Wurm Online developer blog

Moved to http://www.wurmonline.com/blog/

2009-06-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

This blog is now formally moved to
http://www.wurmonline.com/blog/ where the whole team blogs. It will be a lot more interesting and active. See you there instead!

Libilian Outlawz aftermath

2009-05-16T03:06:00.000-07:00

This was taken yesterday, on the morning after the raid. There used to be long houses on the walls and of course as you can see the wall itself has been breached.

What a day!

2009-05-08T00:34:00.000-07:00

This month Wurm Online has a 6 page feature in PC Gamer UK! 6 pages!

The article was fair and just and well written. It explained what Wurm is about and captures the feelings that we want to convey.

I want to congratulate and thank the team and the players as you're all involved in what makes Wurm noticable in such a way.

Other things I've been busy with is refactoring the client, changing protocol and stuff in order to thwart old hacks. I've been talking to potential investors and I've assisted Egal some with getting the new server up and running. Oh and looking at bugs trying to find out the reason why some animals disappear at times. Adding some debug functionality since I have troubles reproducing the bugs at will.

I am currently looking at changing food for the better and also skill rolls need some tweaking to handle difficulties above 100.

Player Of The Week is Drega who reported the mount safety bug and Team Member Of The Week is Egal for working hard with the new server!

Enjoy the weekend - I know I will!

Moving forward with the server setup

2009-04-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

Like, a few weeks ago I managed to wreak havoc upon this game I develop. The effects weren't actually dramatically noticable in player count but quite a lot of the game masters and some developers quit in disappointment. Because of the lack of totally pvp-free servers and the hit to morale the community suffered player count is slowly slumping.

Now, I think that it is safe to say that I made a mistake and a rash decision. The discussion we have now in the forums could have been started instead of opening up for kvk (kingdom versus kingdom) fighting. There are probably some benefits as well with the way things happened though. Someone learned something or so. I probably did:)

Now it is pretty clear that Wurm is moving towards or splitting into a pvp game and a non pvp game on different servers. We are discussing on whether it should be possible to move between these games and if so how.

The main issues with letting people move between pvp and non-pvp servers are:
* Spies coming from and returning to the safe servers
* Loot disappearing into the safe servers
* High skills trained in safety
* High quality items created in safety
* People coming to the safe servers with high fighting skills, killing unique creatures then returning

Some people care about these issues and some don't think that it is a problem.

There are suggestions for solutions to limiting the negative effects of them. I think that we will have a solution ready within a few weeks.

Team member of this week is Enki - he's been around helping out for so long it hurts. I remember he made some useful diagrams over trader prices years ago when I was debugging those.

Player of the week is Awesomefusion. He's been such a force in pvp that it's helped balance it:)

All in all I feel that Wurm is moving in a positive direction again.

Mount code coming together

2009-03-13T02:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I finally got the riding synchronized and the speeds are pretty good now so now I can move on to equipment.

You can add a saddle, bridle, (and horseshoes to horses) and your mount will move a bit faster. This equipment side could be made very intricate using all sorts of equipment and requiring horse grooming equipment etc, but that would just make it a hassle to ride.

Some equipment used as a bonus is good because you can ride without it and it will add to the economy.
We'll probably see these changes coming in a week or two.

The big discussion now is about the survival of HOTS because of dwindling numbers. We'll see how many players stick around until I can make the kingdom work properly.

Player of the week is Phennexion who wrote about his experiences with trying to play HOTS in a very good way and also came to say goodbye in irc afterwards.

Team member of the week is our lead designer Mortimar. He's been under a lot of pressure these last months with work and studies but is rounding up his team for a push. Good luck with that and everything else Mortimar!

Interesting week

2009-02-27T05:26:00.001-08:00

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!

Nice end of the week

2009-02-20T07:53:00.000-08:00

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.

Overheated

2009-02-06T06:26:00.000-08:00

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!

State of war

2009-01-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

I receive a lot of worried reports about the imbalance of the war on wild. Word is that the Jenn Kellon greatly outnumber the HOTS and Mol Rehan kingdoms.
Being tired of the constant underdog position, old players of Mol Rehan change side and join the Jenn Kellon.

