SOE comes up a new Matrix: The other side of the looking glass which featuring the valentine events and the combat effects.

Happy Valentine¡®s Day
For Valentine¡®s Day this year, I¡®m giving everyone my article originally slated for last Friday! (Yeah, I¡®m cheap.) Valentine¡®s Day, I feel, is best observed by spending time with people you care about or thinking about them if you can¡®t be close. Remember, in The Matrix Online, nothing says love like a boot to the head. Just ask anyone from Vector--they¡®re always spreading that kind of love around.

It¡®s A Long, Long Way to Tipperary
Last week was a long one here in the Seattle studio. The team has been jamming on Combat Revision 2.0 and we finally got Update 5 out the door.

We¡®re happy to see the positive feedback about the new combat effects. We also appreciate everyone keeping an open mind to the removal of Tactics numbers and damage absorption text. Our hope is that the combat effects give enough visual feedback for you to make strategic decisions during combat.

Even though we¡®ve come a long way in implementation over the past few months, we still have the final stretch ahead. There are still items we feel must be completed before CR2.0 is released and there¡®s all your feedback to take into consideration. The journey has been a long one since the initial proposal last year, but we¡®re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. (No, it¡®s not a subway car.)

Editutorializing
As some of you noted, the Tutorial isn¡®t automatically available when you create a new character on the External Playtest server. At this time, the client build automatically appends a change that skips the Tutorial.

Now, I was initially going to tell you how to force your way into the Tutorial, but I figured I should check it out beforehand. Let¡®s just say, I¡®m glad I did. There are currently a few stopper bugs that we need to fix before opening the Tutorial for testing. I¡®m pretty sure you¡®re not supposed to loop back to the Tutorial after skipping it and going to the Loading Area. But what do I know?

Keep in mind that the major changes to the Tutorial are related to combat. Other than checking that and looking for bugs, there¡®s not much new to see there at this time.

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