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

2005 January - March April - June July - September October - December

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October 2003

Please note: *'s denote entries from the Dark Ages - see the end of the July-Sept page for more details

* October 1
A bug is discovered (and widely abused) that allowed stat boosters to be re-used repeatedly.

In a sort of mini-reset to punish the cheaters, Jick reduces the level of the Top 50 players. Simon, the 51st most powerful, is now #1.

* October 5
Spikey is admitted to Sparkle Motion.

* October 12
The Strange Leaflet quest is added.

* October 19
Documentation & FAQ go up. To this day (exactly one year later), no FAQ has been filled out.

* October 20
Jick proposes the idea of a community blacklist as an extension of individual ignore lists.

* October 22
The Ring of Flame forum is created. TheBub appointed moderator in Spring of '04.

* October 27
Pimonkey hacks into and deletes TheBub's account. It is quickly re-instated.

November 2003

* November 5
The Altar of Literacy is thought up, but not fully implemented until February 3rd and the advent of chat channels.

November 13
Maxed out gym payoff at level 200. You can now get 40 of a stat per turn, maximum

Fixed a huge hole in the clan stash code. Thanks, boozerbear.
BoozerBear finds his first major bug - the results of which are immortalized here. The exploit allowed someone to use the Clan Stash to purchase any item they desired, even if it wasn't an item the Clan was supposed to be buying (such as sober pills). Jick rewards BoozerBear with his first BBFB.

Fixed a huge hole in the Bounty Hunter Hunter code. Thanks again, boozerbear.
The Bounty Hunter bug let you sell whatever you wanted to the BH.

Fixed a huge hole in the tr4pz0r code. Thanks again again, boozerbear.
The tr4pz0r bug let you trade skins for any item in the game.

Sometime between November 14-20
The way the Gravy Fairy works has been changed. A level 20 BGF now makes a given item twice as likely to drop, rather than simply adding 40% to the drop rate. Item drops will now make more sense again.

Fixed a long-unnoticed bug with clovers, where a combination monsters/adventures zone would only do the clover adventure if it didn't pick a monster, instead.

The twig portion of the Toot Oriole's quest is now easier...

Level restrictions were added for various things:
Flea Market: lvl 5
Join a Clan: lvl 10
Mall: lvl 20
Form a Clan: lvl 50
Buy a Store: lvl 70

Deleting a message no longer sends you back to the first page of your messages.

November 16
The Evil Golden Arches are now implemented, and the Cave quest has been revamped.

November 18
The Goblin King has undergone a minor rewrite. You can kill him again.

November 19
A system is created to ban players from chat. Also, the early idea for the Wang is bandied about.

November 20
The Show Player now adds "http://" to the front of a link, if it isn't already there.

November 23
Some new pictures, some new features, a new zone for level 1-5 players (on the Wrong Side of the Tracks.)

In other news, Dry Noodle recipes are now implemented, along with some new complementary Scrumptious Reagent recipes.

November 24
Greyclock suggests the Dripping Meat Sword and Kentucky Fried Meat Sword.

November 27
The new chat and the top menus should work correctly with Internet Explorer 5 now.

Also, new skills for Disco Bandits, and a few more items are now usable in combat.

November 28
New skills for Accordion Thieves.

December 2003

December 2
Anybody who was carrying a Metallic A will now find a replacement item in their inventory. Oh, and the Beanstalk went active last night, for anybody who didn't notice already.

As December starts up the Top 3 players are Kamara, Jollyman, and Adamson respectively.

December 6
The Castle is now available to those who have gone through the airship. Some of the castle items still need to be implemented.

December 9
I also added a link to vote for KoL at World Online Games on the login page.

I've noticed a serious increase in traffic since we started doing this. Something like a 30% increase in players. So... it's working.

December 10
KoL is getting around 1.5-2k new accounts per month.

December 11
Okay, I'm in the process of making some changes to the way levels are calculated. It's basically like this.

You have three primary stats. Muscle, Mysticality, and Moxie.

