One of today's patch notes stood out to me:
"Bonuses from items (strength, wisdom, dexterity and constitution) will now affect your character properly."

Wait, what? So, all that time agonizing if 3.14159 stamina was better than 2.71828 bonus damage to magic spells was previously worthless? Gah. It's kind of surprising that a game can launch without something like bonuses to statistics working.

Now, game mechanics don't have to be all in the open and clearly explained; although, I think it's better if you can understand the differences between two different stats. But, at least having basic stats have an effect on the game seems to be somewhat important to gameplay.

This is also problematic because it means that the game hasn't been properly balanced with these stats taken into consideration. Now, admittedly, the stats in AoC aren't huge. That 1.41421 bonus to Wisdom added to my base 200 points of Wisdom isn't going to make a huge difference. But, if someone were to take all those pieces of equipment and add them up, whats the effect? Did game mechanics take this possibility into account? Did it anticipate this and balance the game expecting this? If the system wasn't working initially, then probably not.

So, now we'll see how those few extra points of Wisdom affect my Tempest of Set.