Gorwst

Others are not getting in as well. http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=73537.0

I was logged into Independence. While I could move and see chat, I could not execute any commands. Tried a relog, but now I cannot access the server either. I have gotten several timed out messages and several "An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine" trying to log in. Since I've been playing for hours tonight and have not made any firewall or other changes, it's not that.

I have to chime in on this point and give a reality check as someone who has been a project manager for some very large projects: Going to separate code between the two types of server would exponentially increase the workload for the developers and exponentially increase the number of bugs. Or, it would mean that one branch was basically never touched again by the developers. Now, I am not specifically criticizing the poster who made this comment. This kind of idea based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how to maintain such a project is very common. I've even seen it from people who worked in the software industry and really should have known better. Think about a program like Wurm or any other MMO with it's massive number of lines of code. We all know that a small tweak can cause unintended side effects. In the industry, it's well known that even a small tweak can requires many hours of testing and can still let a bug get through. Now think about adding the complication of a second fork. Rolf adds a new feature or makes a change to an existing one. He now has to incorporate that into two different massive sets of code and get them to run successfully. Then the testers have to pour through both forked games. Then the players get to do the live testing on the server. Every little problem becomes magnified and multiplied because every addition is now interacting with two different pieces of software. What works with one may not work with the other, and may, in fact, break the other completely. Even a simple setting change could have far reaching unintended consequences. (Do you really believe Rolf intended to make it impossible to make leather with a recent patch? Something got tweaked and that bug is the trickled-down result.) There are some things that Rolf can do to allow for differences between the two types of servers. We already see this in basic things like whether you can PVP on different servers, whether you can be F2P or premium only, and the speed of skill gain. These are a setting difference. The code is absolutely no different between the two; it's a data value that changes and so adjusts how the program reacts. However, these may be very limited because they require going back and adding checks throughout the code to see if something is true or not for a server. If you miss even one, something won't work right. (Which is a good way for exploits to get into the game.) TL;DR: Forking PVP and PVE into two different code bases would be like Rolf and crew trying to maintain both Word and Excel at the same time and apply the same changes to both. It will overload them and kill the game.

Take a look at the Quality Level of the flowers you are picking. At a low skill and/or with a low QL sickle, you will get a lot more low QL flowers. I find those die on planting a lot more. (Same with sprouts.) When planting flowers to feed your animals, don't forget you can pick the flowers after planting them and go put them on another tile. Even at a skill under 15, I can sometimes get 2-3 tiles out of a flower before it dies on planting. I tend to plant my QL 1 flowers first, using them up, then move on to the higher QL ones I've got. The neat thing is that if you successfully plant a QL 1 flower, when you pick it again it has the same chance as any other flower to have a higher QL.

I really like the new graphics and I think they greatly enhance the look of a farm. As for not being able to tell what's ripe without having to think about it in the slightest, I think that this is an advantage and not a problem. First, you will learn how to tell the difference between plants given a little time. Second, there is now a point and reward to getting your farming skill up high enough to see the growth status of crops on examine. Kudos on this improvement to the game.

The traits below are not necessarily in order of importance. Positive Traits: Trustworthy. Not needlessly destructive to the environment. Courteous to neighbors and their deeds. Willing to help and be helped. Friendly. Tries to repay assistance even if you don't want anything in return. Treats the other people on the game as actual people. Treats actual people with respect. Reads the wiki and isn't afraid to consult it. Negative Traits: Deforestation or any other needless destruction of nearby environment. Stealing items or otherwise disrupting other players. Total inability to form a complete sentence, use capital letters, and/or punctuation in chat. Any chat that involves "LOL" when you are not actually laughing out loud. (Really, any chat involving "LOL", text speak, or elite speak.) Constantly accepting handouts without trying to give back. Asking tons of basic questions because they cannot be bothered to look at the wiki. (This drives me seriously nuts. One question is okay, but when you've asked six in a row that you could have looked up for yourself faster, I want to scream.)

What about a dedicated newbie camp just into the game? There would be walls, guards, some shelters, and something to keep higher level animals away. There could be special "enchanted" land that sprouts trees quickly so there would be wood. Other resources could be there for practice, such as a mine that very quickly restores itself with shards so that you can keep mining. Each character could be given a temporary storage that held as much as a large chest, but which was accessible from a central token like the bank is now. The new players are told as part of this that they can set out on their own but that finding a village makes life easier. Then after a certain amount of time, say their first 24 hours of play, the players are told that they have to go out into the big, bad world now. (With appropriate warnings along the way of how long they have, of course.) Once past the 24 hours, they no longer have access to the settlement. Unlike the tutorial, they could leave at any time. They just cannot go back once they hit 24 hours. (Which should give them time to meet some people, craft a cart, that kind of thing.) (This is just an off the top of my head idea. It would need some polish and need some consideration for keeping older players from exploiting it with a string of newbie alts.) Of course, Rolf does not have to do this himself. If experienced players are concerned about the new player experience, they could build and help maintain this town themselves. Someone is already maintaining things like Freedom Market, the various tunnels and roads, the boat bridges, and other projects. There would probably be people willing to do this too. If Rolf wanted to make this even easier and more likely, he could create a way for more experienced players who have dedicated time to the new player settlement to quickly travel back and forth to their deed so that they can go, help some people, and still go tend crops and such.

