2003 January - March April - June July - September October - December

2004 January - March April - June July - September October - December

2005 January - March April - June

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Unknown
Jick creates Krakrox the Barbarian, an early predecessor to KoL.

January 27
Jick creates what will eventually become the official KoL forums.

January 31
KoL goes live - the official birth of the Kingdom of Loathing.

February 2003

February 10
Okay, so The Kingdom of Loathing is now officially in beta. Welcome to all. Please post bugs and discussion in the forums.

February 11
Jick posts a link to his new game from his website, Asymmetric.net.

February 14
There are about 20 minutes worth of new features today -- check the post in the forums for details. Also, happy Valentine's Day. Everybody gets a free heart-shaped Moxie weed.

You can now send messages by name, instead of just by playerid. You have to type it exactly right, but you can still use the search function if there's any confusion.

Also, you can no longer attack a player who has played an adventure in the past 5 minutes. This is to prevent problems arising from being attacked and losing items or whatever while you're logged on.

February 17
Courtesy of Bjorn's mad haiku skillz and El Perezoso's diligence, the Haiku Dungeon is now open to reasonably advanced players (power >= 50) -- come get your goodies. COMING SOON: (probably tomorrow...) The Flea Market -- sell stuff to each other! Buy stuff from each other! A player economy is us!

Note: "Bjorn" is different from "MightyBjorn." The former no longer plays, the latter is now known as Mr. Skullhead. According to Jick, "At one time, Bjorn was as active in the game as Mr. Skullhead is now."

February 18
A bug that prevented the Haiku Dungeon from showing up was fixed.

Inconnu (#37) and accordion thief (#42) join KoL and later become, excluding Jick, the most veteran of active players.

February 19
Some slight rearrangements of things, and some new graphics. Now I can add new zones without crowding up the main page so much. And new zones I will add, believe you me.

All item lists are now sorted alphabetically, rather than by itemid.

February 20
Today we add The Meatsmith. (Der Fleischschmidt.) Buy stuff, craft stuff.

The Flea Market is now complete. You can get there from town.

February 21
The Spooky Forest is now fully populated, with loads of adventures and a bunch of new items.

The Hidden Temple now exists, though it requires some effort to get there. Search the Forest for clues.

It is now possible to construct a Meat Golem, which, when installed at your campsite, will prevent other players from stealing your items (redirecting them to a dignity attack.) How to summon the Golem is left as an exercise to the player. Some other campsite furnishings can also be constructed from things found in the forest.

There also now exist magical weapons, hats, and pants, which boost your stats when equipped. So far, only the Epic Weapons for each class are enchanted, but I'll be going through and adding some minor magic items to each zone before too long. I'm also going to beef up (so to speak) the Meatsmithing recipes, to allow you to craft your own magic items.

February 24
Gaaaah. Just fixed a dumbass mistake in the campground code which made it so the bouquets of flowers, the scarecrow, and the Meat Golem didn't do anything. Sorry 'bout that.

February 26
I added the much-talked-about non-PvP item (Hippy Stone) to everybody's campsite. Participation in PvP combat is, as of now, completely voluntary. This should slow down some of the griefing and feuding for a little while.

February 27
Sorry 'bout that, kids -- daily script didn't run last night because I forgot to set up the crontabs on the new server. I gave you a couple of days worth, by way of apology...

February 28
And verily did Bjorn smite the wicked, the unjust, the legion of scofflaws and cheaters, and lo, were their campsites rent asunder, their bodies left powerless, and their sacks left empty. And Bjorn saw it, and it was good.

Cheaters never prosper. Bjorn, the most powerful player at the time, ruthlessly and relentlessly PvP's anyone found cheating.

February 29
The stuff that was happening last night was NOT due to Bjorn. It was at least partially due to a recently-introduced bug in the campground code, which was fixed (after Bjorn noticed it and called me to tell me about it) last night. I'm working on stuff today.

Changes/fixes so far:

You can now change your password from the top menu.

I created the Bugfinder Blade. This is, for now, the most powerful weapon in the game. It will be bestowed upon anyone who finds (and tells me about) a serious bug or exploit in the game. This includes, mainly, infinite-meat and infinite-adventures bugs, and item duplication bugs.

Okay, by popular request, there's now a primitive profanity filter for usernames, messages, and graffiti.

March 2003

Sometime in March
Morehen and Steve start the Tricky Tricky clan; Greekotilley creates their website in October of 2003.

MightyBjorn (Mr. Skullhead) forms Sparkle Motion; Haz creates their website in October as well.

March 3
Degrassi Knoll is now available for your adventuring pleasure in The Nearby Plains, if your power is greater than 100 (which almost everybody's is.)

A bunch of monsters, a bunch of items, and a bunch of new recipes were added.

March 4
Fixed an item duplication bug… Another Bugfinder Blade was awarded today to the finder of yet another infinite meat/stats bug.

You can now attach items to messages. You can also delete unused player accounts.

Made it so monster combat favors your primary attribute in determining stat rewards.

March 5
Added dinghy functionality.

March 6
Another feature, another bug. The clover/sewer adventure is up, and the infinite adventures bug it introduced is band-aided up for now. I'll figure out something better to do when I get home from work.

Fixed the Spooky Scarecrow recipe. And by fix, I mean added. I had forgotten to put it in the combination table. My bad.

Fixed a bug whereby if you tried to go to the sewer with no adventures, it'd still take your gum. Also, if you had a clover and tried to play an adventure when you were out, it'd take the clover. Here's hoping too many people didn't get screwed by that.

Epic Hat Quests are now implemented for each class. The Toot Oriole will start you down the path. Also, it looks like the Clockword Maid is finally fixed.

