Johnny Rascal

Some more thoughts on Dominance: Things I liked: The map design. I saw some really neat areas around the Jenn-Kellon mountain that had been modified by hand with the new mapmaking tool and would have made fantastic village locations if they weren't so far out from the HOTA region. The swapped Black Light and White Light locations. The exact location of the White Light gave a small advantage to HOTS though, because it wasn't as heavily guarded by JR and MR as the Black Light was by HOTS. Going back to two kingdoms will solve this though. The removal of champions and kingdom titles. It really made the game feel more fair and balanced. I recommend mentioning changes like this in the news updates before the scenario starts, though. The increased crop growth speed. Things that should be changed: The Valrei creatures and buffed mobs. Somebody was kiting powerful Valrei creatures into our village mine in the first few days of the scenario and it was very frustrating to deal with. Players were expecting to start the scenario as strong fighters but were getting killed by bears. Either return normal mobs to regular strength, or allow deed guards to aggro on Valrei mobs, or just get rid of Valrei mobs completely. The Peacekeeper spawns at the HOTA zone. I guess they're intended to prevent alt camping at the resource depot, but they're also discouraging PvP at the depot when there's only a small number of fighters online. Have the Peacekeepers only start spawning when players are in local for a few minutes. Prayer counts getting reset after a server reboot. This randomly gives some players a faith advantage according to the hours they play at. At the very least you should make it possible to know the faith gain opportunities remaining in the current day. The mechanic for gaining Hunted status. It's too easy to become Hunted by accident or through a bug, and it should really only happen if the victim dies. Village raiding is fine the way it is now I see a lot of people in this thread complaining that it's too hard to raid villages, but HOTS still raided both (all) JK villages successfully. Their siege on Krillin's Porn Stash took a grueling 4 hours and resulted in a few casualties, but they still managed to drain the token and had opportunities to ransack half of our buildings. Despite winning the fight, they're complaining that it was too hard and they didn't get a chance to salt the earth and spawncamp our village members until they left the kingdom/scenario like they had done to MR a few days earlier. Attacking a main village should be extremely difficult and result in heavy casualties, especially for the raiders, but it should also allow the raiders to steal some things and drain the token. Completely leveling a village should only be possible for forward "war deeds" that aren't the home base for a group of players. Even with the limited damage to our village a few of our members dropped out or became less active because honestly they have enough stress in their daily lives that they don't want to worry about logging in and finding the village in burning ruins, and they don't want to have to be on-call 24 hours a day as the village defense force. Starter gear is perfect for village defense, but could be nerfed for field battles The use of suicide alt rushes with starter gear is perfectly fine for defending main villages, and if we didn't have that option Krillin's Porn Stash probably would have been leveled and its members mostly driven out of the scenario before it was halfway done. The use of suicide alts with huge axes and main accounts with starter gear was a problem with field battles though, and people were getting back into the fight a little too quickly because of forward deed and tent spawns. Any changes made to starter gear should still allow it to be abused a little for main village defense. Getting Casuals and Crazy Wurm People to segregate themselves less I think casual players are motivated more by fun, while CWPs are motivated more by in-game social status. Scenario prizes are a great way to encourage CWPs, and it would help if they could transfer their titles and hats/masks to their other accounts on Chaos or Freedom. You could encourage CWPs to distribute themselves more evenly between kingdoms by making it easier to win scenario prizes if they're on a weaker kingdom, like maybe the top 10-20 warriors are recorded at the end of the scenario, and the players with the most kills against these top warriors get prizes. You could get casual players to distribute themselves more evenly between kingdoms by making the game more fun or easier to get started in if they're on a weaker kingdom. One possibility is to give new accounts higher starting skills/characteristics depending on how much time is remaining in the scenario if they're on the kingdom with less territory claimed, or fewer walls built on village deeds.

