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Once upon a time (4,200 some odd days ago) a group of people from the Off Topic forums of World War 2 Online (now Battleground Europe) walked through a portal onto a place called Wild. Being accustomed to rifles and tanks and planes, we were babes lost in the woods. Our survivalist messiah, Bushman, trekked north while creating one of the first maps to exist and found a place we could all live. But you can read about this elsewhere. This history is interesting, but incomplete. Tales of old glory leave out the mundane but wonderful things. For example, the day we thought we set the forest on fire. Sadly my memory is also incomplete and I do not recall the specific individuals who were present at the time beyond one or two. In our earliest days of wurm, we joined the server in sporadic groups and had to be guided north to the promised land. Bloodyhell had placed some campfires to mark the route for those of us coming in on a certain day, and so we learned that campfires were a wonderful source of light. Soon enough, many of us were placing campfires all around our camp area. We then went off exploring the forest, not knowing what to expect or what we might find. It began to get dark, and it seems to my memory glasses that darkness used to be much darker. We pressed on for a bit, foraging and exploring - but then something strange began to happen. At first we thought it was a trick of the eyes, but it soon became undeniable that the area was getting foggy. This fog became surprisingly thick rather quickly. As it became so that we couldn't see the trees just a few feet away from us someone noticed the ominous orange glow coming from the direction of our camp. Someone else suggested that perhaps we should not have left so many campfires unattended, and this idea and panic quickly spread through the group. Surely we had, in our noobness, set the whole forest ablaze! It was a mad rush to get back to camp with buckets to douse the flames, the smoke getting thicker as we went. It seemed an eternity, with the disaster getting ever worse, until at last we burst into the open ground of the camp -- and of course as you all know we had not, in fact, burned down the forest. It was just fog. In the early days, it was common belief among us (until someone actually found out the hard way and starved) that starvation would cause death. Having enough food was a source of great consternation among our little group. Someone had managed to plant a little four-tile farm but it was constantly bulldozed by people digging. Eventually it was established that each person would spend a certain amount of time each day foraging and delivering their haul to the camp cook (darned if I can't remember who it was). So this we did for a day or two, feeding ourselves on lingonberry and nightshade casseroles with a side of potato. Meat was nigh-impossible to get. We had only our terrible little short swords that came as starter gear at the time, and some had already lost those. We couldn't kill anything without casualties. An aged pheasant nearly decimated our whole population on day 2. One day, a large rat wandered into our camp. At first we all ran away, until one of our hunters-to-be goaded us into battle with a cry of "MEAT!!!" and we sallied forth to battle the rat. Some armed with shovels and planks, others with short swords in one hand and carrying their shield in the other - which was not how a shield is to be used - surrounded the rat and brutally bludgeoned it to death in our frenzy. At last the Rat died in glorious battle and we cheered, exultant in our victory! And then came the realization that we had no way to get the meat off the rat. Shovels didn't butcher back then. Dejected, we went back to our vegan lifestyle. Eventually some Blacklighters found us and killed us, built walls around our camp, burned everything that could be burned, butchered our corpses, and scattered our meat around outside the walls. Good times. TLDR; We joined wild and some stuff happened

Most journal goals are single success items like (flatten a tile, ride a cow, enchant an item, etc). But we also have the multiple action goals like : - Hold 10 sermons - Spend 1k favor - sacrifice 10k items, - etc Since this is intended as a new and improved system over the old personal goal system, it would be great if we could actually see the progress.. so it would show in the Journal window like : - Hold 10 sermons (2/10) - Spend 1k favor (0/1000) - Sacrifice 10k items (2.323/10.000) - etc This would help in getting the players more involved and see the actual progress and also with finding bugs, like the favor spending one that's in the forums now, that if people don't know about might just make them waste favor for it without ever completing. This might be the case for other goals as well.

After 3 months, I've finally finished my bridge it's 168 tiles long, 2 tiles wide and connects my island to the finality island on Xanadu.

