The following changes will be applied at server restart at midnight:

PETS
I probably went a bit overboard on the max range a pet can be from it's master in the last update. It has been reduced to 30m from 40m (was originally 20m). This should be plenty to allow a ranged player with a ranged pet to move around during an encounter without the pet keep porting back to you.

BLACKLIST
The blacklist no longer shows the blacklisted player's location - it will just show if they are online or offline.

MONSTERS
Corrected an issue with monsters randomly resetting and going back to their spawn point when their target was close to a wall or obstruction.

MONSTER AGGRO
I feel an explanation is in order as to why monster aggro has changed since the last update.

When trying to find and fix the bug that allowed you to aggro a monster and enter a portal, causing the monster to remain at the portal doing nothing, letting the rest of the party damage it without consequence, I found some other problems, including a piece of code I enabled some time back thinking that it corrected another issue I was facing at the time. But it actually broke monster aggro.

When a monster is engaged by a player it will chase them for a pre-determined amount of time (followtime) and a pre-determined distance (followrange). If the player runs away for longer than the followtime without hitting AND damaging (or provoking) the monster, or the monster hitting the player, it will first look for another target (party member) and switch to it, or if there is no party member in range and on it's aggro list (either from the player damaging it, or from being healed by an aura or potion) it will reset and run back to it's spawn point on the map.

The same happens if the player runs further away than the monsters set followrange, without hitting it or getting hit by it.

When you hit the monster, or it hits you, the followtime is reset and begins again - which is why you can lure monsters by doing damage to them every so often - they will just keep following you forever - providing you hit them within their followtime and stay within their followrange.

However, due to this piece of code I enabled, the followtime was getting reset every time the monster recalculated it's path to get to you - causing it to follow you forever, or until you got further away than it's followrange.

Each monster in the game has it's own followtime and followrange and it depends on it's location, but I will outline below a general idea of what those are:

Followtime in seconds / Followrange in metres
Field monsters 10s / 30m
Dungeon bosses (all modes) 10-20s / 50m
Dungeon monsters (normal mode) 30s / 100m
Dungeon monsters (hard mode) 30s / 150m
Dungeon monsters (insane mode) 30s / 200m
Dungeon monsters (hell modes) 30s / 250m
World bosses 10-30s / 50-100m (varies greatly)
Magic Tower 30s / 100m
Vortex 180s / 170m
Snow Mountain 180s / 170m
Hall of Elements 180s / 170m

Ok so hopefully that makes sense and explains how things should work and what was broken. Tanks will be required to alter their playstyle and actually use some skills to keep packs of monsters aggroed as was originally intended, not just run through them on mounts. Both tanking classes have several ~30s cooldown AoE skills that can keep a large pack of monsters aggroed on them indefinately whilst luring. I have tested this myself on Templar using Fate and Destiny skills to keep Laioha Hell Mode monsters on me for as long as I wish without them resetting or turning to other party members.

Changes
Dungeon bosses Followrange increased from around 30m to 50m.

Dungeon monster Followtime and Followrange has been standardized, as set out below. This change has pros and cons. Many dungeons monsters will now have a much greater Followrange than before, making it easier to lure packs of monsters, but some dungeons that were set with incredibly high Followtime or Followrange (or both) have been reduced (TLC, ToA Insane, Golden Temple (some monsters), Circus Hard/Insane, Catacombs, VSM Normal/Hard, Wonderland).

Dungeon monsters (normal mode) 30s / 100m
Dungeon monsters (hard mode) 30s / 150m
Dungeon monsters (insane mode) 30s / 200m
Dungeon monsters (hell modes) 30s / 250m

Some dungeon monsters have a much higher Followtime and Followrange and will follow indefinately, such as Black Temple's Summoned Worm Worm, Mumu's Pet, Summoned Viper, Catacombs Warder, Wasp, Wasp Spawner, Temple of Atlantis Summoned Nieles/Nielium, to name a few.


DAMAGE
Have you ever wondered why your autoattack does different damage each time, or why sometimes a skill with some armor penetration ends up doing less damage than a skill without any at all?

When calculating how much damage an attack will do, the target's defense is modified randomly by -1~20%. I can't speak for the original developers as to why they did this, but I can only assume it was done to give damage a more random pattern instead of exactly the same numbers each time.

The problem with this system, is that the target's defense can end up being reduced by 20%, which is exactly the same as having a skill that penetrates 20% defense - however, skills that DO actually penetrate defense are not using this random element. The damage of these penetrate skills is being calculated on the full defense amount.

So you could hit with a skill that has no penetrate defense and it *could* end up doing more damage than a skill that has 10% penetrate defense.

Changes
Modified the random element (-1~20% defense) when calculating damage depending on the target's defense to -1~5%.
Skills with penetrate defense now use the same formula as skills without penetrate defense.

The result of these changes will be slightly lower, but more consistent damage done to targets overall, slightly less but more consistent damage taken overall, and Skills with penetrate defense will be more effective.

WHO'S ONLINE
The Who's Online list will no longer display the map name and character level of players on forced PK maps.