Wurm Server Release Notes 2004

This is a shameless, unofficial copy of the Wurm server release notes as shown by /news in 2004. Some people might find it interesting to see what has been changed over the past few months. I hope that people will be able to see just how busy Mojang has been. The section headings are the date the server was updated; YYMMDD. Please note that this page is not an official document.

If anyone has the /news from before March 2004 please add it to this page.

Contents

041229

• New guards have been beefed up. They also know more skills, huge and large axes and swords and large/medium shields.
• Creatures (except guards) shouldn't move through walls anymore.
• No more spamkilling guards. They will also hunt better.
• Alliances can now be formed between diplomats of villages.
• Teleport wands now set the destination to where you stand.

041220

• PvP is now ALLOWED again. Read more below.
• Skill advancement smoother for more skills.
• Decay rates should be smoother. This may affect server performance negatively, we'll see.
• Banks are available to anyone for the moment. Access them from a village token.

041216

• Wall damage saved over reboots now.
• Flattening bug fixed.
• Prayer and alignment should go up more frequently.
• Walls and fences destruction changed. Disassembling removed.

Behave like this, please: Full PvP is in. This means you may in theory attack anyone. Your deity and local laws may prevent this though. Village diplomats may declare wars on other villages. When both parties have accepted they should then be able to attack each other with no penalties from their respective deity. A village that has been declared war upon has 24 hours to accept. As soon as they accept, the village war is on. You may not decline a village war declaration. Domains of deities give bonuses to their followers and others of the same alignment. This system should work, but a GMs word is law!

041213

• Creating advanced items now deal damage when failing instead of deleting the entire item used.
• Percentages are back. They are up to 4% off though since they are statistically calculated.
• Repairing walls and fences made easier (less possibility to damage).
• Drag and drop for liquids bug fixed.
• Fence gate settings for citizens should work now.

041207

• Skill progression slowed down. Skills SHOULD work according to all calculations. Things are generally harder, since it works as intended now.
• A sudden heatwave have evaporized all water in containers.
• Altars must now be used on the ground.
• Digging now has a difficulty. Dirt is easiest, sand next, and clay most. The slope affects the difficulty as well. You may dig steeper with higher skill. Bizarre!
• Mines now have a max ql, and different ores have different difficulties (gold being hardest to mine, iron easiest).

041203

• Skills fix again, affecting for instance digging and mining qls.
• Liquids can now be moved and combined.
• Small encumbrance bug fixed.

041201

• Skills changed again. Learning might be a bit too slow so keep an eye on it.
• Commands changed from '!command' to '/command' so type /help now instead.
• /me should work again.
• Fishing should be better.
• The per cent chance for creation was changed to a string.
• Bug with creatures weren't moving fixed.

041129

• Less rain.
• !emotes should work again.
• Skill system tweak. It was evil.
• A memory leak fixed.
• Movement fix.

041126

• Bank accounts for items are now implemented. Only GM's may use them for now during a test period.
• There is still a memory leak that hasn't been rooted down.

041122

• This weather update is brought to you by Markus!
• Stop using tools/clients like roundwurm immediately or you will be banned from playing. We decided that its more fair for all if we support plugins with our own client instead. So: Don't try to reengineer the protocol. Don't mess with the client. Thanks to the dev/s of roundwurm for 'helping out'! * !me now works for custom emotes.
• Reconstructing walls work again.

041112

• We have had problems with skills being bonused too high and encumbrance. These (should be) are fixed, but we had to rollback again.

041117

• Reputations fix.
• Wall fix.
• Skillsystem learning was too slow after an algorithm revamp, now fixed.

041110

• Walls are back.
• Tabbed chat is in, and the client has been very much updated.
• The deities in this realm has discovered you, and may try to get your attention.
• Encumbrance is now used.
• Your diplomats may now declare war and make peace with other villages.
• For the moment, do not declare war on villages that do not agree beforehand.
• Villages and homesteads also cannot be disbanded if a citizen has logged in within a week.
• Lots of other bugfixes and features. New bugs has certainly been introduced. Expect heavy debugging.

