Emerald

The underlying problem with Wild today is the same as it ever was... everybody knows everybody else. You have no expectation of suspense or drama. That is only compounded by bad, incomplete or distorted mechanics. Think about it for a minute, maybe two minutes, maybe all day. You wonder, you attempt to work up strategies, plots, plans... all based on what? What you know about your enemy. LOL... you already know your enemy because you've faced him a thousand times and each time it was a coin toss because of the mechanics of the game... no matter the strategy used. It is boring watching the Yankee's and Dodgers in the World series year after year after year after year after year. Imagine it. If it were always the same two teams eventually there would be no crowd, no one would care. After a while no one even notices that every year each team swaps half of it's players with the other because their interest is... g'gone, as in b'bye. A.O.D. baby. Yep, it's the year 2011 and Emerald's still here talking about a way to make Wild something it's never been... fun. Angel Of Death, played by an impartial individual. I'd go into more of it here but meh... just look it up the old descriptions should still be here. Or... carry on batting the same tired old arguments over the net about "This needs buffed, if Rolf would bump this number up or down life would be perfect". Go on, you know I couldn't care less.

You are welcome. Now that I have more time to reflect on the game from outside of the bubble, yes, I suggest things that are even more non-conventional as well as non-biased. Also, since my days of jumping into a discussion for no other reason than to discredit another poster have ended... I feel much more free to share my views, unconcerned with what any troll may come along and say afterward from their side of whatever fence they just jumped. Malvado, writing and teaching did not require much physical exertion. Plus, the majority of his writings and teachings were centered also on fighting.

Over 70fs every .25 gain in fs should be offset by a loss of 2.5 from all non-fight related skills. Possibly, this could be implemented as a kind of "fatigue" that lasts 1 solid week (rl time). Being completely honest... Bruce Lee was probably not a very good carpenter, blacksmith or miner because every moment he spent training to fight was taken away from all of the other things that he could have chosen to do. If the offset is implemented, in no time many of the people who now engage in PvP will fall off due to roles that they need in their village and the others will become more easily isolated by groupings of those who "fell off". Of course, they would be much more difficult to solo over time but that feeds back into why others would have to group up.

I completely see the need. However, I also see the distraction that it presents to current players in that they might now be fully in love with the game and not wishing to entertain any "what could be improved" points of view. I don't think the "Suggestion" boards would be a good place for it either. This is why I wish there were still a Liphos around installling extra forums for those with a need. Of course this could be done with a sub-board and that may be the direction to present to Rolf. After time it may as well become a good place to gather views from people who dedicate all of their play time to WoW or any other online game... ie: a resource for Rolf. Again, great idea, just not perfectly placed yet.

Just don't forget... fingerprints you can get out of, blood soaked rags, bone saws and drop cloths in the trunk... no problem. It's the mugshot, whatever you do don't be crying or smiling. If you can remember that you'll be ok. As always, keep laughing man.

Jarosz. Sorry man but this whole thing is rather weird. There seemed to be no issue with ex-players hanging around until you wrote it on the wall and turned a spot light onto it. Now you're talking about people being a "Member" of it and ... sorry, get a room dude.

Get over it.

No doubt. I don't mean to come across like a jerk most of the time >.> It's just that such a concept is at best naive. Anyone who was around during much of the beta knows that Rolf is not one to burn his bridges or isolate himself by cutting off any option available. He's so rooted in keeping an open format that he won't even fully ban hackers as long as he believes there may be something he can learn from them. That's just how he is. Today you could call him the devil in a flaming tutu and tomorrow he'll say "Hey, _your_nic_here_, how are you?". It's admirable and something we should all learn from instead of running the other direction toward protectionism, isolation and in general being jerks. I'll admit, I've not always chosen fight but flight instead.

Anything? Try not to stack the deck so obviously. The question is "say to who" and "about what". There may be things they have to say that are worth players knowing in a forum format which can be easily searched, unlike private emails or irc logs. Then there would be the question about how to treat people new to Wurm that have not yet made accounts, played the game and do not know if they want to because they are unable to ask questions quickly. I'm sure you've got a hard nosed answer for that. No problem, you obviously have a point that you have made and you wish to see it stand against any and all other points which you will try your best to see that it does. Sorry that I invaded your private conversation. I'll bow out here because my time is worth much more than your game of move the line in the sand.

If anyone believes that closing the forums to non actives will keep them away from having an impact they are missing several things. Me for instance... I know where the irc channel is, I know Rolf's email, I know where Motala is and can get there any time I feel like taking a day or two off from other things. Look, not every non-player is here to jump into subjects of game play. There are some who have similar businesses that can have input about things no one else can. Ask yourself this... am I tracking all of the changes in operating systems, server bugs, website hacks, financial transaction software changes, laws and anything else other than the currently coded rulesets of Wurm as I play the game 16+ hours a day? If you say yes, then you really need to stop and think about your 8 remaining available hours and how those stack up to my 24.

