All services are now back online


In order to further improve the systems that run NI we are scheduling some downtime on Saturday morning GMT.

Follow us on twitter for the fastest updates: https://twitter.com/NordInvasion

Times

0900 - 2200 GMT/UTC (hopefully - sorry its taking longer than expected!)
[convert to my timezone]


What is happening

We are doing some massive upgrades with a view to increasing the performance of the systems, specifically the database.

This is likely to last a couple of hours as it will involve massive backups and reshuffling of systems and data. During this time all EU servers, websites and databases will be offline. This also means that no equipment or loot will be handed out to players on AU or NA servers. Additionally the primary teamspeak server will be offline. We may have a backup working - check back here for details as we will keep you posted if it's available.

When the services are back up we will update this thread, IRC and the forum as a whole. I have included a chart to help users understand the impact.


Downtime Systems Affected:

Hi all. Happy New Year again! Back by popular demand I have decided to pull together some stats like I did last year so here we go with 10 interesting stats, some the same and some different.

20.2 Million Pages
That's over 55,000 pages served up every day this year and an increase of over half a million!

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
Crafting remains the most popular page after the character page. The redesigned auction hall however has seen a surge in its popularity and was the most popular page in December.

Region 1 baby
The source regions remain the same with USA taking the number one spot over Germany followed by the UK, Australia and Poland fill the top five. When split into sub continent however Western Europe easily trumps over North America followed by North and then Eastern Europe. Australia props up the bottom of the top 5.

22,000
You guys certainly created a huge number of characters although people are clearly much more content with their characters with a drop in 4,000.

143,000
To me! To you! To me! To you! Trading is on the up with over 23,000 extra trades set up this year.

The iPhone remains king
Although desktop users demolish mobile users (over 90% desktop!!!), the iPhone remains the most popular phone. But beware - a subtle trick by Apple devices however allows all variants to hide under one name. The iPad manages to retain second place and although the iPod too uses the trick as the others it drops to 4th place behind the HTC M7 One which takes 3rd place and proves the most popular single Android device. In manufacturer wars however Samsung takes second place over HTC (whilst Apple obviously leads).

iOS
iOS manages to retain its lead in the mobile OS wars however it has lost the crown in the monthly wars in August so expect to see Android on top next year unless Apple does something special.

23%
Our visitor numbers are up by 23% based on last year. We saw a big boost based on the new listing of the mod on Steam but plenty came from you guys. Thanks and keep spreading the word!

Browser Wars
Chrome is the undeniable king of browsers on NI increasing 2 points to over 63%. Firefox keeps the second place crown despite falling 2 points to 23% and whilst only accounting for 5% of traffic Internet Explorer has an increase of 6.32% versus last year's usage.

900
By special request I can confirm that there is over 900 players with legendary items sat out there in player inventories so its clearly not impossible to get them. Keep on fighting on and this could be you next year!


Anyway this wraps up another year of stats. Hopefully you found these interesting and let us know what other stats you would like to know next year or anything else you think that people should know about in NI during 2014. See you on the battlefield!


/Nao & All of the NI Dev Team

Hello!

Our latest web feature to get a rewrite is now the Trading Center.  Changes have been made which should help to streamline the day-to-day task of trading items and materials between friends and your own characters.

• Trade invites can now be accessed from the left navigation menu no matter what trade you are currently looking at.
  
• Trade invites can be sent by character name as before or by character id to prevent problems when two people in the same house have the same name.
  
• Trades between your own characters do not require you to accept both sides.  They are both your characters after all.
  
• If you "Add" a negative number of items to the trade, that many items will be held back.  (You have 10k gold, add -1k, 9k will be in the trade.)
  
• Open trades can be closed entirely.  A message will be sent to both characters to record this.
  

Hello,

Today the class restrictions of many items are changing, particularly old items that had very low restrictions and certain high tier items being changed to allow hero classes from previously incompatible trees to use them.  In addition, the Legionnaires have been sent to a training camp to learn how to throw and actually manage to hit things!

Changelog:
Rangers can now use Grinder Helmets!
Halberdiers can now use Studded Gauntlets, Swadian Gauntlets, and Plate Mittens!
Aurora Blade now needs T3 Sergeant, Man At Arms, or Heavy Longbowman to equip
Fang of Fenrir is now only usable by Commando and Sharpshooter
Fell Edge is now only usable by Commando, Sharpshooter, and Sniper
Bolt Tosser now requires T4 Sharpshooter
Onyx Bolts now require T4 Sharpshooter
Dragon Spear now requires T4 Pikeman
Dragon Halberd now requires T4 Pikeman
Thunder Pike now requires T4 Pikeman
Sun Pike now requires T4 Pikeman
Legionnaire can now use Dragon Breath!

Legionnaire total throwing is now 250 WPF and 4 PT instead of 170 WPF and 5 PT

Merry Christmas!
- The Nord Invasion Team

Brave and loyal Swadians! The Nord advance appears to have slowed down (something about me sending them lots of kegs of Fosters and now they're all really ill) so we see an opportunity to hold some festivities to raise our troops' morale. It is therefore with great delight that I declare we will holding our second House tournament!