I was the mayor for Krillin's Porn Stash, which was one of the only two villages in Jenn-Kellon during this scenario. Overall I enjoyed this scenario much more than the last, but there are some serious fundamental social issues that need to be addressed. Here are my observations: A brief summary of Dominance Just like the previous scenario, the first few days were the most fun. There were more players online, and they were more active, and they were getting in more fights out in the field because nobody knew the strength of the political factions. Everyone quickly discovered that Mol-Rehan was the weakest of the three kingdoms, and they got dogpiled and imploded around the 5th day of the scenario. The elite fighters in MR used the Black Light (possibly a bug) to convert to HOTS, while the casual players made new characters and joined JK. Up to this point JK had more players total than HOTS, but HOTS had more elite fighters and was somewhat better at fighting in the field. After MR imploded, HOTS had a large advantage in the field and JK was forced to play defensively. The results of the scenario were mostly decided after a successful but costly raid on the 9th day by HOTS against JK. By the 9th day things were winding down and player counts dropped significantly, and there were few large or evenly matched battles in the field. Most fights were either small skirmishes or off-hours raids up to the end of the scenario. Casuals vs Crazy Wurm People (CWPs) About halfway through the scenario I realized that there were two very distinct types of players, and that they were very heavily segregated. Most of JK was made up of casual players who were either new to the game, or were returning to the game after several years of inactivity. They tend to be less organized, and have more real-life obligations, and enjoy crafting, exploring, and combat in equal measure. Most of HOTS was made up of Crazy Wurm People who are regular players with accounts on other servers. They tend to be highly organized and experienced, and generally prefer combat to crafting, and are willing to neglect their health and real-life obligations to accomplish their in-game goals. It appears that MR was a pretty even mix of casuals and CWPs, and when MR imploded their CWPs all joined HOTS, while their casuals all joined JK. I believe this kind of segregation is extremely bad for the game, because it puts Rolf in a no-win situation where he has to either alienate the new players he needs to grow the game, or the regular players who pay his server bills, and moderate his forums, and organize most of the villages. For the record, I'm mostly a casual, but I can be a Crazy Wurm Person for a few days at a time before my real-life obligations pile up. Three kingdoms are politically unstable The removal of player-made kingdoms was a step in the right direction, but we still had a problem with MR quickly getting dogpiled until they imploded. Three kingdoms just aren't sustainable, unless you can get them almost perfectly balanced. I'd recommend removing either JK because we don't want to divide the newbies and veterans into separate kingdom, or remove HOTS because symmetric combat is easier to balance. Alternatively, you could remove kingdoms altogether, and just have a big village versus village free-for-all. Personally I think villages based around groups of friends and acquaintances are the natural way to organize players in this game, but it would probably be harder to balance, and would result in fewer large, organized battles. That's enough effortposting for now, I'll tackle the subject of village raiding, alt abuse and starter gear later.

