History of Loathing

Resurrection!
As of March 2006, The KoL Historians have dived back into this amazing project and should be held accountable for all errors or offences. From here on, the italics are by our conspicuous cabal. For now, we will be using Trog Dor's structure, and no matter what we change, we will always be striving to meet his standards.

We miss you Trog Dor, and thank you for this gift to the KoL community. - Bete Noire (#180553) & TavernWench (#358045)

FAQ

Trog's original greeting: Below is the history of the online RPG parody Kingdom of Loathing. It gleaned from the Announcements and Trivial Updates pages, the forums, and the personal records of some players. Please msg me in-game (#33932) or on the forums for additions, corrections, and suggestions. Thanks are due up-front to Jick and Mr. Skullhead for a) this game b) not deleting the hundreds of old topics that have aided me greatly in this. A 'thank you' too to the folks who have filled in details and dates for me. Thanks to Chubbles and Qrrbrbirlbel for giving me a whole load of stuff to find out about and add. Special shout-out to Gigs for hosting this originally and BoozerBear for doing it currently.

Disclaimers:

  • I'm still working on this, give me time to add in everything (hyperlinks, more dates, better formatting, etc).
  • Most dates are approximate.
  • Plaintext is Jick's writing, italics is mine.
    Enjoy.
    - Trog Dor (#33932), October 18 2004

    2003
    January - March
    April - June
    July - September
    October - December
    2004
    January - March
    April - June
    July - September
    October - December
    2005
    January - March
    April - June
    July - September
    October - December
    2006

    March

    -> Back to the History home

    July 2
    Fixed the bug that made ore smithing produce wrong items from the recipe.

    Mr Skullhead becomes a forum moderator.

    July 8
    The transition to the new host is nearly complete. The only thing missing is the messages, and I'm working on that...

    The clan logs are not there, but that's too much data to feasibly transfer across, so they'll just start over as of today. Sorry 'bout that.

    July 9
    Fixed the recursive frame bug in chat.

    July 10
    Top menu is now in a frame.

    July 14
    Fixed the delete-inactive-account script so it'd stop erasing players who only used the gym. Removing the Delete Account option is proposed, but not implemented until October of 2004.

    July 15
    Eric (Janice is Uber Cool) is awarded a BBFB.

    The Colossal Closet is added.

    Sometime between July 18-22
    "Regular" adventures can now add effects, and effects are now indicated with a message in the results of whatever action caused it (sometimes.)

    You now get an initiative bonus when fighting a monster whose level is lower than yours. This should increase the number of "first-turn kills" you get when fighting low-level monsters.

    July 18
    I'm changing the way some of the persistent stuff is stored in the database, so you might encounter some weirdness over the next few days whereby quest statuses (stati?) get reset. On the bright side, you'll probably get to fight the Boss Bat again soon. Whee!

    Sometime between July 22-27
    Fixed a bug where familiars with apostrophes in their names were being deleted if you tried to put them into the terrarium.

    Weapons, Hats, Pants and Accessories now have level requirements. This should cut down on the begging and twinking a bit.

    July 22
    Player-owned shops with empty inventories no longer show up in the mall list.

    July 24
    All weapons, pants, hats, and accessories now have level requirements associated with them. Anything you had equipped is now in your inventory, and needs to be re-equipped.

    Sometime between July 27 - August 12
    I finally isolated and fixed that stupid bug whereby the "active players" list on the chat pane would go blank every once in a while. At 5+ months, this marks the end of the game's longest-running bug.

    That thing I did with the initiative bonuses a few weeks ago is now actually working correctly. You also get a free weapon attack when you win the initative check in combat, so NOW the number of first-turn kills should be really dramatically higher.

    July 27
    The ring of half-assed regeneration now does what it's supposed to have been doing for a long time.

    July 29
    Whenever you get an item or a quantity of Meat attached to a message, the message will now contain a picture. This should make it impossible to scam people the way some unsavory types have been doing. If anybody figures out a way to fake the new way, please tell me.

    Sometime in August and/or September
    Links are now active (after a fashion) in the chat pane and in private messages.

    Familiars are now clickable-upon in the character pane -- this takes you directly to your terrarium.

    The Typical Tavern has been changed in various ways. Better rewards, less drunkenness. That kind of thing.

    Adventures are now handled by a centralized document, which stops the map from being displayed every time you adventure. This cuts down on a TON of wasted bandwidth, and streamlines things a bit.

    Character info is now in a separate frame, which only updates when it needs to. This should also cut down on some wasted bandwidth.

    The message screen is now paginated. This should also also cut down on some wasted bandwidth, also, too.

    Line breaks are now preserved when messages are displayed. Whoohoo!

    The weekly square-rooting of advertising budgets should now work the way it's supposed to.