New players are left behind
The remaining players of Mol Rehan desperately and quite successfully manage to recruit new blood. However, due to old variations in skill speed gain and the odd exploit the old players have a lot higher body stats so new players feel discouraged.
Add to that the recent skillgain limitation on alt accounts and I can see that the Jenn Kellon kingdom may feel like a dragon poised to swallow you whole.

Kingdom bonus
There is already the bonus for low populated kingdoms. If the difference is very large the players of that kingdom mainly receive a Combat Rating bonus of 2. This effects a few different things but when it comes to hitting the enemy this equals roughly 20 in overall fighting skill. So if you have 20 in fighting skill you fight as if you have 40. If the difference is lower this bonus is 1 CR instead.

.. is too high?
These last days I received two notes forwarded by the GM's. One player complains that he has been killed by people with far lower skill than he has. This is maybe because of the kingdom bonus I just mentioned. It could of course be a number of other things since skills are not the only thing involved in combat. Maybe they flanked him? In any case he was very upset about the kingdom bonuses.

.. is too low?
The other note I received was from a GM who was worried about these things and thought that the lower populated kingdoms were supposed to receive bonuses. He was upset that they didn't receive enough bonus.

On the hidden variables
I just want to comment on this and say that variables in Wurm are hidden for a reason. You are not supposed to easily calculate on whether you can beat an enemy. You will only be able to do certain assumptions given the equipment he is wearing and possibly his reputation.
To make a real world allegory you never know if someone is going to pull up a hidden knife in a fight. If all numbers are available people will make calculations and figure out which combinations are the best. The negative side of this apart from that there may be hidden bugs in the system is that people may decide to refrain from fighting at all. You should however get a feeling of whether you are competitive early on in a combat situation.

What should be done about the situation on the wild server then?

Do nothing?
It is tempting to look at it from a long term perspective. In a year from now I expect that we will have a lot of new players while some old players have left so the problem will be thinned out. We will probably have motivated people to join the other kingdoms so the numbers are different as well. There will also be new features that may outweight the skill advantage in some unknown ways.

.. but we're loosing deeds
But that doesn't help the player who right now feels that he is hopelessly defending his deed on the wild server either against overwhelming numbers or foes that gain unfair kingdom bonuses. Deeds on wild are actually expected to fall now and then. If you fail to defend your deed you will have to retreat.

What did I expect?
I did expect Jenn Kellon to gain the upper hand. Especially since newbies joined Jenn Kellon initially for years. I thought that the people who switched to Mol Rehan were brave given that there was no natural influx of free playing newbies to their kingdom. I was hoping that enough experienced players would join so that they could compete. And they did. But because Jenn kept the newbie situation the Mol Rehan are now in a dire position. Kind of expected. I don't know if the Jenn have enough people to push them back all the way to Gold Coast though.

What do I want?
I want the kingdoms to be fairly equal. I want a front line where the battle rages. I want groups to move around wild in secrecy trying to ambush the enemy, go on siege, hunt for resources, or pursue certain goals that will forward the plot. I will assume that most of the wild players want the same.

Possible immediate actions
Increase skillgain for body stats and fighting skills. Reset fighting related skills. Nerf body stats. Do nothing. Give money to people joining Mol Rehan on wild. Let a plague hit Jenn Kellon. Buff MR and HOTS even more (HOTS will be buffed soon anyways). Increase the kingdom bonuses for low population. - These are just a few of the possibilites.

Selected immediate action
I will add some incitaments for joining Mol Rehan and reward the existing (premium) Mol Rehan players. I will also have to buff HOTS soon even though I was planning to do that while I look at religion primarily. I will refrain from nerfing existing skills for now. This should increase the amount of Mol Rehan players somewhat. Probably not nearly enough to compete with the Jenn Kellons but hopefully enough to at least stand their ground.

Don't feel cheated please
If you are a Jenn Kellon player (chances are high that you are!) and feel kind of cheated I would like for you to consider how fun it is to play tennis alone. You need an opponent. Try to be happy that we try to fix some for you. If you are a Mol Rehan player and wanted a skill nerf try to understand that it is not something we want to do again. Some old heroes will remain on both sides and that you can achieve the same stats given enough time. Their skills will decay or they will loose them to mob deaths.

