Etherdrifter

It rather relies on the exploration mechanics being well designed by the developers doesn't it!

These are all non-consumable barring the skins though? Also 3. was really there for those of us who have 0 use for crafting recipes

Currently, exploring on wurm can net you... Erm... Well, barring finding a unique, nothing you couldn't easily find on your front doorstep, or craft at home! So, below are some suggested rewards, to be worked into exploration themed activities (treasure chests!) and events (rifts). 1. Karma stones - single use stones that call up either summon corpse, or home portal. Pretty simple, but something people would likely want and use. 2. Blueprint Fragments - Unique statues, furniture items, and the like. Put together the blueprint, use it, and the character unlocks the recipe permanently and consumes the blueprint. Number of fragments required balances item desirability/utility. 3. Ancient Scroll Fragments - Extra spells that can be learned by using the scroll (consumed). Lock some to specific gods (A transmutation spell for mag!), give certain spells as upgrades to existing ones (a rejuvenate that actually grows reeds back!), and some new spells everyone can learn (Loadstones for your horse anyone?). Number of fragments required balances spell utility. 4. Wagoneer/Mail Token - Allows one free Wagoneer/Mailbox use (tick box to confirm use).

Stop asking for ideas Elon!

I think there is something that needs pointing out here - like guard towers you'd expect the stones to slowly lose their power over time before falling into an unusable ruined state. I'd definitely be against "token" spells being used (courier already has enough uses, and I get the feeling someone who is recovering from a lobotomy is sat there thinking "bless would be great") - summon soul with a high cast difficulty would be a better option, or multiple spells cast on each component. You're essentially creating a teleportation network, that's got to carry a similar investment to a long road except from a magical point of view. Crafters build roads, priests wave their hands and move folks around.

+1 from me - the old cluster got kicked hard in the teeth by decisions like this.

With the incoming exploration update, a lot of people are going to be leaving their homes and discovering that travelling in wurm is like visiting an entomologist - an enjoyable day filled with bugs. There are a couple of really big ones that need some attention, and I'd like to suggest they're focused on before the exploration update drops: 1. Tent Permissions - make a tent, lock it, try it out at home. Everything works well. Travel to another server, do the same as usual, lose all your stuff because permissions do not function. Some kind of cross-server permissions (similar to vehicles) is needed for locked tents. 2. "Oops, you clipped a wall, better dismount you buddy". This is a really annoying bug that hits especially often when exploring caves with fences/hedges near the entrance. 3. "I'll follow you anywhere! <- He says fading into the distance". Pet and led animal pathing is a real issue when navigating tight deeds, or even exploring outside. The number of times I've been riding down a road, only to have to backtrack 20 mins because the wildcat I tamed got snagged on a wall corner is... Well, if I had a silver for every time I'd be at around 97 silver. 4. "Hmm, I just crossed the server, better jump overboard". Crossing server borders is always a pain, for some reason you end up in the water, even though you're on the boat. You either need to relog to fix this (pain), or disembark, then re-embark - if there is more than one of you on the boat, and you're being transported AFK this becomes a real nightmare!

I definitely wouldn't say wurm's travel should be cut down - part of what gives wurm its feel is the real effort it takes to get somewhere, and how working on transport (horses, carts, ships, wagons) changes this in a noticeable way (how long would it take to walk across Xanadu vs how long it would take to ride across). There is a good feeling to surviving a long trip, that real feeling of relief, though sometimes it is coupled with the dread of “I have to do that again once I cast courier”! When wurm was at its peak there was a lot to see when travelling, now there are mostly just odd patterns in dirt and paving that hint at what you missed (I’ve seen a lot of great deeds over the years that are sadly long gone now). Archaeology really helped here, but a better "ruin" system for when a deed falls, and more natural variety in plants/critters would really help cut out the "I just travelled 3 hours to a rift, and I semi-afked and listened to a podcast the whole way" feel.

There are a lot of amazing things to find in wurm; the trouble is they're all gated behind worse odds than winning a jackpot in a casino (take it from someone who used to rig the machines). However, it is nice for some items to be that rare. I'd opt for a middle ground, create a new "pearl necklace" item that doesn't need a black pearl and has a different model. It keeps certain items as a genuine rarity (the existing variant), but also opens up a use for pearls for the rest of us with actual lives.

At this point, given how few people main priests, and given how narrow and limited our gameplay is, some form of switching is likely to help retain what few priest players wurm has. It is also likely to encouraging more solo toon players to stick around for longer.

-1 This isn't Hafen.

1 and 2 are available (to some degree) from the offical charts (https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Server_graphs). 3 used to be available, but it was decided "it does not offer a real indicator of population" (garbage in my opinion since it is a standard metric for mmo health, but I didn't make that call).

So it was with Release and Pristine, and so it will be again with the old and new clusters. Personally, I would be satisfied if we weren't actively directing players to the new cluster (see stickied post here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1179680/discussions/0/3880365909903427772/).

The server merges were done after a community vote if my memory serves. The joining of Release and Pristine to Xanadu wasn't detrimental. What was detrimental was stale mechanics and promised updates/content that never materialised. Player gods drove out the priests, and priest ALTs exploded into the scene. The real killer was WU, it irrevocabley split the playerbase as WU was adding all the QoL updates that WO was not. The merge didn't harm the cluster communities. Join the world's, end the slow rotting death of the old cluster, and the rampant decay of the new one.

Ooh, sure, drop me the dump. It'll be great to see how hourly data Vs 15 min data compares over the timeframe we both recorded.

This is an outstanding timeline; an achievement in and of itself. Well done for managing to pull all that together!

Oddly enough, I just took the pi offline today for a new project; I'll post the final data drop tomorrow as well as the script I used in case anyone wants to run their own population tracker.

My issue isn't that ALTs exist, and that people use them. It's that the game's design has been stunted to use ALTs to milk extra money.

The trouble is; wurm is designed around ALTs. I'm not going to call it good design from the player's perspective (it's dire), but from a business perspective it's a subtle whale milking mechanic. It's why priests are the way they are; they were designed to be ALTs, a second tier of premium in reality. I definitely think shifting the game's core design away from "milk the alt whales" would be a good thing; but I also think that world peace is more likely!

Maps to treasure and chess sets; definitely a step in the right direction towards more explorative content. Question is, will folks be able to skill as they do it, or will the rewards aid in that?

This would be a fair few extra models to add. +1 though as the price is outweighed by the benefits.

Sort of like the fire ring suggested here? I mean we got the fur bed...

Mine was "grind prayer to 70" and "grind botanise to 90", but that fizzled out. Now it's just enjoying my wurm retirement, watching the world below the mountain slowly return to wild forest.

Updated with new section on roles.

At the moment, Jackal loadstones are pretty useless apart from decoration. But, what if we could give them a use? 1. Create an gateway orb from moonmetal (1KG); improve to QL70 2. Have a priest cast summon soul on that orb (difficulty inflated to 90) - orb changes to "gateway orb" on success, on failure reduces orb QL by 1--15% 3. Use gateway orb on a loadstone - becomes bound to that loadstone 4. Travel to the next loadstone, use the orb on that loadstone 5. Orb vanishes, and loadstones are now linked Right Click -> Jackal Gateway -> Faith/Karma -> Name of the Loadstone (deed name indicated in brackets if applicable) Players can travel between those loadstones at some cost [70 favor if user's channeling is over 70, or 100 karma if not] for each transport. Object controlled using permissions (Teleport to, Teleport From, Create Link) A simple option to allow ingame teleportation, linking it to rifts in a lore friendly way, that uses both priest and crafter skills, and doesn't have an insane price.