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October 2004

October 1
KoL is reviewed by John Borland on CNET's news.com (and mirrored at Gamespot). The article brings in 4k new accounts that day, 2.5k the next, and 2k on the third.

October 2
Due to popular demand, I changed it so that Mall limits reset at the nightly rollover, rather than on a rolling 24-hour schedule.

Also, search results that point to items you can't buy because of these limits are now grayed out.

Also also, you can now use MP-restorative items directly from the skills page. It's convenient, and it's fun!

Alliance from Hell, one of the oldest clans, disbands.

October 3
Because of a dumb typo, the "using MP items from the skills page" thing was only appearing for buffing classes. This is fixed now.

Muzzy begins automatically buffing every player with Elemental Saucesphere in an effort to prove how "out of balance" the MP system is.

October 4  
Mr. Skullhead reveals that highly-anticipated Reset will probably not happen, confirming a months-old rumor. Previously a Lounge-only secret, the news shellshocks the community. It divides people into two major groups (pro or anti-reset), a division made uglier because of the veteran vs. newbie rhetoric.

October 5
Small change to the way the familiar arena works -- each time you win a prize, there's a 25% chance it'll be a lead necklace, and a 75% chance it'll be an accessory that the familiar you're using can equip.

Jick awards everyone in Warehouse 23 with the W23 Bling.

Papa Zito goes public with KoLmelion, a Windows program to "take care of the mundane details of life in the Kingdom, freeing up players to concentrate on more fun things."

Familiar items won in the Arena automatically equip themselves to the appropriate familiar.

October 6  
There's a new store in Seaside Town, on the Right Side of the Tracks, in which you can trade Mr. Accessories for various other groovy gifts. Mr. A prices temporarily inflate 165% in the mall.

The Mr. Store initially sells Mrs. Accessory, Mr. Accessory Jr., Coffee Sprite, Cheshire Bitten, Jill-o-Lantern (first in a series of Familiar-of-the-Month), Golden Mr. Accessory, and a Custom Avatar Form. The last two were previously only the domain of a few: Darguz Parsilvan first had the GMA, and excluding Mr. Skullhead, Quato was the first with a custom avatar.

Jick gives Spazworrier a "bugbear-smiting sword" for his 16th birthday.

Changed Mrs. Accessory to Ms.

October 7
The moderator Inari (and her multis) are deleted by Havaack. The accounts aren't restored until November 29th.

250k accounts have been created.

October 8
Alright, so the host took the database server down for maintenance, and one of the tables got corrupted. I'm rebuilding everything right now, and everything should be back to normal by 9:30 or so, PST.

UPDATE:Okay, so everything should be fixed. Sorry about the inconvenience.

A bug allows clan credos and titles to have html.

October 10  
The bug from the 8th has grown into a problem as players use html in their profiles to log others out, among other things. BoozerBear is at the center of controversy yet again when he forces Radio KoL to open upon viewing his profile. The bug stays open for several more days but no known truly malacious activity occurs.

October 11
Your store rank is now displayed next to the advertising budget.

October 13
Clan attacks no longer affect the defending clan's win/loss record in any way.

October 14
Jick announces plans for a KoL comic book using artists from the community.

D L and BoozerBear both find a bug with Golden Mr. A's that allows more than 15 casts of Smile of Mr. A if you have 3 GMA's equipped. D L is awarded his first BFB.

October 15
Fixed a bug whereby Golden Mr. As were able to be improperly used to give way too many buffs per day.

Made the clan training and buff purchase interface remember the last thing you selected.

Mr. Skullhead starts re-writing and adding to monster texts to increase variety and truly make them 'teh funny'.

October 16
BoozerBear disbands Mahi and joins up with Warehouse 23.

BunBun's biggest and final Meat Day occurs, joined by the dj's on Radio KoL broadcasting live from a KoL party at Thor and Adra's house.

October 17
Account deletion is disabled in favor of strict 60-day deletion of idle accounts except for those with Mr. A's.

Riff begins his Burn Your Meat initiative to encourage personal meatsinks to "Save KoL."

October 18
The forums are moved to a new, faster server. Game lag problems are reaching critical mass as the MySql database crawls under current load.

The Mafia Raffle #5 is finally run.

This History of Loathing site goes online.

October 20
Jick hires an expert from MySql for Tuesday the 26th in an attempt to reduce lag by properly configuring and optimizing the database.

HotStuff and Arbitrage find another stats bug.

October 22
Jick adds the Trophy Case so that showing off trophies is optional.