UPDATE: This Full PvP ban shall conclude in 24 hours. Presumably by Jan 31 @ 00:00 Thank You, Wurm Online Team

I am pretty sure this is true. Used to be one of the first things I would craft once I had a forge was a lantern. But i don;t think i have even carried a lantern in years now. And I have heard stories about those pheasants ? This was a fun read and I loved visualizing you guys all running to put out the "forest fire" or battling the rat with planks of wood.

excuse u, this thread is for information on the sickle of awakening not the poopestry of mclovin

I agree on the sparkles. If it's not easily visible, client hackers will be the only ones that will get there. Now a more serious issue I've seen so far and others have also mentioned: People will use alts to safely check for the moon metals periodically. We definitely need to add guards. About six of them should be enough for even the strongest alt out there. But alts can still run past them, grab the loot and run away. So the loot should be accessible through some delaying mechanism. Either lock the container with a low quality lock, or make it work as the token drain: You click on the tower, select salvage and after 60 seconds you either get the contents or get nothing.

With the introduction of "Summon Soul", we can at last transport players to our location and conquer the vastness of Xanadu a little bit more; if only we knew who to talk to in order to get somewhere... This thread aims to gather information about willing and capable priests across Xanadu offering to transport travellers. Just post here or PM me to have your priest registered in the list. The map is nothing fancy yet, just a modified Leaflet example I clobbered together and hamfisted into my Django server. Could still be developed into something similar to the community map but I doubt the overhead will ever justify that. I'll just pour it in "manually", given that there aren't and won't be many entries on here. http://31.170.106.60/wo/priests/ Priest Contacts: Player: Flubb (Radrohn, Tulon) Location: Windspears @ G18 Timezone: UTC+1 / CET - About every evening past 18:00-19:00 for a couple of hours - online throughout the whole day at weekends. Facilities: Tavern (free beds), runed mailbox (+5% size, Courier [97]), Guard Tower with 6 guards, Highway, public wagoner, a nearby desert and steppe to hunt in (wagoner could ship your goods back to your deed if connected.) Please provide following information to register your priest(s) - The ingame name you want to be contacted by - Your timezone - The map grid cell you are located at Additonal information that may be helpful - Your deed's name if it is registered on the community map; this will provide even better information about your patrons future whereabouts (You can name your deed regardless but if it's not on the map, it doesn't really provide any further information.) - Times you are usually online ontop of your timezone (I won't require this for registration as it may be private, or people don't want to "commit" to the times they name. Although in any case the "usually online" times are, of course, only a hint and pose no obligation for you.) - Any public zones and facilities at your deed that people can refer to during their stay? General guidelines The extent of the service you may provide is up to your own discretion; pricing can be determined in an open round here, and further services discussed in prviate between priest and patron. However, I would point out some obvious things: Qualification: Obviously you just need to be able to cast "Summon Soul" - be that using a battery and a 80+ faith or having a fully fledged 100 faith priest Choose a convenient spot: I'd only be courteous to summon your patron to a place they can easily find their bearing in, such as the coast or something akin to a landmark that is recognizable on the map; ideally put them in an open place in the middle of your community map registered deed so they know exactly where they are. Dropping someone off in a dense forest would not be pleasant. And talking about summon location...no griefing, obviously! Your patron must be able to leave with conventional methods (their feet) and not be endangered by the summoning spot! No lava tiles and steep slopes. Behave, or else. Note for patrons: Enable climb before getting teleported. I'll also take complaints about shenanigans, which may get the offending priest off the list. Yes, I know, I'm the fun police. For Patrons: I thought this was a given but the initial posts suggest it ought to be mentioned - the common courtesy expected from the priests here are asked of patrons as well. Don't randomly mess with the surroundings, people may not want to summon lightly again if people consistently take a hatchet to their off-deed orchards... That's it for guidelines as for now, but it's subject to further suggestions and discussion, as is most of this thread. Suggestions - Extended services could include travelling somewhere else to perform the summon; again, this is up to your own discretion, wether you want to do that at all and how much you charge for that. I can imagine scenarios where I might have to take a boat somewhere else to drop someone off at a place they wouldn't reach on foot from my deed. - Using the IRC ingame chat to handle requests for teleportation so one can just shout into the blue instead of having to work through this list and PM each individual priest who may or may not be on? I'd suggest using #PriestNetworkXanadu, but Freedom chat can probably take the burden for that, even at "maximum traction" I don't think people will request as many teleports that it has to go through different channels. People could technically be asking for teleports in there right now, but this thread may signal boost the possibility to begin with and make more people aware of it. There's currently no active sermon group to boost priests into being capable to participate in this, but with enough requests I can offer my cathedral for this purpose. Otherwise, keep an eye out for the Jolly Roger Monastery to open its gates again: Lastly, a small credit/shoutout to @Shmeric, who came up with the original idea, but renounced taking the reigns over this little community project.

