Atlantica Online: New Patch Rocks Out

The picture is a screengrab from an Atlantica Online mini-site that discusses the details of the new patch, Van Gogh's Gallery. In the photo: the first mercenary capable of using the Instrument weapon class, Paganini the Minstrel. Details below.

I guess I should be glad I'd finished lunch before checking out the details for the latest patch to the MMORPG Atlantica Online, "Van Gogh's Gallery" - I might've done multiple spit takes at my PC otherwise.

In keeping with its long-standing tradition of references to the history and culture of the real world, the latest content update will now allow players to explore the world of that master painter, Vincent Van Gogh.

The developers really took the idea of Van Gogh to heart with this patch: the background of the mini-site is recognizably one of that artist's most famous works, The Starry Night.

Lots of new features come with this patch, and the important ones include the raising of the level cap (from 120 to 130), a new set of armor and weapons for the level 130 set (Dragon God Equipment), new dungeons, and more.

Funny how they gave Paganini a bit of a sex change, eh? The real Paganini, the celebrated Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer Niccolò, is remembered for being one of the most accomplished violin virtuosi, as well as for his technically challenging and imaginative compositions.

The AO version is a sexy young woman with a penchant for leather and a long blonde ponytail, and is the NPC who starts you off on the quest to recruit the Minstrel. It rather puts me in mind of a funny picture: the developers playing a lot of Guitar Hero / Rock Band while conceptualizing the new merc.

A few caveats:
- The patching better be an uneventful and easily-done deal. I don't want to be staying up at all hours of the night and babysitting the home PC just to make sure it all loads properly. Patching DONE. Silly me, I forgot that I'd been preloading the patch while playing all day yesterday, so I only had to complete the actual patching process. Hit a few glitches on the way, but there were helpful threads in the forums, so that got sorted out nicely.
- No more bugs in the code that cause the game to crash, PLEASE. We've had periodic problems with that since the August Hwarang patch; things were really bad in the first few weeks since lots of people were reporting game crashes. Turns out it was something in the code that caused memory leaks. I hope there are none of those this time. UPDATE: Jury's still out on this one. We'll see in a day or two.

For more details, see the patch notes: HERE.

I can't wait to go and see what's new in Atlantica!