Arkenor

It definitely did bad things on my computer. Files were installed, the usual system file that Blackhole deletes (windows/system32/sxs.dll) was deleted, and I shudder to think what else went on that I can't locate. I was using java 6 at the time. Perhaps that would make a difference? I expect you're using the latest version of 7, but plenty of folks are using older ones.

The Blackhole toolkit is a serious threat. It is more than capable of installing keyloggers, destroying work, and any amount of other dangerous stuff. You may still be able to play Wurm, but that does not mean that very bad things are not happening on your computer. If Wurm or its launcher are infected, this needs to be addressed NOW. The infected launcher should have been pulled the moment this was known, and all players notified. To allow players to continue to get infected after the threat is known is shocking!

I had a terrible time with Blackhole yesterday. Was running Microsoft Security Essentials which did a very bad job of protecting me. At the time I was not sure exactly where it had come from, but I had just started playing Wurm a minute or two earlier. For some reason, the idea that I might have gotten infected from an MMO did not occur to me. Fun thing. Before it did anything else, this virus managed to send a kill message to my monitor, fooling me into thinking I was having a hardware issue. So I was messing around with cables and such while it was merrily doing it's thing on my machine. Was only when I rebooted that my monitor returned to life. And I only figured out I was infected at all from reviewing my system logs. MSE did not consider it important enough to tell me about. I don't think I have managed to eradicate it fully yet. Seems like it's managed to get quite deep into my system. I am not best pleased. We trust Wurm to take proper precautions against this sort of thing.

So the first thing you make or improve in a given hour has a chance to be rare, and then nothing else until the hour is up? That seems a little odd. Makes it easy to get the specific rare item you want, if you just try to make one of those, once per hour, and don't craft anything else in the interim. I think that system, if I understood it correctly there, is going to have some unforeseen consequences. It encourages strange and rather inconvenient behaviour from crafters. Normally I'd just sit down and do a big session of crafting, but (particularly if folks start wanting only rare gear) that's going to be extremely suboptimal, and I'd be better off having tiny nibbles of crafting on the hour. It simply won't make sense to craft for the rest of the hour, knowing that nothing I'd make would have a chance of being up to the new standard. Also, if the further upgrades work in the same way, getting to fabled quality is simply a case of only improving your rare item, once every hour. I can't help feeling that simply having a very small chance on every crafting action would have been the preferable path.

Hah, we'll need alfalfa then, I think. If I remember right, it's a nitrogen fixer Then we can implement grazing animal starvation? *grin* I think peas work for that too. And they taste nicer

Most things we do in Wurm affect others. Regardless of whether you think Spirit Templar are a good thing or not, it is preposterous to suggest that they do not affect how other people experience the game. It might be argued that having a spirit templar is one of the most far-reaching ways in which a player can exert control over a wide area, and the players who dwell there. The anti-templar folks actually want you to have *less* ability to control how others experience the game.

Deliverance seems knee deep in unicorns at the moment, since yesterday. They're everywhere. So something is going on.

It might help if fruit trees had a bit more wood in them (not for pallisades but in general). Sure, an olive tree might not have as much wood as a pine, but it ought to be able to manage more than a single log. They're like 8 foot wide!

Everything I say below is only regarding the Freedom servers. I know the PvP servers have different security requirements. They should be used for protection, not as a way to amass vast amounts of meat and animal parts while offline. If they kill creatures without player involvement, those creatures should not be lootable by players (perhaps dragged off to wherever spirit templar come from). Ideally, they would have to be called like tower guards. (A button to call guards when you're in a guarded area would actually be kind of handy too, to make this aspect easier.). Being callable should at least be an option that players can select. I also suggest that when creating a deed, the default number of guards in the box should be zero. I've known several people who've accidentally ended up paying for guards they did not want. People can always add them later if desired. An issue we have is with people setting up deeds with guards, and then they stop playing but their guards carry on their rampage for months to come. If there was some way to make spirit templar go dormant if nobody from that deed logs in for a certain amount of time, that would be useful.

For me, the lumpiness of the cobble is not so much the issue (though I'm certainly not going to use it indoors anymore), but that cobble roads tend to wiggle up and down as you're walking towards them, looking very strange indeed. If they're going to be lumpy, the lumpiness needs to be consistent, and not rise and fall like the ocean as we walk towards them. The new spider skin is a massive improvement. I hope we see more creature updates very soon!

Unstable is using the old models right now. Went back to them after the most recent of today's downtimes.

Had a couple of downtimes, but I still can't get into my house. Also, altars seem to have gone back to their old graphics with the latest downtime. Crazy days!

I was thinking a bit about seasons, seeing as the ability to change them dynamically according to the ingame date was recently added. Would it be possible to change the spawns of creatures depending on those ingame seasons? Perhaps some winter-themed creatures could turn up during the snowy periods. A new rare characteristic like "Frosty", adding some sort of icy particle effect or icy appearance to creatures which possess it, would be a lot of fun. I know I'd love a frosty horse Perhaps more appropriate might be a white-furred wolf variant. Maybe that particular suggestion is a little silly, but it would be interesting to see creature spawns affected by the passage of the seasons.

Do I understand correctly that he has sealed other people's houses inside this enclosure? That can't possibly be permissible. As said above, best to call a GM.

I'm kind of shocked that you would consider other players to be "slime", or undeserving of having a voice here. I can only hope that Rolf does not agree with you.