fredag 27 februari 2009

Interesting week

Well, this one was interesting.

Darkfall released. I have been looking forward to it very much and honestly I've been pretty nervous about loosing a lot of customers to it. It seems that it will not be that bad.

The launch received a lot of criticism and I read that there is a lack of content. Someone claimed that it basically is all about running around killing anyone in sight and that it becomes pretty boring quickly. Now I am sure that is not the whole truth but it probably doesn't have all that jazz that they promised. This is good for us Wurmers I believe but I find it kind of sad that every MMO release seems to hold less than it promises.

I know far too well about post launch issues myself and can only gasp at the humongous task they have of debugging the game now with real players.

One discussion in the forums that I heard a lot about was the Nickromancer case. I removed the skills he received for the second time of becoming a Champion, as well as added a death so that he has as many as he had before the suiciding. Some people will still think that it is unfair. Things are never fair. A bug was involved that should have prevented the last suicide in the first place and a lot of people was upset so I decided to use the bug as an excuse to revive him. I am sure there is some way to hunt him down properly if you really want him permadead.

I do know that I don't want Vynora priests to live among the Hots like Nickromancer does so something will be done about that.

Another discussion was of course the MR region creature spawns on wild. It turns out that they actually do have a lot less spawns in their area. This could be because players destroy those spawns but from what I could see in the logs fewer spawns actually managed to spawn there as well. The numbers are too low to be statistically valid though and in the next update I have updated the spawn rates overall.

I have been busy coding new bugs. We are currently testing mounts and carts on the test server. I threw in a breeding system with traits as well. Wollschaf who has written great test reports thinks that horse breeding has the potential of becoming greater than boats in Wurm. But that is of course until swimming is made harder so that boats become essential for traversing large water masses.

Anyways, the player of the week is Wollschaf and the team member of the week is Eir. She just springs to mind. I think she said hello and goodbye in irc and it is always nice. Besides you all know she rules!

fredag 20 februari 2009

Nice end of the week

Well, this week has seen some nice progress at least on the test front. In production, shield skillgain has yoyo'd in speed which has been frustrating for a lot of people. The whole shield skillgain situation is a bit embarrassing I must say but I think that it works ok now.

The test server is up and running with a large cart that looks like a sack. You can however hitch a bull or two in front of it and drive it around, provided that you tame and lead the bulls first.

You may also ride certain tame creatures. After some convincing I allowed crocodiles to be ridden as well. Most weird creatures require a lot of body control to be ridden though.

You can download the test client and try these features out at http://www.wurmonline.com/testclient/wurmclienttest.jnlp

That client used to go to the production servers but now it goes back to the test server for mount tests.

Team members of this week and last week are Pryath and Niobe. Niobe is a fantastically good GM and gets the award for last week since she had her birthday then. She was the mastermind behind the new Newtown design.
Pryath is her husband and helps out with client development. He is working on icons and spell effects showing in the client.

fredag 6 februari 2009

Overheated

It's fun that people care a lot about what you do. Unfortunately this leaves the possibility to disappoint those persons with every step you take.

Now, Wurm development takes lots of steps every day by a lot of people. This is because we are rushing. There is a reason for this, it is not a coincidence and it is a conscient development strategy on my part. I have goals to reach - I want to reach version 1 of all the features and polishing will come later.
I look at Wurm Online like a car being put together. Right now it lacks wheels and I can't rest until I put them on. After I've taken Wurm for a test drive we'll start replacing parts and polishing the chrome. I think I've made these kinds of allegories before.

This leaves plenty of room for disappointments which you players will have to live with. We seldom optimize right now. It takes too much time. You should be aware of this. Eventually we will take fewer if not smaller steps and with greater care.

Two examples of such steps are
1. The appointment of the mayor of Glitterdale. I hear fears but I see no failure. He sure is better than I was. We will optimize later.
2. The ban of Kingen. Some people think that he should get exactly the same punishment as some other player because the situation was similar. I haven't looked into the case because I don't feel I have to in order to say this: it is not the same case. No cases are exactly the same (I stated that Kingen had been banned before which was wrong but that is irrelevant).
I don't think that you should be able to expect a certain punishment for a certain crime in Wurm since then you can calculate on whether breaking the rules are worth it.
The GM's however do try to follow their own guidelines in order to keep it fair. I think what Kingen received was a standard first term ban.

All in all a ban is one of those steps where we risk disappointing a group of players. It is not fun for anyone involved.

Another thing I want to say about bans that the GM's have done: I've investigated a lot of those pretty thoroughly. At least twenty. Maybe it's a hundred but I don't think so so I'll count low. I've had to question very few and only felt that one or two was wrong or should be reconsidered. None have had any kingdom bias. And those are usually high profile cases - for these there are lots of bans that are without question.

That said, I am trying to code away most situations that are bannable anyways.

Team member of the week is Oracle - not for the ban but for being such a fantastic team member. Like all the GM's he takes the heat that most of the time should be aimed at me. He seems to pick exactly the right persons for the job all the time as well.

Player of the week is Miggy!