Would be nice if more things would go into the feed box, such as cut grass (which chickens eat outside of the coop) and also corn kernels (fish bait), not only the whole corn cobs. Most fish bait should fit in the feeder, like wurms and grubs also. Maybe also the ability to "crush" bread or other items into "chicken feed" (crumbs in the case of bread)? The "Only seeds" is kinda harsh. Hope others have other good suggestions for things to fit in the coop feeder, and that this might be added!=)

Seems like horses get too much love but ancient game systems like taming are forgotten to implementation. It's a very old system that really needs improvements made. You can only hold one tame at a time, charm works the same way. I think this is a bit silly personally. Imagine if you could tame a few bears to go into battle with you, they are immune to aggro from other monsters unless they do a ton of damage or are not being lead. Make taming actually useful its great for taming hell horses, unicorns but nothing else you can do with it. I'm not fond of monsters attacking tames either, tamed creatures require to much maintenance. With the implementation of improvements to taming, I suggest the ability to allow wildcats to become permanent passive creature into a new creature called 'house cat.' These adorable house cats can become bred to make an assortment of different types of cats. This update would also allow the same treatment for dogs.

Iirc it was changed to not alter based on pop/etc and just be a base amount (which is why so many could be cast suddenly on xan). Not sure if it was posted in the priest overhaul, or elsewhere

I managed to get this mod up and running again. Source and .jar in the link below. https://drive.google.com/open?id=17jq2XbjDZSGhEBtnzWj-Atc9xIrwjPJO See GitHub link below for future releases. Let me know if you run into any issues. For the most part mod functionality is the same as Keenan's original code. I however did add functionality that ignores deeds that are owned by a GM character with power equal to or greater than powerOverride when determining how many deeds the steam ID owns. I can't guarantee I will stay on top of this as much as I would like, as my interest in wurm frequently waxes and wanes. (Also, I am very much an amateur coder- so things aren't probably as clean as they could be )

Guys, if u want to teleport around just play Skyrim for 10 hours, get bored of it and come back to Wurm. This isn't the place for that ######

Honestly thought id open this to see the jk model that would walk and squat, dissapointed

I like the ideas posted, first off guards is a must cause of the alts and also a smaller area that you can build fences in, be horrible with 500 million gates to pass through. And as Mclovin said limit the spawns so you actually have to fight/cap from another kingdom in order to win it, kinda pointless with a bunch of camps where you dont have to fight the enemies to win...

between goals like "100k favor" "global spell" and "70 prayer" i assume this is the final in the priest journal. i'm interested in what the other journal's final one is going to be like now. global spells are extremely rare though, 23 got cast in the entirety of last year *before* they bugged out and could be cast non-stop. Doesn't really seem like something that you can work for, just something you can snipe from under other people. seems kind of out of place next to all the "work towards these over a few months" there's a "be in the right spot at the right time and have nerds curse you out for stealing it" Can't wait for the "ban yellowfinger" threads to pop up again lol

