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April 2004

April 1
Here we are now, on the new server. There might be some unexpected turbulence. So buckle your safety belts, because if there's one thing the human body is not built to withstand, it's unexpected turbulence.

The server will have to be referred to by IP address for a few days.

Believe it or not, a huge argument erupts on the forums over whether or not George Washington's horse was "white" (per Altar of Literacy). The discussion is finally laid to rest nearly two months later, after which discussion of George Washington's white horse is forbidden.

April 2
So, the transition to the new server appears to have gone pretty smoothly. I've set up kingdomofloathing.com to automatically redirect to here, but it'll still be a few days before the DNS records point to the right place.

At this time, I'd like to extend the greatest possible volume of thanks to everyone who has donated to cover the cost of our blazingly fast new server. Without you all, none of this would've been possible.

April 5
Sorry about the weirdness over the weekend -- I was out of town. I'm paying more attention to things now, so the rollover tonight should go smoothly.

Also, sorry about e-mail notifications failing to go out, in some cases. This will be resolved as soon as I can get DNS working properly on the new server.

April 6
Metafilter.com links to KoL and brings in Yours Truly (Trog Dor).

April 8
After Giboc and Spikey deleted all its posts, Random Ramblings is re-born in General Asymmetry.

Around this time, BoozerBear hits level 41 and TheBub level 40.

April 9
ID numbers are added to the character sheets.

April 13
The first 2/3 of the Sorceress quest is live. Those level 10 and above, visit the Council for details.

April 13
Jick opens up the possibility of a donors-only continent. A September 30th interview with Nikatoni reveals that sometime in the intervening months plans for the premium-content continent were scratched.

April 15
Okay, so I finally found the Ancient Tome of Annoying SQL Quirks, and fixed the problem whereby multiple copies of the same accessory only gave you one "copy" of the enchantment.

In other news, there is no other news.

Oh, wait, yes there is -- the chat pane should now behave correctly when it's resized, in both IE and Mozilla/FireWhatever.

The chat pane now works a little better in Mozilla-esque browsers.

You can now use plus signs and < signs in the chat. Feel the 3.

April 16
The multi abuse section of the Policies has been updated.

Trivial updates now have dates. Y'know. Flea Market revamped, divided into sections, optimized to perform a little bit less database-hammery.

April 18
The skills page (and the skill combo box in combat) now remember the last skill you used. Buffs also remember the last target.

April 22
Okay, so now we've got more RAM in the server. I'm hoping this will stem some of the nightly lag and crashery.

I'm still working on the DNS problems, but I think they're almost solved.

Also, PayPal donations are now processed automatically, so you can get a Mr. Accessory even when I'm asleep.

April 23
The Forums are currently down because of a DOS attack on my hosting provider. They're working on it.

April 23
I'm going to be making some changes to the way skills work (technically, not in game terms) today, so don't bother reporting any bugs about skills.

April 25
The way skills are stored has been changed. It's now much more flexible. I also fixed a bug where putting double quotes in a familiar's name would cause it to vanish when you put it back in the terrarium.

April 26
I changed the way the alternate-stat weapon skills (Crossbow Fever, the effect of the Special Sauce Glove, Spirit of Rigatoni) work. You should hit quite a bit harder if you're using these skills now.

April 27

Okay, there've been some changes to the way the Adventures / Drunkenness / Fullness are calculated with food and booze.

Here's the way I did it before:
1) Make the new food or booze item.
2) Pull some numbers out of my ass and put them in for the adventure range and "size" of the item.
3) Profit!

This had some lame implications. One was the implication that it looks like I make important game decisions based on whim and whatever the noun form of "arbitrary" is. This is sadly still true, but it's more cleverly hidden now. It also created a situation in which cooking and/or cocktailcrafting things often made them worse, instead of better. This was no good.

Now there's A System(TM)!
Base food / booze items have a certain Size (the fullness or drunkenness you acquire on consumption) and a certain Quality (which translates, in game terms, to the average number of adventures you get for your Size buck.)

The Size and Quality of cooked and cocktailcrafted items now depend solely on the Size and Quality of the items' components -- you lose some Size, and the Quality is additive, so that crafted items are never worse, in terms of what they give you, than their ingredients. The beneficial effects are increased as the number of ingredients increases.

The cool thing about this is that now, the more complicated items are the more effective ones. Few things are better than the Key Lime Pies, except for the stuff that requires both dry noodles and Reagents, which are now da bomb. This is as it should be, since they're the most difficult to create. The spicy and extra spicy burritos are also now a lot better, which should put a lot more beans into circulation.

