Busted

Most peoples self interests involve survival. Staying while you're being bombed by your government or killed by IS taking over your home territory isn't a compelling reason to side with them. Not for the majority at any rate. Most choose to flee rather than fight, regardless to their personal viewpoints on matters.

That young Syrian you are talking about is caught between a rock and a hard place. He's got his choice of people to blame for his situation, not least of which is Assad or IS. He can blame them for whats happening or lash out at the West and join the very people that's caused the suffering. His choice. I'd like to think the average Syrian male isn't a complete idiot and can work out for himself who's at fault. Is it the government that's bombing him, IS that's bombing him or the West that bombing him? What are the reasons? Should he side with his government that a good number of his peers have rebelled against because of it's atrocious rule or join up with the medieval IS who murder, plunder and deprive? Maybe join one of the various rebel forces fighting against Assad and IS now being bombed by Russia? Or think maybe, screw this, I'm heading to Turkey because Assad's still in power, IS is still advancing and Western policy isn't doing the job it intended because it's not putting troops on the ground to secure the region in a way only an organised army can. There aren't many compelling or genuine reasons for a young Syrian male of reasonable intelligence to join IS despite what the doomsayers and fear mongers tell us. Theres always going to be some that can be recruited for whatever reason but most reasonable people would see the difference between supporting genuine opposition to Assads rule and the monsters in the east clawing at the gates. Those that can get away generally do and we've seen that over the last few months. They may not embrace the West with open arms but they know the difference between us and them is significant enough to flood Europe rather than stay and die or sign up with the immoral and evil. As you said, bombing isn't having the desired effect. We all know this and the West (even thought things are now complicated with Russia) are building domestic support to send troops in on the ground in order to finish the fight the way it needs to be done. It will happen .. it's just a case of when. My guess, by March next year we'll start seeing the first coalition land deployments after months of squabbling with the Russians to decide upon safe ROI's and defined areas of operation to operate in. I expect we'll see ourselves in the extreme east of Syria and Iraq leaving the Russians to hold the middle ground to bolster Assad. This will no doubt be a concession to "allow" the West to do the job properly without fear of Russian interference or risk of accidental incidents. Syria is well on it's way to becoming the 21st centuries centre for the next cold war.

How to prevent war? Simple, get rid of religion and reliance on dwindling resources. Then you need a cataclysm for the world as a whole to unite behind to force us to evolve beyond the need for squabbling with our neighbours. Probably not going to happen any time soon.

Why? I'm not. It'd be great if children really did have the capacity at an early age to formulate independant conclusions but that simply doesn't happen. They are exposed, even if indirectly to their parents predudices and outlook on the world. This varies dependant on other environmental factors such as birthplace, economic outlook etc and now with easy access to the internet a global arena to seek out and explore other peoples ideas. It's only when you reach a certain level of maturity you're able to actually think for yourself and rationally explore alternative ideas but by this time you are probably already predudiced by other factors to the point where your opinion isn't really going to vary much from those around you. The only exceptions to this are usually those who look to be different in order to rebel rather than because of an intrinsic difference in mindset. Of course, there are the exceptions but few of them ever get in a position to lead a movement or challenge conformist thinking in a way that actually leads to change. Tis regular human nature stuff is all. But back on topic ... IS is bad and the sooner they are put down the better the world will be .. even if it's only until the next monster rears it's head.

Children often come to the wrong conclusions if left to form their own opinions of complicated issues. It's a simple lack of maturity and real world understanding. Even simpler, parents want to shield their kids as long as possible from the horrors of the real world. They'll get their turn as we all have and then they can make up their own minds about things. Or .. you fill their heads with your views and opinions and they translate that into gospel and repeat it on the internet when a different view is put in front of them. End of the day, rightly or wrongly, the majority usually get their way and the majority are usually in the right and when they aren't it's usually only revealed in hindsight.

