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Rolf's PvP on PvE Episode:: Stories...

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@Chakron mentioned in another thread Rolf once turned on PvP and draining on PvE isles, then went home for the week-end.

 

I was not around back then, but I remember hearing of it after joining.  Being reminded now made me laugh, particularly "going home for the week-end."  I can only imagine Rolf was pretty upset with the PvE folks that day :P

 

In any case, this thread is intended to be a general call for first-hand accounts of this event in Wurm's long history. 

If you were playing when this happened, I'd love to hear some stories of how it went for you.  I can only imagine it would have been a momentous occasion, not to mention mayhem.

 

Thanks ahead for any contributions.  Look forward to reading if anyone has the experience and time to share.

 

**only intended for entertainment purposes, not to be interpreted as a suggestion, admonition, recognition or anything other than history and humor.  Failure to comply will result in a brief though extreme electrostatic shock delivered through your mouse.  Carry on.

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In the few days prior to Rolf's lunch time decision you are referring to a discussion took place on the forums suggesting that Rolf should turn on Deed Raiding/Draining on the Home servers (old JKHome and MRHome). Some of us that opposed the idea got quite vocal about it. Grade A tantrum for a few of us, myself included (forum acct Kyrmius). To this day I seriously wonder just how much responsibility we (those who opposed the idea and voiced our opinions loudly) contributed to Rolf's decision. That time I wish I had kept my opinion to myself, because it may have helped trigger an event in the game that hurt other Players and their deeds, and I never intended that I assure you. Only Rolf knows who pissed him off the most with their comments... if the comments had the effect I fear they did.... so, if I was in any way responsible, I apologize.

 

Besides that... if you were a PvE Player then, it sucked but I avoided it by not logging in for a while and let my premium expire.

Edited by geode
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Well, if I recall correctly, the deeds just across the server border got hammered hard if they had an open design, but Southport was forted up not too bad and was on the opposite side of the server anyway, so wasn't an issue for us.  I'm struggling to recall the time lines, but if I have it correctly, this was a pretty sudden change that predated the decision to close the server by a couple of months wasn't it?

 

 

 

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My personal story is that I picked up all the items I considered valuable and didn't log back in until Freedom was announced as a PvE-only cluster.

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The roaming pvpers of those days had a field day roaming around the home server killing people and draining all the open plan deeds they could find.

 

I don't think there were any actual good fights between the home server residents and the invading PvPers, atleast not from what I remember. Most PvE players were too angered by the decision to even bother logging in.

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My first time there I was in MR in the village Libilian Outlaws, ran around for a few hours killing people and raiding deeds then decided to 1v1 @pacer. Needless to say, I died very quickly lol.

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It was a blast.

 

I remember those coming from Wild (chaos) had a severe fighting penalty, and all it would have taken is some 50+ fighters to clean house, or even some heavy guards (old deed system). Of course everyone just grabbed their stuff and logged off.

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http://wurmdev.blogspot.com.ee/2009/04/moving-forward-with-server-setup.html

 

EDIT

I wasn't there and don't have any firsthand experience, but it was interesting experiment.. so I did bit research a while ago..

I can't find the forum post any more, where he announced it.. in that thread Rolf was pretty cocky with "this is my game, i do what i want" attitude.

Edited by rixk
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To those of us who do not like or want PVP... This was not a blast, it was terrible. mean spirited players just destroying everything and stealing because they could.  We did not sign up for that and we had little warning to prepare to even try to defend ourselves. Because you see the PVP servers had an advantage with higher fight skils and some things that were not available to us lowly PVE people.  The majority of the population is PVE and still is. When we all got outraged and went looking for other games that respected us, Freedom was announced.  I never want to see another PVP scenario again.  Many may be respectful however those who are not give everyone who plays PVP a bad reputation.

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17 hours ago, Madt said:

The roaming pvpers of those days had a field day roaming around the home server killing people and draining all the open plan deeds they could find.

 

I don't think there were any actual good fights between the home server residents and the invading PvPers, atleast not from what I remember. Most PvE players were too angered by the decision to even bother logging in.

From what I remember, it was tools like TG that came over and roamed. And then Xallo and Pacer went hunting.

