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Merle ambrose call streak

AuthorMessage
Survivor
Feb 12, 2011
46
I have read the F.A.Q about where headmaster ambrose calls you but has nothing for you, he has called me five times in a row and i got nothing. does anyone know how can i fix this because i think i am missing out on something.

Adherent
May 20, 2010
2902
At most levels divisible by 5, and at various other times, Professor Ambrose will send you an alert. When you get there, he won't have anything to say. It's his way of checking up on you to make sure you're still around.

When Mr. Ambrose has something for you to do, he'll have the question mark or exclamation point over his head. If he doesn't have anything to say, you can go on your way without fear of missing anything.

Survivor
May 02, 2011
20
I got one of these calls at level 25. In the message it said something had arrived for me. I ported back to Wizard City and visited Merle. Nothing there, no question mark, etc. Is this supposed to happen or did I miss something? Was there something that was supposed to have arrived? This is my first time playing through so no spoilers please, but advice would be appreciated.

Defender
Jan 02, 2011
138
colagada wrote:
It's his way of checking up on you to make sure you're still around.


no it's not. It's KI being too lazy to fix things. Ambrose either has in the past, or perhaps has now, reasons to call you. However if you've already satisfied the quest (such as already starting the next area of Grizzlehiem) he won't have anything for you.

It's an easy fix. However, apparently it's easier for KI to come up with a fake reason than to fix it right.

Mastermind
Jun 10, 2009
394
tanda1 wrote:
colagada wrote:
It's his way of checking up on you to make sure you're still around.


no it's not. It's KI being too lazy to fix things. Ambrose either has in the past, or perhaps has now, reasons to call you. However if you've already satisfied the quest (such as already starting the next area of Grizzlehiem) he won't have anything for you.

It's an easy fix. However, apparently it's easier for KI to come up with a fake reason than to fix it right.
Wow, you really are being sort of harsh there. KI works hard to make this game suitable for all players.

Astrologist
Jun 04, 2010
1008
tanda1 wrote:
colagada wrote:
It's his way of checking up on you to make sure you're still around.


no it's not. It's KI being too lazy to fix things. Ambrose either has in the past, or perhaps has now, reasons to call you. However if you've already satisfied the quest (such as already starting the next area of Grizzlehiem) he won't have anything for you.

It's an easy fix. However, apparently it's easier for KI to come up with a fake reason than to fix it right.


While I have been critical of some of KI's priorities to bugs, this particular one isn't as simple as you might think. There are many, many things such as friend pictures/stats, calls from various teachers, etc, that are stored in the cache on your local computer rather than on KI's servers. The reason being is that they aren't really critical to your character or to the game interacting with you and therefore they place them locally to reduce load on the system, which thereby makes things better for everyone overall. However, if you change computers or unload and reload the game from your computer, the cache is gone and you will get all the annoying little pop-ups such as these again until your local client catches up. Sometimes you get several at once due to level timing... Therefore it is less of a "bug" and more of a client server design issue. "Fixing" it would require altering the client and location of information storage and would put more unnecessary load on their servers.

I realize that I'm splitting hairs here and I'm not saying you shouldn't be critical, just trying to clarify the situation. I hope that helps.

Adherent
May 20, 2010
2902
tanda1 wrote:
colagada wrote:
It's his way of checking up on you to make sure you're still around.


no it's not. It's KI being too lazy to fix things.


I hardly meant that to be a literal interpretation.

Since you want everything technical, I'll explain why I believe those alerts show up. They are or were alerts for Grizzleheim.

Professor Ambrose calls in every wizard at level 20, asking them to explore Grizzleheim, which is when that world becomes available to explore outside of the common area.

Parts of Grizzleheim are only available at levels 30, 35, and 40 (and possibly also level 25), progressively. Players trying to access those areas before the appropriate level is achieved, won't be allowed. The Merle Ambrose alerts were probably intended to let wizards know that a new area of Grizzleheim was open.

My guess is that the programmers realized that it would be a pain to program those alerts in and have them make sense, since some players may have not explored much, if any, of Grizzleheim. There would need to be flags to test what area of Grizzleheim the player was at, what area he/she was entitled to access, and then send or not send the appropriate alert and have Professor Ambrose say the appropriate message. I would imagine that they put it aside and never got back to it. Since Grizzleheim is optional, this job would probably be given a low priority.


Historian
May 01, 2010
665
dont forget, there is one way this can happen,

when you install wizards on a new computer, all of your past calls are thrown at you at once, same with test realm.

you can avoid most of this by putting your setting for the alerts on critical only, and that will get rid of a bunch of them, but you have to remember to check out the areas you need to when you get to that lvl that requires it, because you may not be alerted

Geographer
Nov 22, 2010
836
colagada wrote:
There would need to be flags to test what area of Grizzleheim the player was at, what area he/she was entitled to access, and then send or not send the appropriate alert and have Professor Ambrose say the appropriate message.


The flags are already there. They have to be, in order to allow the players access or not allow it. Not that hard to add a simple if else statement to the Ambrose alerts.

Astrologist
Jun 04, 2010
1008
crystalwizard12345... wrote:
The flags are already there. They have to be, in order to allow the players access or not allow it. Not that hard to add a simple if else statement to the Ambrose alerts.


Please see my earlier post in this thread regarding the location of some saved data. It is hard if some of the information required to make the if else statement work properly is stored in a "volatile cache" on player's local machines instead of on KI's servers.