Alright, I pop into this game every few months after playing hardcore for about four years straight. Each time I see more and more being slashed and cut away from the games core. Karma teleport, server borders leading to anywhere, now you want to teleport to anything. You understand a large portion of attraction to this game 'was' that it offered the sense of longing adventures and travel, I can't really fight anyone on it because the only people that are left playing are the ones that are loud enough to sway the opinion of the other twelve or so loud people, and eventually this will probably get added. I really wish people would understand and take to heart the suggestions and feedback from people that have been around for ten years when they say "this just isn't wurm", and then fade away because they can't really care enough to flesh it out; and because I know for a fact you don't understand why it 'isn't wurm'.

what u lol'n about? i dont see a sickle of mclovin

Pint Sized Pintos! More cultural exchanges in the equestrian community today as little BalletWild (skewbald pinto) has come over to Deliverance from OlafHairyBreeks in Xanadu - thanks very much Olaf! Here she is making friends with SilverLady (piebald pinto) - a friendship Ballet quickly cemented by biting Lady's tail. They are almost inseparable now.

I like both of these suggestions. I supposed you don't have to participate if you don't want to travel across the map. However, you are likely to encounter enemies if you choose to participate, which makes the travel risky and worthwhile, since you can catch enemies away from deeds. Some way to make people travel home with their loots would be nice, but nothing too overbearing (I liked the idea that all the loot would be moved to the most recently captured battle camp, so that you dont have to coordinate 4 routes of loot transport, just 1, but it still gives enemies opportunity for interception and a motivation to go roam for you). I don't like the hota statue + lumps spawning safely at home. I think its good to have it carried back (especially the statue, which is worth some money but will slow you down on your way home. More thought will have to go into how you safely transport it home, and the random locations will prevent a safety net of deeds being built around the zone so that travel home poses a small risk as well)

Leaked footage of what caused the Cele server downtime:

people living on the server doesn't cause that much lag, indy used to have multiple times more people than xanadu, and elevation is the laggiest server with 0 people on it its more mobs and item polling

That's not how any of this works!

Best one is old school Jenn-Kellon model actually.

I think travelling in wurm as a "necessity" and as a major part of the games economy has long been lost due to the multiple bad features such as mailing, wagoneers, karma teleport etc. One more feature that goes against the wurm's mentality won't harm the already dead travelling aspect of the game. +1 from me for that reason only.

Product Manager Samool Developers (DEV) - (Development team for Wurm Online) Ausimus Bawat Budda Jaytoo Jberg Majelika - QA Developer Ostentatio Polarbear Samool Saroman - Art Director Warlander Head Game Master (HGM) - (In charge of overall moderation, GM complaints, and grievances) Pomona Assistant Head Game Master (AHGM) - (Assists with HGM duties, stands in for HGM when absent for a longer period of time) Aion Game Masters (GM) - (Account/Password issues, rule violations) Astarte Azul ( Nicrolis ) Belisama Brokkr Confucius Enki ( Dreammaster ) Epiphron Forsete Hafren Hypnos Idunn ( Idony ) Njorun Tarissa ( Ohana ) Vayu ( Stonesolid ) Quality Assurance Lead Tester (QA) - (Logging, tracking of bugs and exploits) Pomona QA Bug Tester Synjor Lead Chat Moderator (LCM) - (CA Applications, CM Applications, CM complaints, and grievances) Belisama Asst. Lead Chat Moderator (ALCM) - (Assists with LCM duties, stands in for LCM when absent for a longer period of time) Brokkr Chat Moderators (CM) - (Chat moderation for all public channels) Baeowuf Bakhita Cthrekgoru Evening / Ballad Explora / Sirreal Lisabet / Jezrai Maxthx Moogien / Humla Nicrolis / Nicrawlis Sandyar / Herix / Sander Saturnfive Serraphine / Tanzanite Spacy Stonesolid / Herobrine Toeol Timothymarker Tristankh / Tantris Willow / Weelow Yaga Community Assistants (CA) - (Answers common questions via CA Help channel) Ashlynne Huser Kaufecake Nahimana Seriphina Sheder Striderlongshanks Lead Forum Moderator (LFM) - (FM applications, complaints, and grievances) Brattygirl Asst. Lead Forum Moderator (ALFM) - (Assists with LFM duties, stands in for LFM when absent for a longer period of time) Solmark Senior Forum Moderators (SFM) - (Standardized moderation for all public boards) Gawain Yldrania Zachariah Forum Moderators (FM) - (General moderation for all public boards) Khellus Melketh SirEvo Community Manager (CM) - (Community Relations) Army Lead Discord Moderator (LDM) - (DM applications, complaints, and grievances) Stonesolid Asst. Lead Discord Moderator (ALDM) - (Extensive case handling, stands in for LDM when absent for a longer period of time) Senior Discord Moderator (SDM) - (Extensive Discord moderation, Community engagement) EvaDaly Xallo Discord Moderators (DM) - (Discord moderation, Community engagement) Kichi Starmoon Pnut Zykat Wurmpedia Manager (WM) - (WA Applications, WA complaints, and grievances) Oluffus Asst. Wurmpedia Manager (AWM) - (Assists with WM duties, Stands in for WM when absent for a longer period of time) Goldfinch Wurmpedia Assistants (WA) - (Project leaders, upholders of editing guidelines, and image uploaders) Kyoko Solmark Zariodan

