Some of you have raised concerns about the new AB listings included in
the class helpfiles - that they diminish aspects of Achaea that you
treasure such as discovery through one's own efforts, and for some
classes, the prized secrecy surrounding your skills.

Our intent in making these abilities listings public is to help guide
newer players in making educated choices in which classes would best
suit them, and which skills they'd like to learn. Achaea's classes are
unique, and a new player who wants to play a typical wizard-type
character may be quite confused in trying to decide initially between a
Magi, an Occultist, a Shaman, et cetera. Not to mention once the player
has chosen a class, which skill to learn in first to get the kind of
abilities he or she most wishes to learn.

While the class helpfiles as they were previously provided some
guidance, we felt that revealing the AB listings -- the simple list of
skills with a small blurb about each one -- would be even more helpful
in giving insight into what each class is like, without revealing too
much detail for those classes who prize secrecy. (After all, how much
does "Your angel will torture the spirit of your enemies" tell you about
the skill Spiritwrack, for instance?) As Clementius pointed out in his
post, none of this is information that wasn't already available
(sometimes in much greater detail) on easily-found fansites.

For most players, lessons are hard-earned, whether through purchasing
credits from us, or by earning gold in-game to purchase credits from
other players, gained through levelling, or otherwise. It is our
responsibility to provide some official information on what you are
spending them towards, and we have acknowledged and met this. Consider
if we advertised artefacts for sale but refused to tell you what they
actually do. Sure, you could get the information from other players who
had already purchased the artefact, but it would be reasonable to expect
that we would give you some information on what to expect as well.

I hope this helps in better understanding our rationale behind making
the abilities lists public. Feel free to shoot me an email or join in on
one of the discussions on the Achaean forums if you have questions or
concerns not adequately addressed here.

Penned by my hand on the 23rd of Glacian, in the year 411 AF.