this was written for all the players of old, to remember good (and bad) times,
and for all you new players, so you can know what this game has gone through
over the almost 6 years(?) it has been on the net.
written by: Slayer333
know that I do not claim to have been here for most of these events,
I am merely documenting them
The Beginning: Alpha Stages
In the Beginning...
EXP was originally gained by hitting an enemy, being hit, and by dodging, this led
to problems with minion EXP balance, so it was changed on October 15th, 2001
to make it so minions would only recieve EXP for hitting an enemy.
this was eventually changed (again) to the current system.
Now, back in the beginning, it was all tanks, none of this "spell" stuff we have
now, but that changed on November 1st. Jonathan explained the new magic system
which is quite different than what we are accustomed to today. Spells had a
Maximum and Minimum success rate for casting the spell, and enchantments only
lasted for a certain amount of rounds, based off of how much EXP was in it.
Weapons took precedence over DD back then, so a tank casting fireball was quite
possible. DD spells such as Fireball would not be able to damage all four minions
right from the start, as they do now. You would gain the ability to attack more
minions as the spell level increased.
On November 12th, 2001, Jonathan added the ability to create more than one character
which drastically affected how the game was played (IE: The introduction of farms)
Which meant you did not have to register more than once to have more than one
character.
November 20th was the day the bank was introduced, though, not the current day bank
one would find on Cb1. No, this bank was useful. The banking deposits were
larger than present day (or there were none, hard to tell from the post),
making depositing money worthwhile.
On November 24th, 2001, at approximately 4:50 PM, the first botchecks went live.
These were not your modern day botchecks however! These were vicious, man
eaters! Failing two of these (or ignoring it) would reset ALL of your characters.
Luckily for us, Jon changed this three days later, making it so it would only
reset your active character...yay.
December 3rd marked the ability to unlearn spells and enchantments, a big bonus to
most because Jon had not fully finished the enchantments, and they were a waste
of space at the time.
January 4th marked the official launch of spells, all skills and spells were fixed
to at least do what they were supposed to, with a few tweaks needed to the balance,
however.
January 4th also held the Cb1 beta release date, which was scheduled for that monday. This marked
the end of the Alpha testing period.
The Beta Stage (2002)
On January 30th, 2002, the Auctions were added, though buggy and a rough version of what
we have now.
On January 31st, true camping as we know it (or knew it, I should say) was born, before
then, the stores only rotated inventory at noon and midnight, nothing in between.
On February 12th, the first bank nerf was introduced, the bank interest for 7 days was reduced
from 15% to 12%.
On February 15th, another bank nerf was implemented. The deposit maximium was taken to one
million, per user.
On April 20th, the first official tournament ended, the winner of the first official tournament
was Raptor, with his character "Evil". The next day it was announced that official tournaments
would be held weekly.
On May 6th, a change was made to the infamous "Finger of Death", considered to be one of the most
overpowered spells on CB, if not the most overpowered.
On June 18th, Magic Penalties were added to armor as well, this hit FoD mages hard, as the success
rate for their spells dropped drastically.
On June 26th, Jon added Vampiric Aura. Initially this was thought by a few players to be the start
of tank blender, due the the HP gain. (Guess it took a little longer for tank blender to take hold than they had anticipated)
On August 23rd, Jonathan created a new weapon for the player "Grim", calling it "A Carp Named Stinky".
Its stats were as follows: [400x10](+0)
On September 28th, the second FoD nerf arrived, it was made so that a minion who had FoD trained
to less than 110% of his HP would take increased damage based on the HP:FoD ratio. It was
predicted by many players however, that this was only a temporary solution, and that in a month
FoD would be king again.
On November 3rd, The Rental system was introduced.
December 1st marked the introduction of the botcheck system we currently have in CB.
December 6th held the "Store bot checks", this was introduced to prevent a bot from being able to buy
every rare in the store 24/7.
December 12th brought the knighting of the one known as Todd. This was before his merge with Spydah.
The End of 2002 (beta)
January--July 2003
January
The first of the month brought a rather large changelog, some of the more controversial changes were:
1.) Defenders stay damaged when attacked. Defender HP resets as far as attackers are concerned
every 3 minutes.(later changed to 2 minutes)This has no effect on the HP the defender's
actual user sees -- he still won't have to pay to heal himself when killed.
Before this change, farming a character over and over again was a VERY big part of the game, removing this
caused a lot of complaining (most of it in the form of people using bolded, all caps font), however,
it did introduce much more use of strategy.
2)Battle allocation rate decreased. Ratio of max allocation:allocation rate increased. Base award
doubled. Overall effect should be less xp per unit time. If this change stays in, older characters
will be re-scaled to proportional new levels. PR scale may adjust so PR stays constant.
Though this changed caused some small time whining, most of the "Jon has gone insane" posts were aimed more
towards the loss of farming.
The second day of January brought news almost as shocking as the first, Finger of Death was laid to rest.
in its place, the spell we all know as decay was created.
January 3rd, 2003. Doomsday. "The Rescale" of Carnage Blender was completed. To quote Jonathan:No
Characters or items have been deleted, but everything has been scaled to the new system. This
includes stats, spells, money, bank deposits, item enchantments, and unspent xp.
Some players have trouble with complete sentances involving both cases of the alphabet, so let me
summarize: YOU WILL HAVE LOWER STATS. THIS IS NOT A BUG. EVERYONE HAS LOWER STATS. YOUR RELATIVE STRENGTH
IS UNCHANGED.
Oddly enough, the thread only lasted for 20 replies.