The new skill gain rates are fantastic Before I throw around some criticisms and suggestions I'd like to congratulate the developers on eliminating most of the boring drudgery I typically associate with Wurm. The new rates for skill and faith gain are perfect and should not be changed. I've organized at least five different villages and most of them broke up due to burn-out from the tedious Wurm grind. During this Challenge scenario there was practically no burn-out, and I actually enjoyed doing basic crafting and building tasks for the first time in years. Challenge Server isn't ready for premium-only The population on Challenge Server started out strong but dropped massively during the second week when all but the largest and most organized villages got raided off the server. It left a bad impression on a lot of people who are either returning to their stable villages on other servers, or just leaving the game entirely for other MMOs. If Challenge goes premium-only it will completely torpedo activity on the server, and it will end up as a glorified test server. Make some changes to the rules and the game balance, and try to keep a stable population through an entire scenario first. Challenge can become premium-only later once it builds up enough reputation and a stable playerbase. Also the coin drops and money rewards can be removed for now if the profitability of Challenge is an issue - players will still work just as hard for unique title and gear rewards that carry over between scenarios. Make the map more accessible and protect rear bases with mountains The large dirt layer and lack of exposed rock faces and level terrain made it very inconvenient to acquire iron. The next map needs to have more level terrain with steep cliffs and ridges with exposed rock. The broken islands of HOTS territory were a big liability for the kingdom that made it difficult for rear-base villages to support the front-base villages, and also reduced the number of viable village locations. The map should have more dry land too, and mountains and cliffs should be used to block off access to the rear bases. Good defensive terrain will do a lot more to protect newbies than extensive starter deeds. Also, rivers can also be used to create additional routes to the HOTA battleground areas in the center. Consolidate the kingdoms or encourage large kingdoms to break up The first week of Challenge was great and dynamic with lots of low-intensity combat all over the place, but that ended quickly when highly organized villages and kingdoms stomped all over the small villages and disorganized newbies. In particular the MR kingdom and Dateline NBC PMK were extremely well-organized and powerful, while HOTS was badly fractured and suffered from frequent infighting and the JK kingdom was a complete non-entity that couldn't provide any protection for newbies. Either eliminate PMKs completely and make HOTS a dumping ground for outlaws and rejects, or find incentives for large and powerful kingdoms to break up into smaller PMKs. Add new archery items with the rare material drops Archery is normally pretty well balanced with melee, but it doesn't stand a chance against adamantium armor, shields, and weapons. Add in some adamantium arrows and/or bows or else it'll only be useful for ganking newbies and killing mounts. Adamantium arrows/bows will also give a small advantage to defenders during a village siege and help keep smaller villages from getting raided off the server. Buff deed guards and add new items for killing them This first scenario had too much combat at lightly defended villages on the edges of the map, and not enough combat at the depots and HOTA zone. Deed guards should be buffed considerably to protect smaller villages, and this will also encourage players to buy more silver. The new siege items like the ballista and trebuchet can be given large AoE attacks against deed guards, or new and labor-intensive siege items could be added that give a passive debuff to the guards of enemy deeds as long as they're being commanded by a player. Or maybe the HOTA zones could spawn "raid tokens" that can be expended to debuff the guards at nearby deeds - this would also encourage more players to fight at HOTA zones to prevent their villages from being raided.

Will the growth rate of crops or trees be affected?

mid-auction bump

Ingame name - Hempfire Will be sent COD or delivered if you're near the Whitefay or Summerholt areas on Xanadu Starting Bid: 5s Min Increments:1s No reserve Sniper Protection 1 hr Buyout 25s Auction is for 2 days

My neighbors and I could use some help digging a canal near Swanlake Homestead - it's labeled on the community map about 20 minutes southeast of Whitefay. I'd prefer to barter with equipment and supplies but we can scrounge up some coins too if needed. I'm in-game as Hempfire

This change will encourage gatehopping.

I lost 2 affinities so far this way.

JKH is not the least populated at all. I went there and there was 90 players online. They're all concentrated in the suburban sprawl around the spawn deed. Walk 15 minutes into the wilderness and there's nobody around.

This sounds a lot better than the frustrating wound lottery we have now. Would be willing to trade this for a longer absorb cooldown or a longer action timer.

Nice to see HOTS getting some love with their own home server, but is there any final word whether or not we can make PMKs off the HOTS template? Or at least have some kind of protection against spy alts and AWOL emperors?

There used to be a bug that would prevent a player from taking fall damage until the next time he logged out. At the start of Gold 1 we would sometimes hold "initiation ceremonies" for our new players by glitching them out, then taking them to the highest peak of Bearback Mountain. After asking them to drink and annoint themselves with the blessed sweat of the Great Bear, (in reality a bucket of water blessed by our Vynora priest, which did absolutely nothing) we demanded that they jump, and that they trust in the Great Bear, and that He would guide them safely to the ground. In one instance, a new player didn't realize that the fall damage was being prevented by a bug, and tried leaping again the next day without the glitch, with disastrous results.