Added The Dark and Dank and Sinister Cave, the Council of Loathing…

March 7
New accounts now require e-mail activation, and new users are limited to one account per e-mail address. This should cut down on some of the recent exploits.

Added account limit (1 per e-mail) and e-mail activation.

Fixed the message function such that messages are now actually limited to 1000 characters, instead of just pretending to be.

Set up the daily script to automatically delete PvP messages older than two weeks.

March 8
Lots of new stuff today. Two new zones (power 400+) in the Lair, a new shop, and a new trade skill. Bunch of items, too, some of them not fully implemented yet. I can't stare at this screen anymore tonight, so there'll be more stuff tomorrow, too. Oh, there are now Item Sets. And by Sets, I mean Set. But someday it'll be Sets (Added "Outfit" functionality -- like Item Sets in Diablo II).

Sometime between March 9-12th
Tents (and cottage) now reduce player power by a percentage (plus the original flat value.)

In the main message screen, messages are now ordered by date. Sorry they weren't before.

Ordered clan listings at the recruiter by number of members, and removed the zero-member clans from the list.

Added the ability to disassemble and reassemble clovers.

Added item grouping to all of the drop-down lists for selecting items.

Improved the inventory interface somewhat. Items now stack, making the page a lot smaller, and can be sold all at once (but not used all at once, yet. Once the drunkenness is implemented, there should be little call for this.) You can also unequip stuff for the first time ever. This needed to be done for the accessories, mentioned in the previous (following) item.

Added a new class of items, Accessories, of which you can wear 3, and which can carry enchantments. There aren't any actually in there yet, but the functionality's there. Also, items can now be enchanted to add +X to ALL stats.

Added drunkenness meter. Not certain what effect this will have on gameplay, but there's a new entry in the hall of records for it, and it resets when the daily script runs.

All food items are now zero-value, and zero-value items can no longer be transferred to other players by any means (that I'm aware of.)

Added a reply function to messages, and a bug report mailto link to the top menu.

Added "Effects," which stay with you through a certain number of adventures. It'll work like this -- [use] on a candle (or whatever) will give you the "Light" effect for 3 adventures. Maybe some zones will require light to have an adventure there. This will pave the way for temporary stat-boosting potions and stuff like that.

The forums popup link isn't all screwed up anymore.

Added an individual set of flags for some adventures, so that they can get more complex. This will be demonstrated in the next few things I add.

Made it so if you've already got, for instance, a crusty l-shaped piece of metal, you won't find another one. This should make it less likely to have 20 copies of half of a recipe and none of the other half.

Noodles eliminated (for now) due to potential for exploits.

You can now sell zero-value items in the flea market again. This may change.

Added foties to the list of items purchasable by a clan leader. Equivalent to three beers.

March 10
Forgot to post yesterday that the Bat Hole is now in place, and with it the first stage of the Epic Pants quest. Enjoy.

Finishing the Bat Hole netted you "Guild Pants" which were later replaced by the Boss Bat Bandana.

March 12
Quite a few small changes over the last day or two -- check the trivial updates page for details. This is where I'll continue to post most of the changes I make -- I'll only post new announcements when new zones open or really serious changes happen.

March 16
Drunkenness now prevents you from adventuring (and drinking more.) The Arena is revamped, and has 10 progressively more difficult version of a single monster, for testing of the new and improved monster combat system.

The Arena now has 10 difficulty levels.

Sometime between March 17-April 28

You can now transfer leadership of a clan to another player.

You can now discard zero-value items. Worthless items are now zero-value, due to exploits.

The Hall of Records now shows the top 20 players instead of the top 10.

Campsite items are no longer wasted if you already have one.

The text box in the chat pane now limits itself to 100 characters (only the first 100 were displayed, anyway.)

You should no longer be able to end up with the login page in a frame.

The Enchanted Eyepatch no longer drops -- a regular eyepatch is in its place, and the Enchanted one is now a crafted item. It was a little too powerful for where it was found.

Items in the Flea Market are now ordered alphabetically.

Food items now add fullness. You can't get more than about 20 extra turns per day from food, now.

The item description mini-page can no longer be jacked up with impunity.

Made it so the chat pane only refreshes when there's something new in it -- this should cut way down on bandwidth usage (which is becoming sort of an issue...)

Implemented a limited spamming-prevention routine on the chat pane -- you can no longer repeat anything you've said in your last 5 posts.

Reduced the color depth on all of the images (which I should've done in the first place) -- no quality was lost, and they're all about half their original size now. This'll buy me another month or so of not having to start paying a lot for bandwidth.

The "forgot password" function will now also send activation codes (if the account is not yet activated.)

I cut down on the number of prior messages shown in the chat pane, in an effort to conserve some bandwidth.

The hippy camp and Orcish frat house are now easier by 5 levels.

Items can now be enchanted to increase stats by a percentage.

The bonuses given by stat-boosting items were fixed -- previously, the most expensive ones gave less than the mid-ranged ones.

Combine / Cook / Cocktail links now appear at the top of the inventory screen if you have the appropriate item.

Clan Leaders can now delete Clan Messages.

Your password is now required in order to delete your account.

March 17
The new monster combat system was rolled out to all existing monster encounters. This should make certain areas easier for lower-level players.

The new PvP system is now in place at the campground. Battles are resolved in a completely different way, and the outcomes are no longer entirely non-random. You can also now attack whoever you want (except a player who is much much weaker than you,) and only 10 player attacks may be commited [sic] in a 24-hour period.

March 20
Okay, I finally found the typo in the code that made alcohol limits not function the way they're supposed to. Now you should never be able to exceed 17 drunkenness...

March 27