Behave like this, please: Until all mechanisms to control PvP are in, fight only when both parties accept. Don't steal from villages that have not agreed to war with you. If you are abused by another player, use !dev to contact the GM's. These laws are general and may be interpreted by GMs as they see fit. All praise the GMs/Sheriffs for upholding the laws!

This is supposed to be a friendly alpha. Until all mechanisms to control PvP are in, fight only when both parties accept. Don't steal from villages that have not agreed to war with you. If you are abused by another player, use !dev to contact the GM's. These laws are general and may be interpreted by GMs as they see fit. All praise the GMs/Sheriffs for upholding the laws!

040909

• Village reputations bug fix.
• Guests may not drag or move items anymore.
• The time until large anvils decay was heavily increased.
• Track now covers a 7x7 square centered around you and takes more energy and time.
• Guards without contracts will now wander off into the wilderness.

040906

• Pack update is coming. Wood items changed names so some models will look like sacks for a while.
• Village roles management fix. Democracies may now revoke citizenships again.
• The bug where bodyparts could be damaged found.
• Item sizes are checked for the advanced items now.
• Wounds heal better.

040902

• GM's may now issue formal warnings.
• Scrap wood should take less space.
• Only terraformers are now able to drop dirt in guarded villages.
• Seeds spawn increased.

040831

• Wounds will go over 100 in severity now, and hence heal better.
• Creatures (including guards) will now have no natural armour with regards to other creatures.

040830

• Make sure to start using and debugging the new client at http://www.wurmonline.com/client/wurmclient.jnlp, since it will replace the old one soon.
• Newbies may now attack aggressive creatures.
• Items of different materials shouldn't combine any more.
• Traders will not pay for worthless items anymore.
• After next reboot temperatures should remain in objects.
• Item names are generated in a new way. The difference should be 'large iron anvil' instead of 'iron large anvil' etc. 'Medium' will not be displayed any longer as that is the default size.
• Trolls move faster.
• Creatures will normally not enter guarded towns any more. Monsters like trolls may gather up and raid though.
• Some creatures won't hunt as ferociously any more.
• A large increase in the number of creatures has been reported.
• Tree ages were reset and randomized.
• Possible to set negative reputations again.

040826

• Wounds will save state better.
• Villages now accept twice as many citizens.
• Creatures now move north as well.(!)
• Only cows are milkable right now.
• You now need to equip and arm guards. Who can do this is managed by the village writ. These items can only be retrieved again from their corpses. Small bug with equipped item not showing immediately remains.
• Bug with guards taking village slots fixed.
• Seeds can now be found in the wild.

040824

• Database reset coming up.

Tomorrow at about 20.00 hrs GMT the server has been reset. Everything will be new. A new map will be generated, houses and villages will disappear. Skills will be reset. Some people had too high skills due to exploits that now are fixed. You will keep your player name, password and playing time. There will be some kind of reimbursement. All else will be new. We are doing our best and it was necessary sooner or later. This is sooner.

040822

• Better disconnection procedure. You will now leave the world after disconnecting:

1) In 5 minutes after your last fight. 2) In 5 minutes after your last criminal action, regardless of whether you were noticed or not. 3) In 1 minute if you disconnect anywhere. 4) Immediately if you disconnect in your home village/homestead. The maximum value applicable is used. You can check that time with the command '!lotime'.

• The server will not accept connections when lagging since it only escalates the lag.

040818

• You may now remove people on your friends list with !remove (person).
• The command !info shows the basic game info.
• Trolls spawn new things.
• You may lead cows with rope, made from 'wemp'.
• Practice dolls available for construction. They don't work yet though.

