Woot!!! Reconnects, Candy canes, party improvements and More!!

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine,
public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health,
what have the Romans ever done for us?"

Actually, I'm not sure whether this is the best ever. I can't decide between this or observer mode. That was awesome as well.

yay, definitely going to not quit now

Very cool stuff. My first thought on the party system, though, is that they introduced this ~2 months after releasing Nightfall, which introduced heroes and has greatly reduced the number of people looking for PUGs, since most people will just hero/hench missions and quests. Hopefully the party search will inspire more people to use human parties. And the reconnect thing, well, I can't really think of a downside to that.

My monk and paragon can't wait to get their santa hats

w00t! Yay!! woohoo!!! wheeee!!!!

(and all similar interjections.)

And it can't be used as an excuse as easily anymore

Finally! Yay!
Some great updates!

How about this one though. If i disconnect in a timed pvp match such as Broken tower or courtyard, I can hopefully get back before the timer ends, but what if i cant get back in time and my team *hopefully* wins even though i errored, will i be able reappear in the next match ok? Also same with HoH?
Seems like the answer is yes but can Alex confirm this for us?

not sure if this has been answered already but what happens when your in ha and disconnect and u load into the next map. will u still b there or are you going to be replaced by a hench.

same goes for pve, what happens if your exploring with your group you disconnect and they go into another zone. do you spawn into the other zone as well or stay exactly where you disconnected?

Fantastic news.

Didn't Alex explain the first question?

When disconnected, the system informs your teammates that you were disconnected. Your character will still be there in the group for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes your character's session is terminated like a normal disconnection if you have not logged back in within that time. It would be essentially going AFK until you logged back in, your character will still be vulnerable within that time.

As for the Heroes question, doesn't the Heroes stay in the group if the leader disconnects?

Lykan, acutally, Alex did reply somewhat on that issue.
Your character is treated as AFK, and hence, any completion rewards and such are applied if it happens while the character is in AFK mode.
So yeah, most likely, you should be fine as long as you come back in that 10 minutes.

I would assume that even with henchies you stay connected to the area for that 10min window since it responds as if you went afk. And ya gotta love people that don't read the threads -_- One would think that they would at least check the devs notes if they dont feel like reading the whole thread

yay reconnect !! i could rlly use that

go Anet !

/cheer
/dance

I'm really looking forward to the reconnect feature, I still have to unplug the router every time I would want to play for more than half an hour.

Yes I did see an answer to that effect, I only ask because somewhere alex said when you reconnect you will reappear in exactly the same spot as where you disconnected which is ok in Pve as your party can just wait, but obviously you wont be able to reconnect in the same spot there if the timer and match has finished. As you say, I would imagine you just appear in the staging area of the next match "AFK". Was just wondering if this is correct.

Pmsl Might go watch that right now!

Your character will be AFK. I would assume that as long as your character is still in the group, it will be pulled along if the instance changes.

There will probably be different rules for PvP matches. Though Alex never touched on any specifics yet.

So I guess Alt+F4 for survivors is a thing of the past?

Thats kinda sucky for them but in every other instance i could think of, awesome update.

Alt+F4 probably ensures a clean exit - the game reports that you are quitting and makes you leave the game. Disconnecting which usually results from losing synchronization with the game server or lag spikes does not.

pretty excellent additons to game.

shame becuase these features should have been there since the initial release...