Absurd tennis game allegory
Wurm is supposed to be a Wimbledon for MMO players, not merely a chat room. We need to get a working startup line. I count on your understanding!

Thanks,

Rolf

You're not Anonymous here

2009-01-11T02:42:00.000-08:00

As most of you who read this blog probably are aware Wurm was recently discovered by a large internet forum known as 4chan.org. They seem to be a rowdy bunch who don't refrain from using strong language but they deserve a hearty welcome! We have received a lot of energy from them and a lot of them go premium so they really support development.

I must thank my team members for helping them settle in and get accustomed to our culture. I am sure a lot of you have spent long hours and had your share of headaches in the process.

Most of you new arrivals have already settled in but I thought I'd give my view on the matter as well. As you may realize using profane language in the public channels in Wurm is about as Anonymous as talking like that to your neighbours. Wurm is designed to be a place where you become someone so anonymity looses its role here.

I have created some instructions for you here where I personally interact with the community and show the basics of Wurm discussion.

Upcoming holidays

2008-12-22T02:24:00.000-08:00

I've had the kids alone during the weekend so I didn't quite get the client in the shape that I wanted for christmas. There is still an unresolved memory leak in the sound code somewhere so sounds will have to be released after the holidays. Otherwise it looks/sounds good.

I'm going to enjoy the holidays and work a day or two next week only.
Enjoy your christmas gifts everyone - I hope you get good ones and of course that the one in Wurm is best!
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for now. Catch you later!

End of the Nobel Prize week

2008-12-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

Soon leaving, I am just about to see how the latest sound code addition works out. On Gurubears request I added two sound channels positioned right and left of the player to take care of personal sounds like the creaking that occurs when you are in a boat.

Another thing that has been of interest this week is the Nobel Prize awards. I like to watch the party since it reminds me of the parties we had in Uppsala when I was a student. The biggest differences are that they have more expensive jewelry and prominent guests, but we had better entertainment and tempo. And, well they have gold on the walls which adds some class.

Players of the week this week are Madt and Ilu, who with their cat and mouse play forced some changes to the invulnerability code.
Tich is the team member of the week, as usual proposing a good suggestion that is nicely put and fairly quick to implement like some longer duration of tracks.

We wont be selling skill for money

2008-12-11T03:56:00.000-08:00

Everquest sells exp boosts: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F10%2F0130235&from=rss

I understand that you can purchase exp boosts and even whole levels in some usually eastern world MMOs. I am a bit baffled that EQ now does it and I suspect that it is an experiment by SOA that they try because the game is going down the drain or something. Anyways it makes sense. Does anything you do in EQ really matter to anyone else than yourself anyways?

The end of the article has three very good comments.
* The first reaction is negative - "I'm imagining a game between two people determined by how much they spend on the game."
I react the same instinctively when it comes to a lot of microtransactions such as buying levels and enchanted swords directly from the website in other MMOs. But I have a nagging feeling that my negativity is nonprofessional, uncommercial and oldschool. In any case we have decided not to do this.

* One person points out that some people have time and some people have money.
We acknowledge that fact in Wurm as well and sell silver to those who have money in order for them to be able to purchase services and items from those players who have time to put in instead.
It is very similar to selling the same items and services on the website but the difference is that the players who invest time don't loose out but instead gain on it.

* The third person thinks that it is a question of authenticity. That a person wearing cowboy outfit is expected to be able to at least ride a horse.
One reason to play games is to measure oneself with other players. I like highscore lists and understand where this comment comes from. If I meet the player on top of the battle ranks in a game I expect him or her to be good at fighting. And I like to awe at things and what people achieve. Now, my experience is that in a lot of MMO's nobody cares about you and you care about nobody else or what they achieve. Notch calls them massive single player games I think. Wurm is not like that.

In Wurm we allow you to sell the access (password) to your account since we believe that it is your right but I can never see us starting to sell skill boosts.

