Wonka

Totally fair point. ?

I have no dog in this race - I don't have a priest, and don't plan to. The question you're asking is less 'what are you doing' and more 'why aren't you telling us anything', which is kinda fair enough. I don't find this thread uncomfortable, but I also don't think it's likely to get much response from devs, beyond perhaps 'we're working on it' from everyone's favourite whipping boy PR rep. For me, I suspect this is a really hard problem to solve, without either completely devaluing the achivement or screwing it completely (possibly for one group or another), so I can see how the devs are reluctant to just go ahead and change something. Clearly, the current situation isn't good, but I can think of so many knee-jerk changes that could make it so much worse. And I am genuinely curious as to how it could be fixed, without introducing other issues or making it pointless.

It's hard to see a straightforward solution to this, without either making the goal so easy it's trivial (everyone can re-cast for journal within 24 hours), or basically promoting exclusionary play in other ways (must contribute X prayers to be able to cast). Also, practically, a solution that doesn't require a massive rewrite of how spells work is more likely to be implemented. If you've seen/made suggestions that don't fall into one of these holes, do link them. If asking nicely doesn't effect dev change, then passive-aggressive complaints about how the devs obviously don't care at all probably won't help either, just sayin'. Maybe only allowing a particular cast per character every 6 months? Still seems a bit clunky.

original tall banner is better - purple on white stands out way more than white on purple.

Some people may stay because they can make RL money after 5 years of grind (adjust times and amount of RL money to whatever you want), but that's not everyone by a long shot. A lot of people stay beyond the 5/10/15 year point because they want to keep playing. I haven't sold anything in literally years, and I'm still here. As are most of the long-term players I play with. The community thing Mordraug refers to above is still going, incidently, it's just that our alliance has multiple very-high-skilled crafters (many of whom grinded up their own skills), who offer their skills for free to other alliance members, since what goes around comes around.

Botanising on steppe vastly ups the woad numbers. And introducing new colours as botanise only simply restarts the whole "why can't we grow it?!?!?" argument.

Skeletons and zombies already exist - head to pvp. I'm guessing you're on Xanadu, from the lack of monster complaint - try one of the other servers, as they have abunndant wildlife (assuming someone hasn't been out killing it all off again).

Tsk, this is the suggestion that bucks the trend of no staff responses? Deery, deery me.

Tsk, that Angelklaine, already catapulted and drained it, has he?

Not even a little bit. -1.

Excellent post! Of course, ultimately you're going to have to trust someone, but it's all about doing what you can to ensure as much trust as possible. Also, when buying silver from the official store, DON'T USE PAYPAL! All the other options are cheaper - Paypal costs a lot, and wurm passes on that cost to you.

Wouldn't that just drive the whole thing underground? Like wow, etc? At least currently there's some scrutiny and ability for staff to step in and ban scammers.

Why? You can already view the site from a mobile browser, and although not the greatest, it's clearly had some mobile optimisation (i.e. it's not the same as the desktop site), and it all works.

If you can basically get a playable account without paying premium, why would most people pay premium at all? Adding reasons not to pay for the game seems like a bad idea. Wurm is already free to try, and with the change to cap characteristics at 30 for non-prems, you can still ride horses, drive carts and boats, etc (assuming you ground those up a bit while premium). I can see an argument for a very tiny increase (like to 25) in the skill cap, but that should be to help newbies, not to make it easier for vets to play for free. Maybe offer a 1-month sub for a little more (like €9 / month, or €16 / 2 months).

Wurm isn't a game, it's a way of life. And it's almost impossible to ever fully leave it.

I'm guessing the first step is getting it working on the cloud at all. Next step is probably making it work better by splitting stuff into a more cloud-optimised form. Clearly the current hosting isn't working, so something needs to be done; I'm just glad someone on the dev team clearly has a plan and is working towards getting it working. And the dev diaries are interesting, too

you probably want to post something in the WU client bugs section, https://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/forum/270-client-issues/ Also worth a look through that to see if anyone else has the same problem.

And just think of all those lovely, lovely bugs that won't be fixed in the 2015 version...

I still remember when there was the landing on the roof bug, where you could get stuck in the roof of a house by disembarking inside, or riding on a cart as a passenger. I'd just found a fallen deed with a bunch of cool stuff, so really didn't want to die. Took a GM about 30 minutes to get out to me and TP me out of the roof, but it was a tense half an hour waiting!

For anyone hunting woad, go botanizing in steppe - the chances of getting woad are significantly higher.

Wait, why wouldn't you want to put capes on dogs? And why can't my unicorn have a cape?!? Hell, why can't I have capes?!?!?