The issue of removing reinforced tiles has been discussed several times. To my knowledge the point of GM and Devs is that the current situation that only mayor and those with build/mine rights are able to remove them on deed, and not elsewhere. It would make it possible to disrupt innumerous communication lanes all over Freedom to make reinforced tiles free game. Sorry to say, only disintegrate, a truly tricky spell, and deeding remains.Maybe think about a parallel wider tunnel instead of widening the old one.

The screen above is a test of per-camera rendering, currently just grid rendering - foundation to be able to use different cameras for different tasks (for example, one camera being above ground while the other one sits below the ground). Low-level rendering haunts me even in Unity. (it's much easier and clean to use and render such grids using raw GL calls rather than components built into Unity which work well, but don't really handle this specific case of DeedPlanner's uniform, multi-colored and frequently changing grid)

Just throwing a wish out there, well aware that a lot of the player base is more apt to upvote functional stuff and downvote this. But the artsy people is a player base as well and we like our "decorating" options - including animals So with the ridiculous animal colorations being gone, can we ask for something a little more realistic to spice up some pretty lame, tame, but actually useful animals? 1. Extra colors for cows - Let them behave like horse colors? Ie. special colors is a chance thing when you breed the wild ones - and is likely to pass on to offspring. Just throw in a "Fjällko" and a "Jersey" and I would be more than happy. () 2. White bisons - Only on animals bred in captivity - maybe let it have a small chance to appear only on "x amount of traits" animals or something to make it even rarer? Ie. only 5 traited animals have a chance to create this color to start with - but it should be hereditary like with horse colors once it shows up. With bisons now pulling the wagons - I think this would be most awesome.

RockEbony (appaloosa) and HappyHill (black silver) introduce their second 5-speed appaloosa girl! Little HardHunting (appaloosa) born today!

we are a friendly group to.

credit for participation or completing the prayer within 24h, if the goal is kept in my opinion, its def a far cry from a personal goal.

the rite change is bad design especially on smaller servers/pvp servers - so yeah i have to wait several years

they reset the built up global spell favor a month ago do a sermon to check how much more it is

Huge +1. I gave up on keeping them in coop so that I can feed them with grass plus I get 99ql eggs instead of lower ql... Using baits as food is wonderful idea too