040815

• Bug 'not being able to plan again when structure is destroyed' fixed.
• Fighting now affects stamina. Make sure to fight well rested or you will defend much worse.
• Armour and shield damage heavily increased. Reason: To make training with low dam weapons tougher, side effect: it will make armourers more valuable.
• Trees grow much slower.
• Trolls will spawn less often.

040812

• Bug with being able to put items in corpses and charcoal piles fixed.
• Corpse weight fix.
• Village alarm systems now work like this: Guards nearby have a chance of detecting illegal actions. That chance increases with the skill of the guard. There is also a 'general chance' that the guards detect illegal actions. The number of guards in the village increases that chance. That chance drops with the distance from the center of the village. The 5 center squares of a village has 100% detection chance.
• Guards now help eachother in a small perimeter around the village.

040811

• Steel and charcoal lumps weight have been increased.
• Server hang when modifying reputations fix.
• Wall destruction bugfix.
• Reputation bugfix.
• Movement impairing wounds bugfix.
• Double armour bugfix. Remove and relog to retrieve the other armour part if it is gone.

040810

• Guard code rewritten.
• Other exploits and bugs fixed as well.
• Oh, and notice the creatures. Watch out, everything got more dangerous!

040805

• Guards move faster and hunt better.
• You must now enter illegal mode to be able to perform illegal actions. The skills of guards have been lowered to more normal levels again.
• A bug with leg armour was fixed.

040802

• Guards have been given faster reactions.
• Other exploits with fighting have been fixed and the reporters will be rewarded. Skill reduction may occur for some players.
• Remember, we expect you to report bugs and exploits, not abuse them ad nauseum;).

040728

• Justice system is in. Large villages (deed size 10+) need more guards.
• The skills of guards have been heavily increased. This only applies to new guards.
• Guards might pass through locked doors for now.

040723

• Fixed an exploit with fighting.
• Fixed trading bug.
• Small bug with village tokens not giving options fixed.

040718b

• You may now disband villages that have no guards. It takes 24 hours to complete and may be interrupted (salvaged) by its citizens and allies. All citizens of a village will be notified in village chat of any disband and salvage attempts. These operations take place on the village token.
• You now respawn in allied villages if your village is disbanding.
• Price of personal merchant contract set to 10 silver as it should be.

040718

• Trader books have been replaced by contracts. You now purchase trader contracts one at a time. Two type of contracts: 'personal merchant' (10 silver) and 'normal trader' (1 gold) (old traders won't have the 'personal merchant' contract for sale). Your book has been replaced with a normal trader contract. You may sell it or use it. To manage your old traders' inventorys and prices, you have to visit them personally. Purchase new 'personal merchant'-contracts to hire new, contract-manageable merchants.
• Traders and merchants don't use and global price anymore. All prices are local to allow for better trade possibilities.
• Bug with village settings management fixed.

040716

• Trader books now only let you hire one personal trader. Old traders will remain for a while.
• Prices have been trimmed and should be better overall.

040715

• Personal traders now charge 10% of the income and leave if they haven't sold anything for one month.
• Bug with skills fixed.

040713

• You may now hire traders. Both personal, - who sell your own items -, and normal traders who purchase items from players. Purchase an accounting book for 1 gold in Newtown to gain access to them. You may set prices on items used by the personal traders.
• Battle ranks work again.
• Voting should work again.
• Bug with fighting and weird skill resets when fighting with fish and similar items fixed.
• Digging and dropping sand and dirt should work again.

040712

• Deeds, keys and writs in containers while dying will not remain in corpse after death.
• Some more village permissions checked.
• Raw materials such as ore, logs and rock shards will decay faster, while their end products should decay slower.

040705

• You should now log off after pvp.
• You now may be attacked for one minute after you loose link unless you just fought a pvp battle, in which case it takes a little more than 3 minutes.

040705

Pvp is enabled again.

040702

Pvp is currently disabled. ETA sunday.

040629

PVP IS IN New map. You have received money as reimbursement.

