History of LoathingResurrection! We miss you Trog Dor, and thank you for this gift to the KoL community. - Bete Noire (#180553) & TavernWench (#358045)
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: Enjoy. - Trog Dor (#33932) Last updated 1.25.05 4:25pm
July 1 Announcement: Only slightly late, July's Item-of-the-Month is now available in Mr. Store. The third of the Mr. Store familiar equipment items, Wax Lips add 10 lbs of Volleyball (stat gains) to any familiar on which it is equipt. It became very popular in a post-ascension kingdom, and has become the familiar-item of choice for speed ascenders. July 2 Update: The maypole now has familiar-specific messages. July 3 Announcement: There has been a change to the way PvP fights per day limit works. There's a new item available in the Demon Market that gives you extra fights in exchange for a spleen hit. Other stuff that impacts this will be added over the coming weeks. The new item, Hatorade, retailing for 500 meat, gives players one additional PVP fight at the cost of 5 spleen damage. Though a welcome change for avid PVP'ers, it was not considered very useful to hardcore PVP'ers. This changed on November 8, 2005, when PVP was altered so attacks no longer spent adventures. Undocumented Change: On the KoL Forums, the popular Discussion Forum was split into two different forums: Gameplay and Community. Undocumented Change: A new chat effect is discovered. While under a certain effect, a player's chat text is sprinkled with apropriately gothic descriptors, such as miasma, soul, rain, loneliness, etc. July 4 Update:I made some cosmetic changes to the trade system, which ought to make things a little less confusing. Undocumented Change: Some potions got new image drawings today. KoL Forum thread where jonbly wins with a Schmoo reference. Community Moment: The events of the July 4 edition of 120 Minutes with Jick and Mr Skullhead were more or less transcripted. KoL Forum thread July 5 Announcement: The official Store of Loathing is up now. More stuff will be available shortly. Update: If you normally save outgoing messages, Gift Shop messages will now be saved in your Outbox. Also, line breaks are now preserved in the outside messages on gifts. Update: Innabox now properly fails to smith ALL class-specific recipes. Update: The gnauga hide chaps now require Advanced Armorcrafting (or whatever that skill is called) to make. Trivial Moment in KoL History: Renleve (#176503) became the first to complete a hardcore (no path) Seal Clubber ascension. Correspondingly, it was also the day the Stainless Steel Shillelagh was discovered. There was much rejoicing. July 6 Update: I made a change to Hagnk's that should make it load considerably faster. Update: The chat input box now gets bigger when you resize the pane. Though not a major alteration to chat, it was welcomed by many hearts. July 7 Undocumented Change: Alt tags were added added to the hedge maze. This allowed for greater playability by the blind. KoL Forum thread Trivial Moment in KoL History: Radio KoL celebrates its first birthday. July 8 Announcement: The Oyster holiday has arrived again, in a way that was totally expected and on purpose. Seriously. The fact that it went off all halfway and screwed up and was fixed a few hours after rollover is part of the... um... Oyster tradition. July 9 Trivial Moment in KoL History: Sickbaccus becomes the first Hhardcore Oxygenarian ascender. July 10 Update: You can now specify a chat color for people who are NOT on your contact list. Update: A new chat channel (/hardcore) has been added for people who have completed at least one hardcore ascension. Undocumented Change: A new Hardcore Clan leaderboard was added to the Hall of Records. KoL Forum Thread Trivial Moment in KoL History: With the help of goofballs, Crovax1234 ascends at level 1. KoL Forum Thread July 11 Announcement: The Inventory page has been modified. Divided into sections. Rearranged somewhat. You can collapse the sections by clicking on their title bar. This is an "undocumented feature" and using it will make you feel cool. Update: The Consumables pane of the inventory now arranges itself according to your Path. If you have one. Update: Your name is now clickable on your Character Sheet, and links to your public profile. Community Moment: People discover a bit about the three-tiered wedding cake (it appears in the Weird leaderboard under consumption, but the poster didn't say who it was that had the record. In this thread, nobody knows for sure how one can be consumed, but they speculate on the answer being the Feast+Stomach.) KoL Forum Thread Undocumented Change: Minor bug allows you to wear shirts without the skill. KoL Forum Thread July 13 Trivial Moment in KoL History: To