Hello fellow Wurmians, I was a long time player of Wurm Online and absolutely loved the difficulty, then Freedom came, and to be honest, the game went carebear mode and I lost interest in a few months. Now with Wurm Unlimited I have the opportunity to start from a decent difficulty level, and as a seasoned programmer, build mods to make this server a lot harder than Wurm Online ever was. Characteristics start at 19.5, and all skills start at 1. The skill gain rate is 1, and action speed multiplier is 1.5 55% Aggressive Creatures, I kept it low because this is meant to be the newbie map. Silver will be next to impossible to get on this map, at least from traders, and Settlement upkeep and deeding costs ARE enabled. I didn't want to just make everything unreasonable so Breeding time is 2x, field growth 12.8 hours, with the tree spread set to 25% Below is the first of 3 maps 4096x4096, the others will be rolled out after the server has been further developed, the first of which is called Morbus. (Yes, I DO like latin) This server is heavily modded, the current list is: I haven't exactly figured out what the max players are going to be, currently it is set to 60. Max Creatures are set to 30,000 at least for now. As for client mods I am using Sortmod, Skilltrack, Thirdperson and Livemap so make of that what you will. I will add to this post as there are new things added to the server, but for now if you are looking for some level of difficulty, this might be what you are looking for. Until then, back to the grind.

end up being scared of gates more then i do PVP

I missed this! Here goes nothing, I might forget some: Sahar Lei Prancer Faith Ballet Sage Jade Flint Vanilla Tails Dalia Coffee Tich Umbra Roman Ida Ibn Waldo Fancy Still need to pick up: Wart Ula "Special horses" from a VEN wish and staff Christmas gifts for Archaed and myself: Melody Harmony Lyric And always buying more!

This is not worthy of a call out thread. This sounds like your own personal little drama; name and shame is meant to be a warning. Legios is very unlikely to run into this situation with someone else, you're just mad.

Meh. So many people believe that fast travel means that people won't travel any more, people won't explore, people won't be as social (as if they are now, lol), people won't <insert some activity people want to force onto others here>. I often wonder if those that believe that have actually experienced it in a Wurm game. Using other games as an example is useless because, you know...different game and all that. Having experienced fast travel on the wu servers I've played on that have it in one form or another, I've found that the opposite is true. Some have highway portals tied in to the highway system. Some have mark/recall runes like in UO, some have set portals in strategic locations, etc. But the thing they all have in common is that they completely debunk the myth that fast travel would be harmful to Wurm. People can gather & be sociable more easily so...they do. People can get to far sides of the map to explore or hunt, (and *gasp* able to get back home within their allotted play time on any given day), so...they do. People can easily get to markets, starter towns, and/or merchants on other people's out-of-the-way deeds so....they do. People can go help a friend or even a stranger who needs help, even if they're on the far side of the map, so....they do. People can <insert any activity that people would like to do but usually can't/don't/won't in wo because they just don't have the time>......so they do. lol What I have seen is that people are so much more social, and I see more people out off their deeds doing various things, on the servers that have some form of fast travel than on the ones that do not and in wo. Granted I've not played every wu server but these have been my observations on the ones I have played on. With all that said though, I don't like the idea of exclusivity being placed on travel as proposed in the OP. It should be for all, even the unwashed masses. lol +1 for some sort of fast travel -1 for placing any sort of exclusivity or roadblocks on it

or like, you have your own priest that can summon soul back to your own deed? there shouldn't be any form of teleporting, karma, summon soul or anything like that, you can see it in any other mmo, you introduce all these fast ways to get around and 95% of the map is unused because everyone travels to the best spots for quests/grinding/whatever and completely ignores the rest. what's the point of having a giant world if you just teleport from deed to deed

I am not sure what you are getting at, suggesting Red Baron was not good. I have been here since 2011 and I happen to think Red Baron was one of the best, most open and approachable staff members we ever had on the team. I very very often get the feeling that the dev team "as a whole" thinks rather poorly of their player base, and does a GREAT deal of eye rolling "behind the scenes". Red Baron was one of the few who always treated the entire playerbase with an overwhelming amount of courtesy, respect and sheer openness. PS: Alectrys is another member of the team who I think goes over and beyond in courtesy and professionalism. Every single interaction I have ever has with her over the years has been an absolute delight.

if it is a pride thing they shouldnt be allowed to sell on freedom.