Becket and I kept logging in. We fortified the deed with a billion walls that no one would want to waste their time busting into. As an aside, I've always wondered what type that infamous sandwich was. 

Edit: I also recall how arrogant Rolf was during that whole fiasco. Took him about a month to finally change stance of "this is how it is supposed to be, PVE was never intended. Deal." to "okay, I made a very big mistake".

Edited by As_I_Decay
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22 hours ago, Rudie said:

My first time there I was in MR in the village Libilian Outlaws, ran around for a few hours killing people and raiding deeds then decided to 1v1 @pacer. Needless to say, I died very quickly lol.

 

Pacer was stealthed in a mine you logged out in for ... about 7 hours... waiting for you. lol I had to bring him water like 3 times.

It was right next to my deed at the time.

 

----

 

IMO it was probably the absolute worst decision rolf ever made. We lost around 1/3 of the playerbase in 3 days iirc, at least 4 or 5 staff members quit, I was a CM at the time and I just about did as well. The deeds on the far west coast were destroyed... some of them long before the people who owned them even knew the change had been made.  I happened to be on that day and kicked our deed up to heavy guards and we were fairly far east anyhow, so we didn't get too much hassle. Our off deed areas were all fairly solidly fenced in as well.

 

The worst part was the fact that we had absolutely no real warning... people lost hundreds of hours worth of work, some of it was just destroyed maliciously, places torn apart for absolutely no reason at all, there wasn't even loot, and the tokens were not behind any sort of walls, but decorative trees and orchards were cut, roads destroyed, landscaping (not dirt walls, but simple terraces) dug out and fields ripped apart. The part that was the most annoying to me was people standing on the hill over newtown (the start town)... a completely open plan, no walls, not even many buildings to hide in... shooting players with a bow and a spyglass from beyond sight as they spawned at the token... for some of the players it was the first (and last) time they logged in.

 

Even after rolf decided to remove the raiding ability the damage was done. A lot of people had been forced to make very hasty (and ugly) changes to deeds in order to get walls up for some sort of defenses, and a poll on the forums came back with the decision to remove the old homeservers and start fresh on the freedom isles, so for a few months there was nothing going on at all on the pve servers because we knew everything was going to poof but indy was not ready yet.

 

I will say that moving day was actually pretty awesome tho... a few hundred boats crossing the server border in a massive exodus lasting only a day or two.  (there was a week to move iirc, but most people got across within the first 48 hrs) 

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4 minutes ago, spellcast said:

 

Even after rolf decided to remove the raiding ability the damage was done. A lot of people had been forced to make very hasty (and ugly) changes to deeds in order to get walls up for some sort of defenses, and a poll on the forums came back with the decision to remove the old homeservers and start fresh on the freedom isles, so for a few months there was nothing going on at all on the pve servers because we knew everything was going to poof but indy was not ready yet.

 

Thank you for confirming the poll. Last time I brought that up in a similar thread, people assured me that I was wrong and that Rolf made the decision because he supposedly couldn't revert the pvp changes.

IIRC, half of those people were players that pretend they have been around long enough to remember.

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I don't recall if it was an official poll, or just a thread with more people saying start over than stay, but i definitely recall the discussion and the consensus. (tho by that point i was more than a bit mad because we burned 8 sculpting wands hammering through a chunk of rock layer on pacers mountain to expedite construction of a new fortress city for my villagers to use as a secure base in the weeks while it looked like the changes were going to be permanent. I never did get those charges back)

 

I don't remember if the pvp changes were reverted or not, I do know that there were GM rules against some of the stuff, boat theft comes to mind, for the last few months as the new server was set up and people were preparing for the move.

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He reverted the changes after the forums exploded with hatred against it. I do not remember a poll, but more of a 'refresh' with a bigger map to likely draw in more players.

 

Most people gave up, or just moved closer to the south coast with ships loaded with their junk. Imagine this, pre-BSB/FSB.

 

 

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9 hours ago, spellcast said:

I will say that moving day was actually pretty awesome tho... a few hundred boats crossing the server border in a massive exodus lasting only a day or two.  (there was a week to move iirc, but most people got across within the first 48 hrs) 

We actually were given something like 2 months to move to make sure everyone had a chance to log on. But about 3 weeks after announcing we had 2 months he decided that enough people moved off and opened it back up to raiding once again before shutting the servers down. I can remember this vividly because I was working on making a priest at the time. I was trying to hit 30 faith and then head to wild to priest up at the white light because there was no other way to become a priest at that time. This is also the reason priests can now make other priests.

