Docterchese

1. Patch gets delayed for a day. 2. Most of the staff quit. I have a bad feeling about what could be in that patch...

I don't think that knowing why Wurm just shed most of its experienced upper staff in just a day would actually make me want to log in again. Probably the exact opposite. Because I'm guessing it's something really, really bad...

I stopped playing in around 2015. I came back in April 2022 for about a year - it was a fun year of nostalgia running around Wurm's dated game world. The thing that makes it so special is that Wurm has an incredible community and history. Especially on an old server like Independence, it's clear from everywhere you go that countless players have poured so, so many hours into this game that we called our online home - some of us for well over a decade. Losing staff like Enki, Keenan, Darklords, Pandalet, and so many others who have poured years of effort into keeping the game afloat and the community happy & healthy is just such a horrifically bad sign. I've never, ever seen anything remotely this cataclysmic in the entire history of Wurm. If this doesn't kill it... then I don't know what will. (Or maybe not even kill it: just herald the start of a slow death.) One thing is for sure. I cannot, in good conscience, ever put a single euro into this game ever again, because that money would go to an organisation that is, as far as I can tell, going to kill Wurm one way or another.

Hard disagree, there's a lot of value to calming nerves even with a quick post. Rule number 1 of good PR is to solve crises and allay concerns quickly and effectively. To give an example: say your internet is down. I'd much rather my ISP tells me ASAP that they're aware of the problem and working on a solution - even if they don't know what that solution will be, or how long it might take - vs. radio silence where you don't even know if they know (or care). The same principle applies to any business trying to alleviate the concerns of their customers. Right now we don't know if we're going to be ignored or listened to. It would be nice to at least know we're going to be listened to.

yes lol please don't make this an nfi vs sfi topic, we have more important things to worry about (wurmonline dot com)

The math in this post is off by a factor of 10, 1 SEK = 0.085 euro. So it's 850,000€ total or 25k € / month, which isn't so bad. However, I suspect most of that money came from the Steam release, so it has probably been a lot less profitable for the last few years. It's quite tragic, because Wurm makes enough money to sustain the servers and a small dev team (which is what we got in the Rolf days.) But it does not (and will probably never) make enough money to get the new owners (GCG) out of the debt they're in...

Conflict of interest?

I'm the same. I was planning on spending €300 on silver to buy the remaining scale I need to make a set to celebrate 12 years of playing Wurm. Now, I don't think I'll even renew the premium on my accounts unless I see clear evidence that Wurm is not about to crash and burn. *Everything* I have seen here convinces me that Wurm is in big, big trouble. There's the horrendous new website; the sudden departure of two highly experienced team members (Keenan and Enki); the focus on profits and 'corporate speak'; and the terrible financials that Game Chest Group has behind the scenes based on their publically available financial reports (i.e. lots of debt and never making a profit.) I have no idea what @Krister is doing, but I know it isn't what's right for this game and its target audience.

+1, this would be really nice to have!

Thanks for making this video, it's important to document this stuff. Personally, I'm really nervous about tomorrow. It's never a good sign when a new overhaul like this is kept so in the dark - we don't know what they're adding tomorrow, and it might be the beginning of a new era of GCG trying to extract cash from the game by any means necessary. It wouldn't be fun if that ends up being the case. =(

It seems to be working fine now? So I don't think a replacement would be necessary. https://wurmfeed.rotabland.eu/signaturefreedom

The capital letters at the start of each sentence in the article (upto the question mark) read "IS THIS AN APRIL FOOLS?" which seems like an ominous question to ask... I can't find any other hidden messages in the rest of the text, but it could be that they're a code, or are the coordinates of something.

Based on some forum searching, it might be related to the 2018 Wurm anniversairy event, for which sigils were a part of one of the clues/steps: Where did you find it?

Random question, what is everyone using to make the cool gifs? a) I want to know for my own benefit, and b) I will put a tutorial in the OP

-1. Adding new servers to increase playercounts is a cheap trick band-aid that works for a few months and then dies off again. There are many ideas on this forum that would help to improve playercounts. For the new server vibe, I'd rather see something like jackal/challenge servers (or a variation on them) done again, meaning that you get to experience a new server and a fresh start for a while, but can always hop back through a portal to a (still populated) main cluster.