October 23
Fixed the bug whereby items in the flea market were disappearing and sellers not getting their meat.

October 24
Made it so stat gains from monsters no longer cap out at 40.

Added this disclaimer beneath "Enter Chat" - NOTE: By entering the chat, you are agreeing to abide by the Policies of Loathing

October 25  
Fernswarthy's Basement has been placed in its temporary home, the Dungeon Full of Dungeons. It's sort of like the Daily Dungeon, only it doesn't reset each day, it's much, much deeper, and each room is more difficult to pass than the previous.

There's also a new section of the Hall of Records for the deepest Basement delvers.

Everybody give mad props to Riff for coming up with a lot of the monsters.

October 26  
There have been some changes to the way the chat works. As of now, the Altar of Literacy test is required to enter the chat, in ANY channel. Once you pass it, you're granted access to newbie, normal, clan, trade, and a new channel ("games") created for trivia and other contests.

Keep all trade offers in trade. Keep all games and contests in games. Newbie is now a place for new players to ask questions. Trading in newbie is no longer allowed.

If you already passed the Altar, you'll have to do it again before you can enter the chat. Sorry about the inconvenience. Per the argument back in April, the question about George Washington now asks about his black, not "white," horse.

October 27
The site may go down for maintenance sometime in the middle of the day today, while I work with a MySQL consultant on tuning and optimizing the database.

October 28
It's discovered that the stat gain changes from the 24th let the monsters in the Sorceress' Tower to give insane amount of stats. The loophole is patched up fairly quickly.

Cybergoat finds an exploit that allows access to any account without knowing the password. Jick awards him a BBFB.

October 29
Mr. Skullhead makes an official forum thread announcing the strong possibility that the Reset won't happen. It's the first official statement on the controversy and provides an outlet for player feedback on both a reset and ascension.

October 30  
Trick or Treat! Check the main map for the special Halloween event. The event will last until the rollover on Monday night. Fruitcake is dropped once more; the new items added are Wint-o-Fresh Mint, Senior Mints, Pixellated Candy Heart, Cold Hots Candy, Candied Kobold, Rock Pops, Yummy Tummy Beans, Dwarf Bread, and Mr. Mediocrebar.

October 31
Due to my being out of town for an appearance on TechTV's The Screen Savers (November 1st at 4PM Pacific, I think,) November's familiar of the month will not become available until the 2nd.

November 2004

November 1  
Jick appears on TechTv's Screensavers show. The servers are immediately inundated and close to 1400 log on (highest in-chat ever).

Arbitrage, HotStuff, and BoozerBear use a loophole known since July to gain huge stats. Like the Drunk Tank before it, HotStuff determined that on Stat Days 668 scrolls, upon using hundreds or thousands, will end up signifcantly boosting your primary stat.

November 2
November's Familiar of the Month, the Hand Turkey, is added to the Mr. Store.

Birdy is fired as chat moderator.

November 3  
Sorry about the downtime this morning -- some weirdness with the mail server brought the whole thing down.

Also, you've probably noticed that HP and MP didn't get restored at rollover last night. I forgot to announce it when I did it, but this was an intentional change -- the first step in a series of changes to the way MP and skills and buffs work that we're hoping will fix some game balance issues.

UPDATE: The second step in this process has been rolled out -- the amount of MP gained from restorative items has been adjusted to reflect the difficulty of obtaining the item. All items that previously restored MP in its entirety have been toned down to reasonable levels. The Smile of Mr. A now costs 5mp to cast instead of 50.

ALSO UPDATE: MP restorative items can now be used in quantity from the Skills screen. I'll add this feature to the regular inventory screen when I figure out a way to make it not completely clutter everything up.

What Jick posted on the forums: Okay, here's the deal. Muzzy drew my attention to the fact that the buffing and MP system was seriously broken. 150 Meat = the ability to cast one entire month's worth of turns of any buff, for a high level player.

This is ridiculous. You're not always supposed to have a Saucesphere. You're not always supposed to have Ode to Booze on. If everybody has them all the time, then they don't mean anything. They're not sought-after. They're just another thing making the game easier, and it was already easy.

MP was, effectively, the only limitless quantity in the game. And it was being horribly, horribly abused. Not due to any exploit, but due to the fact that it was a very, very bad design decision on my part to set it up the way I did.

November 4  
Okay, so starting tonight, the nightly rollover will regenerate a flat amount of HP and MP, that amount depending on your campsite equipment. Better housing = more recovery, and there are a couple of other items that impact MP specifically.

Also, the beanbag chair, which lets you Relax instead of Resting (which heals double MP but no HP) can now be created by combining two items. Which two items? You'll just have to guess.