• You can't build fences until new client is up.
• Traders now purchase almost all items, and sell off to the king. (Global economy)
• Villages now need guards to uphold its laws.
• You no longer need to dig for clay. It is visible.
• Strong persons may now destroy walls and fences.
• Metals now need to be glowing you start working on them. Time needed has been reduced to compensate.
• Fences now attach to corners.
• You can now drop dirt on sand and vice versa.
• A large anvil now takes a whopping 50 kgs iron lump to create.
• Reparations and improvements should work again.
• If you die, NODROP items, such as deeds, writs and keys will appear in your inventory. or on your body unless they are kept in a locked container.
• No longer can you drop dirt where buildings or walls would be affected.
• Metallurgy should work better.
• Yet another item size/weight fix.
• Fish sizes should be correct for new fish.
• Managing friends now have longer distance.
• House walls should not keep using planks when finished.

040618

• More items should be improvable.
• Building house walls work again.
• Item sizes were bugged still. The carrying capacity problem is solved.
• Raft building works again.

040617

• Logging out for five minutes should fix any carrying capacity problems.
• Huge sharks have been discovered surrounding the island group.
• You can now create a rudimentary raft.
• Sizes of items now depend of weight more closely, except for liquids where weight depends on size.
• You may now reset all roles in the village deed. This should take care of legacy bugs.
• Traders now have a stricter trading policy, purchasing ever better items. At times they sell off purchased items to the king, making room for new goods.
• You can now improve items using the right tools/materials, making them easier to sell.
• Item names may look a bit weird, especially for metal items. They use the material as part of the name.
• Creating large anvil shouldn't consume whole lump whatever that size.
• Creating steel now depends more on the amount of iron and charcoal.
• Tar no longer takes damage in the charcoal pit.
• Bug with founding villages fixed.
• Sprouts shouldn't render shriveled trees when planted anymore.
• You can now !suicide. This will take you to the start or your hometown. It will cost skills and most items will remain in your corpse.
• Trees now die and fall down at old age.

040612

• Apart from a few small server side fixes, fences now should behave correctly when finished.

040606

• You can no longer build fences/walls in too steep slopes.
• Bugfixes:
• A bug with decaying items was fixed.
• Voting should work better. Based on active players two weeks back, and the votes cast last week. Votes are counted as soon as you vote. If the number of votes cast last week is greater than 50% of the active players for a democracy or 80% for a dictatorship, the election is held and the mayor changes to the citizen with most votes.
• Switching between democracy and dictatorship should work now.
• Repair and improve algorithm improved. House walls should be repaired and improved on both sides now.
• Gates should work better.
• Combined ore now fit better in a forge.
• Coal no longer takes damage from fire(!). Basically it doesn't burn, just glow.
• Cotton now produces more string while used.
• Some items didn't take damage when used.
• Filling liquids from one container to another used to always yield water.
• Fixed a bug where deleting village roles caused citizens to be lost.
• Combining metal now requires both items to be glowing hot.

040603

• Bugfixes:
• Found a bug with coins that could cause them to disappear from the ground or from piles.
• Sizes for combined items were reset since some were extremely huge.
• You should now be unable to tell if a cow has milk from a distance.
• All liquids like milk should now be poured on the ground if dropped.
• Tools should appear under tools in the creation menus.
• You can't move while continuing any longer.
• Weights for scrap items changed.
• Chisel is made from wooden handle now.
• Pottery no longer increases unarmed fighting;)
• You cannot build outside items inside buildings any longer.
• Fix to planning buildings that intersect with walls.
• Combining should work better with regards to containers (size bugs).

040531

• Pottery is now created in a new way (use your hands, clay and heat).
• The server will handle crashes much better.
• You can no longer plan buildings that intersect with walls.
• Pottery is created by working with yours hands on clay now then burning it.

040527

• Fixed bug with items that affected sprouts, unfinished items and other things. Some items are still broken. Try to burn them if you wish.
• Fixed the cart drag on water exploit.