 

This is where it was Ironic. I had to leave my home server and go to wild(chaos) to be safe. While he had turned raiding back on the home servers PVP and raiding was still forbidden on Wild to give people a chance to cross over and settle in if they chose to move there.

 

Lets not also forget that boats had not really been in the game super long and a lot of people didn't have boats. Back then we could gain stamina in the water so lots of people would just swim instead of owning a boat. So right before he opens Indy he changes it so you cannot gain stamina in the water and added the drowning damage.

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I was not playing back then but I remember reading about it. There is also this Penny Arcade thread recounting the events as they unfolded;

https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/81658/cluster######-on-wurm-online-pvp-free-server-is-up-again-run-for-it

 

Of especial note was Rolf's stubbornness in the initial days following, even when he had many players and GM staff quitting, insisting it was a right move and players should just get used to it and hey maybe they would even find they ENJOYED having their deeds trashed and raided:

 

Quote

I have hinted about it and written posts stating that the game would go in that direction. I did not give warning the day it happened. Not to the players, not to the staff. The obvious question is why not?
There is not one single answer to that question. The move was a mix of frustration, stress, enlightenment, timing and determination. I was not interested in discussing the decision at all. I got the feeling that it was time. It had to be done. When that happens I usually give in. I would gladly discuss things that I am unsure of but not this and not this time.
...
I hear that a lot of the nice players and staff members that make up the caring core of the home servers already have or consider to quit because they just don't want to be close to PvP. I respect that and I am glad if I made the decision easy for you. It is sad since if I had given warning and discussed it a lot of you may have stayed and maybe realized that you can cope with it. Some may even have started to enjoy the benefits the change will bring.
...
It is too early to let the vision be ruled by you the customer. I must have faith that I see things that many of you do not.
I hope that right now you assess the situation and take it for what it is. See if you actually do get raided and how bad it actually gets. If you don't do that I know you have good reasons for your decision.

 

 

This is why a few of us "newer" players go nervous when Rolf started blogging again in 2012 about "some situations where the game has deviated from the vision and idea over the years", and warning that changes were coming to return to original visions, since we all knew "original vision" was for Wurm to be a hardcore PvP only game world.    If you poked around in the Wayback machine you could find Rolf's original 2004 "Concept" of the game, which again revolved almost entirely around pvp-style warfare:  "Almost every day there is a raid where the enemy comes in large hoards against their stone-walled keeps."

 

So we were edgy in 2012 about him announcing new changes coming to correct the current "Deviation From The Vision."   We kept begging him to elaborate on that but he never did. Maybe he just forgot?

 

Anyway this always made me wonder about that OTHER great event in wurm history, the 2007  Wurmaggeddon, when Rolf suddenly announced the wurm hard drives had catastrophically  failed, he had no backups, and everyone's stuff and characters and deeds were just ..;. gone forever.

 

I think seriously he sometimes just got frikkin tired of us.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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Heh aye that was a pretty traumatic change; though, I should point out there had been some (admittedly limited) warning beforehand. Then for some reason Rolf basically did the equivalent of quickly ripping the bandage off.

 

Granted most of the warning signs were known to pvp players that had consistently complained about some Home server raiders abusing the current system to hit Chaos and then run back to the invulnerable Homes.

 

Still though, total agreement the change would probably have been far better received with much more public announcements and a longer cooling period for pve players to adjust. Might have made for a nicer mix of pvp and pve player styles, especially with enemy kd taking CR penalties on Home servers. Also the no deed or tower-building limit.

 

Not to mention some more "buffer" servers with varying degrees of safety.

 

Not like the arrangement was all that unusual in mmos. Consider Eve's security space system where the solar systems are fully linked regardless of pve or pvp. Powerful NPC fleets patrol the "high security" pve servers. Heck the really nice stuff is even out in the ""kill or be killed" sectors of space, almost exclusively.