Fixed the bug that allowed near-infinite MP from the Skills page.

Fixed the bug that let you relax in the beanbag chair even if you didn't actually have one.

Jick announces on RKOL that KoL Coldfront is now the official KoL fansite.

November 8  
Xlyinia (BoozerBear's girlfriend) starts work as Jick's secretary.

Jick begins MySql consultation with a different (better) expert.

Papa Zito releases the KoL Radio Tuner.

November 9
Fixed another beanbag bug and the glitch that allowed Blue Pixel Potions to still fully refresh you if used in battle.

Fixed the bug that made the Bounty Hunter ask for the same thing repeatedly.

November 10
Nikatoni and KoL Coldfront, in collaboration with Jick, release the Coldfront Marketplace, a tool that tracks every mall purchase.

Jick joins Warehouse 23.

November 11 (11/11 -- it's ridiculous.)
Short Notice Extravaganza: Tonight at 7:00 MST, Mr. Skullhead and I will be broadcasting, live, the third episode of 120 Minutes of Misanthropy with Jick and Mr. Skullhead, on Radio KoL. For those of you that haven't listened to the last two episodes, here's what we do:

First, we spend about a half an hour trying to get the audio set up correctly, during which you hear a lot of silence and the occasional hemiconversation. Fun!

Next, we take calls from people using Skype, (username: radiojick) and we answer their questions and/or talk to them about the weather. We also field questions from people in the chat, via private messages to our faithful servant, radiobugbear.

This week, we're hoping that we can skip the first portion of the show and get straight to the good stuff. So tune in! 7PM MST, right after Vida Londres's show.

KoL appears in the December issue of Game Informer, a British gaming magazine.

November 12  
Random Ramblings is brought back and Aelfrhian and Scyld made moderators of it.

More chat mods are appointed: Arbitrage, Bellytor, Bete Noire, Idiania, and Vultar.

Jick adds the promised link to KoL Coldfront on the homepage: Be sure to check out KoL Coldfront, the official unofficial KoL fan site. It's Jick-tested, Skullhead approved.

Submissions close for the official Comic of Loathing.

November 14  
Uncle P's Antiques has a new item: Note that there is a new item available today, the Mob Penguin protection contract. This item will afford you a measure of protection against certain things that may be done to you during the next phase of our operation, which will begin shortly.

Note also that our older items have been reduced in price. Everything must go! Mr. Exploiters are down from 1B to 500M, Villa Documents go from 500M to 250M.

Due to the potential for multi abuse, Mall store purchases no longer add to the store's advertising budget. The only way to increase your ad budget now is to directly contribute Meat to it.

A Most Paranoid leaderboard is added to the homepage that lists those who've bought the most protection contracts.

Jick gives skipperic her own item: intergalactic pom poms.

November 15
The bug that made the graying out of search results on stores with limits act all weird has been fixed. Thanks to everyone who reported it.

Jick adjusts the probabilities on 668 Scrolls to close a loophole that allowed insane gains on Stat Days.

Radio items are created for dj's and contest winners on Radio KoL.

November 16  
Shady new dealings are taking place at Uncle P's Antiques. The Council has called an emergency session to formulate a strategy for dealing with this new crime wave...

The "Back Room" in Uncle P's Antiques sells "hits" that players can put out on each other. The types of hits include:
For 10,000 Meat, we will beat somebody up and break their knees.
For 20,000 Meat, we will beat somebody up and break both their knees and their familiar's knees.
For 60,000 Meat, we will deliver the 20,000 Meat treatment to somebody, and up to three of their friends. If they have any friends, that is.
For 100,000 Meat, we will deliver "The Don's Special" to somebody. This one does some... permanent... damage.
As you know, Uncle P has been selling protection contracts, each of which will cancel out one of the above "favors." For 5,000 Meat, we will tell you how many of these contracts your target has left.

Mafia hits eventually burn over 5B meat.

Doing a /who in the chat should now only show people who are actually logged in to the chat.

A bug where putting a slash in a familiar's name would cause it to disappear when it was put back in the terrarium was fixed. Thanks to Arbitrage and the others who reported it.

300k accounts have been created.

November 17
Trick or Treating returns for Porktober.

November 18  
The Council has unveiled its plan for dealing with the Mob Penguin menace, and has taken up a new collection towards that end.

The Council reads: After much deliberation, the Council has determined that the best way to combat the Mob Penguin menace is to remove the conditions that allowed it to flourish in the first place -- namely, the lack of predators on the Icy Peak.