    Clan Item messages are now only kept for 1 day. This should reduce some clutter until I can figure out a better way to handle it.

    The display of new messages from the main map screens is temporarily disabled, until I can figure out some problems I'm having with the message system.

    Fixed a bug in the way the moons were being interpreted. The grue should make more sense now. A couple of additional moon effects are also now in place.

    The odds in the casino are now closer to what they should be. You can stop hammering on it now.

    Clan Item, Flea Market, and Store purchases, and all clan administrative actions, now no longer send messages to the recipient/owner. They instead generate events, which are displayed in the "new events" window on any main map page. This'll cut down on some clutter in the message table.

    The profanity filter now applies to private messages as well as the chat pane.

    Fixed a bug whereby every monster had one extra hit point. Heh.

    Fixed a bug whereby things that were supposed to increase your chance of finding items actually decreased it.

    Made it so you can only do the Dolphin King's Map once, and it counts as an accomplishment.

    August 4
    Okay, lots of updates today...

    The much-requested contact list feature is finally implemented. People on your list now appear in a drop-down when sending messages, and their names are highlighted on the Active Players list on the chat pane.

    You can manage your contact list from the [account] menu.

    You can also now turn off the profanity filter in the chat pane. This is also done from the [account] menu. Profanity is still not allowed in player to player messages or clan postings.

    Last but not least, some of the Scrumptious Reagent recipes are now active.

    August 5
    Pi found a hole, and in probing it, accidentally used it in an unexpected way, which deleted the contents of the inventory table.

    August 6
    The inventory items that were lost yesterday, as it turns out, cannot be replaced. I've now fixed the code such that this will very likely never happen again.

    Everybody gets 60 turns a day for a while, to give you a chance to reacquire the stuff you lost. Turns also max out at 260 instead of 200.

    I also added 60 turns to everybody today, and 3000 Meat, so you can pick your hammers, ovens, and cocktail kits back up.

    Pimonkey is VERY, VERY sorry about this.

    August 11
    More bugs, more fixes, and a slow trickle of new content.

    Oh yeah. And an updated login page.

    August 12
    MP is now calculated based on Magicalness, rather than on your primary stat.

    August 18
    Familiars are back as of the last backup (6 days ago...) Sorry about any losses.

    Compact mode is now available for those with screen issues, and for those who want to help conserve bandwidth. Toggle it from the Account menu.

    August 21
    The Mall is searchable. For now. Think of this as a real-time, practical analysis of the economic impact of the feature.

    August 22
    There was another change -- now putting an item in at a different price changes ALL instances of that item in your store to the new price. No more multiple prices for the same item. So now prices should be easier to change, and there wasn't much point to being able to do that, anyway...

    Advertising budget now also receives funds from store sales. You can also search for stores now.

    August 23
    Clan vs. Clan warfare has been added. I suppose it's in something like a testing stage right now.

    Jick says: This is where some more old announcements would be if my stupid ass hadn't accidentally deleted them. Ah well. This portion of KoL history will just have to be shrouded in mystery.
    From here on out, an * denotes part of these Dark Ages where I've had to deduce from the forums and first-hand accounts of what went on.

    * August 26
    You can now block/baleet/ignore other players. Spikey is probably a large reason for this feature.

    * September 9
    Spikey becomes a Moderator in a new forum, Random Ramblings. Seven months later, on April 8th, the name is changed to General Asymmetry.

    * September 12
    Alright, I've just made some change to the way item enchantments work.

    Instead of giving a flat +X to str/mag/mox/all, items now give +X/level. This makes these items a lot less worthless.

    I've calculated the effects out (behold the wonders of Excel) and it has some interesting implications due to the exponential relationship between stats and level. Like, for instance, a +3 item on your primary stat is better than a +10% item up until about level 35. It also makes off-primary-stat boosting items a lot more valuable, since your primary stat determines your level.

    Items that were +10 are now +3, +15 are +5, and +20 are +7.

    In other news, items can also now be enchanted to give you an Intrinsic Effect, which is like an ordinary effect, but stays on your character as long as you've got the item equipped. This allows the effects of items to be arbitrarily complex, and allows some of the interesting stuff Mr. Skullhead has been working on to be possible.

    Oh, and the enchantments are now displayed on the item description popup in blue. Pretty!

    * September 13
    BoozerBear sells Inconnu a forum graphic (the first known case of selling art for meat) for 50k, which he uses to start BoozerBear's Casbah of Values, what becomes arguably one of the most famous stores.

    * September 14
    I changed the "Flood Interval" to 60 seconds [on the forums], so now a given user can only post one message per minute.

    For those of you who are irritated by this policy, please consider using the extra time to proofread your posts.