Not sure if this helps any concerns but GMs aren't allowed to be involved in a situation they are involved in as a player, or have personal ties to. I know this isn't a perfect world but that's how things are intended to go and usually is. Sometimes it's unavoidable to appear biased or abusing internal information. For example one time on elevation many years ago, BL killed MR poles in south ele in a boat fight, and their corpses were bugged invisible. MR poles were already coming back to the fight with those of us from the capital deed including me who was a CM at the time, but halfway there BL submit support ticket about the invisible corpses. This means I am able to see the tickets and know what is going on and that they are likely still in the water waiting for GM support. Unfortunately I am already on the way back with the people that died and they want revenge. I do not tell them about the ticket as that is leaking information, so my options are to either restrict my own gameplay and karma home avoiding telling why and giving my team a disadvantage when they could have found someone else to take my boat seat, or stay and act as if nothing occurred since it is what I was already doing. Naturally this upset BL and certain people accused me of abusing info from tickets despite me being the only one on my side with the knowledge. Except... for Brqqq who was on the boat next to me and actually a GM and yet no one said a word about him. There was also a time pre-staff when I got a knarr stuck in a cave wall and needed a GM to help. Just so happened the GM I got played on BLH and the knarr was for a bunch of us to go raid BLH. Nothing odd happened. There is also that other staff can tell when you as staff are on their server (which signifies raids on epic home servers), and I've been on both sides of this many times. Nothing odd happened still. Staff are trusted to keep staff and player separate, more so GMs. Anyone that has played WU knows what GMs can do and see. GM actions are logged and anyone abusing their power for gain in pvp would be removed for it. Feel free to report legitimate concerns of staff abuse to Enki and it will be looked into, but as of currently don't expect a personal response since after your report it becomes an internal matter which doesn't mean it won't be taken seriously.