May, 2003
May second: The Cloak of Thought was added as the new supporter item.
May ninth was a good day for everyone who had begged for an official CB clock, as Jonathan puts it:One of
the frequently-requested, frequently-ignored requests has historically been for an official CB clock. I
have decided to show mercy on all you timezone-challenged people, and you may now see the Official CB Time
in Settings.
On May 14th the "evil", "stupid" spellcheck was added to CB. Score one for Bast!
Bloodlust was added on May 23rd, however it was a bit different, it casted on your entire team, meaning you could
have BL enchanters.
July, 2003
July 1st brought on another Bank nerf, non supporters had their limit decreased to 600k.
On July 21st enchantments were tweaked so that they lasted the entire battle, instead of basing it on how much EXP
was in them.
"The July Rescale"--July 24th, Jon admits to messing up the fight rewards, so there has to be a bit of a rescale of
weapon NW, EXP, and Money, as you can imagine, people were not exactly cheering. :-)
Ablative Shield was added on July 31st, though I guess the real interesting part of that changelog was the first reply
Victim, July 31 2003 1:28 AM EDT
*cough* Dispel Magic *cough*
sound like a familar spell, anyone?
September, 2003
The only big change in this month was on September 30th, the Forge was added to the game, only a little different than what
we have now though, and there was no 20% BS fee, it was freeeeeee :-)
November, 2003
The ability to purchase BA was added November 1st.
2004
January, 2004
January 2nd: The Elven Long Bow was added to the game. In my opinion, this could quite possibly be the most complained about
weapon on Cb1 (in terms of being overpowered)
January 5th also gave the ability for users to untrain the Intrinsic stats (HP/STR/DX)
January 5th wasn't all rainbows and butterflies ;-) Forge efficiency was reduce 65%!...ouch.
January 9th brought some relief to the forgers, efficiency was bumped by about 25%.
January 16th held an interesting change, Whacky fight rewards were introduced. Though, thats not quite as interesting
as Jon's post:
The people have spoken. And for once the people asked for something neither retarded nor fiendishly difficult to implement.
March, 2004
March 11th: The beta code for Clans was introduced, it was pretty much the same thing as we have now, with bigger "%" bonuses.
March 27th: Bloodlust was made a melee only skill, as it is now. Before that, HxBows+BL+Loch=pwnage.
May 2004
May 1st: Spell chance to cast was removed, they were made to how it is today, 100% chance to cast. Spell effectiveness was reduced
to compensate.
May 1st: Another bank nerf? *pow* dead bank :-). Deposit limits were lowered to 60k for a non supporter, 100k for supporters.
May 1st: Unarmed Combat added....chuckle
May 12th: Black Market added--However, you could buy votes, I recall seeing a post where someone spawned 4 ELBs in one day ;-)
May 29th: Favorite Opponents list added...W00t :)
June, 2004
June 8th: Mentors were added to the game, or, the ability to sign up to be a mentor at least.
July, 2004
July 1st: ExBow added to the game.
July 2nd: New supporter item added! A Trollskin Armor [22] (+10% to STR; +.2 BL
July 5th: The End Of Free Forging. The forge fee of 20% of the BS cost was added, plenty of replys to that post, as you can guess,
not very many were happy campers. :)
July 30th: Mace of Disruption [205x13] +40 was added as the new Supporter Item.
September, 2004
September 1st: DB's caught a huge buff, their Evasion bonus was set to equal their "+", instead of a +15 to evasion.
November, 2004
November 9th: Cloak of Balrog Flames added (originally named Holocaust Cloak, but renamed due to player complaints). This was not
similar to the current Cb1 CoBF, or the old Cb2 CoBF at all, however. The damage done to enemy minions was way higher, and it gave -5%
to STR/DX/magic. The upgrade costs were not linear as they were on CB2.
December 2004
DOOMSDAY: December 13th, 2004. CB2 IS ANNOUNCED!
The game was thrown in a state of confusion, and the inevitable whining that Jonathan was betraying all the faithful Cb1 members.
over 140 posts were in the annoucement thread.
2005
May, 2005
May 9th, 2005. The last changelog of Cb1 to date.
Cb1 signups for new accounts were closed. The final nail in the coffin for a lot of Cb1 players.
December 27th, 2005. R.I.P. CB1.
Players of Mention
Todd-Spydah; created the death machine formerly known as Spid.
Sutekh; long time rival of the Todd-Spydah duo, for quite some time Sutekh's character "RedDwarf" was the only competition Spid had
MrsDi; IMO, one of the nicest players to ever grace the game
Saint; Well known admin, fair and honest
BCMoto; first x27 ELB...largest weapon in the game at over 400m NW...first player to over 1 billion Net Worth, and a good guy all around.
Freed; x28 ELB...(first and only one) and as you can guess, MPB belonged to him (over 300m) ended up with the highest NW, at well over 1.5 billion NW
wldflr; one of the kindest CB players out there, and IIRC, held the record for the shortest amount of time getting to 1 or 2 m PR (my mind is slipping here ;) )
Sefton; brilliant strategist, and how else would wldflr have found her way over here? ; )
Crackmonkey; what can I say, some of the funniest threads on Cb1 were spawned because of him, perhaps the best known banned player of the game?
Mushu; apparently edible, though, as the late lumpbot would say: eat at your own risk.
Darkmage; better watch out Jon, I think he is still hunting for you...*chuckle*
I had a longer list, but this was all I could get around to finding before the shut-down.
these are only players I can remember, I am 100% positive I have missed many worthy players, perhaps someone remembers better than I do
