those who would like to know what it is, go read the changelog.
As always, report any and all bugs as soon as you can find them, it will help things get better faster.
For those who participated in the poll a few days ago, this will confuse them, but here is how that poll determined this.
The LEAST POPULAR option on that poll was the one that got worked on. The reason for this is because that is obviously the least likely to cause an uproar of this isn't perfect or that is perfect, etc. Therefore it provides the best opportunity for the first reintroduction. and gives me chances to evaluate early some assumptions i made concerning how balance is going to work and other ways the interactions are going to work.
Reply || Read Comments (42)
Once any group can clear completely hythloth and all it contains, i will personally redesign the spawns for that dungeon.
The same for any other area that people want redone, however it may stay near what it is if that's how it shouldbe, for those wanting every area ever redone.
Lots of screencaps, or more preferably a Staff's witness will be nice and proof.
Reply || Read Comments (18)
Ok, outside of work monday and wednesday during the day, fully half or more of my awake time for the first 4-5 days of this week will be spent on obsidian. Maybe more depending on how my project for this week turns out. 
Things i'd like to get done, but no promises:
Crafting (i know i know)
Magery patch
At least once race or teaser.
Miscellaneous crap.
So yeah, look forward starting monday to me being around a ton. Get in game and have a chat.
Reply || Read Comments (11)
Sorry guys, i haven't been around for i think longer than a fortnight.
In that time i have barely had time to keep up with my job(even took a week off from that).
So the short and long of it is i've had some personal issues and some huge family issues(came about the same time) that have come up that took up my time, and obsidian will never be higher priority than those. Sorry guys.
They are mostly resolved, but will still consume a fair share of my time for awhile. However the next huge thing is the fact that it is the month of may, and as i said earlier, my schedule right now ignoring those, is as follows:
tuesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday - out of town.
This will persist the entire month. In addition to that, we all have university exams comming up and a fair bit of projects there.
So, you will not see or hear much of me.
THAT BEING SAID.
I will try to get some patches done. At the very least i'll go through the boards hopefully later today or tomorrow and try to get everyones questions answered and note down anything that needs to be fixed. I also have a ton of new accounts to create, apologies to those who have waited patiently. I'm normally good about making those within 24 hours.
There's your update, no the crafting patch is not in, and it may not make it this month, or it may be done in a week or two, i have no clue and have no way to say given how fubar my schedule is.
Oh and i've mentioned it a few times, but my laptop is STILL fubar, meaning it works 10% of the time(literally, takes a lot of jurry rigging(concussive maintenance) and work to get it to power up and it can't be moved once it's on), and i don't have the cash to replace it, which makes working abroad a little troublesome.
So that's how things stand right now. Of ocurse that's just me and doesn't apply to echo/bb/drakkar/thassius/etc. If they want to say what they're doing that's up to them. I just try to keep ya'll informed.
Reply || Read Comments (14)
Alright, first patch of the new cycle is up. Fixes a few longstanding bugs and annoyances, as well as a few balance updates. Most specifically fizzle rates have been adjusted both without and with mytheril armor.
Also veteran rewards have changed, and are now based on how old your account is, not your character. Read the changelog for more information about it.
The crafting patch is getting along. Yes it's way overdue, but as i said, my schedule and freetime are near zilch right now. On the plus side it's getting some things that weren't expected originally and it seems to be working out very nicely. I can't promise anything, but it's probably comming soon.
Normal patches will resume even though the crafting patch is not done, now that i have patch ability back.
Reply || Read Comments (29)
Two updates back to back?!?
Yes I guess I'm tend to be crazy like that, but please don't tell my mother.
There have been considerable network upgrades over the past two days. First off, Obsidian has doubled it's internet pipe. We are now sitting on a fat tube of 30/5. Additionally we have upgraded our Cisco router with quality QOS and Obsidian has taken the lead as far as important services. Hopefully in the next few days you'll find that Obs is lagless and even lag free! Let us know how it's treating ya before we do our best to recruit the rest of the world to our awesome yet insane shard.
Reply || Read Comments (12)
Just wanted to let everyone know that I ran a massive user account maintenance cycle on user accounts. In short, there were a bunch of spam accounts created that were doing nothing more but bogging down the board. Hopefully with some new code I added today that'll be a thing of the past.
In short, any account with 0 posts was deleted. If you happened to recently register or never made a post unfortunately your account was deleted and I do apologize.
The username should be available if you would like to re-register it.
Additionally there is quite a bit coming down the tube for Obsidian at the end of April. I'll be a little more forthcoming as the date approaches.
Reply || Read Comments (6)
Alright, here's the rundown.
Recently there's been a lot of discussion amongst staff. And combined with the new server we got late last year, it's been tested and we can now say for sure that this is a viable option.
Starting next week, obsidian will be running T4A and T3A. Two seperate servers will be running, and players can pick which one they'd prefer to play on.
Development will be divided amongst the two shards in accordance to the ratios of people playing. The development time will be split 30% t3a and 70% t4a until such a time that both shards are considered functional. At which point we will divide it by population.
Characters will NOT be transferred from t4a back to t3a. This means that if you choose to play T3A you will end up exactly where you started when it went down. You also will be age 20. This is one of the showstopping bugs that originally caused us to upgrade to T4A.
Late in the year, we will make a mechanism that you can migrate your character across the two shards at will, so you can play some days on t3a, and other days on t4a. However this is a huge undertaking so don't expect it anytime soon.
Bob
Reply || Read Comments (17)
The next major patch will be a combat balancing patch. A lot of people have been comming up with issues with the current method of combat, and i'll be the first to admit it's not exactly like our old system. It works, but it's not the best. However figuring out exactly what is missing is what takes a lot of work and effort.
So there is a new sub-forum in the bugs and suggestions forum. All discussion related to the patch is to be there. This will make it easy to keep track of.
Talk amongst yourselves for a week or two. Staff will make no comments or direct any of the discussion for at least that period of time. This is to establish not only what the vocal people feel, but to give them time to weed through their own ideas and see what everyone thinks. However, pointing out what's wrong is easy. Figuring out how to fix it is the hard part.
So go nuts. PVP, PVM, PvPets, all topics of combat go in there.
In other news the server is still a little wonky, i still can't do patches, and crafting is still getting worked on. Yay craziness. But it's getting there, i have a meeting with broadband sometime this week to try to sort out the rest of the server stuff. However lag seems to be a lot better, yes?
Reply || Read Comments (10)