Thirty updates a second, new human bodies, and cities on the drawing board

A day split between speed and looks: the world can run half as fast again, the first new bodies arrived, and a lot of new cities went on the drawing board.

The world can run at thirty updates a second. It ran at twenty. Everything that counted time in updates was checked so it keeps real time at any rate: swing timers, jumps and falls, damage over time, drowning and the quest clock. Movement feels smoother and fights answer sooner.

A hundred players over a real network. A hundred test players joined Fairhaven on a separate server at thirty updates a second. All of them got in, and each update took 14 milliseconds, well under half the time allowed. Moving a player now costs about half what it did, and a creature resting on the floor costs almost nothing.

New human bodies, with armour made to fit. A first sample of the next generation of player bodies: three looks each for human men and women, built on the same skeleton, so every animation still works. Plate, ring mail, banded mail, leather, cloth and robes, seven pieces each, are fitted to every body and checked for gaps. With them come 23 rusty weapons and shields. It's a sample to try out (the /newbodies command switches it on), not the final look yet.

Iksar with a lizard's face and Vah Shir with a cat's. The new bodies started with human heads for every race. The Iksar now get a proper snout and the Vah Shir a cat's face.

On the drawing board. Deepwell is an underground city like Fairhaven, reached by a great lift. Fifteen more starting cities have been designed: five open like Fairhaven, five under a great glass dome and five underground like Dreadhaven. Each is big enough for a crowd, has a home for every race and class, and has a barn with stalls for horses. Each can be built in the classic look or a newer one, side by side. They're all being looked at in Blender for now; none of them is in the game yet.