I decided to resign from the Wurm Online development team. This was not due to any specific event, but instead a much longer sequence of events and general disagreement with deep-rooted policies in place for the Wurm Online team. I joined the team to make progressive changes for the game, and fix long standing issues with existing systems. The priest rework was a major accomplishment in that regard, overhauling a major system of the game into a much healthier state. However, I truly feel that the most significant issues with the game cannot be fixed through code. The common theme between everything that caused my resignation can be traced to one aspect: Communication. The first part would be development communication to the players. Certain features and development goals are kept secret with poor reason. Major changes can be implemented with players reading about them during the patch notes while the server is down. Without going into detail, Tower Chaining was one such feature that was nearly mishandled in this regard. This type of secrecy in the development leads to anxiety for players. What is the future fate of Epic? Should players continue playing there? If they place a new deed on Elevation, is there a possibility of the map being reset shortly after? How much heads up will be given? All these questions stem from the fact that there is no official statement for plans on the future of Epic. Everything is being done behind closed doors and leads the community to speculate. The players don’t know if there’s a plan for Epic at all. Making sure that content is complete before announcing it is one thing. Leaving the community in a state of anxiety without giving them something to look forward to is a whole different beast. There doesn’t need to be a set date, there doesn’t need to be a specific timeline. If something gets delayed, there was a reason. State the reason and trust the community to support it. Everyone in this community just wants the game to get better, but get kept at arm’s length due to fear of having them bark up a storm when something doesn’t get done. If you communicate clearly, and speak to your players like you’re having a conversation with a human instead of calming an angry consumer, you’ll see a much better response. The second part is an extension of the first, which is constraints imposed on staff when it comes to communicating with players. It was very recent that I received a discord PM regarding someone wondering who they should contact in order to report someone. I asked in the general staff channel if there was anyone around who could help this player. It got resolved, but not without it being made clear that type of communication to players is frowned upon. The expectation, being a developer and not someone who handles moderation, was to not respond to the inquiry at all. This is just a recent example, but this dates all the way back to when I first started. My communications with players seemed to have gone under incredible scrutiny. I remember instances where I was urged not to join specific chat channels or discord servers. I remember getting an absolutely insane amount of flak for appearing on stream without proper notification ahead of time. I remember reporting an issue and being told I shouldn’t even be bringing it up because it’s not part of being a developer. I remember having an exploit reported directly to me, bringing it up in the development chat, and then being chastised for having handled the bug report directly instead of redirecting them to the forums. These events all added up seemed to have painted me as hostile in the team. Like I was somehow breaking the natural order of things or overruling someone else’s duty. If someone comes to me with an issue, I shouldn’t have to judge whether I should attempt to resolve it or not. I shouldn’t be expected to ignore the message entirely and give the player no direction. Players have no interest in jumping through hoops to get something done “correctly” - it should just get done. These artificial restrictions, whatever purpose they serve, do nothing but harm the players in the long run and make players reporting issues excessively difficult. The final part is communication about GM actions to the general public, and even the players who are subject to the actions. This has nothing to do with GM rulings themselves. Instead, my primary point of complaint here is the communication to the players and general public when rulings are made. The lack of communication allows the players on the other end of the ruling to spin the narrative to paint corruption and bias into the decisions, even if they are not present. This dates all the way back to when Propheteer was banned and there was only the single statement made about it. From the GM team, there was no general statement as to why one of the most prominent players in the game was banned. Instead, it was handled behind closed doors and Propheteer was able to release his own statements to the player base, spinning the narrative to suit his perspective. If a clear, informative statement was made saying “Propheteer has been banned for this reason and this is the evidence we have against him” the whole situation would have gone much smoother. This translates to all decisions. When a PvP ban or raid ban is announced, it’s just announced then lifted some time later. Updates on the progress and expected timeframe would help settle the minds of players. Updates similar to “The bug has been found and fixed, and will be patched in the next update. When the update is live, we will ensure the bug has been fixed and lift the ban.” You can even provide non-committal ballparks for when that is. “We expect the update to go live later this week.” If it doesn’t happen, again, like stated before: You have a reason, just state your reason and trust the community to back it. Finally, this should extend to investigation process. Both sides should be heard during a dispute. Too many times have I heard of a player being punished without anyone listening to their perspective of events. Truth can’t be known until both sides are heard, and you can figure out the actual events that happened. For some reason, the players being accused are considered hostile and are never contacted to hear their side of events. GM’s should serve as mediators between players, not executioners of justice for those who do something suspicious. With all of that said, these aren’t the only reasons. Certain events that I’m not at liberty to discuss were also part of my decision. I truly respect the current development team and feel they have the best interests of the game in mind. However, improving the communication and winning your community back to supporting your efforts should be of paramount importance. I wish the best of luck to the future of the game, and hope players enjoy the content I’ve worked on. It’s been a great experience and it pains me to leave, but I feel that the work I do was being consistently tainted by policies and decisions outside my control.

Joining late to the conversation as I had a busy new year week and I didnt participate in the event myself but happy new year to all those who did! Just wanted to say thanks to all the devs/staff who worked hard this year! Priest overhaul was the most important patch for me but every bit of content around that (horse colours, fishing etc) was obviously very appreciated! Seeing a sneak peak of the new water physics got me butterflies in my stomach! (Yes I consumed them, they arent welcomed on Affliction). A big thanks again, I hope 2019 will bring equal excitement and anticipation P.S Epic is still alive and we love you, never forget us ? Also for those who used alts to get a chest and specially to get more then one chest, that disgusts me. No matter if its the community or game mechanics to blame for this I do not care, but it should be fixed

[19:31:12] You get an Auld Lang Syne. Thank you. Thank you to the Wurm devs and staff for all the hard work in 2018, looking forward to another year. Happy New Year to all.

No I'm definitely a Loaf. ;D I'd like to say thank-you to Enki, Retro and all the devs who put up with us all and make Wurm a great game to play. Thank-you for the updates, the events, the presents (random or otherwise) and everything else during a year that must have been hard for you all. ❤️

We could always just avoid placing them around start deeds next year and stick to the wild drops, that's okay