Then again - if EQ does it and a majority wants it.. Wurm as a project looses out.

Nah, for now I'll consider it being able to buy aces for your online poker hand. It can't be a durable solution. Wurm shall last for at least 20 more years so it has to be durable.

Friday again!

2008-12-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

So here's the friday. This evening I'm off to eat some Julbord.

I had a sore throat a few days this week so I didn't get to finish the sound stuff as planned but we are certainly getting there, even though we restructure and rethink quite often still.

The staff member of the week is Wolfram, who had to take a break. In case he doesn't return he's well worth it. Now don't go quitting just because you want this recognition any of you!

Player of the week is J.F, aka known as Prometheus. It is always nice and interesting to speak with him. He has been busy, but since his work has damaged the playerbase and thus all that I've worked so hard for for so long I had to issue a formal warning to him. I think he got the point and the severity of it.

I am pleased to know that all his hacks can be made disfunctional in a days work or two, even if I never seem to get the time. Needless to say - if you decide to take your chances with it and are detected your character and any that we can link together will be wiped.

Have a good weekend!

About christmas gifts in games and Wurm

2008-12-05T03:18:00.000-08:00

Apart from the bugs that occurred last christmas when people just waited and waited half a day in vain for Santa I have some other thoughts about christmas (and other seasonal) gifts in games. There's a lot of discussion in our forums where people really don't want to miss out on the christmas gift in Wurm.

First and foremost I want them to be... well.. seasonal gifts!

To me this means that:

They should become available when the seasonal event starts.
They should be delivered in a way that gifts related to the seasonal event usually arrive (such as in a colourful package, an egg, or in a pinata par example).
A christmas gift shouldn't arrive in april.

Other thoughts

You shouldn't just _own_ an account and get the gift. The gift may be worth more than the cost of a monthly subscription. You shouldn't just purchase subscriptions for these events.
You should have to attend the event in order to collect the gift. I pity for those who play a lot but just fail to attend but such have been the nature of gifts all over the world since the beginning of time. If you're not where the gifts are you prioritize something else and that is perfectly in order.
Putting them on some kind of reimbursement account would be better for business and a lot of players would be much happier. For a while. Until they realize that everyone has that same gifts, resulting in that the gifts loose value.
The gifts are not to force people to play on christmas in order to keep the player base active. They can be seen as a reward for sacrificing some time with your family and hopefully as something special for the odd player who actually receives few other gifts during christmas although I admit that that scenario probably is very rare. They are seasonal gifts, handed out during a seasonal event for the same reasons that the same gifts are handed out in real life whatever that is.
If we allowed only one account per real life person or could keep track of it we could consider handing them out in your absence.

Also, if we add the gifts to some kind of reimbursement account it would water them out as a feature in my opinion and we could instead hand them out once per three months to everyone who plays and stop calling them easter eggs or christmas presents or whatever. Basically I want the people who do play at the time of the event to feel that it is special and actually means something to attend it.

So the problem is drawing the line when the gifts no longer are handed out. In Wurm this usually means when the real life event is over. Previously this has been on the evening of the 26th of December Swedish time.

However, because a lot of our players do look forward to the gift and I don't want them to push their families too hard and feel stressed about christmas I will prolong that time to the 28th sometime late in some timezone very far out west. Depending on how well I count it may even become the 29th all over the world until Santa leaves Wurm and comes back here to his castle here in Norrland in Sweden.

Christmas approaching

2008-11-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

We christmas decorated at home today and even though the snow is gone again it's very cosy now. I want to figure out some good gift for all Wurmers this christmas. As usual only premium players will receive it since otherwise people will create free accounts just to get the gift.

I'm waiting for Joss/Gurubear to comment on the new soundscape in the test client. Zcul visited the office yesterday and said that the game was very different with some nice ambient sounds. The music won't be on all the time but instead play now and then, and I've had a few interesting moments where Joss' music starts playing at times where it creates a very special feeling.

The team member of the week this week is Dashiva. He makes so many updates to the client that I go dizzy.

This weeks Player of the week is Swedishphoenix! He put me in his top 5 players list in the forums! Apart from that he's always been helpful and writes about Wurm in a very good way in other forums for which I am very happy.

