Guild Launch Version 6.8.3 Release Notes

Greetings,

This release is planned for just after our normal backup downtime ~8:30 Eastern on Wednesday October 21st.

Version 6.8.3 is primarily a bug fix, tweak and enhancement release.

For this release we are trying something new and putting our release notes on our blog site. The primary reason is because a few users have asked that we make the release notes available for viewing when the site is down for our longer updates. Version 6.8.3 will not requires extended downtime, but we're trying the new blog post method with this release to see how it is received.

In Version 6.8.3 we have:

New Ventrilo Billing Site

All *new* Ventrilo orders will be managed through our new billing site at http://billing.guildlaunch.net/ This site will handle Ventrilo billing better than the current system and gives us more options in the future for payment options, affiliate programs, and other options. Currently, existing Ventrilo subscriptions cannot be moved to the new system because the Subscriptions are not compatible. This does not change the functionality of the servers *in any way* only how the billing is handled.

If you had a server ordered before today then continue to manage the subscription via PayPal. If you order a Ventrilo server today and after today then you will be able to manage it on the Billing site at http://billling.guildlaunch.net/

NOTE: For increased security the billing site requires a new account that is used only for the billing site.

New Templates

- 2 New Champions Templates
- 1 New DC Univers Template
- A Star Trek Online Template
- A Star Wars: The Old Republic Template

Feature Enhancements

- The Shoutbox Widget is now transparent
- The Twitter Widget is now transparent
--- If the above 2 changes conflict with your customization then let us know and we can work with you. It is a vast improvement for most, if not all, templates.
- The shoutbox and Twitter widget will now auto link URLs in them.
- The Twitter widget will now link "@"s to the person's Twitter page.
- The Twitter widget will now link topics "#blahblahblah" to a search for the topic
- WoW Heroes is now on the Game Tools page for WoW
- WoW Heroes is now on the Character Profile for WoW characters
- There is now a "[mp3_player]" BBCode available in the forums. It was introduced for the PugCast Podcast http://www.pugcast.com/ which we are sponsoring and can be seen in action on the homepage of their site. Note: The PugCast is NSFW, but that's their style and their up front about it.
- You can now edit an image's title and description on the Image Details page.
- The DKP page for a character now shows info on which pools they will display in and why they will/or won't display in a given pool. We hope this will help Admins figure this out and will help players see what is required so they can notify Admins.
- New Ony (10 man) and Ony (25 Man) icons are available on the calendar
- The opening page of the Guild Application process now states some more info about the guild and the process.

Bug Fixes

- A few spelling bugs have been fixed
- Warcrafter links for certain realms have been fixed
- All currency types will now display for games that are configured with multiple currencies on the guild bank
- Some pages without proper encoding are encoded properly with utf-8
- Light and Dark forum post backgrounds are now available in the WoTLK full width template
- Item hovers for items with the same name can now be properly displayed with the Item ID without the info being swapped back and forth between the lower iLevel and higher iLevel items.
- Locked sub-forums will now display properly
- Awards are now properly removed from the forums when deleted


Performance Enhancements

- All item hover scripts are now optionally loaded for guilds set to a different games. Put another way only the item hover script for your game shows by default. This was done to improve load times and to not slow GL pages down when external sites are having a problem. This was quite common with War DB and sometimes with WoWHead.
- The WoWHead script has been moved to load at the bottom of the page. This should not effect functionality, but should make the page feel as if it is loading a touch faster. It will also diminish any load time issues they are having on their end.
- We've combined some CSS files into one file to reduce HTTP requests.

Dust 514 - More Info - Single Shard

More information is available about Dust 514 at a conceptual level now. As things flesh out this game is sounding more and more interesting. I like FPSs, but they aren't a core game of mine as they are with some other people here at Guild Launch. So, the idea of FPS/RPG MMOs intrigues me. I fully believe that Hi-Rez has hit on a good idea with Global Agenda, but Dust 514 looks like another excellent way to merge these genres.

One of CCP's unique strong points is knowledge of how to scale single shard game worlds. Eve Online is one massive game world that routinely holds 10s of thousands of players. CCP will be applying the same technique and experience to Dust 514. My hunch is that if CCP delivers a solid core FPS game then Dust 514 is going to be huge because of the interlinked game play. Their approach is another answer to the question of "How do we bridge FPS and RPG in an MMO environment?". My gut says that CCP has hit on one possible winning approach and you have to have a sister MMO to do it this way. Which means only a few can take this approach. Interesting...

-Stephen