That's fine, I don't need you to agree with any part of what I'm saying That's what being permitted to express an opinion safely in a western democracy allows. Unlike, say, in certain other parts of the world where saying such things gets you burned to death in a cage or forced to marry at age 12 or if you're really lucky, just lose your hands. To me you are basing your opinions churned out by anti establishment blow hards who unappreciative of the freedoms their home nations allow them decide to attack and criticise their elected officials because it's safe, easy and rebellious to do so without any consequences whatsoever. The vast majority of people don't think their government is evil or wrong most of the time. That's why we elect them. Sometimes they do things we don't fully understand or appreciate at the time by you tend to find democracies work towards the betterment of the nation as a whole despite what the outraged left or liberal types may tell you. Regardless, you or I have little say in what transpires so our feelings on touchy matters like this mean little when those same elected officials already have the approval to govern on our behalf. So we leave it upto them to make the best possible decisions for all of us. Most of the time they get it right. When they don't, we vote them out. I understand people don't generally enjoy war and the associated killing of others, but when it comes down to it when one side is hell bent on murder and mayhem I'd rather my government did something more substantive about it than blog their opinions online or make snarky facebook posts.

I bring it up because the terrorist apologists love to lay blame on the west for things like this. It's offensive and a disservice to the people fighting to make things better as well as the victims of terrorism.

Nobody deliberately creates something with the intention of that creation turning on it's creator. I'm so sick of the conspiracy theories running around from armchair politicians happy to lay the blame for all of this at the feet of western governments claiming it's all done for profiteering, oil, control etc. That kind of thinking is a luxury the freedoms you enjoy as citizens of those governments allow that the dictatorships, fanatics and mentally deranged of the world use to justify mass murder, terrorism and enslavement would murder you in your beds for uttering. This is exactly what goes on when the west sits idly by and doesn't raise a hand. Clearly the rise of IS and extremist movements like it are the result of a gung ho western mentality that begun with removal of Saddam Hussain but failed to properly address and manage the aftermath but it was done (however misguided in hindsight) to preserve the lives of innocent people, not because we wanted to sell guns, get cheaper oil or force democracy on the region. As immoral as some aspects of our western governments may be we are certainly not the bad guys here. At worst we may be described as arrogant for believing our morality superiority would be welcomed and embraced once we had freed people from the yoke of dictatorships. Well, that backfired and we've paid for it. That doesn't mean we should stop trying to do the right thing especially now as the blurred lines are much better defined and we have a real evil to face off against.

You can't have peace with an unreasonable enemy. You can stop fighting and pour all those war resources into education, better intelligence gathering (which inevitably leads to more erosion of civil liberties in order to better protect you) but that doesn't mean the other guy will stop trying to hurt you. And when they inevitably find cracks in the armour and exploit them you'll find society will not turn the other cheek when it's continually zipping up body bags filled with their young people out for a coffee or watching a rock concert. Western society may not have much stomach left for foreign wars due to the last two decades actions but we are directly threatened now by people who will not stop regardless of whether we are involving ourselves in Middle Eastern affairs or not. And just for example say they did - then what? Get used to more of the same happening in Iraq and Syria and beyond. Is inaction going to make things worse for the people we are trying to help? Can we sit by and do nothing while Assad uses chemical weapons on his own people? Do we need more Kurdish villages gassed in Iraq? What about more abductions by Boko Haram or Rwandan genocides? Lets think about what could happen further down the line. IS spreads through regional and international inactivity and makes inroads to Russia. How long is it going to be before they get their hands on cold war era nuclear devices and start blowing up entire cities? When did war bring peace? When it killed the other guy. And then the next one and the next. The real trick is using war sparingly and only when not going to war leads to greater losses. I think in the case of IS who ######, murder, abduct and enslave not going to war is an even greater tragedy.

Nobody likes war but when you are facing fanaticism you can't just sit by and wish it away. When facing an unrelenting and merciless enemy you have to pick the lessor of two evils. Inactivity of governments allows the rise of Hitlers and Bin Ladens. Sometimes good intentions backfire and create monsters like IS. Either way there is a clear and present threat and it has to be dealt with, even more so if it's a monster of our own creating. It's not like we can all just walk away ..