Week summary

2008-11-21T08:48:00.000-08:00

This week ended in a nice way. These last hours I got footsteps working in the client again (not the version you use but the development version) and the ambient sound system that I've been working on seems to be taking shape as well.

There has been some progress in other areas this week as well, especially when it comes to some old bugs that were taken care of.

I'd like to appoint the player of the week this week to Posteh, who returned to Wurm after waiting for several months for a working Macintosh version of the client.

Kilean receives the Team Member of the week because he made the client more compatible with linux and I suspect that was the reason that it started working on Mac again as well.

Enjoy the weekend. I really start to see the end of the sound development and this means that hopefully mid next week I can move on to more server coding!

Coughing

2008-11-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

Been having a cough and a slight fever in the evenings and mornings. Tried to sleep it away yesterday and it helped a bit.

Today I appointed Kilean as the new Client Team Coordinator. His main responsibility will be to keep track of what everyone is doing, making sure that there are no overlaps. Thanks a lot for accepting this responsibility Kilean!

Also Pidgeon has replaced Teslas in the team. Pidgeon is an irc operator for heavenlyplace.org, where we keep the #wurm irc channel. He's been around for ages and even though he specializes in C# I am happy to have him on the team.

Development wise I am starting to see a pattern now after several years:
Mondays: panic bugs and issues from the weekend or ending up in communication
Tuesdays: If I'm lucky progress on the current plan
Wednesdays: Issues from the last two days. Meeting with the accountant or some other business related issue
Thursdays: If I'm lucky progress on the current plan
Fridays: Something breaks down and the whole day is lost communicating

Remove some exaggeration. Actually things are pretty calm now with bugs and issues I think. Although I spent most of today with such things it looks good when it comes to progress.

Landed on my feet

2008-10-31T06:49:00.000-07:00

After the weeks of exile in the cottage we made it inside our house again just as the snow arrives.
Even though some work remains to get the house in order (after rewiring all the electricity that turned out to be from 1939) we can live there and we've gotten the heat up. Like I wrote yesterday I'm making progress with coding again and I hope to be able to turn around the emerging slump in subscriptions now.

During renovation I purchased a best of cd with Electric Light Orchestra since I thought I liked some of their songs twenty/thirty years ago - and I did. I usually mix them up with Supertramp and REO Speedwagon. Turns out they made a whole album with Olivia Newton John, so I've kind of started listening to both those. Remember
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1UWSD-FaA ?

A day with sounds

2008-10-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

Today is free from meetings, panic bugs or customer support issues so I finally get to do some focused programming. Gurubear has made good progress with ambient sounds so I plan to add support for them and do some tweaks on spot sounds as well during the day.

The Mol Rehan home server crashed tonight (again). Fortunately we have already sent some crash logs to Sun Microsystems to look at and I expect an answer within a few days. Hopefully they have a solution as well.

Not what I needed

2008-10-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

I love synchronicity. Random pieces of data that suddenly match in time and seem to make sense or have a deeper meaning. As most of you probably understand I am itching to get back to work full time.

Now, I also like to purchase budget games in malls. Lately in the evenings I've been playing Enter the Matrix from 2003, which is about the time that we started developing Wurm Online. I play on Easy so that I can see what the game is about without wasting too much time. Incidentally the game has a nice focus mode where you are more powerful and everything moves in bullet time. Enter the Matrix is actually the only game beside Wurm that I know of that calls a feature "focus".

I don't fail often at Easy even though I play sloppily. Now, this time I did fail and I didn't like what I saw:

Yes yes yes. I know. I am doing my best!

Oh, and apparently Wurm has a face:
http://www.pixolator.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=32442

Increased decay

2008-10-17T04:08:00.000-07:00

Yep, again. Bleh. Nobody likes it and that makes me feel bad, so I'm sorry.

The game is supposed to have the capability to handle 500 simultaneous players. I wrote some about it here:
http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=8361.180

Been renovating the kitchen 24/7. Pretty exhausted and battered. I expect to get the furniture up on monday so that we can move in. Fetching it now from IKEA. Only the floor remains now and it should be laid down on sunday by Rickard Nyren the floor expert.