 

@Brash_Endeavors, personally I assumed the 2012 announcement was about his plans for what became Epic. What was going to happen to Chaos at the time was pretty uncertain.

 

EDIT: But yeah overall Rolf and Notch had a slightly more hardcore niche vision in mind from the beginning, especially in terms of pvp. The entire Freedom cluster (except Wild or Chaos :P) was more of a kneejerk response to the fallout from the majority of the then playerbase. Heck even us pvpers were going... "Damn man" while:

 

 

Edited by Klaa

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I find it kinda funny, that in 2009 he created such a mess with that decision, then he made big changes (pvp and pve split + epic servers at some point) .. but now we are back to the same situation basically, where the game was at 2009 march before the changes. There is currently big pvp server connected to the several pve servers(they are just not home servers). Epic is pretty much dead at this point(sorry epic players, but it is) and out of the picture.

 

I think wisest would've been to go with the idea what he had shortly after raiding fiasco:

I mean the plot/subplot part from that post: "I realized that I should probably be adding subplots for the home servers as well. Together they form the overall plot and interact at certain points. The most dramatic events will take place in the wild cluster where the kingdoms and religions clash. The way the subplots will affect the main plot will probably be by supporting or weakening the deities in various ways."

 

Instead of creating completely new cluster for that, he just could've implemented it to the existing servers. He tried to create a huge wall between PvE and PvP players, but exactly the opposite should've been the goal. That plot/subplot system could've probably actually united those two gamestyles. They both would've worked towards the same goal.. of course in different way. Personally I feel, that there was a lot of personal disappointment involved and that "payback to the carebears" is, what has been guiding the development of Wurm.

 

This is the reason, why I don't understand, why even today it is being tried to resurrect epic. Sorry, but it is dead, move the good features (valrei etc) to the freedom and let epic rest. I am not very popular with the idea among epic players, I know.

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...wait, we have a plot?  Can someone help me, I seem to have lost mine...

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This was back when gaining fight skill was super piss hard so gaining even 50 fs was a real accomplishment - Especially on the PvE servers since it was a much less skill efficient way to fight creatures than fighting other players. So when he announced that PvP players would be allowed to come over and raid us we were understandably pretty upset, especially since a decent amount of players had given up entirely on fs after the "nerf incident" when a select group of cheating players on Wild resulted in a game wide percentage of fs removed for everyone. I had 5 or something fs before the nerf so that didn't matter much for me anyway, but hearing that PvP players would be allowed onto Jenn-Kellon Home really wasn't my cup of tea.

 

The time of the JKH PvP was honestly one of the most devastating events in the game, because we lost the sense of community that we had prior to that. Everyone fortified their deeds and as soon as someone entered local you'd start PMing everyone you knew to find out whether they belonged or if they were a spy looking for a weakness. In a way I think the paranoia from that time is what caused the awful Area of Control to come into existence, and that was some really vile garbage. In the end there weren't many incidents during JKH's time of PvP, but the fear was still there since not everyone respected that we wanted to play PvE in peace.

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I just remember Rage.

 

Rage from PvP towards PvE. About how they were using Wurm to build gardens. And wasting so much time and energy on 'silly' or 'stupid' things.

 

Rage from PvE towards PvP. About how vindictively they were destroying people's homes and gardens. How maliciously they were rampaging and killing.

 

Rage from PvE towards Rolf. About how he just... unleashed... this horde of 'horribleness' onto them without warning. And offered them no support or help.

 

The whole community was in flames... It was absolutely awful.

 

It might be the original source of the hatred between PvP and PvE. And probably the turning point in the evolution of Wurm and its community.

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8 hours ago, Aeris said:

In a way I think the paranoia from that time is what caused the awful Area of Control to come into existence,

 

Actually the AoC came from quite a bit before the raiding, as the only reason my group HAD a deed at the time that raiding was activated was because we had needed to place one in order to cover our various houses and farms WITH an AoC to prevent others from preventing us from working. It was at least 3-4 months older than the raiding incident, and probably a lot more than that.

 

The paranoia definitely came from around that point however, but a lot of the PvE/PvP disconnect existed long before the raiding.

There were and are issues with having a place that you can escape to and be completely safe from retribution, which is what rolf was trying to fix when he added the HS raiding in.

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