040526

• Login lag and reboot times should be decreased due to database optimizations.
• Removed the one-month inactivity player character removal. It ran once.

040525

• We now delete unused accounts older than one month. Quick and ugly fix to reduce loading times.
• You have received new legs and feet. This means your previous garments are lost. You will have to log in again for them to be graphically displayed correctly.

040524

• WARNING! You can SOON slay eachother. This is expected to have severe effect on gameplay. To use weapons, shield and armour, equip them by dragging them to your body parts. To experience relative safety, seek out and join or form villages with guards. When a person dies he will loose some fighting related skills, and carried and worn equipment will be left in a corpse for the winner to take. You will however NOT loose NODROP items such as deeds, writs and keys. Statistics are gathered, and will be displayed on the website later on.
• More production options, such as armours.
• Cows should start to appear. They will look like humans a little while.
• We have found 3 severe server bugs during this weekend and today. It is starting to become more stable.

040423

• we restored the backup from april 23 16:00 CEST after a crash due to powerfailure

040421

• volume problem fixed which had an effect on drinking
• no more 1QL fish
• fixed stateString

040415

• fixed a null pointer exception

040414

• intersecting fences are now possible
• village chat color changed

040402

• Current policy when it comes to theft:
• If someone catches you stealing and tells you to drop the item you have to obey.
• If someone catches you farming a field you haven't sown and asks you to stop you must.
• These are temporary rules until we have fighting.
• Failure to obey may result in banning from the game.

040401

• Fish now do damage to rods according to weight of the fish.
• More elaborate CDS (Cheat Detection System) implemented.
• The trader buys more items.

040330

• Current policy when it comes to altering the client: Don't. It will get you bansited. The reason for this is that we want to implement security at our pace and not at your. We are logging offenders (and some innocent people). All offenders and possibly some innocents may end up being bansited until we have intended security in place.
• You cannot move while doing things like creating/building/repairing any longer. If the ground changes it will interrupt the action.

040325

• We seem to have rooted out the problem we had with stability. Your accounts can now be considered permanent!
• Movement speedcheck introduced.

040324

• You now find clay by digging in sand. After about 5 seconds you will find out if it contains clay or not.

040321

• Welcome back to a new world!
• This time, think of the following:
• Minerals are scarce. You might want to settle near a mineral deposit.
• Keep close to water until you can transport it.
• Plant seeds early.
• Make new fishing hooks and rods until you can bake bread.

040319

• Bug with repairing and improving walls and fences fixed.
• Bug stamina regen while moving fixed.
• The !who command now works again.
• Exploit with dropping and queuing fixed.

040318

• Structure walls now slowly take damage and have to be repaired.
• Fences now slowly take damage and have to be repaired.
• Due to a db clean, some old locks on doors may have disappeared!
• !ignore command introduced.
• Items now have visibility range.
• Action queue exploit remedied.
• Bug with skill decay fixed.
• Bugs with polling and containers fixed.
• Bug with village information fixed.

040315

• Settlements can now form alliances.
• Gates should be lockable again.
• It is now possible to fill water from another container.
• Faster server startup time.
• Item bug fixes with ql and containers.

040311

• You now gain only 50% skill when exhausted.

040310

• Bug with not being able to reconnect after teleporting fixed.
• Settlement tokens should appear where you found the settlement.
• Can't locate tree sprouts from long distance any longer.
• Increased time to learn repair.
• Bug fix with passing through walls randomly.

040309

• You can now plant trees. You need a sickle to cut a sprout off of a tree.
• A scythe is now needed to harvest cereals.
• Bug with removal of citizenship fixed.

040307

• NEW COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS Default channel in the chat window is now SAY. Everyone that can see you (and that you can see) will receive that message. The other channels are !village (message), !shout (message) and !tell (recipient) (message), or shortly !vi, !sh, !te.
• Fences collision detection fixed.