Our genius Hande has provided an epic map for the event and the Swadian nobility are looking forward to seeing the houses battle to claim the title of Champions of the Realm! We will be heading over to the neutral Sarranid Sultanate as their cities have not been ravaged by those nasty Nords!

House Tournamet matches will be held on Saturday and Sunday between 7 pm and 11 pm GMT.

This event will require a lot of planning and scrict adherence to our guidelines and rules. Failure to do so will result in a short walk to the executioners block (a 2 month ban minimum). It is therefore in your interests to read the following information very carefully.

Matchmaking will be done after the sign up is closed, based on region and number of players in houses.

Spoiler

Round 1
[Image: 6592db3a5c.png]

Round 2
[Image: d025ef5c75.png]

Semi-Finale
[Image: 0f7dd235a6.png]

Finale
[Image: 223af5bdc0.png]

Spoiler

Sign up here
Untill sign up closes in [countdown=11,12,2014,22,00]CLOSED[/countdown]

Spoiler

• First and foremost, the tournament will be on a deathmatch server. This means you can kill your teammates (be careful!) but also means that spectators etc can attack each other. Any player that kills another player that is not competing in the arena will be [color=black]banned.
  
• You will listen to the developer team or be removed from the server.
  
• You will not attack another player until the presiding Lord declares the match to begin.
  
• All players not competing will head to the spectator areas provided.
  
• Players will NOT bring weapons onto the server. Only competitors with regulation equipment will be allowed.
  
• While some inter-house rivalry is encouraged, trolling/swearing/being a twat is not allowed. The same rules apply for language as on any other server.
  
• Teamspeak will be mandatory for this event. There will be many instructions given out over TS and imperative that all players listen and obey.
  

Spoiler

• Only House Leaders are allowed to post on the sign up thread.
  
• Houses need to come on tournamets on time, if a house isn't ready within 10 mins of their scheduled start they will have to play with avaliable setup or forfeit
  
• House needs to have at least 5 competitors to participate in house tournament
  
• Competitors needs to be playing NI at least 2 months prior to tournament
  
• There will be an absolute maximum of 25 players per House. This is dictated by map features and size. Concrete numbers will be confirmed closer to the event.
  
• Your House will be told how many players it can bring to the event after signing up. It's not fair to have 25 v 8. Do not complain when we tell you how many players you can bring or you will be removed from the competition.
  
• The House leader will decide how to pick his team and will inform us when requested who his troop will comprise of.
  
• We will provide to the House leader the equipment required for his team based on the information he provides us.
  
• Use of non regulation gear will result in disqualification.
  
• Your team will be assigned either Red or Green equipment. Use it and only it or be disqualified.
  
• Combat will only commence when the presiding Lord declares the fight started.
  
• Players equipment will be checked by the arena gaolers before the fight. If players have the wrong equipment, the whole House will suffer my wrath(wraith).
  
• Competitors will remain beside their allocated elevator until the gaoler orders the team into position.
  
• Any competitor that misses the elevator will miss that round of the match.
  
• Use only players from region that you applied for, unless hosts decides otherwise
  
• Houses with lack of members can use volunteers from other house; house still needs at least 3 own members participating and can only use as many volunteers to fill the required 5 participatns
  
• Volunteers can only be participating for 1 house and can't be a member of already perticipating house
  
• Volunteers can gain personal reward but can't get house rewards
  

• Tournament gear will be provided to the Houses
  
• Tournament Gear

  • [li]Tournament Heavy Body Armor(Red & Green) + Tournament Heavy Head Armor(Red & Green)
    
  • Tournament Light Body Armor(Red & Green) + Tournament Light Head Armor(Red & Green)
    
  • Tournament Boots & Tournament Gloves
    
  • Tournament 1 Handed Sword 
    
  • Tournament 2 Handed Sword
    
  • Tournament 1 Handed Axe
    
  • Tournament Shield (Red & Green)
    
  • Tournament Spear
    
  • Tournament Pike
    
  • Tournament Bow & Arrows
    
  • Tournament Crossbow & Bolts
    
  • Tournament Throwing Daggers & Javelins
    
  [/li]
  

• 100k in house bank
  
• Buff banner

• cash

(06-12-2014, 09:23 PM)Hande link Wrote:[embed=425,349]http://youtu.be/Dg6Hk7RRXxc[/embed]

http://youtu.be/Dg6Hk7RRXxc

You can watch finals rounds from that video if you missed it.
Oh, I forgot to turn off dead bodies in first rounds so don't complain about them.

Hello,

A much requested feature has been added to the Account page of the website: Support Reset.

Support Reset will remove your support class for a flat fee of 50k gold.  Your character classes (most importantly, your hero classes) will remain untouched.

As with all the Account actions, you can reset the support class of one character using the gold from another.

Enjoy!
- The NordInvasion Team

Hello,

In the latest patch, we made it so Nords do not drop some of their weapons that Swadians cannot pick up from the ground.  This helps keep the ground uncluttered so that barricades can be built and valuable items don't get lost.

There are still plenty of weapons dropping which should not, though, so it would be greatly appreciated if people could give us a list of Nords and their weapons which need to be fixed.