I'm not sure my argument is any different from yours in that regard - I'm stating an opinion and the logic and inputs I used to arrive at it. Your experience is clearly quite different to mine, but neither of us are staff, and neither of us have access to hard data to back our positions. My argument is essentially that there is clearly a disconnect between what you think and what staff think, in that you say you've not broken any rules, but various staff presumably think you have, since they've applied sanctions. Again, if you feel the sanctions were unjust (and you've given one example of when this happened), have you appealed them via the channels open to you? If you got no answer, or the answer was "haha, you suck, loser!" then I would 100% be right behind you calling for changes, burning pitchfork in hand. I can only speak from my own experience and those immediately around me, but I've generally found the staff polite and approachable, and prepared to explain why something happened. I may not have always agreed with a decision, but as I've not personally run into moderation from the wrong end, I guess I have less personal skin in this game, so I may be more sanguine about it. If you feel you're being picked on by particular staff members, or rules are being enforced inconsistently, please take specific examples to the relevant leads, so they can actually do something about it. And I ask that for the good of all of us (I'm sure I'll say something stupid enough to draw a mods attention eventually). My experience of various people who have moderation responsibilities in wurm has been that they want to get better at what they do, but I don't see that random accusations of generic wrongdoing with no specifics made publicly really help them with that; in fact, it probably hinders the change you're professing to want. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure staff didn't volunteer because they want your respect, nor does the lack of your (or any of our) respect form a significant input in moderation. Just like how whether you have a premium toon or not makes no difference to moderation (nor should it).

My apologies, I did not mean to imply that you personally had been racist, etc - that's poor wording on my part. However, given that this thread is about over-moderation on discord, and I've hopped into one of the 'alternative' non-official discords being touted by those who have run afoul of moderation, I can only say that if what folks had been saying in the official channels is even a fraction as offensive as what I saw in the non-official ones, then I can see exactly how they ended up banned. 'Toxic' seems to fit those individuals perfectly, to my understanding of the word, and I have zero desire to share anything with them. Again, no implication that you share anything with such individuals (beyond perhaps a slightly antagonistic approach to argument) - I have no evidence that you are racist, homophobic, etc, and did not intend to suggest that. I can't say why you've had posts etc removed, only staff could. As several senior staff have said here, you can contact them to ask about that - I assume you've done that and you're unsatisfied with the responses? I have to imagine that only serious infractions result in records, otherwise staff would spend more time writing up every minor thing they did than actually moderating. I'm not suggesting that 'toxic' should mean 'offended someone minorly, ever' - that's clearly a strawman argument. The in-game examples you've cited are clearly trivial, and I doubt you received any sanctions for them - when you had a GM called on you, did he do anything other than talk to you to figure out what happened and move on? You've described several in-game interactions that seem trivial; however, when approached by the other parties, did you respond calmly or with a stream of vitriol? I would suggest that being toxic is about how you respond to others (staff included) as much as what you do. My contention is that when only a minority of users find they run into issues with the rules governing a particular community, it may be that the issue is with those individuals rather than the community or it's accepted norms of behaviour. Possibly the issue is that the individuals concerned would be better somewhere else, and nothing more. Perhaps something more. I have no figures to back this up - only the various moderation teams will be able to say how many people cross their radars as a percentage of total users - only an impression based on my own observations. It seems to me that: the number of people sanctioned or who seem to persistently run afoul of staff is small, even within the low number of active users the people who run into issues tend to come from the pvp crowd rather than the pve crowd. Not universally, but primarily. the number of people permanantly excluded is a very small proportion of the numbers sanctioned at all, and a tiny proportion of total numbers I seriously doubt you've been banned "without a single rule broken". I expect that you disagree with an interpretation of a rule, or with the judgement of a staff member, or possibly with a rule at all. I assume you've appealed said ban, which I'm guessing was investigated and you were informed that it was correct and would stand? I'm not saying staff are perfect, or that they get it right every time. Of course they don't. I am saying that there seem to be robust procedures in place for dealing with this, and my experience, and that of the people I play with, has been that they generally work. Also, disagreeing with a sanction is not sufficient reason for a sanction not to apply, nor does it constitute wrong-doing on the part of staff. All moderation has to rely on a degree of personal judgement, and moderators (and presumably staff in general) are chosen because they exhibit the level of judgement and outlook expected by those who decide policy. You say you were a forum mod, but don't seem to be now. Can I guess that you found your own judgement and expectations did not match what was expected of your position, and you either left or were asked to leave? The counter arguments to this view I've seen on the forums seem to be as much an opportunity to slag off the moderation teams as anything else, and they seem to come from a small number of very vocal players, often who have been sanctioned multiple times. There may be a few bad apples in the moderation team (which I'm not seeing any evidence of), but their actions should be pretty obvious to those in charge, especially if they're receiving multiple reports about those individuals.

See, for me, toxic is pretty clear. Wurms big strength is that it can be as social as you want, if you want to be a hermit on a mountain doing everything yourself, you can. Some folks just like to make trouble, though, and go out of their way to troll or upset others just for kicks. There's quite a lot of them in the pvp crowd, which is part of why I left way back when. I imagine that the same group of people are trying sophistry on staff, trying to twist whatever they say, quote out of context, etc - when they get smacked for it, it must be staff bias, 'censorship', and so on. The various comms channels run by CodeClub are theirs, absolutely, to run how they see fit. If you don't like the way they're run, nobody is forcing you to stay here. Go somewhere that is more to your liking, where you can be as racist, non-PG13, and generally unpleasant as you like. It's funny how the majority of forum users (to take one channel) don't seem to have any trouble staying within the rules, and never run into the mod team at all.

Why would you expect that discord would be moderated any different to any of the official channels? This isn't some sort of public interest, state supplied communications platform, it's a privately-run community, run by a commercial business, for their benefit. There's no free speech, nor should you have any expectation that there would be. If you don't like it, go use other channels, or create your own - I'm sure the various moderation teams would heartily love you for it!