There are a couple of things here I think Rolf could be interested in. Why people choose not to play and why they hang around so long after quitting. Me, I am in real life how I was in Wurm... for the most part. Now, had I rage-quit real life I would not be here writing this now would I? That is why I said "for the most part" In general it was the lack of attention to the social aspects of the game that eventually wore me down. Yes, those are the most difficult parts of any game to figure out... I'm sure much more difficult to understand, isolate and then plan for than they are to code. /ignore sometimes is just not enough and "/dev we got a problem" is usually overkill. Kchats, PM's and village assignments are great albeit not yet full featured but I really think Wurm is lacking an important 20% of social coding that has simply never been addressed. I pushed for the Kchats and got them, HoTS creation and got it, separate maps for PvP/PvE/starter and got those and then I lost my steam (as well as my temper and eventually, seemingly, parts of my mind). Going any farther than the current in place social mechanisms could be walking even closer to the thin line of hard coding roles. It does not have to be though. This is the area that Rolf has, under his very nose, that can set Wurm father apart from other online games than Wurm has ever gone. It is the most important direction he could go in but expecting it from him is like expecting a taxi company that has no call center, no dispatchers, no gps, not even a map... to know where to pick you up using only telepathy. IE: Now, you have to find the taxi and flag it down to get anywhere because it's just driving around blindly through town randomly turning corners and hovering at spots where commuters are "normally" found. I'm not saying that Rolf is absent or absent minded. No, he keeps his taxi running smoothly, the oil changed, the tires new, he even cleans the windshield himself... he just has no direction other than what he can see from behind the wheel. Why I hang around? It's a hobby at this point. I find myself reading sometimes 20 or more threads a week lol. The suggestions threads, what's for sale etc. I usually overlook the "Has _whatever_ changed?" posts in favor of the "That's it I'm out of here" ones because I am more interested in what makes player's tick than the little bits of code sent from the server that control your pixels... always have been. The real game exists in our heads, not in our machines.

No sleep bonus for you Mr. Jansson !!! Congratz man. Seriously cool name choice too. All the best.

Notch probably made over $2Million last year... clear. That is a good thing. I, for one, think he deserves it and I'm glad he got out of the funk and just DID IT. Wurm was driving him insane toward the end of '05. He knows what he is doing, always did. He learned a ton while working on Wurm, especially about what people like and don't like. He was also spending a lot of time playing other games in his free time for the last couple of years. I would like to think that as minecraft starts to become old hat and his schedule levels out that he might come back, take a good look at Wurm (from a player's perspective) and give Rolf a few pointers. I know, they are two totally different games but if something in Wurm annoys you and I... it would probably drive Notch out of his mind and I think he would say so. Rolf, however, worries about the backend and thinks "OMG, what will it take to do this??!!!" too much to make the hard decisions that are necessary... so he listens to grinders... because they are the closest thing he has to "insiders". Notch would more likely experience it himself and then just say "This, this and this have to change. It's going to happen." and worry with the details later ... as they happen.

To the OP... bummer, gl finding an mmo that let's you advance straight to uber in less than 2 years worth of character rental. Tich: Slow, but sure I wish Farmerbob would've written what he just did about 6 or 7 years ago. But there were real problems that needed addressed and spending time on those would have kept Wurm from going gold until at least '09. Believe it or not crafters and religion ppl needed appeased before PvPers. Sad but true. The game would not have progressed as far as it has with the first method of practice dolls and sparring. The grind factor would be much higher than it is now had that continued. Consider the last beta map. 8 of 10 serious miners and smiths went BL. To make mauls you need more iron, which takes more mining and then you need smiths fueled by high ql iron to imp those mauls which takes even more iron. WL players were at a loss. It wasn't until I showed Rolf that with a 20ql maul and 0.00 maul skills a player with decent fight skills could solo a hyena in less than 1 minute... but even with 50 sword main and LS skill they'd get their butt handed to them over a nearly 10 minute grudge match... that he saw why so many people were ticked off. The unbalanced PvP situation had very little to do with actual fight skills. It was a grouping of skill sets that were well known by BL players and they were feeding off of those earlier mistakes... plus, they were building fight afk. See, the sparring issue was NOT the cake... it was the icing on a cake. Much was learned that map and much was changed, albeit much was very haphazardly thrown in on day #1 of gold as well that needed (needs) removed and/or altered as well. A more complicated system is possible and should eventually be adapted. However, I would warn for consensus. Don't approach Rolf alone, in irc, on the spur of the moment. Build it, gather support here in the forums, get idea's worked out, be serious as you can be... otherwise you might end up with a half implemented MESS.