Your primary stat will eventually max out at 200. Your secondary stats will max out at either 150 or 100, depending on which sub-class you are. For instance:
Seal Clubber maxes: 200 mus, 100 mag, 150 mox

Turtle Tamer maxes: 200 mus, 150 mag, 100 mox

In order to raise these stats, you earn what are basically the equivalent of experience points, but specific to each stat. These points are what you're used to earning from winning fights, using stat boosters, etc. (ie. Beefiness, Strongness, Enchantedness.) You'll get a notification when you get enough of them to boost one of your main stats.

The three primary stats are now equivalent to what used to be your level.

The new thing called "Level" is still dependent on your primary stat, but it's much lower. Much much lower. With a base primary stat of 200, you will be at level 15. So 15 is the maximum level after the cap goes into place. There will be titles associated with each level, which will be cool.

Please note that nobody lost ANYTHING as a result of these changes. Everyone is still exactly as powerful relative to everyone else as they were before, and the rate of advancement hasn't changed, either. The only thing really changing is the scale.

Why am I changing this? I'm glad you asked. There are a number of reasons.
1) The numbers associated with stats just get unwieldy after a while. It's hard to do good math with an important stat that can vary from 5 to 100,000. Having the stats kept to manageable numbers will make stat-enhancing accessories make a lot more sense, for instance.
2) Since your turns are limited, I want you to see visible character progress every day. However, I want gaining stats, and especially gaining levels, to MEAN something. I feel more of a sense of accomplishment going from 20 to 21 than I do going from 20,000,000 to 21,000,000, y'know?
3) Okay, so maybe there were only two reasons after all.

December 11
The level requirements for clan stuff and the stores were changed to reflect the new system last night.

Flea Market - level 2
Join Clan - level 3
Shop at Mall - level 5
Form Clan - level 7

December 19
The server will go down for a few minutes today, around 3:00 Eastern Daylight Time, for a RAM upgrade. This upgrade, plus a number of optimizations I've been working on over the past few days, should make a dent in the occasional lag we've been experiencing lately.

Jick warns everyone that 31337 scrolls soon won't be dropping sober pills anymore, though the pills will remain in the game database (item table). They were completely removed almost eight months later, on August 14th .

December 22
You can now set up secure trades (items for Meat) from the Messages menu. You can also now add and remove clan hoard items in quantity.

Sometime between December 23-March 19
You can now see equipment when you look at a player's info.

You can now look at player info from the "search players" dialog.

Radio button selection is now preserved on the Create Player page. This should reduce the incidence of accidental Seal Clubbers.

You can now trade all of your furs to the trapper at the same time.

You can now change the capitalization of your name from the account menu.

Added "make as many as possible" to the combine screen.

Multiple items given to a player no longer loop -- they are shown in quantity. (You receive some items: whatever (quantity))

The Barrel Full of Barrels has been changed. The item drops are less random, and you occasionally hit an enemy now.

HP now shows up in red on the char pane when it gets low.

Moxie is now the required stat for pants and hats, Mysticality for accessories.

Item pictures that show up in the "you acquire an item" fashion are now clickable for description.

The oldest (and hopefully last) infinite Meat bug has been squashed.

Minor formatting change -- short results are now centered in their cells, making some of the blue boxy things look a little better.

Changed the function of the phonics down to give you a temporary boost effect, rather than stats.

Fixed a bug whereby the "equip a whole outfit" operation would allow you to equip things you didn't have the stats for.

Added percentage bars to the character sheet for stat advancement.

Plus signs (and some other stuff, I'm sure) are now correctly recognized by the new chat system, by virtue of URL-encoding and -decoding functions found by Pimonkey at http://www.albionresarch.com/.

You can now talk in other channels than the one you're in, by using /channelname (ie. /newbie Hey, newbies! or /trade I'm selling a goofball for 100 Meat!)

December 23
The Daily Dungeon and the Barrel Full of Barrels have changed, dramatically and slightly, respectively.

Fixed a bug whereby you'd get no mana back if you had a pagoda but no tent. Who'd've thought that'd ever happen?

December 25
Merry Crimbo!
Crimbo Pressies for all! Check your inventory.

Jick comes up with the precursor to the Policies of Loathing.

December 26
Happy day after Crimbo! There has been a slight change to the way the "who's online" list works -- lurking in the chat now counts as being online.

The Detective Skull is added around this time.

December 30
The Shore is revamped, and open for your vacationing pleasure. The reset did not occur last night, because of a mistake I made. It's now fixed.