regain a bit of old school street cred, Mr Skullhead (#688) switched his player ID with the that of his first character, mightybjorn (#13). It had no other effect than to give Jick the jibblies. July 14 Update: You can now make meat paste from the combine screen if you run out. July 17 Undocumented Change: Another minor tweak on the trade system. Trade offers now say 0 meat instead of being blank if no meat is attached, another fix to try to foil note-scamming. July 18 Community Moment: The Jick & Skully Radio Show discusses ComiCon, assembling the /dev team, and Asymmetric getting a real office with real staff. Mr. A's currently worth 6.5 million. KoL Forum Thread July 19 Announcement: Your Display Case can now be divided up into customizable shelves. Everybody thank Armak for suggesting this, many moons ago. We also made some optimizations to the way effects are handled that we hope will help alleviate lag a little bit. The display case shelves were a long-awaited change that was welcomed by Diamonds far and wide. Update: Gift packages now have their own subsection in the miscellaneous section of the inventory. July 20 Update: Xenophobe put together some slick image maps for the Sorceress' Lair -- you can now jump to individual parts of the tower from the page linked to from the main map. Undocumented Change: Though no one is certain when it happened, it was discovered that the Papaya Battle mini-game of the PvP has been discontinued when the flower minigame was added. KoL Forum Thread Undocumented Change: A minor bug wherein a player could ascend without slaying the Goblin King was repaired. Sorry Jareth. KoL Forum Thread July 21 Undocumented Change: WANG's finally do what they say they do when they become usable for correcting the typos others in chat. KoL Forum Thread July 23 Update: By popular demand, SGEEAs (Soft Green Echo Eyedrop Antidote) have been moved to the consumables page of the inventory. July 25 Community Moment: The events of the July 25 edition of 120 Minutes with Jick and Mr Skullhead were more or less transcripted. KoL Forum Thread July 27 Undocumented Change: The ever-sparse rollover message was updated to include links to both Radio KoL and the official unofficial fan site, KoL Coldfront. KoL Forum Thread July 28 Undocumented Change: Power level is now listed next to each applicable item in the equipment section of the inventory. KoL Forum Thread Undocumented Change: The Light/Heavy Door puzzle of the Naughty Sorceress quest was made somewhat more wordy to make it somewhat more difficult. KoL Forum Thread July 29 Announcement: The duration of the post-ascension Ronin period has been reduced to 800 Adventures. As the speed run leaderboards continue to mature, this period will continue to decrease, and we expect it to eventually settle around 500. Also, some adventures were added to the pre-disguise Pirate's Cove. These were text adventures which offered the player three choices. Two would lead to an outfit item, the third would lead to meat. The new Cove adventures signaled a series of changes that made getting outfits in certain areas much easier. Trivial Moment: Clappingman finds proof of the Mongoose’s sign effect. KoL Forum Thread August 1 Announcement: August's Item-of-the-Month is now in Mr. Store. The item was the pygmy bugbear shaman familiar. Though designed to fill the long-desired request for a volleyball/gravy fairy familiar, the MP cost involved made the pygmy bugbear shaman unpopular in a post-ascension game. Undocumented Change: Jick added a 'pluralizing mechanism' to the way in which you get items. Instead of acquiring 2 Hell Ramen you now acquire 2 bowls of Hell Ramen. This has gone on to produce some fairly amusing pluralizations such as multiple snowcones green and multiple yo-yo-yo. KoL Forum Thread Community Moment: Personal Province and Fluffymuffin Cocobutter's Lucky 888 Clan hold Boozefest 2K5. KoL Forum Thread August 2 Announcement: The way Golden Mr. Accessories work has been changed significantly to make them less useless in the post-ascension Kingdom. You no longer have to equip them to use them (which means they can be used even from Hagnk's,) and the Smile can be cast on somebody in Hardcore or Ronin (instead of the buff, they'll receive a gift-like package that allows them to use the smile once they get out.) Also, the clan log has been redone, and is now much more comprehensive. Probably too comprehensive, but we'll wait and see how many complaints come in... Undocumented Change: All weapons in KoL are designated as 1-handed or 2-handed. This had no immediate effect, but was the first step in a later change that would create a two-weapon fighting skill for seal clubbers. There were also a few weapons designated as 3-handed, but