I'm not forgetting that at all. Few would argue that the majorigy of Muslims want us to die. We're talking about the so called Islamic State, not the other 1.5 billion Muslims. Few want to see a religious genocide going on. We're talking about the extreemists, not the average everyday folks who just want to go about their lives in peace and safety. It's very specifically IS and not Islam at large that is the enemy here. You can reason with Muslims. You can build bridges with Muslim nations. You don't need to fear or revile them because of their beliefs. IS is another matter.

You're forgetting the main point whereby these people want to kill you, your friends and everybody you ever loved because you are not one of them. That's the reason why we drop bombs and will continue to do so until they are gone. If we are attacked, we retaliate. If they attack again, we retaliate some more. We won't stop hitting them until they stop hitting us or are eliminated completely. It's not ideal, but then again nothing is. Collateral damage is unfortunate but it's always going to happen when these people hide amongst the people to shield themselves. It's ugly and savage but necessary when you are fighting an opponent that isn't afraid to die and isn't constrained by western morality. There is no other sensible way to combat it. You can't educate people who hate you with every fibre of their being. You can't reason with people who will blow themselves up gladly if it will kill you and as many other people as possible in return. You can't fight against people with kindness when they believe you are an infidel who is an affront to their god. We are well beyond reason and a concerted military response is the only thing we can do to stop this. It may not be a final solution to extremism - I suspect that will only happen as people finally do away with all forms of spiritual belief - but it will make the world safer in the interim while we all grow up.

Anyone else getting issues with dirt dropping whereby you only appear to get 1 or 2 dirt dropped? Maps are generated using default settings.

No, he'd give it bird seed and cheep at it. Properly mental.

Could be worse. My grandfather used to keep a teapot in a bird cage. True story. Very sad.

Hello world, A long, long time ago when I first started playing Wurm on Wild the seasons were long and the nights dark and imposing. As a new player who barley knew how to rub two sticks together to make a campfire, I was living in a near constant state of fear of the night time hours and the long, dreary winters. It was, without doubt, the most fun I have ever had in a game purely because of the utter bleakness and isolation of winter and inability to see more than a few feet ahead of you when darkness fell. By contrast today night time is perma dusk and not one bit intimidating compared to how it used to be back in the good old days. I would very much like to see a server mod to introduce real darkness into Wurm Unlimited so I can revisit the terrors of my younger days as well as extend the seasons (especially the weekend long winters) and play the game as it was originally intended. Clearly, most people prefer the seasons and light level the way they are now in WO but I bet there's a sizeable survivalist player element that would embrace darker nights and longer seasons if such a thing were created for WU. Please help this masochist out.

We really need a number of server config options to set default start dates, passage of time durations, day/night cycle, season duration etc to name a few. Also, being able to alter default names from mobs to days of the week would be really useful instead of having to trapse through code to do so. There's so much potential for greater customization to really make it your own medieval sandbox but not having easy to set gui options to enable even basic changes (such as start date) will be a turn off for server hosts used to many more options. Hell, if the Realm Crafter monkeys can offer all the above out of the (shoddy) box I'm sure with a little work CC could accommodate us expertly.

Changing your GM level (say from 5 to 4) regenerates one. You'll also need to change your GM level to 2 in order to get the ivory wand which I hear is used in spawning items ... although I can't seem to work out exactly how to spawn items with it.

All working now after updating Wgen, importing, saving and copying over. A quick rebuild-dbs run and all is good. Except, dear Jesus, it's winter.

It would be extremely useful for those unsure if a dev would draft a blow by blow account of how to set up custom maps for adventure / creative mode just to avoid a flood of similar posts in the very near future and sticky it for quick referral.

Handy. Thank you.

More importantly, how is spawn in managed on new maps? Does a GM account need to first spawn in (randomly) and then create a starter deed so actual players have a place to spawn into? I'm sure this has been addressed elsewhere but this seems like a good place for a recap.

Works fine for me on the old version, not checked new yet. As long as you've saved everything previously and then create a new heightmap and drop dirt you can import the saved actions as long as you specify the map name. This replicates the saved map when it finishes the import.

This is fantastic.