Late at night on 11/29/2010, Meridian 59 received a surprise update.

The update included some major fixes:



- Fixes and balancing adjustments on Shadow Rift.
- Fixes towards a Reflection-based client crash.
- Fixed Shrines (to dedicate to schools) on the mainland, 3/5 total are now working.
- Fixed Hall of Heroes statue corruption bug.


And additions:

-NEW default stats added to the character creation screen (suggested by players) - Fighter, Mage, and Hybrid!
- Functionality: Newbies (< 30 HP) with Guardian Angels don't lose anything when they die.
-NEW Creature: Frogmen (unused high karma creature for Qor players) added to the Sandy Shores of the Great Ocean, replacing Fungus Beasts - "With Metal Beating Rod and Authentic Battle Damage"!

Due to a bug in the client, the update initially caused a few unintended issues: deleting soldiers, flagpoles, and all contents from guildhall chests - some of the coded changes couldn't be fully implemented until a second update on 12/5/2010.

The second effort fixed the major bug that had caused the game to reset and reject some of the changes.



The entire update, according to Andrew "Zaphod" Kirmse, sounds like a production nightmare, "5 years of accumulated bugs hit all at once..." with hints of future calamity, "...we discovered a few things (like the shrines) that have never worked or were in danger of breaking at any time."

Below are some excerpts, with mentioned changes, from the first and second posts on the Gilroy's message board by Zaphod (recommended reading!).


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-- Posted by Zaphod on Gilroy's M59 forum, 2010-11-29 12:04 AM (» Update, November 2010.



- Monsters can't enter shadow rifts.
- Shadow rift can't be cast in guild halls or boss lairs.
- More safeguards on the reflection spell so that clients won't crash.
- "Tougher" messages are bold and italic.
- New players under 30 HP don't lose anything when they die.
- Added reasonable defaults to the character creation dialog.
- Some small adjustments to game balance that you'll discover over time. "

AND:

- For the under 30 change, not checking the angel is a mistake. We'll fix that as soon as we can.

- The guild hall chests emptying is quite a surprise. There's a function we call to reset things after certain updates and it's supposed to preserve things like this. The function has been around since the beginning of the game, but apparently at some point, someone broke the guild halls. We can fix this for future updates, but I don't know that there's much we can do about this one, because we'd have to fix the code, then roll back a huge amount of game play.

- I didn't touch anything with soldier shields; it's possible the reset function also has a problem with this, and we'll look into that afterward."



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-- Posted by Zaphod on Gilroy's M59 forum, 2010-12-05 11:54 PM (» Update Results.



"Thanks to those who helped us test the new update code, we were able to repair and perform the global world reset that normally follows nontrivial updates. As a reminder, here's what was in the update:

- Newbies (< 30 HP) don't lose anything when they die - changed to apply only to newbies with angels
- No shadow rift in guild halls or boss lairs
- Monsters can't go through shadow rift portals
- More fixes for reflections crashing clients
- Small gameplay changes (now actually working)

I had said this was in the update, but it's not working yet because it will require a download:

- "Tougher" message is bold & italic

And in the meantime we included the following two changes in today's update:

- Fixed bug in hall of heroes where statues could become corrupted
- Two of the shrines on the mainland have never had any effect since they were implemented. This is now fixed. The total power of all 5 shrines is the same as the power of the previous 3 working shrines.

Due to the reset, the following things happened:

- Flagpoles reset their faction (this also deletes any soldiers that exist)
- Shrines were reset
- The Duke's feast hall closed
- Brax levers reset

In theory maybe the flagpoles and shrines shouldn't reset, but actually this kinds of shakes things up a bit and maybe isn't so bad.

Maybe later I'll write up a story of the debugging we had to do this week. Basically 5 years of accumulated bugs hit all at once, and we discovered a few things (like the shrines) that have never worked or were in danger of breaking at any time."

Source: Andrew