this was only done for laughs. KoL Forum Thread August 7 Community Moment: Jicken Wings opened up their clan chat and held Jickenfest '05, which included a rousing game of online, 1000 Blank White Cards. KoL Forum Thread Undocumented Change: Kmail now has an option to return you to the inbox after you send a message KoL Forum Thread August 8 August 9 Trivial Moment: Chrono Mage gets the first full Stainless set KoL Forum Thread August 11 This was possibly an effort to reduce PVP sniping, though it only gave serious PVPers a tool for deception. It did add a small amount of strategy to PvP by requiring that people profile to win the familiar mini game. Also, several PvPers used this opportunity to change main familiars to the bitten, something they otherwise wouldnt have done. Update: All stringed instruments are now created equal. All stringed instruments (Guitarrr/Thunder Guitarrr/Stone Banjo/Disco Banjo) count for winning the Mariachi challenge in the Naughty Sorceress quest. KoL Forum Thread Update: All leftover quest items have been nuked from clan stashes, due to some weird quest flag problems they were causing for some people. Trivial Moment: Tiny Plastic Haikubot becomes player number 600k in the Kingdom. KoL Forum Thread August 12 Undocumented Change: Skills in profile sheet now show as Hardcore Permanent KoL Forum Thread August 13 Community Moment: Malatise holds an East Coast meet in Baltimore, MD KoL Forum Thread August 14 Update: The documentation has been beefed up a bit by Mr. Skullhead. Of particular note is the newly-added guide to common scams. September 1 Announcement: September's item of the month is now in Mr. Store. Also, Preregistration packets for KoLCon II are available in The Store of Loathing. Check the description for details on what preregistration entails, and expect an update of the Con page really soon. September 4 Announcement: Tonight, KolMohDee will begin a 24-hour telethon on Radio KoL, to raise money for the victims of Katrina. Which was also my first girlfriend's name. Except I think she spelled it differently. Anyway, you should listen to it, because it's for a good cause, and it'll be fun to hear KMD slowly descend into cackling, gurgling madness. All of the donations for the telethon will be handled by Thor The Mighty and Adrasteia, the people who run the Player Pics Page. You can find their PayPal link at http://kol.stinkernaut.com/paypal. September 6 Announcement: Tonight's maintenance will be longer than usual. In other news, KMD's radio telethon was a tremendous success. Something like $6,700 was raised, which Asymmetric Publications is going to match, for a grand total of... um... something like $13,400. Thanks to everyone for their eXtreme generosity. September 07 Update: Items in the Untinker's list are now arranged alphabetically. September 13 Update: Multiuse on all items now generates the same distribution as using the item one at a time. Update:The words "Last Adventure" now link to the container document of your last adventure. September 16 Update: Doing a /whois in chat now tells you what channels somebody is listening to as well as what channel they're in. September 18 Update: Gnorman can now Supertinker things in quantity. No more carpal tugnnel sygndrome for you! Update: Xeno added a progress bar for familiar weight. Check it out in your account menu, which should also now be error-free in Safari. September 19 Announcement: After tonight, LARP tickets for KoLCon II will no longer be available in the store. So, if you wanna play in the LARP and haven't bought your ticket yet, now's your last chance. Update: You can now edit the names of all of your familiars at once. Update: The Tr4pz0r will now trade furs in quantity. September 21 Announcement: KoLCon II is coming right up! Check the link above for updated info! And extra exclamation point! September 28 Announcement: A change has been made to the fight code. If you win initiative, you now get an entire normal round of combat for free instead of automatically attacking with your weapon. This allows you to use skills and items on the first round. Also, there are three new shirt designs (non-KoL stuff by the Pretentious Artist) available in the Store of Loathing. September 29 Announcement: In the account menu, there's now an option to turn on "auto-attack" if you want combat to work the way it used to. I also forgot to mention yesterday that in addition to the new shirts, there are new (mostly larger) sizes available for all of the original shirt designs, too. Temporary tattoos and coffee cups are forthcoming. September 30 Update: All of the stuff I put on my to-do list during last night's show is done. Update: Trivial updates now announce themselves in chat when I post them. |