This is going to change some things, in ways I'm not entirely willing to attempt to predict. Some stuff undoubtedly got worse, some stuff got better, so the food economy might be a little weird for a while.

One other consequence is that since the cocktail recipes are fairly similar, you don't get as drunk as you used to for drinking most things. You also don't get as many turns, but c'est la vie.

The Hell Ramen Era begins, it being the best and most expensive food available.

April 28
Every place that you can go should now have a link back to its "container" location in the main pane -- let me know if there are any missing.

April 29
The problems with the Donate popup window should be fixed now. In other news, Gatorade is delicious.

April 30
The Bat Haggis recipe (batgut + meat stack) is changed to be consistent with a semi-unstated rule that meat is inedible.

May 2004

Sometime in May
The Ninja Turtles become the first clan to have 1k+ members.

The Easter Egg Balloon is added. Within a month it is made non-tradable.

May 1
More chat moderators are appointed. Joining TheGreatYak and Elven_Princess, the new mods are Werebear, Lacey, Kabuki, Lady Arryn, and Fruity Vuish.

Mr. A's cost roughly one million.

50k accounts have been created.

May 2
Sorry about the "delete all messages" problem and the Hall of Records not updating -- they're fixed now.

May 3
Spoiler tags show up on the forums for the first time.

There are 1000 registered members on the forums.

May 5
The Gourd Quest is added.

Fixed the Gourd Potion bug that essentially allowed infinite stats. Stable is awarded a BFB.

May 6
Over the course of today/tonight I'll be migrating stuff to the shiny new second server. There might be some weirdness with images, and there will very likely be an hour or so of downtime while I move game data over.

The transition to the new database server seems to have gone pretty smoothly. 500 simultaneous players tonight, and nary a connection error in sight.

Again, my thanks go out to everyone who has donated, and made these perpetually necessary upgrades possible.

May 7
Memepool.com links to KoL and brings in 1600 new accounts that day.

May 9
RiceCop.com links to KoL.

May 10
Clan Signup page is no longer bandwidth-wastetastic. In other words, you have to search for clans now - they aren't all listed alphabetically on the same page.

May 12
Buffing players became easier with the addition of a textbox and drop-down list of targets.

You can no longer apply to a clan if you're the leader of another clan.

May 13
Fixed a bug in the "run away" option that made it so the faster a monster was, the more likely you were to be able to get away. This was obviously backwards. Also fixed a bug that was causing occasional SQL errors in the Flea Market.

May 14
The Trollbooth cost calculation bug is fixed now.

May 17
The fifth 1/6 of the Sorceress quest is now available.

The last two months saw an amazing increase of traffic, averaging 757 new accounts every day.

May 18
Like sober pills before them, key lime pies no longer drop from 31337 scrolls.

May 19
A disbelieving Lacey, recently made a moderator, is banned by Spikey to prove that he was, in fact, a mod as well.

May 20
Excluding clan stashes, there is just over 6.3B meat in the KoL economy. Inflation is becoming more and more of a problem and hot discussion topic.

May 24
I came to the realization today that people who never use the chat weren't ever getting any event notifications. Now, if you don't enter the chat, it automatically switches you over to the old-style message notification.

In other news, as of tomorrow or the next day, you will no longer be able to e-mail me at kingdomofloathing.com. All places that used to have an e-mail link now have a contact form instead. See My post in the forums for a more detailed explanation.

The send message window now truncates to 2000 characters as your message is being typed. Also, messages can now be 2000 characters long.

You can now quote the original message when replying to a message.

Also, Jick mentions that he's working on holidays based upon the KoL calendar, not just real world events such as Crimbo (Christmas).

May 26
The Policies have been updated.

May 27
Some changes last night -- you can now purchase items from the Mall in quantity. You can also now disband a clan if you're the only person left in it.

Reversing a long-held stance, Jick now makes item quantities in stores visible to all.

May 28
That bug whereby having part of an outfit on made it so you couldn't auto-equip the whole outfit is now fixed. Also, non-buff skills can now be used in quantity.

May 29
BoozerBear's infamous 99 meat salty dogs become priced at 66, where they remain until Qrrbrbirlbel buys him out on July 17th.

Spikey (inadvertently given chat moderator powers) gives Greekotilley his password, who gives it to Steve, who then proceeds to ban Jick, Skully, and Pimonkey. Hilarity does not ensue. Lady Arryn ends the madness by banning Spikey from chat. Steve, Spikey, and Greek all have their accounts disabled (and then accidentally wiped).

