URL: http://Meridian59.NearDeathStudios.com/M59-Newsletter-12-21-01.html

OFFICIAL MERIDIAN 59 NEWSLETTER	DECEMBER 21, 2001

	Now let's have some fun Soon. The pre-launch testing will begin soon. We know that's the first question you all hope to have answered in these newsletters. Seriously we are doing our best to get everyone playing as quickly as possible. Hosting is being finalized and we hope to have an announcement about when you can play again shortly. This week we'll begin some guided discussion with you about the changes going into the re-launch. Brian has an update of all the stuff he's been changing to how the game works. Rob's stuff isn't very fun to read about yet, so we'll just leave him out. The billing system is coming along, though we've hit a few snags. We don't expect that to cause us to miss our internal target date. Some sketches of the CD and splash screen art should be ready by next week's newsletter. Barry and Colin have been working with a bunch of reference art we sent over to them but this weekend they should be logging into the development servers to get some play time in. It should be great fun watching absolute newbies playing Meridian 59 for the first time. Of course we always ask people to write down everything they liked, didn't like, or were confused by when playing for the first time, so we can learn from their experiences. We say this a lot, but really it can't be stressed enough... thank you for your support! The mailing list subscription numbers are constantly growing, we continue to receive donations, and major websites are eager for more news about the re-launch of Meridian 59. Thanks again, and keep telling your friends! Happy Holidays to all! Now, on to the news...
	Official Discussion Forums Launched As of the mailing of this newsletter, the Official Meridian 59 Forums are open! Head on over and start discussing the changes you'd like to see in the Meridian 59 re-launch. The forum software is very feature rich and we hope you all enjoy your time there. We have started a few design discussions already. We plan to make great use of polls in these forums, so even if someone else has posted a similar point of view, make your voice heard by voting.
	Brian's Bug Bashing Brian seems to work best writing sentence fragments. It must be a programmer thing. Here are a bunch of things he's changed since we've begun working on the game. Fixed Nodeburst to only be castable once per game day as intended. Fixed Sandstorm and Winds to actually ruin ranged weapon shots. The spells now have a chance, based on spellpower, to disrupt shots. Gives a message and takes ammo from the player. Changed cure disease. The spell was putting the enchantment back onto the player, but not penalizing the stat points. So, when the enchantment expired, it replaced the stat points which were never removed. This lead to the increase in stats. Fixed Armor of Gort to not be quite so uber. It now absorbs less damage. Several other formatting and structural changes. Be sure to head over to the new Official Meridian 59 Forums to share your thoughts with Brian and the rest of the team.
	Some more memories Recently a few players were remembering the "good ol' days" of the beta test. The mentioned how they loved the original Meridian 59 splash screen and asked around if anyone had it. So we've put that splash screen up on our website for everyone to enjoy. It might make a cool desktop background! Click the thumbnail below to view the full sized image.
	Meridian 59 Fansite Spotlight Meridian 59 Deutschland Meridian 59 Deutschland is a great site for our German speaking fans. I personally can't speak German, but according to Babblefish they're very demanding of their guests, as one gathers from the saying on the front page... "We require much fun to you on these homepage." Their admin Merrit does a lot of the translations into German found on our official site. (I can only assume he does better than Babblefish!) They recently held a fan chat with Brian 'Psychochild' Green.
	...and in closing... Yechezkel/Big Man James broadcasts, " Hey, IM looking to trade a 130hp Shally 6 kraan 5 wc 6, 99 in all good stuff, On german server 115, for a decent built char here, who isnt known as a total jerk.. somone who keeps a low profile.. My char on 115 is currently Random, but IM sure you could get off kos... Youd be doing the place a favor, gmail me"