4x Claymaker COD to Docterchese, please!

I'll take a room! (Docterchese) Is it possible to get another for my priest (Laureltrees)? Maybe you have double rooms?

I really hope the feedback in this thread will be listened to. For a lot of people, the 20% upkeep discount from traders is important, and it would be a real shame if there is no way to keep that in the game. It should be so easy to do, too (e.g. an extra options window), so at this point there is no excuse for not implementing an alternative. On a broader note, I also really think that patch notes should be more thoroughly checked. The discussion in this thread is 99% about an aspect of trader removal, and this is a pattern we've seen a lot lately - a single problem/issue takes over these threads, and what should be an opportunity to get excited about positive news is dominated by such a mishap. Instead, it would be good to see one (or all) of the following: Circulate news posts around the entire team before publishing them. Even an hour or two of notice should give an opportunity to get feedback and catch any obvious issues that are likely to come up. Be prepared to make faster, stronger commitments when issues are brought up. It's great that Darklords engages in these threads, but "we will clarify this better and fine tune based on your feedback" is PR speak for... not committing to anything. The issues in this thread would be almost completely alleviated by quickly saying that the 20% discount will be replaced another way - I don't think that's hard to commit to, even on short notice, and it would stop these mini PR disasters from happening on ~50% of news threads. Wurm is a complicated game, and changing one thing can affect many other features or things people used that feature for. Hence, player feedback is essential; and stronger, quicker commitments (even to really simple things) would stop threads like this from getting a bit derailed every time. Likewise, the news posts could be checked more widely to try and spot issues like this one (or the now-deleted bunny ear discussion) from happening.

It might be worth putting in a bug report if the xmls are incorrectly formatted. Has anyone else had the same issue?

I don't understand what would be so controversial about removing the RNG on if you get a tick or not and compensating by reducing skillgain by ~50%. Getting a tick half of the time is just annoying, and when it happens multiple times in a row, people get confused about whether they're doing something wrong. It would make it the same as gaining faith from prayer, which is the other timegated skill in Wurm. Meditating would take the same amount of time to grind but wouldn't be as unfriendly to players. Not getting a single tick in two days is just weird and confusing, but with the current system it has a chance to happen. That one change would not make the skill faster to grind, just more user friendly. We're playing a game here, so why not make things fun instead of frustrating? As a side note, I have almost 90 meditating on my main, and would stand to "lose out the most" if the skill was reworked to make it more straightforward to grind. Yet I would be completely in support of this (and more). The only reason why I got to such a high skill is by using Wurm Assistant to remind me when to meditate - that's right, it required a third party tool to make skilling meditating possible. I think that's just bad game design, plain and simple. I constantly see people in my alliance/freedom chat struggling with the mechanics of meditation, which just... is not how it should be. Meditating is a skill with powerful bonuses, and it should be difficult to reach high levels. But a good game makes difficult things fun, not frustrating.

I think that meditation is a very powerful skill, so it should be difficult - even at low levels, refresh from the Path of Love is really powerful (negates a lot of the need for food), enchant grass is extremely powerful (pretty much mandatory for animal pens), Path of Power's erupt/freeze is really powerful in certain contexts, and the level 11 abilities can be extremely powerful (especially Path of Knowledge with that +25% skillgain in everything except for FS). However, that difficulty should be implemented into the skill in ways that are engaging to players. Random skill ticks are just frustrating, so +1 to that being removed and changed to work like faith gains instead (where ticks are always the same size.) I don't mind the time gating, though - given the power of the skill I think it should take months of work to reach. With the new timers and event messages that were added in the last patch I think it should be a lot easier for the average player to keep track of when they should be meditating, so I think the timing isn't as big of a difficulty as it once was.

There are specific left and right versions - do you need a left, or a right, or does it not matter?

I think the main issue is that it's a lot of work to make such content, but it would be really good to see Wurm's socials get used more again. It costs nothing to post to social media but gives promotion of the game - it's a win-win!

+1, the current system is really frustrating when someone is doing AH on a deed but isn't the mayor. I'd hope it's an easy change to make, too!

Unfortunately this doesn't quite work either - bridges can't be on the same tile as a house. But it works as long as the ramps are all external. There are designs that would work with that, just requires something a little different 😃