Don't panic over the decay. At least you'll get skills getting new items. The big difference is that you have to use them up more quickly and that goes for everyone so at least its fair.

Enjoy the weekend!

Client team at full strength

2008-10-08T00:55:00.000-07:00

I have now finally received the NDA from Brent, aka Teslas. The client team now consists of 8 people and is at full strength which feels very good.

I'm at work fixing a few bugs and restarting for maintenance but I thought I'd show you what I am facing this afternoon:

I have to get this done by the weekend. The cottage we borrow is getting cold:)

I made a lot of progress tearing down things yesterday though. This is how it looked then:

No place for a ten months old. Actually it was a pretty ugly kitchen even before, not suited for a thirty-eight year old either.

A you can see there used to be a wall in the middle of the room where the door is. It took forever for the hired guys to tear it down. We also discovered the surprise pipe for the radiators in the wall just in front of the door so we had to call the plumber.

I've never renovated a kitchen before and even though I'm not young anymore I can feel the adult points ticking in as I detach the stove fan, figure out how to turn off the water and move the sink, or drill a hole in the concrete to the basement. No wonder those carpenter guys got their children ten years before me.

Evening work this week

2008-10-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

I started a renovation project in my house a week ago that has escalated beyond imagination. The idea was to simply open a door to the garden but just as with every other project like this the whole kitchen now has to be renovated. I can't afford this so I have to do most of it myself.

Since the house is pretty much uninhabitable until this is fixed I better get on it right away since we have small children and its really starting to wear on us. This means that I'll be away most of the week and do whatever work I can in the evenings.

Meanwhile, play Wurm and enjoy!

Wurm is on the frontpage again!

2008-10-03T05:19:00.001-07:00

Thanks go out to the regional newspaper Östgöta Correspondenten (corren.se) for featuring Wurm on its frontpage here in the Motala edition! Seems we didn't make it to the online version but paper is fun enough.

Here are some photos I took of it (click for a larger version):

Glad that they point out that the picture is arranged.

Unexpected webserver move

2008-09-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

Just as I was going to have dinner I noted that the player count was falling instead of rising towards the peak hours. I quickly noticed that our website said some evilness about being suspended and that someone responsible should contact the hosting company. I agreed but was of course startled when I realized that that person would be me.

We were told a few weeks ago to move out of the web hotel and order a dedicated server since we used too much of the shared web hotel resources. I ordered the server since I wanted to avoid hassle - the move was supposed to be unnoticable if we stayed with them. After a while I received an email with some passwords that I didn't need at the moment and was happy that the move was so seamless.

Now it turns out that we actually were still using the old website. At the bottom of that email were some lines telling me that I had to change the DNS as well so that people are redirected to the new server instead. I did actually wonder about that thing before but thought that they had moved the ip address along with the website somehow. Now they kindly offer to move the website again for which I am very grateful.

Anyways, in public I will blame them a bit for not pushing the DNS issue more and me a bit for not reading the email to the end. But secretly, when I turn out the light, I will blame them only so that I sleep better at night.

New client update!

2008-09-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to update the client along with the server. The client devs didn't really give their clearance for it and some features like the profiles weren't really fully tested. But the protocol had changed and I decided that the new skill window features were worth a few minor bugs.

You also now have to check that you agree with the End User License Agreement before playing. The EULA has two main reasons: One is that it's there to protect us as a company and the other is to make sure that everyone that plays the game agrees that things like hacking and cheating in wurm is not allowed and that we can ban at will for those things.

The first reaction we got was someone who asked if he didn't own his account so that he couldn't sell it. I want you to be able to make money off playing wurm. I think that it is your right. The Eula states that "you have no ownership to the account". This is correct. We own the server and the bits on it. It would be weird if you could make claims on that so we want to protect ourselves from it.

Wurm is a service. The password you submit when you launch the client is the key to the service. If you decide to sell this key it is up to you but we will take no responsibility in that transaction. That is how we try to draw the line. The discussion becomes theoretical and abstract after a while. But basically - we won't hunt you down or ban you if you sell your passwords. We don't provide any protection to the buyer either though since we don't handle those transactions but in clear cases we may still help out just to be nice.