May 30
The Inventory page now keeps track of the last section selected, and automatically loads that section.

June 2004

Sometime in June
Rumors begin that Ascension and Reset will happen in December.

Elp begins his Comic of Loathing.

June 1
The form for putting stuff in your Closet is now above the items, rather than below.

June 4
Lots of minor bugfixes and typo corrections. The profanity filter now works properly for private messages.

June 8

100k accounts have been created.

June 9
A much-requested feature has finally been added: the ability to define a Custom Outfit, to make switching between item sets easier. Hitting the "Save Custom Outfit" button in the equipment section of your inventory will create an Outfit out of the items you currently have equipped. Selecting "Custom Outfit" from the Dress Up menu will reequip all of those items.

Putting on an outfit with an accesssory as part of it no longer needlessly unequips other accessories if there is an available slot.

June 10
Sorry about the downtime earlier -- there were some hardware problems at the facility where the servers are kept. Everything should be fine now.

Fixed the bug whereby equipping a custom outfit wouldn't give you intrinsic effects from pants that should.

For the first time, Jick confirms precisely how the moons, and their cycles, work.

Pachelbel introduces his two buffbots, Petal and Lawrence Welk.

June 11
There are some problems with outgoing e-mail right now, so if you don't receive an activation code, please be patient. I'm working on getting it resolved, and all of the queued-up e-mails will go out as soon as it's up and running again.

In other news, I finally fixed some long-standing problems with the clan rankings system. If you were having trouble (unable to assign certain ranks to clan members, weird ordering problems) before, you should be able to redo your rankings now in a way that makes sense. Thanks to everybody who reported these problems.

BoozerBear's Mr. A collection gathering is in full-swing, with a current goal of 100. Additionally, Pachelbel receives his first BFB today.

June 12
The problems with activation e-mails should now be solved. Sorry for the inconvenience.

There are 2000 registered members on the forums.

June 13
Jacka18l reports his first bugfinds/exploits.

June 14
Okay, so maybe the e-mail problems AREN'T entirely fixed. I'm still looking into this stuff, and I'm sorry about the continued activation delays.

Neffie starts up the KoL Wiki. Pimonkey, Trog Dor, and Old Ned help get it off the ground.

June 15
From out of the eldritch mists and sinister vapors of the nether regions of the Kingdom, the Spectral Pickle Factory has emerged, in a fog of adjectives. Look for it in the Nearby Plains.

Spectral Pickles usurp Hell Ramen as the best food in the game. Some speculate that the Pickle Factory was inspired by this earlier mini-game by Jick.

Jacka18l is rewarded with a BBFB for finding a hack that allowed unlimited access to any account. He is also given some Mr. Containers, Mr. Shirts, and Item #13's.

A trivia chat channel is first suggested; it is implemented four months later in the form of the /games channel.

June 16
And as quickly as it emerged, the Spectral Pickle Factory fades back into the mists. And fogs.

June 17
Gizmodo.com links to KoL.

HotStuff finds a loophole that allows one to gain a near-limitless advertising budget.

June 20
Players are now notified when their familiar gains a level.

The Strange Leaflet code has been changed.

June 21
I think all of the glitches involving Custom Outfits with more than one copy of the same accessory are fixed now. Thanks to everybody who reported them.

Names of people who send you PMs are now clickable to view the sender's profile. A bunch of other changes have been made, too, but I don't remember what they were.

The Drunk Tank is removed because (theoretically) it allows unlimited adventures.

If you forget to select an item in a store and click "Buy" you no longer purchase the first item in the store.

June 22
Sandrylene records KoL's first fan song, an Ode to Booze (with lyrics by ScottieGirlC). The next day Jick records his own version, including mad accordion skills.

BoozerBear falsely inflates the Wedding Cake and Baseball markets by starting a rumor tying those two items to Ascension.

Anthrax101 finds a bug that essentially allows unlimited adventures and drunkenness (though it caps at 255).

June 25
Contrickster starts The Church of Meat, one of the first non-clan groups to form around a specific theme.

June 26
Trog Dor starts the first unofficial Bank of Loathing. It is later supplanted by Razorboy's savings bank, which runs until early October.

June 28
Fixed the clan roster bug.

Mr. A's cost between 4-5M.

June 29
I've changed it so you can no longer PvP somebody who isn't EXACTLY the same level as you. It will be like this until I either a) get some sort of retaliation system in place, or b) decide not to do a).

HotStuff goes public with his 'handy html helper,' helping non-techies simplify repetitive tasks in the Kingdom.