I disagree on the grounds that if you make a skill too difficult to increase because mats are hard to find, you will create artificial scarcity because nobody will want to work with it. In your example, you suggested Unicorn Leathermaking. Let's take that all the way down. Imagine if you had a special leather crafting skill for every type of animal out there. Just how frustrated are new players going to get when they can't make a simple bag because they focused on Rat Leathermaking and the only leather they can find now are dogs? How many experienced players would just give up on leather because that's too frustrating? While people could trade their dog leather with someone who has rat leather, but new players tend to quit if they get stopped from proceeding early on. As new players are the lifeblood of a game, both in the game and financially, they need to be encouraged and not stymied. I think the best way to stir up the market is not some artificial manipulation of existing skills, but the addition of new avenues of schilling and crafting. As an example, everyone can make a chair, but if there were several new models, some of which require a high skill level, there are people who would buy them for decoration. You could also do things like a "canvas chair", which would require high cloth making as well as high skills with carpentry, or a "leather char" that was padded and required leather making as well. Labor intense aesthetics can also be useful in stirring the economy. People already pay for digging and surface mining to level and prepare their deed. Imagine if there was a really pretty brick walkway or brick tile border that people wanted, but which required a lot of labor to create and install. (More like building a wall than building cobblestone.) That's work that those with money but not time will pay those with time but not money to do.

This is a separate thought, so I'm putting it into a separate post. If you want to improve the economy, you have to expand the market. As others have said, one way to do this is to get in new players so there is a bigger market overall. The other way is to expand into a new type of market. To help stir up the market in this game, the designers don't need to make items decay faster (which can drive players away), they need to add new items to the market. Creation of new, aesthetic items would create a whole new market, especially if those items required a lot of steps to make, a high skill, or a combination of different skills so that not everyone could easily make them on their own. People wanting to deck out their homes would have more options and stir the market if they're buying paintings or tile edging or decorative rugs or special dyes or new statues or whatever else the designers can come up with.

As I'm reading through this thread, it strikes me as odd that people are focusing so hard on boat building and ways to cause boats to fall apart so that they can sell more boats. The boats are just part of the Wurm market and are controlled by the same factors as any other product in the game. Prices are high when one of three conditions are met: 1) There is a limited production of an item, one under the possible level of demand for that product. 2) The raw materials (or subcomponents) are rare or expensive to acquire, meaning prices must be at a certain level to ensure profit. 3) An artificial control of the market allows price fixing. In Wurm, since sooner or later everyone can do almost everything themselves, there is no limited production. While not everyone is going to build their own large cart or high QL enchanted tool, enough people can and do that the possible production of any item is very high. In Wurm, since basically all materials are infinite in supply, the only cost that really matters is time. Technically this includes overhead time, like making tools to make the product or building an initial mine for the ore, but most people can't really factor those things in, so ultimately it's just how many clicks it takes you to make the item you're selling. In Wurm, there are enough separate groups that nobody can get enough control of the market to set a price everyone must sell at. I doubt this is even possible because the barrier to entry in any market is so low that a new player starting today could go off and find the supplies and earn the skills to join any market if they're willing to put in the time. Ultimately, pricing is about supply and demand and these are self-regulating factors in the long run. People produce a product and set the price at X; more people are willing to produce the higher X rises. People wanting to buy the product are willing to pay Y; more people are willing to buy the product the lower Y goes. Over time, X and Y meet somewhere and that's where the market lands. Since the "overhead" of any production is just time, if the prices for your chosen product are too low in your mind, that means that there are producers out there who value their time less than you value yours, so their "cost of production" is lower. In the real world, you either get out of that market because your profit isn't high enough or you learn to accept that this is the profit level you're going to make. So, really, if you don't like the price of boats or tools or wildflowers, don't complain that these items have to be made to fall apart so that you can have more market. I realized that sort of thought process seems right because of the modern way of doing business, but this is an artificial construct. Items are designed to wear out quickly or become obsolete so they can sell you a new one again soon. That only works when people have plenty and there is money for luxury. Wurm is more frontier. You expect to buy a good tool and have it last a long time, until you finally wear it out. When you have more funds, you may buy a better tool, such as a pickaxe with enchants or stronger armor, but the economy is not and should not be based on the constant artificial churn of items for the latest and greatest or because items were built to fall apart three days after the warranty ends. Think of the economy as more like old frontier towns. Communities were self sufficient, trading with their fellow villagers for specialized skills. (The blacksmith got food from the farmer, the farmer got tools from the smith.) Trade between communities happened if there was surplus that another might have use for and for specialty goods that weren't produced locally or not enough were produced locally. (Traveling to a silver smith because there's only one in the region. Importing tea because you can't grow it locally.) Wurm doesn't seem to be about big, modern marketplaces. There simply isn't enough market churn (more players coming in and out) and there aren't enough specialized goods. It's frontier survival, not Walmart and the malls. Which is probably why I've seen more people trying to hire someone for manual labor in chat than I've seen trying to buy finished goods.