Guidelines:

• Please give us the Nord's name and describe the weapon (sword, two handed axe, shield, etc).
  
• This only covers weapons which cannot be picked up by anyone.
  
• Consider whether the item can be picked up by a class that is specialized for that weapon.
  
• If you are not sure you have the right Nord's name, please don't post it.
  
• Avoid reporting a weapon that has already been listed in this thread.  It will make it easier for us to go through.
  

Good evening dear Swadians,

This patch has been a long time coming and I know various rumours have been floating around for the past few months as to what exactly this patch will entail. I am delighted to be the bearer of good news and confirm that the release is upon us! This patch is one of the biggest we have released in a long time and brings a lot of changes to the gameplay and to the coding side of NI. Hopefully we will see less lag on servers on our side, a potential increase in frame rate and a more interesting game for you guys.


General changes

- Restricted the number of tomes and barrels that can be spawned
- Added "backup support" slot for after the tomes and barrels have been used
- Removed the need to juggle support items
- Capped friendly-fire damage
- Fixed the support item bug that uses multiple items of the same type at once for example when placing a SHC with two in the inventory, both were used
- Changed the loot system to allow for some interesting additions…
- Adjusted assist xp/loot area to allow for “Rambo” players
- Rewrote most of the game code for better performance
- Completely overhauled Swadian gear stats
- New textures
- Added "prep time" between waves to eliminate saving last
- Reduced barricade building time in prep time
- Faster health, ammo, and shield repair props in prep time
- Can replace gear on spawn waves once (not if you just spawned) without needing to spectate
- Rebalanced Nords
- New bot AI for ranged units
- New barricade health bar
- New character screen (beta status and subject to change!)
- Moar rangers!!!

Loot system

There has been a radical overhaul of the loot system. I know we have been talking about the loot system for quite some time now but I am happy to say it is now in effect. As ever, I will not go into details as to how our loot system actually works but I will say that it very much favours playing in groups and not solo playing. No doubt some will moan but it really should be no surprise that we have introduced a new feature to encourage team play as this is (dun dun duuuun!!!!) a teamplay mod! Loot is not set in stone and will be subject to change as we observe what's dropping and how often.

Stats
I'm not going to comment in depth on stat changes for both Swadians and Nords as these are always subject to change, however we have felt of late that both players and bots have been creeping back towards "demi-god" status. As such, this patch will see some big changes to both. While we no doubt anticipate some "boo hoo" from the community, the changes we have made we feel are for the best in regards to balanced game play. Hero classes will now play an even greater role and as you fight on the battlefield you should notice a good few differences, some of which even increase survivability (??!) so expect a few surprises coming your way 

Support items

Support items have seen a lot of attention from us in this patch. We have now limited the amount of tomes and barrels that each player can bring into a server per map. Each player can bring in 2 tomes or 2 barrels per server or one of each. This is account specific so changing character will not allow you to bring in more items nor relogging. We have even gone as far as making sure that you can't trade these items to another player to bring in to that server. All barrels and tomes are uniquely identified and that item cannot be spawned more than twice on one map. If you own 2 tomes/barrels this same limit applies and you cannot spawn more than 2 per map. Our reasoning for this is that we have had had issues with tomes making the game too easy and as a result, we made the nords harder. Players will bring in more tomes and we would make the nords harder again. In an effort to get out of this vicious cycle we are taking steps to try and balance things out. We have "weakened" the nords as a result to try and find this balance. While we appreciate that the system may not be perfect at present, we will be editing the stats of the troops on the back of community feedback. If the nords seem impossible, please do let us know (nicely!) and we'll make changes for future changes that can be rolled out without requiring any downloads on your part.

Item stat changes

There have been MANY item stat changes and we have a comprehensive list of all changes. We will release this list for you once we've cleaned it up a bit and make it a little more reader friendly.

Community address

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Kip for all of his service as US senior admin. Kip is stepping down from this position to focus more time on developing the mod and that pesky thing call real life. Winter will be stepping up to the mark and taking over the position. This should allow us to focus more attention on the admining of the US servers. We would also like to take this opportunity to notify the community that recruitment for the US and EU is open for the next 2 weeks. Please direct your attention to the relevant forum threads for details on how to apply and who to direct your PMs to.

I would also like to thank the community for their continued support of NI in the form of donations. Your support is always very much appreciated! I am happy to say that NI is currently in an acceptable financial position. I know that the AU community have been looking for a new sever and have been in dialogue with Kip over such a server. My position is that one month of donations does not convince me that paying for another Australian server will actually see support from the Australian community. While I appreciate the donations that have come in from Australia, in the average month (looking back over the last year) the donations from the pacific region on a monthly basis do not normally meet 1/8 of our server costs. I would be happy to pay for another Austalian server if I could see more donations coming in on a regular basis from the pacific region. I have always been happy to pick up the brunt of the server costs but I unfortunately cannot justify paying even more for the AU region when I am not receiving any more fiscal support from that playerbase. A rather negative message unfortunately, but with great power comes great responsibility.

The NordInvasion updater is available here

The full patch is available here

Love,

The NI Family