Is it possible that we can get announcements for all updates? It would also help if the scheduled maintenance was also announced like the night before or something. My internet connection can be weird, so I like to reset things before I download patches and stuff. I don't want to lose my connection in the middle of a patch and risk having to reinstall everything.
I am not going to pout about it if nothing gets done, but it would help. When ever I notice that I loaded a patch I come here to check headmaster's announcements to see what has been added to my computer. And I like the fact that maintenance is usually done like at 3 or 4am, but sometimes we actually make plans to be on that late so a bit of a warning would definitely be welcome.
The evening before a scheduled 3am Central maintenance, the game launch window indicates that there's is upcoming scheduled maintenance.
Just because we do maintenance, doesn't mean there are updates to the game, and this is indicated within the messaging on the game launch window.
It usually states something like: Wizard101 Scheduled Maintenance Wizard101 the game will be offline tonight from 3:00am to 4:00am Central US Time.
Changes will not be made to the game or your characters during this downtime.
During this time, players will be unable to log in to the game, and active players will be prompted to log out. When we do these, they are just database cleanup, server restarts and other behind the scenes technical updates that do not impact our players in a way that you will see (such as new items) but are used to increase performance within the game.
If changes are made to the contents of the game, it IS messaged on these message boards, usually under the Headmaster's Announcements, or sometimes if it's just an update to the Pets like fixing Spiffy Pop and Mega Snack Packs, it will be placed in the corresponding section, in this case the Pets section of the Message Boards.
Announcements are always made by an administrator, usually Professor Greyrose, but sometimes Gamma steps up to assist as well.
I've often been surprised at the lack of a changelog here. Would it be possible for all changes to the game to be listed after updates, not just the major changes?
As a newer player, it has been confusing for me to come across some things. For example, I once found an announcement saying that "winged mounts" weren't dropping at a high enough rate, but I never found anything saying if that was addressed. There are many such examples, and veteran players or developers may be familiar with when certain things were fixed, but newer players will come across the old complaints on the forum without seeing any update indicating it was fixed.
A changelog would be great for identifying things like that. I absolutely love the Update Notes page, particularly the bulleted lists under "Badge Updates," "Character Updates," etc. That would be perfect if it could be separated by the day that a particular element was updated.
Even the little things like "We fixed the Aeronaut badge," "Monsters will now drop pet snacks," or "We sped up spell animations" are awesome to know.