To this end, we've located a healthy breeding pair of Knott Yetis at a zoo in Distant Lands.

They've agreed to sell us the Yetis for five billion Meat, so that we may begin efforts to repopulate the Peak.

UPDATE: After being informed of the urgency of our situation, the zoo has agreed to reduce the price (from 5 billion) of the pair of Yetis to three billion. We're almost at that goal -- please give what you can so that we can get the ball rolling!

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Citizens of Loathing, we have raised the 3 Billion Meat needed to purchase the breeding pair of Yetis. They should be arriving by boat some time tomorrow.

There is 470B liquid meat in the economy.

November 19
Adra and Thor begin adding player pictures directly to profiles.

November 20
The Most Meat Wealthy table is removed from the Hall of Records leaderboard. At the time of removal, Contrickster is first with 4.1B, then Mee_Tall (3.6B), and Mr Bimblebob (3.5B).

November 21  
The breeding Yetis have arrived from Distant Lands. See the Council for details on the next phase of the Icy Peak Reintroduction Project.

The Council reads: The breeding pair of Knott Yetis has arrived, but we're having a little bit of trouble getting them to... er... breed.
We've decided to try plying the male with alcohol. Could you spare any booze toward this effort? Allows you to submit booze to help breed Yetis.
The Council is also holding a naming contest for the male and female Yetis. Submit your suggestions, and if one of them is chosen when the Council decides to actually name the Yetis, you'll win a fabulous prize!

Recreated a limited multi-use feature for items. This is hardcoded on a per-item basis, so it will roll out slowly over time.

MaxDemian finds an exploit that essentially could allow you access (albeit limited) to anyone's account. Jick awards a BFB.

HotStuff discovers a bug that allows infinite meat via the new Mafia Hit code. He's given a BBFB.

Commas are added to the meat amount in the charpane for easier viewing, counting, and meat-grubbing.

Like /who before it, /whois now only shows a player is online if they're actually in chat.

November 22
The Council has sent the first batch of Knott Yetis to the Icy Peak. Sparks have begun to fly. New item: Broken Cell Phone

HotStuff finds another infinite meat bug, this time with the 'use multiple' feature.

November 23
The Icy Peak Reintroduction Project continues, as another batch of Yetis is sent to the Peak. This phase was not without its problems, however, as a brief stampede caused some damage on the Wrong Side of the Tracks. See the Council for more details. Uncle P's Antique Store is shut down, "accidentally" trampled by Yetis on the way to the Icy Peak. Mafia Hits cease and Mr. E's and Villa Docs are no longer available.

November 24
BoozerBear autosells most of his millions of Spectral Pickles in an effort to convince Jick to bring back the Pickle Factory and re-enable the Ghost Pickle on a Stick recipe.

The Cool Guy Crew becomes the first clan to reach 2000 enlisted members.

November 26
As you probably noticed, the promised Thanksgiving event did not occur, owing to my unexpected lack of Internet access while visiting my family. Here's what we're gonna do: We're gonna pretend that Thanksgiving is actually next week. Probably on Tuesday.

The recurring KoL Calendar holiday will fall on Boozember 7th.

Also also, the Hall of Records now updates every hour, instead of every day. Also also also, clans must now have at least 5 members before they show up on any of the boards that list average stats.

November 27
Scyld is added as moderator for the KoL - Discussion forum.

November 29  
Some changes have been made to the PvP system. I explain them in detail in This forum post.

November 30
The 10-fights-per-day PvP restriction has been changed to reset at the nightly rollover, rather than on a sliding 24-hour clock.

Also, I fixed a bug where the second challenge (which is supposed to compare unbuffed stats) was using buffed stats, instead. Thanks to everybody who noticed this and reported it.

Added PvP rank to charsheets.

December 2004

December 2
Better one day late than never, the Crimbo Elf is available in Mr. Store.

Also, to correct a gap in the distribution of the Scrumptious Reagent potions, the papotion of papower can now be made by Saucerors. Thanks, ShadowsLight!

December 4
Added five more dreams for when you "rest" at your Campground.

Increased the maximum characters allowed in the quote on player profiles.

Pachelbel autosells most of his Spectral Pickles at the request of Jick. At the time, Pachelbel's stash comprised 80% of all pickles in the game.

December 5
Added a timer so that if you haven't PvP-ed in two weeks you automatically get your Hippy Stone back.

BunnyBabs starts the Mr. Accessory Merit Scholarship to give Mr. A's to those who can't afford one or are too young to donate. It is later merged with the larger Trade Foundation, which BunnyBabs founded on December 16th. Within a month close to 50 Mr. A's and 1B+ meat has been given out.

December 7
Fixed a bug that was allowing some of those banned to still be able to chat.

The Goddess's Knights, the third largest clan, is looted then disbanded by SexyGoddess, the clan leader and former RKOL dj.

December 8
I removed the PvP records from public view because I want to emphasize the importance of the rankings, as compared to record.

December 9
Added links to chat PMs. Also fixed some time issues with /last, /reply, and clan message boards.

Marshall and Fnord7 find a dupe bug; both are awarded BBFB's.

December 11
Rollover now happens 20 minutes earlier than previously.

December 12
There are now 10,000 registered members on the forums.

December 13
British magazine PC Format mentions Kingdom of Loathing.

Philanthropist starts The Rye. It quickly becomes a popular, high-level clan.

December 15
Fixed a bug that was allowing duplicate instances of the same buff.

Moved the game images and graphics to a different server.

December 16
By popular request, Hippy Stones are now reconstructable by players who have gone two weeks without initiating a PvP attack.

In additional other news, I think that the gluing might not actually start working until this weekend -- I've evidently been keeping track of the attack records for a few days fewer than I had initially thought. Sorry 'bout that.

[Mall searches have] changed. Item searches are now exact-match-only (e.g. a search for 'papaya' will only return papayas.) Asterisks now act as wildcards. If you want to search for everything that starts with 'papaya', search for 'papaya*'

Betrayer is appointed mod of the Random Ramblings forum.

December 17
Added multi-use to a bunch more items. Stat boosters, bang potions, other random stuff.

Made the name of a Mall store's owner a link to that player's profile.

Fixed some word-wrap issues with the Mall search results.

Made it a little harder to make derivative/msg-breaking names. Now, if a player named "The Dude" exists, it will not allow a new player to create an account named "The_Dude".

Fixed that problem whereby changing clan ranks and titles would always think people with apostrophes in their titles had been changed.

/whois now no longer incorrectly reports people being in the chat if they're not.

I've given all chat mods the ability to delete posts from the graffiti wall in town.

Philanthropists, a popular high-level clan, becomes Noblesse Oblige.

December 18
Now that the PvP rankings have had some time to work themselves out, I've made a slight change to the limits on selecting PvP targets. As of now, you cannot attack anyone ranked more than 50 points below you, that being the point at which you woudln't get any rank points for winning, anyway.

The upper limit has been removed completely -- you can attack anybody more powerful than you, regardless of how much more powerful they are.

December 19
Hippy stones are able to be repaired for the first time if you haven't attacked in two weeks.

December 20
Add the ability to cook and mix any number of items instead of just one or all.

TheBub leaves the famous clan he founded, [aZn], and joins 1337 sn4x0rs.

December 22
Kucolan, whose company unofficially sponsors KoL by donating 10% of profits, is given his own custom item - the Arse-shooting Crossbow.

HotStuff finds a bug that allows an infinite number of adventures; it's patched within 15 minutes.

MaxDemian begins creating his custom animated avatars, a number of which become used in-game later on.

December 23
The profanity filter now works in a slightly different way. Rather than replacing entire lines of chat or messages with [profanity] it just !@#$s out the naughty bits.

Chat no longer accepts high ASCII characters in input.

KoL now has registered over 350k accounts.

December 24
Two new drinks: Spiced Rum (first sold by HotStuff and Trog Dor) and Eggnog (first sold by Furion_Stormrag and Rickerscott).

Mick is given her own custom item, the Fuzzy Bracelets, for Christmas.

December 25
Like the opposite of a thief in the night, Father Crimbo swung by each and every campsite in the Kingdom and left a little surprise. Check the miscellaneous section of your inventory (Every player receives a Crimbo Stocking)

December 26
Secret Santa hands out 150 Extra Special Crimbo Stockings to a semi-random smattering of players. When opened, the stockings contain everything a 'normal' one does plus a Mr. Accessory.

December 27
Added a new ultra-rare, the Spooky Hockey Mask, made (and first given) to honor Esjay (#20163)

December 28
A couple of minor changes today:

The closet has been revamped. Thanks, BoozerBear! It now allows for multiple items to be inserted and removed from it with one form submission.

Those of you with custom avatars can now turn them off from your account menu. This change also allows the handful of people who have expressed an interest in getting multiple custom avatars to do so.

Changed some of the "offer system" formatting and linkified trade notifications in chat.

December 29
Added the Steaming Evil item to fill the #666 slot.