Hope that clarifies some of it. Enjoy the updates!

A big day

2008-09-25T07:51:00.001-07:00

Today we are featured on the main page of mmorpg.com! Since they are one of the largest commercial sites specialized on MMO's it is a very good thing.

The review is positive and fair I think, as are the comments. Some comments about Wurm will always be negative as with any MMO. What I think makes us a bit different is that we have a lot of unused potential in our concept. Comments like "lack of story" and "all characters look the same" have little impact on me. I know that those things can and will be changed and improved.
Wurm has the possibility to make the story have a huge impact on the game and the players because of its openness and vice versa and we aim to use it.

Thanks you guys at mmorpg.com! I didn't even pay you for it. When we start making money I'll pay you back by advertising:)

This is a link to the full article.

Bladerunner or Highlander?

2008-09-23T12:22:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I confused the two movies in my previous entry. I mean Highlander of course and have changed the text (thanks Gurubear)!

On another note I noticed something interesting on mmorpg.com. Since the release of Warhammer Online, the ratings of ALL other mmo's dropped below 8. Warhammer Online currently has 8.9 in overall score. Wurm Online lost 0.5 in rating down to 6.8, and it seems every other game did as well. I don't want to speculate on why this happened - I just find it fascinating.

Hopefully it will have a good effect on our rating as well. It may be a bit unfair to the larger games such as WoW if they now will have a tough time raising their rating. Since we have so few votes our rating may fluctuate a lot faster. I don't know the effects of the ratings anyways but a sophisticated guess is that a higher rating means more people will be willing to try the game out.

Allright I had to check some facts out just when I had written the post. There's a nice explanation here: http://www.mmorpg.com/faq.cfm/showFaq/15 :) It was still interesting and shows the impact Warhammer Online had on the mmo community.

Frantic client developers

2008-09-23T00:56:00.001-07:00

The new client developer team have started updating the code at a fantastic pace! And yesterday Martinus joined as well. Dashiva, Serplat and Zcul are committing more code changes than I have the possibility to look at so it will be interesting to see the new client version and find out what has changed.

I assume you have found out how to locate the springs now. It should make it easier to inhabit those high up places on mountains.

Weekend update

2008-09-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

This week I've been busy laying some basics in the client for atmospheric sounds. We're also finishing up assembling the client developer team. The latest two additions are Pryath and Serplat. There are three more NDA's out there that I wait for. When those arrive we will have a team of 8 client developers. It is a round and nice number, and given the applications I received I think that it will be a very creative and productive team that are able to make some really nice improvements.

A feature that soon will come is that you'll see the max skill achieved in the skill window so that you know if you're catching up from death or decay still or improving the max. You will also see the number of affinities you have in the skill.

I have kept the affinity system pretty much a secret but today I decided I want to describe it since it's been around long enough now for you to explore and I really want you to start hunting affinities. I invented it because I liked the idea of a Highlander type of feature.

An affinity is a bonus to skillgain for a skill. You may have up to 5 affinities for every skill in the game.
You may gain an affinity from another player when you slay him or her in pvp combat, given that the player is premium, has an affinity and is of another kingdom than you. Every player starts with but one affinity in something - it is totally random and could be rope making or body strenght. If several players are involved in the kill the person who got the killing blow usually gets the affinity.
Right now there is no end functionality for affinities - you don't become the One like in Highlander... Yet!

A first new blog

2008-09-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

Allright! Blog set up.

I decided to go for Blogspot since it is neutral ground and may attract new players.

First of all: Welcome to the Client developer team Dashiva and Amnesia!

I am in quite a hurry to get our new client developers set up so this will be a short post. There are others coming as well that I have sent out NDAs to and I look forward a lot to receiving them.

I am just about to get starting on getting ambient sound in Wurm sorted out together with Gurubear. I got sidetracked trying out Prevent code analysis software from coverity.com. Looks like a powerful tool but we can't afford it at the moment anyways so it seems like a waste of time.

Make marketstalls: