Arilou's Mad Ramblings

10 Year Anniversary Retrospective - Part I

2012-02-04T15:17:00.010-05:00

February 4, 2001. That, my friends, is the day that Wyvern was opened up for public testing. I would like to be posting this in the cabochon.com news right now where I could maybe say something about how far we've come now that we're at the eleven year mark. Unfortunately, that can't happen, but it does make you wonder how far we could've come in the last year had things gone differently.

When planning the big celebration to mark our 10 year anniversary, I tried to not only to create a single fun day long event, but to create something that would move the game forward again. Without getting into a whole long backstory, we had spent the previous year and a half working on balance and bug fixes, which provided, shall we say... challenges, for our loyal players to adapt to. But, as we got the major issues worked out we had begun to slow down, leaving only some "tweaks" here and there and large scale projects (like enchanting and random dungeons) on our list before we could move forward entirely.

Now, when I say "large scale projects" I mean, extremely time intensive things. Therefore, it would've been a little longer before we could get on with the fun stuff. But you guys had been so loyal to the game throughout all that that you deserved a a break. Thus, the event I created was centered around permanent content that you could enjoy long after the day was over. Below, I'll review that content and give you some behind the scenes information to go along with it:

Costumes

Ah, costumes. Such a simple concept and yet, such a Salkand (har har har). Originally coded and introduced to the game by Janica, (via her wedding dress and tuxedo) these little things have been a pain since day one.

First, they were rather buggy. Not only did they hork the images of our poor giant and naga friends, but it set your gender to match whoever the costume was intended for. While it may have led to some amusing moments, such as the time Airick shook his fist at the anonymous tricky wizard who changed him to female, (before we knew that the costumes were the actual cause) it also made it pointless to ever create gender specific content.

Second, Avalon's introduction of a plethora of Halloween costumes, actually created quite a controversy. It had become so easy to change your image and you had so many options that people begun to complain that it devalued the work they put in to attain their hof image.

As a result of all that, and some other things, costumes disappeared from the game for quite awhile. But they can be a lot of fun for players so I thought that if we could get a bug free version up and running and devise some way to limit their use, we could bring them back. Thus I asked Contrare if he could code something that limited its use to only one day of the year (and fix the bugs). This request almost got shoved to the "not enough time" pile, but he pulled it together at the very last minute and I do believe they were quite the hit.

They also would have led to some fun times ahead - I always wanted to have automated holidays in Wyvern. Every year, on a certain day, new content would become accessible. You walk into Stensele and a celebration is going on or you walk into New Verden and a portal through time appears that takes you to our old style New Verden. We didn't yet have the code to do that with areas, but once a day costumes were the first step. Next we could have created the above mentioned content and fill it up with special items like obtainable costumes. So although it may seem sad to only get to be a little wyvern once every February, you could've had the chance to be who knows what in {insert month}.

One other thing I had in mind for future additions to this concept were costume rooms. I don't know how feasible this would have been or if other wizards would have agreed that this would have been a good way to go, but it was on my list to see if we could set a map to allow you to wear you costume regardless of the day of the year. That way you could create parties to show off the various holiday costumes you collected anytime you want and maybe it would create a greater incentive to create parties in the first place (something that doesn't happen much since auction houses replaced emote rooms as the place to hang out).

Minath Monster Arena

Above is a video Vesrayech created of himself trying to conquer the redesigned arena. It was nice of him to put the work into getting it together and uploading it as I really wanted people to able to see what the changes entailed after all the work that went into it. You can compare it with the old arena by viewing the following videos:

MMA by Kohora
Minath Monster Arena by Irano

I'm really happy with how it turned out. It had some bugs, sure, but there was a time crunch (Contrare was working up until right before the anniversary) and the bugs were hard to spot with one wizard testing it at a time (who would've thought you'd all end up in the same arena maps? - lol). Overall, though, I think players enjoyed it and most of the bugs were fixed by the time the game went down (I think there were one or two left on the list, plus we still hadn't been able to settle the whole statue thing - bummer).

For me, this was the most time consuming thing I worked on (although making the old New Verden come alive was by far the most tedious). In fact, it sucked up so much of my time that there were a number of things that I wasn't able to complete when I decided to push forward with this (I spent the better half of January consumed with this).

Contrare and I had previously discussed his plans for redoing the arena and I offered to help him with the map aspect at the time, but it was put on hold since our focus was still on bugs/balance. So it was nice to have a break to work on things like this, which not only allowed us to provide you with this redone arena, but it allowed Contrare to redo the code in such a way where other wizards could use it in creating their own arenas (should they have wanted to). With that, who knows, you might have one day seen an Alaria Monster Arena or a Havisfel Monster Arena... okay, probably not, but the possibility would have been there moving forward.

As for thee Minath Monster Arena, Contrare wanted two main things out of the redone maps; he wanted them rounded and he wanted them bigger. Basically, he wanted players to have more room to run around, cast spells, and avoid their foes. So I came up with the design seen in the above video and I incorporated rotating barriers in all by the boss levels, which have just two obelisks (fun fact: if you look at the obelisks the description reads "a strangely water-soaked, granite obelisk" in reference to a certain monster that rises from the sea).

I also decided to create a unique map for every level, which upped the count from 32 to 50 maps (some were reused in the previous design). Further, I instituted themes (forest, town, caves, grave, abyss, underwater) that lasted between 8 and 15 levels, with a boss type fight at the end of each that was a little harder than what came before and what comes after. Originally, I wanted to create a swamp theme, but we didn't have enough monsters to fill that out, so the Abyss got extended a bit. Had I done this, I probably would've made level 50 the demon boss level and had the chicken and actual boss be bonus levels. I also considered adding things like a dinosaur bonus level (Rhialto originally talked about including them in the previous redo) but ultimately rejected that.

It may seem like no big thing, but the real killer was matching themes with the objective of creating an ever increasing degree of danger. I had to swap themes around, (originally I wanted the underwater theme to be right before the final boss level to kind of symbolize the boss begun woken up from under the sea and rising out of the ocean, but the demons were just too powerful not to appear last) scrap/redo levels, and create whole new monsters to specifically fit certain levels (some monster images I had been saving up, some I finally got around to watering down from their First Day of Summer appearance). It worked out nicely, though, as I not only got to use them for the arena, but I was able to introduce them into the random lists at the same time so you guys had new monsters to fight everywhere.

Meanwhile, I worked to eliminate problem monsters that appeared in the previous design. Meaning, no more air elementals, diamond golems, or will 'o wisps. They were just too hard for specific individuals to beat, which is fine in the general game where you can group or avoid them or wait for a summon to kill you without a clock ticking, but doesn't work so well for the competitive nature of the arena. Of course, the arena is by no means balanced to give each class and race a truly equal opportunity, but it is better.

Before I move on, I'd like to end this discussion of the arena with the below image of the entrance. Out of all the maps I designed for the arena, this is my favorite - I've said it before and I'll say it again... I LOVE those tiles of Binyamin's.

To be Continued

Check back soon for part II of the anniversary retrospective. Coming up, I'll dissect such additions as the fae Wyston graveyard, the suggested playing time system, the original New Verden design, and more. I'll also be posting player comments/screenshots and I'll give some details on the things I wanted to have ready in time for the anniversary, but wasn't able to complete in time.

Wyvern: Year in Review

2011-12-31T06:02:00.003-05:00

For the last two years I've done a "Year in Review" news post for Wyvern, detailing the important news of the past year and linking to the full articles so that returning/new players could catch up or so that regular players could quickly go over it and see if there was anything they missed and wanted more information about. They took quite a bit of work to put together, especially the 2009 version (that beast took a number of hours to conquer).

I originally conceived of this idea shortly after the game came back up following what is known as the 15 month hiatus. It seemed like Rhialto was going to be more active from this point on and that updates and news posts would be forthcoming as a result. Therefore, I figured I could do a big blog post at the end of 2008 catching everyone up. Unfortunately, things didn't work out that way and there weren't really enough highlights that year to make it worthwhile. It seemed like the same would be true the following year, but that changed a few months in and the news began to flow so rapidly that people couldn't keep up. Thus, "Wyvern: Year in Review" was born.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to put up a news post this year, but I thought I'd continue the tradition as a blog post per the original idea. So for your reading pleasure here are the highlights of 2011:

Celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Wyvern we brought to you a fun weekday party that introduced a lot of new content to the game. Out of this day, we saw new maps, new quests, new monsters, a new [and only somewhat buggy] Minath Monster Arena, the return of costumes, and artifact armor. We then followed this up with a "suggested playing hours" feature that would allow players to get extra experience while training throughout the game during specific hours of the day.

Such updates were the first steps toward focusing a bit more on attracting players to the game after spending quite a lot of time working on balance/bug fixes that hampered players during the bulk of our work. We still had more work to do to balance the game, but with most of the quick fixes taken care of, work would have continued more slowly in the future and therefore we wanted to also spend some time keeping all of our very loyal players entertained until we could be finally be done with old balance problems and turn our complete attention to building the game up.

Following these exciting two updates, Rhialto announced a temporary downtime for March 7th... and with that we end this edition of "Wyvern: Year in Review." *cues dramatic music as the camera pans out - I now begin to fiddle with my shirt in an attempt to remove my mic while the credits role*

More Tales From Little Arilou

2011-09-18T22:22:00.005-04:00

Awhile back I posted a childhood story of mine that I thought some of you might find amusing since it showed that, even at that age, I was writing about people being eaten. Well, as luck would have it, I just recently found a story book that I had completely forgotten about and, long story short, I thought some of my might get a laugh or two out of this one as well.

I don't know what age I was when I wrote this or even what it was for. However, in the original booklet, each paragraph was on a new page and each page had some illustrations that I had cut out and colored. Therefore I would assume the assignment was to create a children's book. Unfortunately, there's no grade or teacher comments on it but, as I'm sure you will agree, if this masterpiece didn't receive an A, I was robbed (robbed I say). Anyway without further ado, I present to you said "masterpiece."

The Little Snowman That multiplied.

Dedicated to all my readers.

Once there was a snowman who was as small as a mouse. Nobody know how he came to be but, he is believed to be a robot. The only thing is he doesn't have any wires inside him. He is made out of real live snow.

One day three children came upon him. The children's names were Joe, Ellen, and Ken. Joe and Ellen were cousins and Ken was their best friend. The three children found the snowman deep in the woods. The children just about lost it when they saw the walking snowman. But, the snowman talked to them and the three kids became friends with the snowman.

"What's your name?" asked Ken.
"I have no name of my own," said the snowman.
"Then we shall call you Jack," said Ellen.

Suddenly, Jack fell into polluted water. He had a big problem. He couldn't stop drinking the water in the lake. He was growing bigger and bigger. The children heard a loud P O P and then, water & snow filled the kids faces.
"Oh no," said Joe. "Jack has now multiplied into two."

The two Jacks quickly gulped up the water. The children pulled the snowmen away from the water but, then, the two snowmen started to suck the water out of Ellen. Ken and Joe pulled the Jacks off of Ellen. Then the snowmen ran out of the woods. The kids were so shocked that they didn't know what to do.

Finally, after a few minutes, the kids ran after the snowmen but, they couldn't find them. So, they went home. They went outside after being in for about half an hour. When they got out there were at least one hundred little snowmen and they all had sharp teeth. One jumped on Ellen's neck and started to suck the water out of it.

She finally got the thing off of her neck. More snowmen jumped on her and the two boys. The snowmen knocked the children down to the ground.

The creatures jumped off the children and started attacking each other. Within minutes, the snowmen had killed each other.

"They got too mean," said Joe.
"Yae," said Ken.
"Let's go home, said Ellen.

The
End!

Wyvern Videos Segment 2

2011-04-07T07:05:00.008-04:00

Welcome to another segment of... *drum roll* Wyvern Videos! Please, please... try to contain your excitement. It's been awhile but for your viewing pleasure, yours truly has compiled another selection of Wyvern videos for you to browse through. Enjoy [or die].

Hentoko Graveyard by Ssalkand

Wyvern LQ Gauntlet by BlazerV60

Wyvern Ancient Vesimas by BlazerV60

32 RD Levels by ICUTUUU

Wyvern Promotional Video by Ssalkand

Hades by ICUTUUU

Wyvern BlazerV RD by BlazerV60

Mykenubie's Ultimate Downfall by Ssalkand

Wyvern on Lag by TheRealCrytearea

Have a Wyvern video that hasn't been included in any of these segments and you want me to mention it? Leave a comment with a proper link and I'll be sure to keep it in mind for future segments.

Jigsaw Puzzle: Forgotten Oak

2009-07-24T00:00:00.008-04:00

Just for fun, here's a jigsaw puzzle of a battle in Forgotten Oak. You can see how much time you are able to complete the puzzle in or just stare at it and scratch your head. Up to you!

A glimpse into the mind of little Arilou

2009-04-17T12:01:00.007-04:00

The Space Alien

Once a spaceship was going to space. It was going to Mars.The astronauts found a dead monster. Then they heard a noise.They saw that their spaceship was gone.They looked and looked but they could not find the spaceship. Suddenly they heard somebody screaming,SCREEEEEEEAMM!One of the men said,"I think somebody else is on this planet." One of the other men said, "I think it is Lexa." All of the sudden they saw a alien coming. "What?" said on of the men. "Ruun!" said another.They tried to run, but it was hard to run with the spacesuits. The alien caught one of the men and ate him. The rest of the men screamed with fear.Then they ran as fast as they could. Soon they saw a house.It was all green.The door was as big as a 999 story building. All of the sudden the ground shook and shook and shook. Then it stopped. They got very, very, very, very scared, but they were happy that they were not eaten.Then the door opened.They went in and saw they spaceship.Then they went home.

The End.

Wyvern Videos Segment 1

2008-09-21T17:30:00.010-04:00

Ever find yourself wondering what Wyvern videos there are out there? Well even if you haven't, there are a growing number of them out in the cyber world (some of which are better than others) and for those of you who might find yourself interested in checking them out, I've compiled a selection of them in this post for your viewing pleasure. Whenever a significant group of new videos comes out I'll do another Wyvern Videos segment on this blog in an attempt to save some of you the endless minutes of searching and to introduce them to those of you who would otherwise never know they existed. Enjoy.

MMA (Minath Monster Arena) by Kohora

Wyvern Battles by BlazerV60

RDing (Random Dungen adventure) by Kohora

Gauntlet by Kohora

Ziggurat by Kohora

Wyvern Gauntlet by Garoodude

Post Nerf Orcus by Kohora

Wyvern by Garoodude

Macabre by Kohora

Wyvern (a promo video) by Kohora

Minath Monster Arena by Irano

Btw, if you ever notice that one of these videos has become unavailable, do me a favor and let me know by leaving a comment that says which one it is so I can edit it out.

First Day of Summer Feast - The Lq Trascript

2008-07-08T05:12:00.005-04:00

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! A grave threat has been brought to our attention and it is asked that all heroes of the land be ready to take up arms against this terrible threat that may strike at any moment. If you wish to learn more about this, I am told that an envoy was sent to the feast to tell the tale to those in attendance.

*a half hour passes*

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! Reports are coming in that Stoneybrook suffered a grave attack. Many innocent people were killed and the damage was significant.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! Follow up reports confirm suspicions that Stoneybrook was destroyed by a Conqueror Wurm and an army of Nec-Bathat's followers.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The wurm was seen burrowing into the ground and its army taking off on foot. An investigation is underway to find out where it is heading so that this unholy army can be confronted and put down before many more innocent lives are lost.

*minutes later*

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! It has been reported that the small hamlet of Ashberry, located north of Stoneybrook, has also been destroyed.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! It has now been confirmed that the Conqueror Wurm was once against responsible and has since moved on from that location. Fortunately a mage, in service to a special order of mages, managed to stumble upon the army while searching for possible locations the Conqueror Wurm would strike next. Although she was killed, it is said she managed to cast a tracking spell on the wurm which will allow her order to track the beast and determine where he is headed in advance. They are now viewing him with their magical orbs and should be able to alert us to where he is headed shortly.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The mages have informed us that the wurm is headed to the elven village of Raukos Nwalya, located near the edge of the Almien forest. They implore you to head there with all haste as it is expected that he an his army will already be in the middle of searching the village before the nearest heroes can get there.

*the battle wages on*

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! Bad news! The Conqueror Wurm has burrowed underground and the bulk of his army has taken off as well. The mages are once again tracking him in hopes of trying to pinpoint the next village he plans to attack.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The mages believe the great wurm is headed for Bilyn's Town, located near the bridge south of Noir. Once again, please hurry with all haste lest you wish to get there after the wurm has already ravaged the place and moved on.

*the battle wages on**

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The great wurm and its army has continued on once more!
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! It's believed the wurm is headed for Claverack, located Northwest of Noir.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! Scratch that. The mages believe the wurm is instead headed for the shoreside hamlet of Fallwick, located east of Toys in the Attic.

*the battle wages on*

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The great wurm and its army has left Fallwick.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The Wurm is on its way to the Orc infested Town currently known as Orc's Rock! It's located just north of Toys in the Attic and northwest of Fallwick.

*the battle wages on*

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! It looked like the band of heroes were about to defeat the wurm this time around, but it once again has burrowed into the ground and taken off!
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The wurm is headed to Blackwynne, located southeast of the Temple of Life, next! Hurry brave heroes!

*the battle wages on*

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! Moral is low as the wurm once again vanishes by burrowing into the ground.
-Town Crier shouts: Oh my dear! Oh my dear! The mages have reported that the wurm and its army are now headed for Alaria! Quick! Quick! This beast must be stopped before its too late for Alaria and its many citizens!
-Town Crier breathes a sigh of relief and shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The mages appear to have been mistaken. The wurm was actually headed to Shadowham, located by the sea, just north of Alaria.

*the battle wages on*

-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The wurm has escaped death once more.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The mages report that it is on the move eastward, but aren't sure where it is headed as of yet.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The wurm's army has been spotted moving along King's Road, but still no confirmation as to were they or the wurm are headed.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! We have word! The wurm is almost at Hawthorne. It is a little known village, hidden deep in the mountains west of Blackrose. It can only be accessed through a series of caves under the mountains. The entrance to said caves is located south of Blackrose's main gate.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! Reports indicate that the bulk of the wurm's army have set up camp in the caves leading to Hawthorne so as to slow down any attempts at approaching the village.

*the battle wages on*

-From as far away as Alaria and the great feast, a bright blue light can be seen shimmering on the mountains where Hawthorne is located. The light appears to be a series of blue rays that originate from Hawthorne.
-You stare upon the light in amazement and wonder what it going on there just as a loud boom echoes down through the land.
-In Hawthorne, the band of heroes fall back as a great beast of a thing appears before them...Nec-bathat...She's....here...They found the relic. No!
-Tears well up in the eyes of many of those who risked their lives to trying to stop her from returning as they look upon the horrifying sight that is Nec-bathat, demon goddess of death. This cannot be how it ends, they think...It just can't be.
-And with that thought, the battered and tired heroes seem to gather every bit of energy and courage they have left within them, for they move forward in unison and prepare to die trying to stop this demi-god from realizing its dreams of complete and utter destruction. Although the effort seems futile, none seem to care as they shrug off the pain from the multiple bloody wounds, that cover their bodies, and charge at the she-demon.
-Town Crier shouts: antithigram led the battle in vanquishing Conqueror Wurm!

*the ultimate battle takes place*

-Town Crier shouts: patriarch led the battle in vanquishing Nec-Bathat!
-After a long, hard battle, the final blow is inflicted onto Nec-bathat, causing her physical body to collapse onto the ground. You can hear a long, high-pitched wail as her immortal spirit is sent back to the Abyss where her body can be reformed. Although she has been defeated this day, the threat of Nec-bathat looms on forever more.
-Town Crier shouts: I...I don't believe it. None of us do. Nec-bathat has been vanquished! The land is safe!
-Throughout the land, cheers go up for the brave heroes who fought and died this day. Chatter takes place about erecting a monument to them and someone suggests later dragging the heroic statue from the feast, all the way to Hawthorne. Cries of; "Great idea!" ensue.
-Suddenly a bright flash of red light is seen falling from the heavens onto Hawthorne. Those there are startled to see a Phoenix, as bright and beautiful as the sun itself.
-A series of loud voices speak at once: Well done, people of Wyvern. Nec-bathat knows better than to try to directly strike out at mortals in such a fashion. As a demi-god she is not normally restricted to being stuck in the Abyss after a defeat here, in the prime material plane. But as punishment, we have once again made sure she is banished for a hundred of your years. At which point we will evaluate if she has learned her lesson.
-You realize that the voices were actually many of the goodly gods and so you bow your heads in reverence to their glory and continued kindness. After a fashion, you look up to gaze upon the phoenix once more. It was sent to channel their voices to you and, knowing that, you smile at the phoenix...nay the symbol of hope that majestically poses before you.

...

-As an afterthought a small group think to search for the relic, but it is nowhere to be found. One can only hope the gods took it for safekeeping. You try to convince yourself that that is the most likely scenario, but a feeling of dread fills your body anyway.

First Day of Summer Feast - The Screenshots

2008-06-25T20:19:00.038-04:00

As expected, not many of you took the time to help document the day. Which is totally fine as I didn't want people to have to worry about stopping in the middle of their fun to take screenshots unless they really wanted to. So, I have a collection of my own for all of you to use to remember the fun. Enjoy...

Arilou's Screenshots:

Ah, the trivia contest. Out of the three I ran, this is from the first. Everyone flocked into this one map when called and sat down to try their hand at winning some feast tokens. The plan was to ask ten questions and give out four tokens as a 1st prize, two tokens as a 2nd prize, and one token as a 3rd prize. But, it was a four way tie with those four people each getting two questions right so I just gave them each two tokens.

Here players excitedly wait for Teshuvah's Mining Lq to begin.

The Mining Lq just ended (thus the pickaxes flung carelessly across the ground) and players returned to stuffing their faces with food so that they could become all the better for me to eat. I must say, players are a strange kind of prey. They, just flock around a hungry predator, seeming not to care that they are making said predator's job all the more easy. I'm not sure if it's foolishness or stupidity. Perhaps a combination of both - As you can see from this screenshot one, especially tasty look halfling, even dared to think that simply surrounding me could cause me to be trapped.

Like Stone Giants to the slaughter, a large group of players gather in preparation for the day's Pk Lq.

Players find that the Conqueror Wurm's army has destroyed a small elven community and are in the process of digging through the area in search of the famed relic. "Bravely," the band of selfish vagabonds do battle with Nec-Bathat's followers in hopes of stopping their reign of destruction here before too many more lives are lost.

As it turns out, those "heroes" couldn't save their way out of a paper bag and so the Conqueror Wurm is able to move on to destroy the hamlet known as Bilyn's Town. They once again confront Nec-bathat's followers and once again...

their being there only barely slowed the army's search for the relic and so they are able to determine that it is not there and move on to destroy Fallwick. As you can see from this shot of Fallwick, a Stone Giant bravely fights a pair of deadly Glabrezus, while a Paladin leaves him for dead and appears to be searching for a corner to hide in. Typical.

But wait, here the Paladin is seen going up against the Conqueror Wurm. Or so it seems... clearly, his hiding spot had been discovered and after trying to flee, he found himself cornered. No doubt, he is wetting himself at this moment. Poor little Paladin.

And so the Conqueror Wurm moves on to obliterate another poor village. This time we see a pair of those brave (is being too stupid to run really considered bravery?) Stone Giants trying to stop the Conqueror Wurm's path of destruction here and now. As you can see, the paladin is nowhere to be seen. No doubt he died crying back in Fallwick. He will always be forgotten.

Oh dear. As the band traverses the underground caves, that lead to Hawthorne, they encounter a fierce bunch of undead horrors. It turns out that the army has supplemented its lost numbers by using these Undead to try and kill the interlopers.

Nec-bathat lives! Mwahahaha! With the relic recovered, she has been summoned from the Abyss to continue the destruction she begun five years ago. But first she must defeat these insignificant little whelps who foolishly stand before the Goddess of Death!

The survivors of the Nec-bathat battle return to the feast. Not to help care for the wounded, mind you, but to try to exchange their spoils of war for rarities. It makes you wonder whatever happened to those heroes that fought simply to protect the weak and make the world a better place, doesn't it?

The third Trivia contest for the day takes place. After the first one, I did two more contests that consisted of ten questions each and this time everyone who got an answer right got a feast token.

Just because, I took a screenshot of Legolas' chessboard pieces. He introduced the new graphics at the first feast and then used them for a chessboard in Almien. So it was fitting that they make their appearance this year. Further on there's also a checkers board. Early in the day people were earnestly playing both games, but as the day went on they seemed to have lost interest. Every time I went to check on it, after the morning hours, I found the place empty. Here, I seem to have missed someone who started a Chess game, but left in the middle. Alas.

As the day wound to an end, the feast map emptied and everyone begun to park themselves in Valkon's lottery, waiting for a new lottery ticket to become available and chatting in the interim. The wizards followed with Legolas, Teshuvah, Binyamin, Arilou, Contrare, Valkon, a crushed pixie, and others making appearances before they went off to catch some must needed rest.

Arilou, having napped just before, decided to take this time to eat all the players he could catch. If you look closely, you can see that here I've pinned a Halfling down and am in the process of stuffing his fat self into my mouth. Naturally, this is the end result of toying with my little prey for quite some time, taking chunks out of his meaty hide and "accidentally" releasing him so that I could chase him down once more. While it was fun torturing the bug-eyed creature, I could only resist chowing down on him for so long. Oh and for the record... he was a most delicious meal indeed.

Randorxeous' Screenshots:

http://tlsuda.com/wyvernfeast/

Steovanni's Screenshots:

Patriarch's Screenshots:

http://www.freewebs.com/atriarch/summerfeast2008.htm

Well, that's all folks. For now anyway - It's never too late to in-game mail me and let me know you have feast stuff that you want me to include here. So, if you're slow on the uptake, no biggie. Anyway, I'll be following this up with at least two more blog posts that are more informative than visual. So check in if you think that might be of interest to you.

First Day of Summer Feast - The Day After

2008-06-22T19:51:00.009-04:00

If I do say so myself, the feast was a smashing success. It was a lot of fun all around and I think most everyone would agree. In the next couple of days I'll be posting screenshots and describing the days events for anyone who wasn't around for all or some of it. I'll also give a complete run down of the main lq and get a bit deeper into the plot for any interested.

In the meantime, I'd like to request that anyone who took screenshots or videos, in-game mail me. Any links you send me will be posted here and if you don't have anywhere to host it, just let me know in the message and I'll give you an email where you can send it to (I'll upload it here for posterity sake). I have my own screenshots, which I'll be posting either way, so if nobody comes through, there will still be something for you guys to remember the day by. Plus, a player was nice enough to get in contact with me already. Still, it would be awesome if someone managed to capture the lq on video.

Anyway, I have to get back to the fun part, (doing the work needed to get some of this new content into the game on a regular basis) but I'll be back to blogging soon.

Trivia Contest

2008-06-21T23:52:00.007-04:00

Wow, just wow. I ran a number of Trivia Contests today in honor of the ones Rhialto used to do late at night. It's a pretty simple concept. Answer some basic Wyvern trivia questions and win a prize. However, the type of answers I got back were mind boggling. Take this one, for example. I asked this: "How many arch wizards are there and what are their names?" and below are the hilarious replies I got back.

klodin says: 4
klodin says: ummm
patriarch says: 2 legolas and rhialto
snarfer growls: 2 Arilou, and Teshuvah
crier says: 3 Kupior, Legolas Rhialto
heqet says: 2 rhialto legolas
tyranos says: say legolas and rhialto
zevran says: legolas rhialto
veldin says: 3, teshavuah, arilou and binyamin
randorxeous says: 3 lego, rhialto and kupior
dermatolith says: 7- sleepy, dopey, doc, bashful...
klodin says: 4 Rhialto, Teshuvah, Kiz and Caius
snarfer growls: 1 Legolas
tyranos says: say legolas and rhialto 2
firexr says: 3, rhialto, legoles, ad kiz
rifkas says: 2. Legolas and Rhialto
tyranos says: say legolas and rhialto 2 tesh biny
veldin says: 3, teshavuah, arilou and rhailato
tyranos says: say legolas and rhialto 2 readen
tyranos says: say legolas and rhialto 3 readen
patriarch says: 3 kiz, legolas, and rhialto
snarfer growls: 2 Legolas, and Kupior
tyranos says: say legolas and rhialto 3 tesh
zevran says: 4 legolas rhialto kiz janica
heqet says: 3 kiz, kupior, legolas
tyranos says: say legolas and rhialto 4 biny tesh
veldin says: 3, teshavah, arilou and legolas
klodin says: Janica's a elder
crier says: Kix, Tesh, Lego, 3?
steovanni says: 3
snarfer growls: 2 Legolas, and Kiz
klodin says: the 4th is someone who starts with C i think
crier says: kiz*
heqet says: 2 legoloas, kiz
patriarch says: 1, legolas
tyranos says: me
steovanni says: tesh arilou
randorxeous says: 5 lego, rhialto, chirs, and others?
klodin says: there are 4 >.<
You say: It's 4, yes...Now who are they?
perceptor says: 3 Cloud Strife, Sephiroth and Johnny Cash
steovanni says: 4
veldin says: 4, teshavah, arilou, janica, binaymin
klodin says: Rhialto, Teshuvah, Kiz and C......
crier says: Tesh, Lego, Arilou, Ciaus
steovanni says: tesh lego arilou cauis
beckhan says: rhialto legolas benyamin and teshuvah
rifkas says: 4. Teshuvah, Binyamin, Arilou, Lego
snarfer growls: 4 Legolas, Kiz, Janica, and Ciaus.
patriarch says: 3 lego, ciaus, and R
klodin says: Rhialto, Teshuvah, Kiz and Ciaus?
raffy says: Rhialto Legolas Galdor Kiz
rifkas says: 4. Teshuvah, Rhialto, Arilou, Lego
klodin says: arilou's not arhc
patriarch says: 5 kiz, caius, rhialto, janica, and legolas
snarfer growls: 4 Legolas Kiz Rhialto and Ciaus
randorxeous says: 5 lefo, R, kiz, janica and ciaus?
steovanni says: rhialto legolas kiz cauis
veldin says: 4, teshavah, arilou, janica, legolas
beckhan says: rhialto legolas kiz and teshuvah
perceptor says: Legolas, Kiz, Teshuvah, Ciaus
zevran says: legolas kiz caius rhialto
tyranos says: rhialto legolas zifa claus 4

And my all time favorite: patriarch says: 4 kupoir, legolas, rhialto, and kupoir Gotta Love those Kupior twins. :)

People ask how many arch wizards there are and who they are all the time and I'm constantly answering that question. Knowing this, I thought it would be a breeze, but apparently not. First of all, how do you seriously answer the question without including Rhialto in it by default? Even if you don't know all of them, he's obvious. Secondly, I was visible - Anyone who typed wizards could've seen I was an Elder and not an Arch Wizard, yet my name kept coming up. Third, Kupior? Seriously? That name was thrown out way too many times. How so many people could confuse a full wizard with an arch wizard I do not know. Janica...Okay. Raeden...Okay. Teshuvah, come on, she's around all the time...Okay though. But Kupior? Silly players.

It went on like this for awhile, but this was the most comical. Other gems included seriously mixing up when wizards were first promoted, (which is no big deal in and of itself, but the level at which they mixed them up was classic) not knowing that Thrain originally made the Mist Temple (that should be common knowledge) and responding that Legolas and Rhialto were elders to a question asking players to list all our Elder Wizards ("then says: arilou, teshuvah, rhialto, legolas, binyamin"). Surprisingly, though, everyone knew Teshuvah was afraid of Spiders - After asking that question my screen filled with "spider! spider! spider...." Which, of course, made me happy as I exist to make sure everyone knows this.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share my amusement. More blogging about the feast will be done over the next few days. Which will include a full run down of the main lq for anyone who missed it and lots of screenshots!

First Day of Summer Feast and LQ

2008-06-03T13:28:00.008-04:00

You heard that right, we are doing the First Day of Summer Feast again this year on June 21st. It hasn't happened in five years and it may never happen again, so miss out only if you have to.

Whether you were here for the first one or not, you are in for a treat. It will be an all day event that you can stop in on at any time and find something to do from hanging out with good company in our lovely feast area to enjoying some of the games we will be hosting. Many of our active wizards have banded together to contribute something for this event so expect to see a wave of new content. Much of which will end up working its way into the game afterwards, but some of it can only be seen/obtained on this special day. So as to not spoil things for you, the wizards are remaining tight lipped on the specifics of what you can expect to encounter, but trust me when I say you will enjoy yourself with what we have planned for you.

However, if are really dying to get some sort of idea of what it will be like, I recommend seeking out your fellow players who were here for the 2003 feast. Ask them to publicly share their stories and see if any have screenshots that they will be willing to put up on the forum. While you're at it, you can also stop by Glacier Point and Lirkka to see some of the lasting effects that day had on the game. There was a lot going on that day and it was a lot fun, but if I do so dare, I think we've managed to top it.

Oh and by the way, I'd like take this time to encourage you people to take screenshots and make videos during the feast. The last one wasn't well documented and it would be nice if future wyverneers had something to look back on. I'll be blogging about it sometime after it happens and I'd be more than happy to link to any videos or display any screenshots for those of you who contact me about it. More so, if you have a website (even a freewebs one) and you want to make a page about the feast, just let me know and I'll even link to that. That said, if you feel any of this will be a distraction, just have fun and absorb the day. That's what it's all about, afterall.

Game Informer

2008-05-17T00:30:00.008-04:00

Well, I was feasting on the flesh of some tasty little players yesterday and in-between their screams of absolute and total pain, we got to talking and the old Wyvern Game Informer article came up. That is, of course, once they stopped begging for their lives while tears flowed freely down their rump little faces that you could just eat up. But I digress. The point is, it got me thinking and I thought it would make an okay blog post, if for no other reason than to document the article for posterity's sake.

For those of you who missed out, I'll give you a quick backstory; "It was a cold winter's day back in December of '04. The sun was glistening on fresh banks of snow as far as the eye could see. Out in the distance one could view the most magnificent sight of a lone..." What? Right, right, it was supposed to be a quick backstory. Skipping ahead then; "In turned out that a player made an excited forum post about the game getting reviewed in a magazine. Naturally, I laughed it off, thinking it another attempt by the players to mess with each other. However, the discussion continued and the post was followed up with a transcript of the article, which made it a little more believable, but with these rugrats you never know. So I returned to my meal of roast halfling and put the nonsense out of my mind. Days went by since then and I found myself at Barnes and Noble buying a pile of books, as I'm known to do. On a whim, I walked over to the magazine section and began rummaging around looking for this Game Informer magazine that held the alleged article. At first the magazine was nowhere to be found and I was about to walk away, but then..." What's that? This isn't getting to the point any quicker you say? All of this is just pointless little details that nobody cares about? Well I never... oh, all right, you win. The point is I found the article, scanned it into my computer, and posted it on the forums for players to see. Not very exciting and I know you don't care. Honestly, I don't either, but I just filled up another paragraph on this blog that would've worked fine just having had the pictures and nothing else. Ha! Ha! My plan to bore you all to death is working perfectly!

Okay, fine, fine, I'm done with the insanity (for now). I'll leave you off with two more pictures (below). To give a complete picture I photographed the magazine cover and the page that the article was on. As you can see it's nothing huge, but I found it interesting that one of the players I was talking to yesterday came to the game this year because of the article. He had noticed it back when it came out, but ignored it until recently. So it's still having an effect and it's a nice little thing that adds a bit of notability to Wyvern. Plus, it's so minor that the Game Informer website doesn't mention it on its website under the details for this issue, so I figured, hey, it deserves to be documented somewhere and what better place then among my ramblings? No really, tell me of a better place. It deserves much more than this dinky little blog. If it could talk it would be screaming for help right this second. And wait, I think it's actually doing that. Yes! Yes! I can hear it! ... oh, my bad. That's just another voice in my head, trying to mess with me... great, now he's laughing at me. Well he's not getting the last laugh. No sir!

Btw, for those of you interested, your friendly neighborhood wizards are planning something big (I kid you not) and to wet your appetites I might just make a blog post next month that slightly scratches the surface of what it will be. But you have to good little boys and girls. Otherwise I may just have to sacrifice Mr. Wiggles to the monster that lives under your bed and we don't want that, now do we? Well... maybe you don't. Mwuahahaha! But seriously, it's something very exciting that I'm sure you're all going to love it once you know what it is.

The Exciting Conclusion to the Chaotic Jester Event

2008-04-02T00:41:00.011-04:00

Several weeks in the making and after all the confused ramblings, the whining, and the shouts of pretend joy, the full picture has been revealed. Incase you have not been following the tale I will copy everything said tonight here once again. But first some general notes:

Those who fully took part in the event received a number of rewards. The first went to those who died in the March 31st slaughter. They were able to reclaim a Jester Wand from the Netherworld, which is a special memento of this day that will never again be given out. Later that night, those who had the wand, and were willing to prove it, received an xp voucher and a renamed Jester doll. If you were hoping for something you could use in combat, sorry, but since the Jester won it didn't make sense for people to come out of it with anything of value. However, tonight that changed. The one who defeated the Marilith claimed an artifact (or gem, depending on what popped up out of the random spawn list) and the one who defeated the Chaotic Jester claimed a random mini-lq item from Janica's goditem spawns. Meanwhile, everyone who made it to the end was rewarded with two prize tokens and as a special something everyone who had the jester wand received an additional two prize tokens and the new Amulet of Valor. This was done by design to reward those who were brave enough to risk this live quest after facing a horrible defeat in the last one. Congratulations to all who came away with something.

To those still confused after reading all the fakeshout transcripts, the purpose behind this event was several fold. The primary reasons were that I wanted an explanation for the little April Fools thing I do in Forgotten Oak and I wanted to have a Live Quest where the boss won. Every year I warp Forgotten Oak into a blur of colors, upsidedownness, and general wackiness. However, this year I thought it would be fun if there was a plot reason behind it. So the Chaotic Jester (aka the ancient demon) was born. He escaped, waited for April Fools Eve to make his move as he absorbed special powers on this and the following day, and then the Live Quest ended with the players defeated so the Jester was able to make his "mark" by claiming Forgotten Oak as his own. Of course, after 24 hours I always take down the decoration and return Forgotten Oak to its previous state, so I planned for the victory to be short lived. Thus the second live quest took place. The Jester went to make his move, but since Arilou (the character) was involved, the Arch Wizards stepped in and gave players the opportunity to finish him off. All in all, everything went just as planned (server crashes aside). Throughout the years, players had always commented on how it was a shame the Live Quest monster did not win, so as a reward I came up with the first Live Quest where just that happened.

Secondary to that, I liked the idea of setting up a Live Quest in advance and revealing plot pieces bit by bit. In the past I've never liked doing plot based live quests as they seem like a waste of time. I write a story, a couple dozen players participate and even fewer pay attention to the details. Then it's over and is forgotten as the plot doesn't allow for you to keep redoing the live quest and to do so anyway would be stupid. Many wizards feel the same way which is why they make generic live quests that are rather brief and not extremely heavy on the plot as the 2002 Live Quests were. However, this blog gave me the opportunity to immortalize it in a way where I was able to get excited about doing one (plus the Jester Wand is akin to the Lirkka statue - People will always be applying to it and people will in turn ask to be told what the event was about). As such I'd like to do this again someday once I'm done with areas I need to get in-game first and when the server can better handle lots of players online. I have something in my head that expands over several months - At first the Live Quests begin as an exploratory to something sinister going on. Then, as more of what is going on is revealed to you, you get into bigger battles with Generals of a dark evil before eventually being able to encounter the Dark One yourself. Rather than just doing them randomly, they can be announced in advance and players can set aside time to take part in it. It generates more excitement that way and gives people something to look forward to and follow closely. But, if I were to do something like that it would be a long way into the future.

Something I'd also like to do more of is expand on the Arilou character. If you've been following my ramblings you know I want to introduce characters to Wyvern that you encounter time and time again. Arilou is already a developed character and I love creating things for him. For the most part he is limited to what "I" say in shouts and on this blog as him. However, he has always made himself known in the Elemental Dungeon and I've always been thinking up other ways to include him. One idea involved him creating a temple and trying to gain worshipers in an attempt to attain godhood, but Rhialto and Legolas tore his temple to the ground while Arilou held his head down off to the side, (I referenced the idea tonight) quite pained over the incident as he was sooo close. Meanwhile this Live Quest presented another way to include his character and in a rather exciting way. Once again he's out there trying to spread chaos, once again he's lurking in the shadows, and once again the arch wizards limit the scope of his scheming. He's really a great little character and I very much so enjoy getting into his head.

Anyway, as you already noticed I took a number of sreenshots for you people. As you can also see the maps are very chaotic, very nonsense oriented, and do not have the same kind of flow a normal map would. This is by design. I've done this when creating the Forgotten Oak April Fools map and wanted to continue it with the Live Quest. Basically, the idea is that if it looks "good" then it's bad. It might be cool and a little neat to see it for the first time, but you should come away with a feeling of; "what was that garbage?" when leaving. In contrast I also took a screenshot of the Great Hall of Minath Elion which has a more pleasing design. Here players were rewarded with the Amulet of Valor by the princess (in keeping with the vague Minath plot about the King not being around, I had the npcs claim the King wanted to thank them but did not have him make an appearance) and later players were able to drink, eat, and be merry for all of 5 minutes before they ran off.

Well that's about it. I'd just like to give a very special thanks one of our new wizards, Valkon, for putting together The Infernal Galop (aka the can-can) score which you could hear during the Live Quest. I had wanted to bring that music into the game for so long and Valkon made it possible. Now that has made its appearance in the Live Quest it will make its way into the general rotation of midis which wizards can use for their areas. Thanks again, Valkon.

Tonight's Transcript

-From within his dark lair the jester flexes his muscles as his absorption of power is almost complete. Soon... very soon, the conquest shall begin.

*an hour passes*

-An ominous cloud appears overhead.
-The now beefed up jester steps out into the daylight and smirks as he looks down on the world that will soon be his. It's not the prettiest sight to his warped mind but that shall all change when he replaces it all with a haze of colors and warps reality with his powerful illusionary magic.
-From the ground below, Arilou appears and excitedly pats his clawed hands together as he watches the culmination of a long thought out plan come to a head. The forces of chaos shall finally reign.
-Never would he have been able to achieve this on his own. While his power is great, it comes from the Arch Wizards and so he must dance a line in regard to interfering with mortals. Always being sure not to go too far in his attempts to bring chaos to the masses, lest he wake the bearded ones from their dreamy slumber deep below the surface.
-But this, this was the perfect plan, he mused, while watching the Chaotic Jester. The Jester was already a force in the universe, locked away in a dark realm in the early days of the world, long before the memory of any can remember. After learning about the creature, all he had to do was fight his way through the extra-planar guardians and break the chains that kept the Jester from achieving his true potential. All he had to do now was not be overt about his involvement and chaos would reign.
-While Arilou pats himself on the back, the Chaotic Jester goes to work summoning his dark forces. He reanimates his Undead Unicorns, resurrects the fallen soldiers that they might unwillingly serve him once more, and re-summons his Marilith General from the Abyss.
-From his base, in Forgotten Oak, the Jester levitates his forces around him and begins to move them forward, setting his sights on the main land. But suddenly the ground rumbles furiously and a series of lightning bolts soar through the sky overhead.
-An old, raspy voice can be heard bellowing orders to halt. The jester replies with a mocking laugh but suddenly he feels himself fall to ground in a sharp wave of pain.
-Arilou moves quickly to defend his interests but is flung aside like a rag doll by a telekinetic force. Then, from within the mist, steps forward four wizened old men, that have the appearance of barely being able to hold themselves together, yet at the same time, emit tremendous power.
-Arilou and the Jester squeal in unison and try to bring themselves to their feet but cannot.
-Together the four bearded old men chant and a wave of light falls over the Jester and his minions, which elicit screams of pain from all.
-The apparent leader of the bunch steps forward and bellows: Did you think we would not find out about your scheming? First you try to claim the title, Lord of Chaos for yourself and gain worshipers in an attempt to elevate yourself to godhood. Now you free this most ancient of demons that has a fancy for illusionary magic and disguising himself as a human fool.
-Arilou wrinkles his nose and in response utters: It should've worked.
-The apparent blue robed leader bellows: Typical. I applaud your effort. Still, you shouldn't have been the one to free it. I will not undo all that is, but the being has been weakened considerably and in doing so the magic that flows throw him and to his minions is lessened, making them weaker as well. If it wants to conquer the world, it will have to fight with its own sweat and blood. The old man turns to his companions and utters a single word, causing the ground to envelop the four of them.
-The Jester and Arilou share a look, but then Arilou quickly does his own vanishing act, leaving behind a puff of smoke.
-Alone and feeling severely weakened, the Chaotic Jester gathers his forces and retreats back to his hiding place in Forgotten Oak. He needs time to restructure his plan in light of recent events... now would be the perfect opportunity to lead an assault against him and his minions and be rid of this demon once and for all.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The Jester has once again been spotted on the island of Forgotten Oak.

*some time passes*

-The jester utters a gurgled scream as his body falls to the ground, quite lifeless.
-Those around for the event begin to cheer, but suddenly their faces turn to that of horror as his dark essence springs forth from the body and begins to expand.
-Just as they begin to cower, something grabs at the shadow and pulls it away into a dark cloud.
-Though his form was destroyed, the demon's essence is eternal. However, he will trouble none anymore for the remaining guardians have recaptured him and, with newly forged chains that beam with even more power than before, they lock the demon away. It cries out in defeat, wanting nothing less than to return to this fate of complete and utter hopelessness.
-Meanwhile, the jester's illusions begin to vanish and its so called "mark" fades away to reveal the Forgotten Oak of old.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! The High King of Minath Elion wishes to give special thanks to the heroes who saved the land this night. The Grand Hall has been opened in Minath Elion and in attendance is the princess and the King's adviser to offer their thanks.
-Town Crier shouts: Those who have the Jester's Wand and took part in defeating him tonight can use to the portal in the Chaotic Jester's cave to come here and receive a very special reward. Everyone else is invited to come and partake in drink, food, and good company. The world offers you all, a debt of gratitude.

*a brief time later*

-From within the Great Hall you hear someone utter how this was all Teshuvah's fault. A flurry of: "Hear, Hears!" can be heard in response. Lurking within the shadows, Arilou smiles as his magic once again deflected blame to poor Teshuvah. He stands there for a moment, watching the crowd angrily discuss how this and everything else other the sun is Teshuvah's fault. Then he turns to leave as he has much work ahead of him. Afterall, lag is not going to create itself.
-The end. *Trumpets blare as the screen fades to black.*

Chaotic Jester Live Quest

2008-03-31T23:04:00.006-04:00

Incase you missed it, here's what went on. We got some 60 odd players online at once, the game crashed twice during the event, and the following messages appeared to those online:

-Excited giggles fill the land. The hour of complete and utter chaos draws near.

*an hour passes*

-A great booming laughter fills the land.
-You grab your weapons, prepare your spells, and await in fear of the moment of truth.
-Town Crier shouts from within his hiding place: Hear ye! Hear ye! Minathian scouts have spotted the Jester making its move on the outer edges of the Forgotten Oak island. They have sent a contingent of soldiers through to battle with whatever forces the Chaotic Jester can muster.
-Town Crier shouts from within his hiding place: However, they request that any willing and able heroes join their cause and meet up with them to do battle with the Jester and end the threat it presents once and for all. Only united can the forces of light defeat this evil and save the land from becoming the Jester's amusement park.

*an hour passes*

-The Chaotic Jester led the fight in vanquishing the adventuring band!
-The Jester leaves his secluded cave and enters Oaken Village where he makes his mark on the world with a delighted smile on his face.
-Here he shall gather his energy from the players he slew and from his day of power. Then, tomorrow at midnight, he shall make his move and infest the entire world with his colorful goodness.
-Those who survived the battle shall submit to his will and become his slaves or die painful deaths.
-You put your head down, quite defeated and realize it was his plan all along to lure you to him so he could kill the strongest among you and use your spirits to fuel his conquest of the world.

*some time passes*

-Arilou thanks everyone who participated in feeding the jester and invites you all to witness the birth of a new, chaotic, age tomorrow night at Might-night, Eastern Time.

The Last Foreshadowing Before the Storm

2008-03-31T01:31:00.008-04:00

Well kiddies, tonight is thee night. Once again, no it is not a joke and yes I am serious about it not being a joke. So be there and partake in what is bound to be quite the rollercoaster for you wannabe heroes.

-Hee, hee, hee... that dark laughter which has been tormenting you from afar these last few weeks returns. But this time it seems much closer, much more foreboding.
-The forces of chaos plot their next move as they bask in the pure energy that flows through them on the eve of their day of power.
-As the jester summons his forces an even darker being watches over him. They converse in hushed tones as this overlord points to a map insistently. The jester squeals in defiance but the being of chaos reminds him to remember who freed him from his eternal bondage.
-The jester puffs out his chest, but backs down as the figure takes a step forward and reveals a wicked grin on his green colored face.
-Suddenly the figure sniffs the air and turns his head sharply at a creature spying on them in the background. He reaches his clawed hands out at the halfling sneak and brings it up to his maw where he promptly bites down on the squirming thing, putting an end to its frightened protests.
-The figure turns his now bloody face to the jester and gives him a cold look before storming off.
-The wizard Arilou appears and greets the brave heroes of land.
-Arilou emotes: Obviously this is a grave, grave threat that this jester presents and to do my part I have utilized thee public forum to get you all together for my... your benefit. May you fight with glory and unite against this wonderful... dark creature.
-Arilou represses his laughter and in doing so notices some blood appeared on his hand after removing it from his mouth. He quickly wipes the blood off his chin and retires to his lair in a puff of smoke.

Foreshadowing Revealed

2008-03-29T19:13:00.008-04:00

Finally, at long last, the meaning behind these omens has been revealed... or so I thought. Apparently to the players listening at the time this meant they should scream; "lq!" and insist on asking if it means they should go to Blackrose to look for it (why would you send a scout out from a city if the trouble is within it?). Then end by asking repeatedly if the live quest was today or not despite the Town Crier clearly stating that they needed to prepare for something coming in two dream days (dream days = real days btw). I swear, if I don't explain things in simple, short words some of your heads seem to be on the brink of exploding. Anyway, here is what was announced incase you missed it:

-An ominous cloud passed by over head.
-Town Crier shouts: Hear ye! Hear ye! Everyone gather 'round. There is news to be heard.
-Town Crier shouts: Silence so I can be heard!
-Town Crier shouts: The Kings of land had sent scouts out to learn more about this horrific threat that escaped from a place of darkness a short time ago. Until this morning, when a thiefling scout scampered through the gates of Blackrose City, none had returned.
-Town Crier shouts: It is said that his demonic heritage protected him from being killed instantly at the sound of the jester's laugh, though he was by no means in good shape upon his return. In fact, he was on the brink of death, but he managed to bring crucial information to his lord, nonetheless.
-Town Crier shouts: He claims the chaotic jester is preparing for an assault on the land in two dream days hence where the jester's powers will be its strongest for the eve of its special day shall be at hand. From there he shall make his mark on the land and use it as a base to conquer all the world.
Town Crier shouts: All able bodied men and women are asked to sharpen their blades, hone their spells, restock their quivers, and be ready to defend the land against this threat.
-Town Crier shouts: The seers claim that there is no hope, that this threat is the final threat, and that we should pray to the gods to make our deaths swift. But the Kings and Lords of the land bid you to use their ramblings to inspire yourselves to new heights. Fight like you've never fought before and spread the word to all heroes so that this vile fiend, that has threatened us so, will be faced with an army of awe inspiring numbers.
-Town Crier shouts: And now I shall read a quote from the High King of Minath Elion; "We have fought bravely in many battles against the forces of darkness. Our courage has led us to defend the land against mighty Demon Lords, evil wizards, and unspeakable creatures, the likes of which we never hope to see again in our lifetimes. We even defended the land against the greatest threat of our generation, the Nec-Bathat. But no matter what the peril, we have always come through for we are on the side of right. This is no different. This... fool, shall not be the one to take us down. We shall overcome it as we have overcome more horrifying sights and we shall do so with the bravery of each who takes up the call to battle with it when it makes its sinister move. Go now and prepare, for the hour of your glory, where you shall go down in the history books for you service, is at hand."
-Town Crier shouts: That is all the news for now.
-The Town Crier goes to find some place to hide.
-Moments later, you hear the distant sound of laughter, "Hee, hee, hee," almost as if it knows and is mocking you all.

From the Notebook of Arilou - Chicken Spell Edition

2008-03-26T00:34:00.006-04:00

It's been awhile since this blog delved into Wyvern content, something which I suspect is the primary reason many of you seven people check in on it. As such I am introducing a new series called; "From the Notebook of Arilou." As I go through life, beating on small children and taking their candy as my own, an idea occasionally pops into my head. The ones I like the most get written down either in a notebook or in a number of disorderly notepad files on my computer. From time to time I thought I'd give you guys a glimpse into them. However, they will usually involve things that cannot be added because of the limitations of the game at the moment or because they are beyond my abilities to make. So bothering me to introduce them won't work as if it was just up to me they would exist already.

In any case, today's edition focuses on something I refer to as the "Chicken Spell" in my notes. The idea was that when adventuring through a dungeon you can suddenly encounter a dark mage (obviously any monster could have the spell, but stay with me) who casts a bolt spell that, if it hits you, changes your graphic to that of a chicken. Once a chicken, you cannot change forms if your race normally allows it. Instead you, as any character, are given this as your new form. Your ability to wield weapons and wear most armor is removed, your hp and sp is extremely lowered, and your combat stats are lowered as well. The specifics of which are not important and were left opened to be determined after testing of the spell was underway. The point is that you are too weak to remain in combat and have to "take flight" (HAR HAR HAR). Ideally, I'd like this to be something that forces players to find a corner to hide in, within the given dungeon, and hope beyond hope that the dark mage or some other creature does not find you before the spell's effect wears off and you return to your normal self.

Some general notes:

- It's important that it is a bolt spell. The idea is to give players something they have to dodge as this should be a hated spell that people take special care to avoid and if it gets players every time it's not as balanced. This is not just something meant to annoy players. It's meant to create an interesting aspect of the game that forces them to react in a unique manner and if it happens to players all the time it becomes a generic nuisance that you just have to put up rather than an occasional challenge that simply takes you off target for a short while.

- It goes without saying, but this would be a monster only spell. However, it would open the door to a greater range of polymorph spells. Such as, instead of negative ones that monsters use on you, players could potentially cast ones on other players which turn them into various monsters for a short period of time - These forms could make them more powerful in combat or, at the least, will give them a unique skill that aids them in the moment.

- The time you remain as a chicken depends on the caster's skill in the element of choice.

- This was something that I came up with in 2003. I was once hoping to get someone to code it for me, but that never worked out. There were a number of problems. Specifically with getting it to work as a bolt spell and with the chicken aspect of it all. Apparently it had the same problem costumes did, meaning that it would glitch a player's image if they were a giant or a naga. But in general it's something that is complicated to code, so while I still hope someone will make something out of it someday, it has gained a special place in my notebook where it will probably remain for some time to come.

- While writing this I added another note - "Dark mage should randomly appear at different points in the dungeon and have a possibility to not appear at all." What this means is that if the spell ever got made, the first place I would use it in is a new dungeon where this "dark mage" lives. Rather than have him at a fixed point in the dungeon where players always knew where he was so they could prepare, it would be more fun if he would randomly jump out at you. Of course, this has nothing to do with where the spell would be used in other wizard's areas or projects of mine made after that. But the spell originated as an idea for a very specific encounter and I would like to make that a reality before doing anything else - Crazed mage -> polymorph chicken spell -> dungeon -> corners designed into the maps that give players somewhere to hide -> screaming over shouts that the sky is falling -> laughter by Arilou and sweet dreams of players dying painful deaths to follow.

Even more foreshadowing

2008-03-25T01:16:00.003-04:00

Incase you haven't caught on yet I've been copying transcripts of messages that have appeared to players via the fakeshout command. Players online at the time have responded with mixed, but ultimately confused, reactions. Some don't take it all that seriously (and I can't imagine why) while others scream that it has to do with wizards leaving or the game going down (not the brightest bulbs we have in Wyvern). I'll tell you this much... it's not a joke - It does have to do with something that is "coming" just as the messages suggest. The question is can you guess what that something is and what it is in relation to? Maybe this third bit of foreshadowing can fill in some of the pieces for you guys, gals, and disfigured mutants who's gender we cannot be sure of:

-In the darkness lurks a great evil. Waiting, always waiting, but soon... soon it shall make its move and the world shall crumble before its might.
-The hour of bloodshed grows ever closer while the masses skip through life laughing at omens and stuffing their faces with the lies they tell themselves.
-From the darkness the blinding colors of all the rainbow shall sprout and all shall know their doom is at hand as the world turns on its head.
-Hark! The great evil shall come forth on the eve of the day where its powers will be the strongest. None shall doubt its strength as it makes its mark on the world in a massive blood bath, the likes of which have rarely been seen throughout the ages.
-A great flash of colors appears before you all and then is gone as soon as it came. The third omen has presented itself and the time for mirth diminishes that much more.

*Some time passes*

Hee, hee, hee... the laughter is a cold reminder of what is and what is to come. Your face grows pale this time for no longer can you deny the truth. Your doom and the doom of all that are and ever will be is near.

Foreshadowing (continued)

2008-03-20T02:37:00.003-04:00

-The end is near.
-On top a mountain hilltop lurks a lone goblin. The wind blows gently against his disfigured face as the little creature basks in its refreshing chill.
-It feels secure. Too secure... for somewhere behind it lurks a dark figure.
-Ever so slowly the figure tiptoes towards the unsuspecting goblin...
-Alas, the bell dangling at the figure's ankle makes a noise, causing the goblin to spin around, quite startled. It is greeted by the most horrid, most evil, most fearsome creature imaginable.
-The goblin tries to run but its legs buckle in fear and so all it can do is whimper as the figure comes forward...
-The goblin raises its arms defensively but nothing happens for several moments. Suddenly the goblin gets up the nerve to peer at the figure and is greeted by the most wickedly curled smile from a...
-Jester. With a hop and a wink it lets out a laugh: "Hee, hee, hee."
-The goblin falls dead in response without so much as a confused cry.
-Suddenly, there is a flash of colors before your eyes and then... normalcy. Everything is as it was...
-And yet a chill runs down your spine. The second omen has made itself known. A great evil shall soon make its mark on the world and you fear that it may be the end of all that is and all that will be. But how long do you have? Days? Weeks? You cannot be certain, but you know you do not have as much time as you'd like before the end is upon you. You close your eyes, remembering that flash of colors and wonder what it symbolizes.

Battling Monsters

2008-03-17T20:56:00.012-04:00

Just for fun, I thought I'd post this little "screenshot" of a battle between an adventuring band and the creatures they have encountered within Forgotten Oak.

It has occurred to me since posting this that this would be a good basis for a story. You can start with the introduction of these five heroes, to each other, in the New Verden area and follow their adventures throughout the land. Rather than doing chapters in a book it could be a series of short stories and throughout you get a couple of images mixed in that visually show something described in the story. I'm way too busy to do something like that at the moment, but I find the idea intriguing and I may explore it sometime in the next few years. It would make a good series of blog posts and an even better website feature. Additionally, the characters can be referenced in the game and it could be possible to meet them while exploring. Possibly during certain quests. It'll add a bit of flavor to the game and I've always wanted to have famous adventuring parties in the game (for flavor purposes). You know, people who townsfolk talk about with high praise and who you can later meet and battle against, join forces with, talk to, etc. However, this would be even better as the player will get to know every little detail of their rise to fame in a way I could never do just by using the game itself to tell their story. It could also create a bit of excitement for players to end up hearing about or meeting in the game.

But in the here and now, I thought the screenshot came out nicely. Its purpose was to show off the most exciting aspects of Wyvern's battle features while using some of the game's better graphics. For someone who never played Wyvern before I want them to see it and go; "Wow, I have to try that!" The current game screenshots on cabochon.com, don't really do that. There was an attempt to update them a bit in 2003, but nothing ever came of it and even so, what was captured then doesn't display what the game is capable of today. In the future we'll see about trying to get them updated, (they won't be as stylized as this image is) but until Rhialto follows through with his web-based client plans I'm inclined to hold off on that as the purpose of good screenshots is to show off not just the game, but the client and its features as well. So any ones made of the current client would be vastly outdated as soon as that came about.

Foreshadowing

2008-03-14T16:35:00.005-04:00

-The end grows near.
-A farewell is proclaimed.
-Trapped in the darkness between desperation and despair lives a great evil of unmatched power.
-Its bonds are nearly broken and it hungers for your souls.
-Suddenly two bright orbs appear from somewhere within that darkness. A chill runs down your spine.
-A mighty roar and the sound of a great struggle follow.
-Then silence.
-Stunned, you take a step forward, but as you do you are knocked back by a massive explosion.
-From within the darkness and the cloud of dust, a figure steps forward. But you can't quite make it out just yet...
-Fearful, you try to run, but your legs fail to work. All you can do is shut your eyes and hope for a quick end.
-The sound of mad laughter makes you open your eyes at your doom, despite your better judgment, and standing there before you is...
-A jester. He offers you a smile and a wink, does a little dance, and hops off down the road.
-Suddenly he looks back at you and in all seriousness proclaims: "The end is near." Then he turns his back on you and hops out of sight.

**Some time passes**

-While the mortals go on with their lives, somewhere, deep in a darkened forest, a jester sits against a rock and ponders what is to come. A curled smile appears on the little guy's face as he pats his hands together with glee.
-His laughter echoes throughout the forest and when it ends there is only silence. No longer can birds be heard chirping or goblins heard fighting amongst themselves for a handful of bronze coins. Even the trees grow silent despite the wind pushing against their usually creaking branches.
-Hee, hee, hee... the sound of death.
-You suddenly grow very nervous at this horrific precursor and wonder how much longer you are for this world. Hours? days? It is all so surreal.
-Colors flash before your eyes while in your current haze, and then nothing. Everything is as it was, but you will never forget that something is coming... something big... but when?

**Some time passes**

-Hee, hee, hee... the laughter is a cold reminder of what is and what is to come.

Where art thou brave Arilou?

2008-02-24T17:29:00.005-05:00

Well it's been awhile since I last foamed at the mouth and sputtered out some words over here. A large part of that is just because my interest in this has waned somewhat. The last time I attempted to come up with creative ways to find topics to write about, it spilled over into the game and I would like to keep the two separate as much as possible. That's why there's a comments section - You can use them to point and laugh at me or debate my thickheaded self as much as you want. I'll read it all and if it's interesting enough I might even incorporate it into furture blog posts. Anyway, another part of it is that my time has become more limited than it used to be. Lots of things have been going on in my daily life and in the game (as you should be well aware unless you've been living in a hole).

Despite this, I'm going to make an attempt to post on a more regular basis. Right now, I have plans for a series of new posts. Specifically, they will detail a number of game inspirations of mine which have an impact on my Wyvern content. I'll go into a little backstory about the games, post some screenshots, and point out where you can see how they've affected my creations. I promise, it'll be more interesting than I make it sound. I'm also still going to be making posts after every area that I introduce to the game. At the rate I'm currently going I should get one, maybe two posts out of that every 5 years... yeah, no, the more I think about it, two might be stretching it a bit. In any case, there's a lot to look forward to if you are one of those sorry sacks that are locked in your room without a TV and have heavy parent controls on your Internet browser. Although now that I think on it, I'm surprised this blog isn't blocked as well. A fanatical little green alien with delusions of grandeur and homicidal tendencies that likes to talk to the voices in his head isn't exactly a good influence on young minds. Then again I have a lot to teach the little ones. Where else are they going to learn to gut an elf or roast a plump dwarf? These are important skills people! Those pixies aren't going to bake themselves you know.

A Day Better Forgotten

2008-01-13T13:19:00.004-05:00

Well it's been 5 years. Today, 2003, at about 11 AM-ish I made the mistake of replying yes to Rhialto's tell asking me if I was ready to be promoted. Now I am doomed to wander the halls of Wyvern, wailing to players about rules until the end of days.

But that's not where I made the first mistake that led me to this end. No, it all started at the beginning of January. In the previous year I came to the conclusion that games might be my best bet for the creative outlet I so desired. I tried looking into learning how to write code, but as I have realized since it wasn't for me. During that period I spent quite a bit of time on arcadepod, looking through games as I kind of liked the java applet format to game creation and I was busy generating game idea after game idea and recording them in .txt files. But I ended up finding this game called Wyvern that mentioned being able to make areas for the game and after checking out the link I learned that no programming was required to do so. Excited, I thought this would be a great way to use Wyvern as a way to see if I was kidding myself in thinking that I could do this and if I wasn't it would be a great way to get some practice before moving on (naive does not begin to describe how I view that thinking today). So I downloaded the client and logged in.

I was instantly amazed with the game as, while walking through New Verden, it felt very reminiscent of good classic games (needless to say I am a big fan of classic games). After getting to level 2 I headed over to Alaria and explored a bit. The big thing that I would do is play Sokoban as I had a version of the game on my computer which I previously played so it was familiar to me and I enjoyed it. But every now and then I would head over to the towers and do a little fighting to get some xp. During this time, I also used the world map and went to every city, just looking into the first map or two, and then I headed back to Alaria (for a very brief time I didn't know there was an inn there so I would save in the Kings Road Inn and run there before every reboot to save again like the message said to).

Shortly thereafter, I thought I had a good enough feel for the game and I sat down to work on some maps. I created a four map dungeon first that had a demon lord and some other random monsters in it. It was bad, but it was intended to be bad. I was trying to get a feel for the mapmaker and how things worked. So I simply filled it with a wide range of things. Once I was done with this practice run I deleted those maps (which btw, had a plot to them as I am incapable of making anything without one). Then I opened up a new map and tried to think of something to make next.

That, of course, isn't the best thing to do as you should never stare at a blank map, hoping ideas come to you. You should generate those ideas ahead of time, plan them out, and then sit down and work on them. But rather than do that, I started playing around with the objects in the mapeditor again and I suddenly took the dark earth terrain and I just started drawing it. I didn't necessarily expect to be coming up with the idea that I would be submitting, but as it happened I started thinking why would there be dark earth all over the place and then it hit me... this was a lifeless ruined area.

After that, I was on a roll and idea after idea just kept jumping at me. I put some ruined structures down (I think one the guard towers came first) and then I added a little water. At some point I got to the right hand side of the map and for some odd reason decided to draw some grass under this mansion. Why would there be grass in that one spot if it was a lifeless area though? Hmmm ... magic. Yes, but who's magic? Well I went through the list of monsters and saw a hill giant in green clothes, saw the green grass, and combined the two (as you can guess, I knew nothing about hill giants as I was not a fan of fantasy). Next thing I know there's a hill giant planning to conquer Alaria (I later changed it to New Verden) and he needed allies so there was a place for pirates. But wait, he couldn't go unopposed so there was the guard tower and the Orcs/Undead were what remained from the time when the village turned into a lifeless area. Meanwhile, somewhere in-between I came up with the name Forgotten Oak after seeing the word Forgotten written on something to my left and I came up with the idea of the magical Oak to explain the name. I think all of this took me about 3 days of doing nothing but sitting at my computer and, from doing that, I ended up with somewhere between 60 and 70 maps (I want to say 63, but I do not remember for sure).

To top it off I had two ideas for other areas that came about around the same time. One was the temple on Forgotten Oak which was to lead to a hidden elf area. I made one map for it (the one you enter when you use the teleporters in the temple) and left it as is thinking this could be my next project. The other was for a dwarf area on the land mass south of Forgotten Oak which later turned into a gray dwarf area. I never really did much with that one, but generate ideas and draw the male gray dwarf graphic (which is what inspired the idea that it should be for them and not regular dwarves) and I have since realized I did not need to start another complex area considering all the other projects that I have yet to finish.

In any case, on the 11th, a little bit before midnight, I sent Rhialto these Forgotten Oak maps and the one hidden elf map. Well, not really. I screwed up and hit enter causing the email to send without any text or attachment. The only thing it had was a title saying; "Forgotten Oak (large map submission)" and I was horrified when Rhialto emailed me back (almost right away) to tell me my attachment didn't make it... which I didn't realize until after I sat down and finished writing my best attempt at a professional email describing who I was and what my area was. It was 746 words and included a joke which I cringe at when reading right now; "Why choose Forgotten Oak to be added: becus u lik itz da bes! ;)" I am really embarrassed by it now, but maybe in another entry I will post it (typos and all) for you guys to chuckle at.

Anyway, I got an email back telling me he would look at it. Then we conversed a bit about a problem with boats vanishing in maps. Ahead of time I was fully prepared to get an email back telling me more work needed to be done and was ready to make any changes that were needed until it was good enough. But, to my surprise, I got an email on the 13th, after he had time to look at my area, and to mu utter shock he said he liked them to the point where he thought they were of exceptionally high quality. To this day I don't get and I think you'll see why when viewing my early maps below. Maybe it was my ability to follow instructions and get the teleporter paths right (something which few people did as I later realized) or the fact that it had a story for it which is rare at the time... or perhaps even that I had another area in the works already (most wizards would make one area and then stop). I don't know, but at the time stupid me was pleased and unaware of what horrors awaited me. So I logged into Arilou (the account I made on the 8th to save the name as I knew that would be the name I wanted to be a wizard) and got to level 2 while waiting for him to find me.

I remember running through Garignor's a bit and then being in Alaria's main map when I got this tell from this Rhialto fellow. I was confused as my highest level account was level 6 (this was when the level 15 rule was just a suggestion) and so all I knew of the game came from reading the manuals and my little experience with leveling that account. Who was this Rhialto fellow? I knew him as Steve so it was odd, but after a brief pause I said yes without stupidly letting on about my confusion and waited in his workroom while he set everything up (incase you're wondering, at this point I caught on that he was the person I had been conversing with in emails - I'm not that dense, despite what Teshuvah may have told you).

After this, I devoted all my time to getting these maps online (which ended up happening on the 16th). I then met up with Legolas who took over and did the actual testing of my maps before they went live. It was a little odd and a lot to absorb at once, but he helped me out in ways I cannot put to words. The very first bit of advice he gave me was after a player sent me a tell asking me to give him something or whatever and would not relent (this guy must've thought the new wizard would be an easy target). I asked Legolas what I should do and he told me something along the lines of; "Before you silence, always warn them... and then warn again." Basically, I've modeled by entire attitude, (the real one, not the joking, 'I'll banish you all' one) in regards to being an admin, on that. After that he helped to make me a better mapmaker and a better wizard. I consider him to have been my mentor and on a good day, where I'm not trying to kill him, I cannot say enough good things about how he helped me and how much of a great guy he is.

I don't know what else to say after that, I really should end it now as nothing will top that last sentence, but I first must show you Forgotten Oak of old and even before that I just want to say one thing - When I was first promoted, I had no intention of being an admin. I thought it was crazy to get involved in it as I knew how bad people could get from my past gaming experience. But I'm the type of person who cannot see someone being abused because of someone else breaking the rules and not do anything about it. So despite my promise to myself that I would just be a mapmaker, I ended up becoming one of the most active admins. As such, my mapmaking has suffered since I have had less time for it. It also caused me to become the mean wizard in the eyes of some and it's generally a lot of stress, but I've continued always for two reasons;

One, I see it as a way I can give back to Rhialto and the game as I am very grateful for the opportunity I was given. The ability to express myself with my maps is something I love doing. Even if nobody gets to see them, I am just happy that my vision of something can be brought to life in the way it can when I upload it to the server or (to a lesser extent) see it in the mapeditor. So I am very thankful as I was given a chance I don't think I deserved at the time.

Two, I do it for players most of all. I know some of you like to complain, but then there are a lot of you who like to praise the game for its great community and even go so far as to say that's why you play. So, just knowing that you guys can login after a hard day and relax to have some fun with as little stress as possible because people aren't cursing at you to no end or doing a whole host of other stressful things, makes it all worth it.

Anyway, I hate being sappy and I hate talking about what I do like it's something of importance (i'm not curing cancer here) so remember this as you're probably not going to hear such candid talk from me again. In fact, if you repeat it I will probably threaten to eat you after roasting you alive. Now, let's get on to the part where you get to make fun of my awful mapmaking abilities of 2003 already. We both know that's came for, afterall.

I'm sorry to say I don't have the unedited version that was sent to Rhialto, but this is pretty close. Here is basically how it originally looked. I added the dark abyss crevices after the maps were live for a bit. So imagine the original with more open space. There were also no empty tiles in the left hand corner, (at least I don't think) no dirt hole, no undead unicorns, and no buildings with new graphics. Meaning, the graveyard was the normal graveyard, the inn was the normal ruined inn, the two small houses were these white ruined buildings, and the castle had blue towers. Also, there was no ruined wall in the right hand corner. I added that later thinking that in an extreme bit of irony I could add a plot about how they were just building a wall to defend the city before the attack and had only done that one bit.

For fun, here is an updated version of that map with all the new terrain I drew. It's a lot better, but still needed work. Specifically it needed to be split up into multiple maps and have a lot more going on in each. If you go to Forgotten Oak right now you can see how much better the west part of the map looks now. Well just think of that style continuing eastward with ever more maps, each with more buildings to explore and things to do, including monsters in each of them. That would be so great... when I get to it in 10 years.

Here's a really bad one for you to laugh at. It's a big square map that is way over the size limit and is filled with junk. I made four maps for the entire castle, one for each floor. Go there now and you will see about 20 maps just for the first floor alone (I didn't get to doing the other floors yet). It has all the same points of interest; the stables, the dining room, the entrance to the dungeons, and the throne room. However, there's so much more. There's an outer wall for extra defense that has space for archers to shoot out at enemies, there's a kitchen, (a dining hall without a kitchen was brilliant, but had to be fixed) and the entrance to the dungeons is fortified so if a break out happens they can't just run into the throne room and kill the king. Also, in the original version those stairs (which were white in the version Rhialto got since the colored stairs came later) were just random dungeons, but when I'm done with the castle there will be lots of good quality maps there instead.

Here's another bad one. I had this thing where I would make 25x25 maps and just fill them up with junk for no good reason whatsoever. I since have learned to make smaller maps and have them look like they belong to the structure that represents them. The current version you see when going to Forgotten Oak isn't the best and needs to be redone yet again, but it was better than this garbage. But anyway, another interesting thing about this and the Orc Tower is that it shows Alaria's influence on my early maps. It's all I really knew, so this is based off of the Southern tower in Alaria and the Orc tower was based off of the Northern one. Oh and for the record, the wooden floors you see in this grahic have updated graphics.

This is pretty close to the original, minus using Legolas' cliffs for walls. It originally used the cave wall terrain. When you see it today it's black and looks great, but back then it was this horrible looking piece of garbage that I hated having to use. So after a suggestion from Janica, I started using the cliff walls for cave walls (for the record, today I'm a cave wall terrain kind of mapmaker). Anyway, this map is an example of how far I've come. The original Elemental Dungeon consisted of 6 maps where as now, it's 15 and still not done. Plus it is what I consider to be some of my best work - thanks to some of the brilliant new artwork we now have available to us. Including that dark terrain that I came up with at some point. I just love making areas with it.

Here's just another example of my making 25x25 maps and filling it with stuff. This is unedited from what Rhialto got and there's absolutely no need for it to be this big. Go have a look at what it is now. I updated that map awhile ago, but it still holds up.

I don't walk to talk about it and you don't want to know. Trust me, it's better this way.

Well although this was part of a different area, I'm going to conclude this entry with this "gem" (ha!) of a map since it was included with the package to Rhialto. As you can see, I knew next to nothing about fantasy monsters as the ones I placed here are all wrong (although I knew what scorpions were and I put them in a forest map so I can only use that excuse so much). The demons/undead are out of place, gorgons mostly live underground, same with umberhulks, the blood angel shouldn't have been next to the floating eyes, and best of all... it's so beyond amazing that the fox is just wandering around and has not been eaten. Of course, in today's map you will see that it links to other maps. That is something that I did when I tried to complete this idea and turn it into a quest (that story is for another blog). After deciding to scrap it all I took the 3 maps that attached to it, redid them, redid this main map, and left it there despite having to throw out 200 maps.

For fun, I'll let in you in on a secret - You know the map that connects to the serpents? That used to be a lich map. I mean liches, out in broad daylight, just hanging around a forest with dimwitted monsters. How amateurish is that?

The Ever Approaching Hour of Discontent

2008-01-12T16:41:00.002-05:00

Greetings all. As it turns out, this Sunday marks the day that I became a wizard in 2003. So I will be doing a special blog tomorrow in honor of the day that began my prison sentence. There will a backstory regarding how I became a wizard for you to read, a look at what I submitted to get promoted in all its awful glory, what was going through my mind as I was making those garbage maps, and similarly boring content to look forward to...or similarly exciting content, depending on what kind of meds you've been taking.

As part of an early preview, I posted a map I once made of Oaken Village before its fall. It was made in the months following my promotion as part of a bad idea that will never come to pass. You see, I wanted it so you can go through the ruins in the middle of the lake and find a rift in time (and space) that lead to the Oaken Village of old. It was to take place in the days leading up to the attack so you could explore the island and find the Orc hoards surrounding the village while life within was tense, but went on as preparations were made.

The reason it never came about was because creating two versions of the same area, set in different periods of time, is impossible to do. I, of course, realized back then that Forgotten Oak wasn't the best set of maps and one day I would find a way to improve upon them. But if I created the Oaken Village maps based on the then current Forgotten Oak version I would end up having to redo nearly 200 maps rather than just 100. Then, if I ever ended up redoing them again, I would be in that same boat. So I scrapped the idea and with the plans I have in my head for Forgotten Oak now, trust me when I say it was a smart move.

That said, I would still like to have a way to let players see the glory that was Oaken village (my poorly designed 2003 map doesn't do it justice) and I think the way to handle that is simply to take the one map that exists for the village right now and make a second version of that which shows how it looked before the fall. Then, allow players to view it via a magical orb which made a viewable record of that one place 200 years prior. That way if I ever redo that section of Forgotten Oak, yet again, I won't have hundreds of maps to redo which are set in the past. Instead I'd have just one. The thing that prevents me from doing it is that it requires new graphics as I need a good looking magical oak, I need a version of the castle which doesn't look so spooky, etc, etc. Plus I don't want to do anything until I have all of the village done and decided if I am going to make any further changes to that one map. So it's just one of those things that is a lot of work for something so minor and can't be done for awhile anyway.

But I digress. As you can see, tomorrow's blog entry will be something to look forward to as if I can go off on this much a tangent regarding one map, all that I have to cover tomorrow should send me over the edge. Maybe I'll even begin to foam at the mouth as local kids poke me with sticks... yet again.

Logged Ideas of Wyvern - Act Five

2008-01-08T09:30:00.011-05:00

I'm free! Finally free this most horrid idea of using my blog to showcase player ideas. I can finally get back to plotting all the lovely ways at which I can torment Binyamin, which are on their way, oh yes. Yes indeed! Anywho... you know what's going on by now and if you don't, I stopped caring, so just read it, scan through it, or skip it entirely. Whatever.

Ideas That Are Suggested to Death

Quite often we get the same ideas suggested to no end. Many of these ideas are things we never intend to bring to the game. Here you can see a few of them and my replies as to why they will never happen. I'm ending this series with this as there's no humor meant to be found in here, just serious replies so you people will better understand why you need to stop bothering us about them. Mostly it's just something I can point to when people go on about it on the forum again rather than having to write a reply all over again.

2003-07-30 14:36:24: T [wiz/arilou/amita/inn 9 4]
u should make it so u know exactly how much damage weapons do seeing as though all other mmorpg games do

Arilou's reply: What's this "other" mmorpgs nonsense about? Wyvern is a MUD and there are many MUDs which do not show you damage. There's actually an interesting article at http://www.topmudsites.com/ that goes into roll playing games versus role playing games. The first makes everything about dice and numbers. The second focuses more on your interaction with the world you are exploring (Wyvern is somewhere in-between). In the real world, you'd never pick one sword over another just because one happens to be the equivalent of a game sword having one wc-cut point more than the other. There's just no way of you possibly knowing such a thing. Rather, you would get a general feel for it by testing it out in battle a bit, looking at the material it is made of, seeing if it's balanced or magical, (yes I know there's no magic in the real world, just go with) and looking at the value that was placed there by those who inspected it closely. This way you have to actually put some effort into finding the right weapon/armor for you and there's no official item which is the best in the game. Instead, you have options that result in people running around with a wide range of things rather than shooting for that one thing with two more points of whatever on it. As a result, you may end up going around with something weaker than you would have if you knew an item's exact stats and we like it that way. It's balanced, it's realistic, and it can sometimes be fun.

2003-07-30 14:36:54: T [wiz/arilou/amita/inn 9 4]
also on that weapon idea u could make it like runescape

Arilou's reply: This is the same person from above and, surprisingly, we get this a lot. People tell us we should make Wyvern more like some other game and what they fail to realize are two things; One, we have no idea what that game does unless you tell us. Two, we are not out to make the game more like what you are comfortable with based on your previous gaming experience. There are so many people with so many different systems that in the end, we are going to do what we decide is best and if you like it you can play. Otherwise there are other games out there that may be more to your liking. That's the great thing about games - There's so many out there for every type of gamer that you can always find something you will enjoy. But, some people don't get that and they want every game they find to be something that they, personally, like as they get bored with knowing everything in one game after awhile and go out looking for a game that offers new experience but is otherwise exactly like it.

What they fail to realize is that there are millions of people out there who think very differently from them in what system works best for a game and many of them also go around to various games with the same egocentric attitude, but instead of wanting a game to be more like Runescape, they may want it to be more like Wyvern, or World of Warcraft, or Everquest, etc. The bottom line - let games be what they want to be and if what they want to be is not to your liking, I have a list of free online games for anyone who asks.

2003-10-21 18:13:22: N [wiz/arilou/amita/inn 9 4]
create a monster list that tell what exp you get for each type of monster

Arilou's reply: This sort of goes with the reply two posts up. We don't want you to know how much experience a monster gives. That just leads to you trying to calculate how many of a certain monster you need to kill before leveling up and that takes away from the fun of the game. As such, monsters give you different experience points at different levels and we change the values on monsters quite a bit. Thus making attempts by players to compile their own lists a waste of time.

2003-08-29 21:23:10: D [wiz/janica/naga/castle1w 12 23]
an air spell like fireball/blizzard

Arilou's reply: Ball spells are way too popular. The fact that you guys want more versions of them simply shows us that you're ignoring the spray and bolt spells too much. Right now air mages are more balanced and we may be looking into ways of limiting the mindlessness of being a fire/water mage down the road.

2003-08-31 12:46:14: L [temple2 9 6]
make it realistic... make it so players can wear ten rings (one per finger) but can wield no weapon, or can wear 4 amulets, but gets weighed down

Arlou's reply: Okay I know I said no humor, but 4 amulets? Am I the only one that thinks it should be in the brain damage list for that alone? In all seriousness, what people don't get is we're doing you a favor by only allowing you to wear 2 rings. If we made it so you could wear 10, we'd cut the stats on the rings way down. A ring of fire resistance, for example, would do 1/5th of what it does for you now. Then your 80 inv spots would be eaten up by 8 extra useless rings that you have to wear and they would all add to your weight.

Also, people don't get that it's not really all that realistic. For one, try putting on 10 rings. It makes it harder for you to grip a weapon as they move your fingers apart. This situation worsens when dealing with one with thick gold bands, as you see in Wyvern - With one ring, it melts into the skin of the two fingers between it, with several, the bands touch. Secondly, any ring worth wearing is magical and so you automatically have to approach this from a perspective different than you would take in life. You see, in Dungeons and Dragons you can only wear two rings as well and the explanation is that having so many various magical items actively working at the same time, while so close to each other, is a recipe for disaster.

2004-01-10 10:30:19: M [wiz/arilou/amita/orcdungeon 10 22]
let us be able to open display cases

Arilou's reply: Again, I want to put this under the brain damage list, but you have no idea how many times this gets suggested. I can't imagine that people do not understand that we do not want you to be able to get the items in display cases as to do so would be too unbalanced. We put them in there for show and if you could break into them, we'd only be allowed to put a bunch of worthless junk inside like string, one silver coin, rope, and sharpening stones. Not only would you no longer care to break into display cases, but the game would become so much less colorful.

2003-10-12 13:31:06: O [village/village 16 20]
naga tail rings to subsitute for boots

Arilou's reply: Nothing with a tail will ever be given tail rings. It's just an attempt on the part of players to overpower races that are already fairly decent.

2003-04-24 17:52:15: H [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/mansion2 10 4]
all players being able to refresh a map that no one is in, people would get exp faster but it would not be an imbalance becuase every1 would get exp faster

Arilou's reply: Unbalances are usually exploited by everyone, that's what makes them unbalanced. Everyone who wants a map to unload faster or wants a way to unload it themselves fails to realize that we do not want you all to reach level 30 in a week and we do not want you going into the same map over and over again to no end. We want to challenge you with various maps that are fun and we want you to explore to find them. That is why the maps you find the easiest unload so rarely - The whole thing of players going into maps they really like so often to check to see if there are monsters there, making it so that those maps do not unload very often, is by design and is, in fact, real balance at work.

2004-07-06 10:44:34: A [wiz/arilou/amita/house2_basement 2 3]
a wyvern 3d cluient keep the old one too and let that be updated but do the same with the 3d one

Arilou's reply: Absolutely not. Wyvern will always remain 2D. We will also always be striving to improve the graphics... within a 2D model. 3D games make it very difficult to add new/original content and require a team of graphic artists working around the clock (which is a costly enterprise). It also ruins the flavor of Wyvern by leaps and bounds.

2004-07-15 14:53:41: S [continent 117 160]
you should make it so that there are like 5-9 different begining towns and that befor you star the game you get to choose whotch one you where born at and train in that one intell lv 4

Arilou's reply: There are four main problems with this:

1) We should never be telling a player where their race was born. This limits RPing as they should be allowed to say they were raised in Alaria, Minath Elion, New Verden, or wherever.
2) It makes no sense that everyone of an entire race are all born in the same small town.
3) It really limits the game when you can only group with Fire Giants, for example, until level four. Meaning you can't meet a wider range of people who could potentially become your friends and meaning that if you and your friend start a new account at the same time you can't group unless you both decide to be the same race.
4) This assumes that you are born in Amita, Davos, or New Verden. You are not. After deciding to be an adventurer, you ventured to the tutorial tower to learn your craft and then began to explore the nearby areas as it was suggested of you by your mentors.

2004-10-11 18:57:07: C [continent 147 148]
when you are in a boat or a hot air ballon there should be light surronding you

Arilou's reply: No, there really shouldn't be. Type "view in" when in a boat. That's the only place where a light source should realistically extend to. It should be limited to a small portion of the deck of a ship or to the basket of a balloon (yes, it looks nothing like a basket, just go with it). It makes no sense that your tiny light source should extend from your location in the air (which is so high that you can go over mountains) all the way to the ground. The same with a boat - The Ocean is massive, more so than you may think given that it is not to scale. Your little light source is not going to help you very much there, especially in bigger boats.

Of course, some of you don't care about what makes sense or not and just want to complain that it's hard for you to get around at night. Well guess what? That's the point. This encourages you to use departments of transportation (dots) and it encourages you to walk more with the aid of things which allow you to fly or walk over water. You guys are overly spoiled with balloons and boats - They're a nice aid for you, but they're not the end all and be all of transportation and we don't ever want them to be.

Well that's it, we're done. I just want to take this time to point out the obvious - I changed the template... again. I know it was like this originally and maybe one day I'll edit my own version. But while I liked the other one, the brown background was driving me crazy. It had these awful patterns that you expect to see on some floor from a tacky house in the 70s. I couldn't take it anymore, I just couldn't.

Logged Ideas of Wyvern - Act Four

2008-01-07T07:53:00.003-05:00

Well it's finally back. The series that you all hate to love. I've been bored with it from the second the idea turned into a reality and I had to actually go through the process of putting it all together. So, let's just get this over with. After tomorrow's entry we are finally done and can move on to something far more interesting. Anyway, as I've said a million times, go to http://arilou-wyvern.blogspot.com/2008/01/logged-ideas-for-wyvern-act-one.html and read the first two paragraphs if you don't know what's going on.

Ideas That Just Don't get it

Oh the Humanity! They just don't get it! They have no idea what we want from the game, they have no idea what balance is, they have no idea... well just read and see for yourself.

2004-04-27 20:11:15: D [wiz/arilou/amita/vault 19 14] A "disown" command, that allows us to drop things and leave them so that others can pick them up

Arilou's reply: Makes sense to me. After all the trouble Rhialto went to code it so you guys can't pick things up your solution is to have him code it so you and choose to abuse the no drop trading rule.

2004-02-04 20:57:20: J [wiz/arilou/amita/store 12 2] Some small reward for recycling

Arilou's reply: Okay, would 1 xp do the trick? You did say a "small" reward afterall...

2004-09-10 18:17:27: K [continent 56 242] summon dinosaur.... lore 12.... life.... ask arilou for monster classes

Arilou's reply: Look up the word "summon." It does not meant to create. A summon spell works in fantasy by summoning a living being from somewhere else in the world (usually nearby) and binding them to your will. Since, as of yet, there are no dinosaurs found to be living in modern times and since you can't summon things through the magic of the well of time (which is highly unstable and never linked to the same place for very long) I fail to see how this would work.

2003-08-29 19:18:48: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/High_Mountains_6 19 12] i should NOT be able to destroy, corpses or objects or signs on the ground with fireball

Arilou's reply: Of course you should. It forces you to be more careful with your spells, to the point where you might rather use bolt spells over ball spells. But, hey, why do that when you can try to get us to support your recklessness?

2004-01-26 17:38:09: M [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/forgottenoakvillage 19 22] let us do something other then quest for guild

Arilou's reply: Well if you insist, I suppose we could make you do mini quests instead. They're just as hard, but you don't get quest points as a reward.

2004-05-02 11:00:36: T [players/thaddiuz/wiz/kiz/samhoc/samhoc 9 8] fountain of energy in samhoc, it would help questers alot

Arilou's reply: I bet it would. As would giving everyone 50,000 levels in sk-healing.

2003-09-14 21:01:15: T [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/foi/forgottenoakisland 9 13] change the monks guild quest

Arilou's reply: No.

2003-09-03 15:27:28: N [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/undeadunicorns 23 15] if u can see a trap...you can 'disarm' it...some times a teleport trap blocks the way int oa quest area and u have to wait for it to unload to try again

Arilou's reply: Or, since we never put traps on teleporters, you could just keep walking into it until you're teleported to the other side. Having to keep walking up against it until you got across may have even been a challenge the mapmaker wanted to present you with.

2003-08-29 19:35:27: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/High_Mountains_3 17 14] magic trap summons more and stronger monsters but no blindness

Arilou's reply: Eh? ... Oh I get it you want free xp! In that case,What part of the word "trap" did you not understand? Was it the "r" or "t?"

2003-04-22 18:35:12: K [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/forgottenoakvillage 38 22] there should be a typo report

Arilou's reply: There is... it's called the bug command... it's like the idea command, only with the word bug instead. Amazing, huh?

2003-09-20 14:48:58: T [wiz/arilou/amita/village 18 20]Earmuffs should block out all channels but LQ.

Arilou's reply: In this person's defense this was written before you could unsubscribe from channels and there did indeed need to be a way to not hear all but one channel if you so wanted to. That said... how self centered do you have to be to think that just because you want to only hear the LQ channel, everyone would be? This is clearly a case of; "What's good for the individual, should be good for the masses."

2003-08-29 19:36:42: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/High_Mountains_3 18 5] new quests should give less quest points and made easier

Arilou's reply: Well okay, that's not too hard to do. Afterall, it's not like we make quests based on ideas we have and then decide on how many quest points it should be based on how hard the plotline ends up making it. Oh wait...

2004-07-06 13:18:50: S [wiz/thrain/prison/prison2 20 4] A lockpick that relies on lockpicking skill that never runs out!s

Arilou's reply: Sure thing! We just love to make things easier for you!

2003-08-29 19:38:08: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/High_Mountains_3 18 5] when ur a pixie, or u cast fly, u should actually FLY!! like a hot-air baloon

Arilou's reply: Great idea! Since hot air balloons work by making the balloon non-blocking that means pixies can fly "over" (err... I mean through) walls and ignore mazes, zip through puzzles, and get that treasure in display cases/behind bank fences. Okay, you didn't know that and just wanted code that would allow pixies to go over mountains, but even so there's a reason we don't put balloons in every map that has mountains in them. I think it has something to do with us not wanting you to go over them.

2003-09-25 20:10:57: O [wiz/janica/naga/serpent 28 10] moving 4% faster a level, so at level 25, 100% faster.

Arilou's reply: Or you could just use the magical items that grant additional speed rather than trying to make them useless with your unbalanced and nonsensical ideas.

2003-05-27 07:28:54: W [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/undeadunicorns 19 22] make pit monsters killable (they are called hungry pit MONSTERS ,not hungry pit traps)

2003-05-27 07:29:42: W [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/undeadunicorns 1 4] its the only monster that cant be killed

Arilou's reply: Actually there are lots of monsters that can't be killed. We give them 9,999,999 hp and/or 9,999,999 ac and/or we put no-kill objects in those maps. Regardless, creative traps need not just be made up of rope, metal, stone, etc. Monsters can be used in creating a trap and limiting us to not being able to be creative with these things (because there is no way we're going to code it so traps can be attackable) is a crime against mapmakers.

2004-03-13 15:29:15: T [wiz/arilou/amita/brownie/westpath 11 8] need . . . healing . . .fountains . . . here

Arilou's reply: No . . . you . . . do . . . not ... although, actually, now that I think about it, healing fountains in training areas sounds like a good idea. Maybe there should be one next to demon lords while we're at it.

2004-03-13 16:23:32: F [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/golem_main 12 9] always get at lest 1 exp from all golems ie straw and wood cuz i kill lotso them

Arilou's reply: The whole reason low level monsters don't give xp to higher levels is because people like you kill them a lot. It encourages you leave them alone so lower level players can deal with them (even if you have to pass through a swarm of them without getting xp, you don't have to kill every last one of them so if someone else comes along, they're still there for them) and it prevents players from going through low level maps just to get 39 xp per map without having to worry about death.

2004-03-10 22:44:27: U [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/church_basement 11 3] make an artifact key that opens all chests

Arilou's reply: The fun thing about artifacts is that for a short period of time you have it a little easier in the game, but they do not radically change your playing experience. You suddenly can't get free xp by one hitting all powerful monsters and you can't make it so the need to train lockpicking or a magic skill is suddenly gone. At best, there could be an artifact lockpick that gives you more points in the lockpicking skill than the highest one regularly found in the game, but anything more is overpowered.

2004-03-13 08:24:05: V [wiz/arilou/amita/stirge_tunnels 5 6] the raks should see better in the dark

Arilou's reply: Greedy little bugger. You have it so much easier than most at low levels as is.

2004-04-04 11:47:32: S [wiz/arilou/amita/village/path1 5 22]change poisoned sword pic to have agreen blade

Arilou's reply: Green metal = Poison. Since when?

2003-06-04 14:43:01: J [wiz/arilou/amita/westorc 17 7] Ok.. arrows from the creatures are annoying me. Could you make them a little bit less homing like

Arilou's reply: Let me guess, the arrows killed you? Well in that case, sure, instead of training dodge and not fighting groups of them at your level, let's dumb down the game. *thumbs up* Great idea.

2003-07-10 10:04:21: D [continent 145 339] when you get out of a ship it should first check to see if your near land and put on land!

Arilou's reply: It does...unless you're, oh I don't know... swimming.

2004-04-07 19:15:11: A [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/castle2 34 11]delete this game

Arilou's reply: Umm... we'll get right on that, sir and/or ma'am.

2004-04-07 19:16:01: A [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/castle2 43 24]im jk i like this game but we need to have were people can give other people stuff for free

Arilou's reply: (same person from above) OOhh you were just kidding... well, hey, thanks for wasting space and making it harder for us to get to real ideas. We just LOVE when people do that. But, you only did it that one time so I guess I can...*reads the second part of this last idea*... ah I see, you did it again with that little gem about giving people items for free. Missed the part where we intentionally took it away from ya, eh?

2003-05-02 20:13:59: L [wiz/airick/maps/lq/lq2 15 29]
replace town crier with game driver...ask anyone, they like game driver better

Arilou's reply: Really? Anyone I ask will say they like the game driver better? I seriously doubt that. It's no matter though as we switched it for rp purposes and rather than get that, I suspect you and your friends just blindly like what is familiar to you.

I know what you're thinking, I'm getting meaner as these things go on. Well I spent five and a half hours one morning collecting them all, separating them into groups, and writing replies. As it neared noon, my right hand needed a rest and I wanted to shoot myself for getting myself into this. Copy, paste, ctrl+i, ctrl+b, ctrl+z, type, type, type, edit, go back... ARGH! I'm not sure how yet, but I'm positive that it's all Teshuvah's fault. I just know it is and when I figure it out there will be hell to pay. That or I'll just whine and she'll laugh... it could go either way, folks.

Binyamin's Wyvern Video

2008-01-06T07:55:00.003-05:00

This issue of Wyvern Ideas (which will return tomorrow) has been interrupted to bring you simple minded little creatures a glimpse into what Binyamin has been up to lately. No, this has nothing to do with his love for singing songs about how great he thinks he is (but worry not as that is on the way). Rather the little devil with a love for all things Barney has put together an extremely cool Wyvern video (yes I said cool... stop looking at me like that). You'd be remiss not to have a look so here it is your for viewing pleasure (incase you were wondering, no this is not the Binyamin video that kills you if you watch it - I'll post that next week).

If you like it head over to youtube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=SWgruMNI7oo) and let everyone know by rating it and/or posting a comment.

Logged Ideas of Wyvern - Act Three

2008-01-04T07:38:00.001-05:00

The insanity is back with yet another entry. You all should know what's going on by now and if you don't, read the first two paragraphs of this post: http://arilou-wyvern.blogspot.com/2008/01/logged-ideas-for-wyvern-act-one.html ... ... .... All caught up now? Good. Let's begin then...

Ideas That Make us Wonder how you Function After so Much Brain Damage.

The title says it all...

2004-07-15 11:16:21: Y [wiz/arilou/amita/village/ruins 8 10] Have especial penalties for people who kill neutral NPCs of their own race- i.e. elves become branded "Kinslayers," humans "Murderers," etc.

Arilou's reply: A human that kills an elf isn't a murderer?

2003-04-16 00:15:28: A [wiz/janica/balloons/arkillion 14 14] more board games like monopoly

Arilou's reply: Agreed, copyright infringement is fun!

2003-09-28 23:08:41: K [wiz/arilou/hidden_elves/unicorn 19 7] undead unicorns should have unicorn horns too cause without them they are undead horses

Arilou's reply: Having a horn cut off makes a creature into an entirely different species? Since when?

2003-06-26 11:25:14: A [minath/city/prison2 9 1]FIRE SHOULDNT HURT SO MUCH

Arilou's reply: Okay, we'll get right on that. Would you like anything else while we're at it? Free experience, perhaps? Maybe a few million gold? Oh I know... how about a sign that points you to a shop where you can buy fire resist items?

2004-01-01 12:51:53: P [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/special/skulldungeon2 2 6] instead of getting banned you should get exciled from that town (that you got banned in) for a certain amount of time, cause if this was real, banned would be death..but exciled would be more fitting to this RPG..thank you

Arilou's reply: Great idea! After silencing you, sending you to jail, and warning you that you need to stop to no end, all we can do is "excile" you from a town so you can wander between the others shouting quest information and offensive language while also abusing bugs, abusing people to no end, and spamming. All of which fits perfectly into your vision of an RPG, I'm sure.

2004-04-08 23:25:37: R [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/mansion2 11 13] people should go to jail for half an hour with over 5 trill gold bail and then do whatever they did for a banished or banned offince.

Arilou's reply: Great idea! After silencing you, sending you to jail, and warning you that you need to stop to no end, all we can do is let you go to jail for a half hour. After which you can go back to shouting question information and offensive language while also abusing bugs, abusing people to no end, and spamming... deja vu, anyone?

2003-06-28 12:43:00: C [wiz/arilou/amita/mansion4 12 15] mea an orc race that way all the orc axes and orcish bows and orcish armor and stuff could be used

Arilou's reply: Orcish armor and weapons can't be used without an Orc race? Since when? What about all that pirate stuff? Do we need to make a pirate race too? If only we had Orc monsters in the game that benefited from the flavor that exists thanks to them dropping Orc items and if only all the races could use these items despite them being made by Orcs... but alas, your logical has foiled me. Now we need to make a race to give these items a purpose even though dwarf and elf characters pretty much ignore armor/weapons made by their race and go for whatever is at hand or the most powerful.

2003-11-06 16:19:27: K [wiz/arilou/amita/enter 4 1] Kind of like Choasnaga was mayor of Lysegu, we should be able to elect a president of Wyvern.

Arilou's reply: What part of the whole medieval King system where one rules by blood did you miss? Nevermind, the concept of governments not being far reaching enough or friendly enough to unite under one rule.

2003-07-13 00:36:08: T [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/orctower 10 23] There should be some sort of 'Success' message when I summon a monster

Arilou's reply: I can see why a hulking creature appearing right next to you would be confusing. Instead, a line of text that easily gets lost in battle messages is obviously a must and requires our utmost attention!

2003-08-29 19:39:11: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/High_Mountains_3 12 3] stronger monsters should give more xp when killed by weaker players

Arilou's reply: Grrreeeaattt... now we're rewarding unbalanced players who figure out how to kill monsters way below their level and giving more xp to mages and archers who can safely fight higher level monsters while fighters stand no chance against them.

2003-08-29 22:30:20: T [main/lighthouse3 5 5] you shouldnt be ale to talk to npsc when invisible

Arilou's reply: Okay, I guess I can see why not being seen by someone makes it impossible for them to hear you...wait, what?

2003-10-12 14:21:31: C [wiz/janica/castle/towersw1 6 27] Hydra's should be able to wear 5 girdle

Arilou's reply: I must need to get my eyes checked. I don't see 5 waists on the hydra graphic... how odd.

2003-09-26 19:34:02: K [wiz/avalon/city/blackrose_city 38 32] i was thinking since dwarfs are overpowered and nagas at hydra form can wear 5 ammys...if raks could wear tail rings

Arilou's reply: One race is overpowered so rather than suggest we balance them your solution is to add more power to another race? ... I'm sure that makes sense to someone.

2004-04-07 19:16:04: R [village/newbie_house3 8 2] I think it would be cool if u could put transporters in the new verden prison or any other prison the transporters can let u go to cell to cell to visit other players in the cells

Arilou's reply: Do yourself a favor, never design a real prison. You'd just be leaving yourself open to a lawsuit.

2003-07-13 01:41:53: S [wiz/legolas/zoo/bar 4 10] The minath arena should be like sokoban for every level you get a quest point or something like that

Arilou's reply: One quest point for killing a few kobolds, then another for killing a few elves, and so on... genius.

2004-05-16 17:07:09: O [wiz/arilou/amita/village/slums 8 17] maybe we should have a religion channel

Arilou's reply: Oh boy and while we're at it how about a quest information channel, and a complain channel, and an; "anything else we don't allow and would result in you getting silenced just for using it," channel.

2004-07-04 16:10:06: Y [wiz/arilou/amita/village/path1 5 22] A whine channel for whenever you really need to vent.

Arilou's reply: (this is not the same person as above) ... another one... great.

2004-10-05 14:43:32: arhige [village/magicshop1 7 7]
i think pixies should get the pixie dust reagent for free, because, well, their pixies.

Arilou's reply: Well okay, pixie dust just appears out of thin air afterall. It's not like someone in a pixie community spends their day gathering it and even if that were true you're one of their kin, so of course they can give you their sweat and blood for free. Oh and while we're at it, dwarves should be able to get dwarven smithed weapons and armor for free too. Makes perfect sense to me because, well, they're dwarves, right?

2004-02-11 05:21:05: N [continent 69 152]
make a super monster suck-o-matic so you can suck up any monster

Arilou's reply: *laughs* Yeah, that's what we need. You and a bunch of other brain damage patients running around spewing, Demon Lords and Riagors anywhere you are allowed to. Nevermind the logic behind being able to trap powerful monsters into something you can carry around with you.

2005-08-22 12:00:03: R [village/village 24 23]
this game sucks big can you make something actually good and worth it

Arilou's reply: Sure thing boss.

2003-06-28 07:53:47: L [continent 157 297]
i would like it if janica would make smithing bows, arrows, crossbows and arrows possible

Arilou's reply: How exactly does one go about smithing bows and arrows? No wait, let me guess. You hammer a little wood, some string, a handful of feathers, more wood, and a very tiny bit of metal for the arrowhead over an anvil... then - Wala! Presto! Smithed bows and arrows! Absolutely amazing!

2003-06-28 11:24:45: W [wiz/kiz/samhoc/barracks 2 1]
nagas need a high lvl 1 square player maybe diamond golem? maybe at lvl 18?

Arilou's reply: How exactly does a Naga shift into a lifeless construct that is animated by magical means? How exactly do you think that makes any sense? How exactly do you feed yourself? ... wait, you do feed yourself, right? *crosses fingers* It could go either way with this one, folks.

Well that's it for today. I think there are two more of these left and then we can move on to discussing Binyamin's love of singing songs. So stay tuned... or not. Really, I don't care. It's just that all the cool kids end their ramblings with that and so, wanting to fit in, I feel obligated to do the same. That or I'm just too lazy to write something original here so I'm repeating common TV phrases. You figure it out.

Logged Ideas of Wyvern - Act Two

2008-01-03T05:58:00.001-05:00

Greetings once again. Today we will be continuing with a series of blogs that address ideas players have submitted to Wyvern (for more information about what this is all about, read the first two paragraphs of the previous post). It's going to be a wild ride, so hang on to your seats and do your throwing up now before it's too late.

Ideas That Speak for Themselves

Watch and be amazed without any input from the peanut gallery...

2004-07-21 16:25:00: S [continent 158 154]
you know this is more of a knoledgable idea as something you COULD do its about the samhoc crown i noticed that you couldnt where that and sorcerers hel, but in fact a king when he went into battle would wear both

2004-01-23 17:20:35: L [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/castle3 14 22]
make less lag

2004-01-27 21:13:24: E [continent 79 152]
when you die you should loose the same amount of xp that thou monster gives you ^^

2003-04-15 14:01:39: W [continent 150 151]
player suck-o-matic (sucks up weak players lvl 1-5))

2004-07-17 13:16:34: S [continent 80 157]
i thnk when you join the magas guild you should get the bennifet og being able to wear 3 rings but not 3 of the same kind

2003-09-25 15:43:20: A [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/mansion 12 35]
instead of a giant shrinking it should show the giant on his hands and knees that way the hps would stay the same

2003-10-22 07:08:10: H [village/newbie_house5 6 7]
plz do not make us lose exp

2003-12-13 19:38:47: E [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/special/skulldungeon1 17 7]
shouldn't undead be less flame retardent?

2004-01-10 14:54:12: S [wiz/avalon/city/blackrose_hospital 8 14]
A demon city,it should have friendly demons and underneath the ground should be armys and armys of chaotic demons trying to make there armys big enough to be able to take over wyvern.This would make better roll play,add more sense to the enviroment,and hey.....you could even make a cool quest

2004-04-27 20:02:49: D [wiz/arilou/amita/village/creekpath1 4 13]
One word: Debit cards.

2004-03-11 17:43:20: S [wiz/arilou/amita/village/slums 11 20]As you level, you should get more 'shout points'. Just like Skill Points

2004-05-12 15:20:56: Q [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/mansiondungeon2 25 18]
there needs to be a phasing spell that lets you walk through walls.

2004-06-15 18:55:57: B [wiz/arilou/amita/westorc 18 5]
Maybe make the server not crash somehow.

2004-08-31 07:08:07: D [wiz/binyamin/oxbow/souvenirs 9 14]
T-shirts should be considered undershirts, so we can hate Arilou and be protected from the ice at the same time, lol

Mar 01 2003 09:42 AM: wyvern.lib.Kernel.log: grandalff [continent 92 159]
please make it so that nagas can wear rings and cloaks in ALL forms (maybe put the rings on a chain for the forms with no fingers?)

2004-10-06 14:28:11: H [minath/start 9 24]
this game is gettin worse dude...

Ideas That Make no Sense

It's not that these ideas are stupid, silly, or whatever. It's just that they make no sense. Where do I go with something like this? What do you want? You couldn't take a minute to explain yourself properly?

2003-08-29 19:32:25: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/High_Mountains_6 14 0]
official wyvern rpg photographer

Arilou's reply: Okay so is this guy a player, an npc, a figment in your head? And more so what does he do? Does he go around taking pictures and, if so, what does he do with them? ... ... ... Well fine if you're going to be that way, to the recycling bin you go.

2003-09-05 05:31:25: L [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/oldchurch 7 10]
make a use for books. Make it so that with a spell, lvl 20's or above, you can learn high lvls spells with them

Arilou's reply: Maybe you meant "a use for BLANK spellbooks," maybe not. But in either case, how would casting a spell allow you write a spell in a spellbooks? Don't you traditionally need a pen for that?

2003-04-25 19:21:37: P [continent 78 151]
divorces
2003-04-25 19:21:52: T [dungeon: level 7 5 13]
divorces
2003-04-25 19:21:53: B [wiz/legolas/inside_raft 2 3]
divorces
2003-04-25 19:22:12: G [village/newbie_house4 6 9]
divorces

Arilou's reply: You can get your friends to suggest the same idea all you want (well really you can't - this kind of behavior is likely to get you in trouble) but I still don't know what you mean.

2004-07-19 01:25:53: S [village/auction 14 16] why arnt there necromancers to fight a thing that can summon any undead monster

Arilou's reply: It took me awhile to figure this one out. But I think I finally did it. It's like an optical illusion. It looks like a box, but all of the sudden something clicks in your eyes and it looks like stairs. Only that is done by design. Here we have a case of the person not being able to form a proper sentence. At first, I thought he wanted to know why there weren't necromancers who existed to fight another thing that summons any undead monster. Then I realized that he failed to break after the word 'fight' and didn't start the next thought properly. So it's really something like this; "Why aren't there any necromancers to fight in Wyvern? You know, the guys that can summon any undead monster." The lesson learned here is that you need to proof read your submissions and make sure they make sense... or in this case, learn to write in the first place.

The next edition will be a good one; "Ideas That Make us Wonder how you Function After so Much Brain Damage," so stay tuned kiddies.

Logged Ideas of Wyvern - Act One

2008-01-02T11:32:00.003-05:00

We get a lot of silly bug reports and ideas from players. Some are down right awful, some are short sighted in that they are unaware of how we want the game to be, some are funny, and some just make no sense. In a series of blogs, I'm going to point out some of the ideas that fit those categories and comment a bit on them (anything in italics are the actual ideas that were submitted to us and anything bolded are my comments). In the past, the idea log was published on the webpage for you guys to read and even though it has since been removed, there are copies out there on the web that you can access. Even so, I will be editing the name people submitted these ideas under so just the first letter appears. Beyond that, they are as is without any alterations to the "brilliance" of those who submitted them.

Disclaimer: Although I realize some of my comments may sound mean spirited, I hold no ill will toward anyone who submitted an idea. I was simply trying to add some humor while explaining why it was a bad idea and after stupidly deciding to do so many at once I quickly ran out of funny replies (note: I actually wrote all parts at once, but after realizing how long it was I decided to break it up into a series of blog entries). I also, certainly, do not mean to discourage anyone from submitting ideas in the future. At best, I hope only that you will try to make better ideas that make more sense and do not fall into common trappings. Finally, I want to make it absolutely clear that I do this only because the idea log was publicly posted on the homepage by Rhialto. I certainly would never make public anything out of a private log and so before you start yelling at me for replying to your idea, please keep that in mind.

Ideas That Aren't Quite Ideas

Sometimes it amuses me a bit that people don't get what the idea log is for and so they end up sending all sorts of stuff to us via it. Some examples...

2004-03-04 02:34:06: Z [village/newbie_house4 7 10]
hey

Arilou's reply: Hey to you too.

2003-06-19 13:13:10: J [wiz/arilou/amita/village 28 14]I love the detail when you get drunk, keep up the awesome work!

Arilou's reply: Well thank you... I think. But do tell, what part of the 'idea' command sounded like the 'compliments' command to you?

2004-01-17 16:45:58: M [wiz/murlana/GPCity 19 7]
most castles are closed. Why?

Arilou's reply: Why do you think?

2004-06-01 21:28:51: D [wiz/arilou/amita/merchant3_1 14 9]
The "magic mirror" in Tyveris's house in Amita isn't quite magical.

Arilou's reply: I take it this was meant to be a bug. In any case, how do you know the mirror isn't magical? Let me guess, you weren't able to do anything with it? But how, for example, do you know that Tyveris didn't have a secret word that would cause gold to flow out of it whenever he spoke it?

2003-08-31 11:18:04: N [wiz/arilou/amita/enterorc 13 8]
how bout they get rid o these shout points...who's with me on this

Arilou's reply: It's a log, not a forum. Nobody can join you with shouts of; "Yeah, let's do it!" when you type something here. You could've, at least, tried to phrase your complaint in the form of an idea, but maybe you thought that 'idea' equaled 'shout'.

2003-08-29 19:11:38: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/Bura_Shaan 13 27]
arilou shouldn't prosecute me for spammin for sayin 2 things
2003-08-29 19:37:03: F [wiz/raeden/burashaan/High_Mountains_3 18 5]
saying something twice will not be spamming

Arilou's reply: The game prevents you from saying the same thing twice for a reason. If it wanted you to say the same thing twice, it would let you do so and then stop after the third attempt. Instead you had to add a period or something at the end of your sentence to get around that. You don't see the problem with that? Btw, giving a verbal warning or a 5 minute silence, at the absolute worst, (unless it happened over and over again) is not "prosecution" (nor is it PERsecution, but I digress).

2003-09-26 22:16:47: H [minath/city/city 32 38]
ARILOU SHOULD BE BAN FOR BANNING PEOPLE FOR SPAMMING AND I AM RAELLY ANGRY BECASUE MY CHRACTER H GO DELETED I SPENT ENDLESS HOURS MAKIN FRIENDS TRAING AND ARILOU TAKES IT ALL AWAY FORM ME ALLL OF IT , I AHTE ARILOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arilou's reply: I love you too and I agree, I should be banished for following the wizard rules and moderating the game like Rhialto wants.

Note: We don't banish people for spamming one time. This person would've had to have been doing it repeatedly despite silences and other actions taken against them or they would've had to have been spamming seriously offensive language/quest information/you get the idea.

2004-05-08 00:37:42: R [wiz/arilou/amita/house5 0 7]
nagas are terribly weak at level 1...compared to raks

Arilou's reply: Okay, thanks for that little tidbit... I think. *slowly edges toward the recycling bin*

2004-02-04 16:39:11: L [wiz/kupior/maps/newbie/grove1/grove2 11 12]
make it so if ur over 5 levels of a person in the pkguild u can hurt them (not just don't get pkpoints)

Arilou's reply: This fellow actually ended up spamming the idea log like doing so would make us any more capable of understanding what he's going on about.

2003-04-15 23:22:38: S [wiz/janica/naga/cathedral 4 16]
this drowning thing is really annoying me

Arilou's reply: That's nice... want an apple?

2003-12-15 14:55:19: D [wiz/arilou/mini/dino/deinonychus 5 12]
Arilou's new area was my idea.....me and Galdor were working on it and they did it!Now i didn't even get included so i think i should atleast be on the sign or something..........Them wizards can't even think of there own ideas!

Arilou's reply: I take it he wanted to be a wizard since he was working on maps, in which case it's odd that he wouldn't get the concept of the idea log being for ideas, but I assume he was acting out of anger and not thinking. He ended up emailing Rhialto as well and eventually calmed down when it was explained to him (by Rhialto) that dinosaurs were an unoriginal idea that were in the documents for Wyvern since the very beginning and that I had been working on it for about six months (it was a real pain to try to get the graphics I needed from everyone and I ended up settling with a product that was less than I envisioned because it was better to just get it up). Anyway, I had originally been attempting to keep it a secret as I didn't want it getting to players since I knew I would be bothered with questions concerning when I would finish it and I also knew that it would be awhile. Thus, not all the wizards knew about it which lead to him (apparently) thinking that Galdor told me of his dinosaur idea and the two of us stole this grand concept. It's kind of gotten old, but at the time I found this one rather amusing.

Next time on Logged Ideas of Wyvern we will be airing Act Two; "Ideas That Speak for Themselves." It's a thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Testing Wyvern

2007-12-27T08:33:00.001-05:00

Well, kiddies, it's been a long night of testing Wyvern. I took a few screenshots for you people as I know some of you live on this sort of thing (Note: I can change my image at will). Anyway, some things that were taken care of during the night were as follows:

- Monsters and players couldn't wield or ready weapons.
- Map load objects (those things that we use to move items from different maps in quests and the like) weren't loading.
- Spike traps, firespouts, and the like didn't give damage messages
- Makeshift additions to the game that the elder wizards made in the past are now directly in the maps where said changes were made. This means no more boulders over Minath Prison. It's now just gone.
- Misc errors with the website (there are probably still more issues, such as dead links, that went unnoticed, so keep an eye out) were corrected.

Other changes that I can remember off the top of my head only affected wizards so there's no need to list them. Plus I am multi-managing at the moment which means I keep switching between writing a few words here and the game so I do not have a lot of time to go into great detail at the moment. Hopefully this will be a sufficient update to hold you over for the time being.

Evolution of the Undead Unicorn

2007-12-25T13:16:00.002-05:00

Very briefly, (or so I thought when I began writing this) I thought it would be interesting to show the evolution of the Undead Unicorn graphic within Wyvern. For those who aren't aware, the Undead Unicorn is a creature that I created for the Forgotten Oak chapel. I was a novice that wanted to expand on the limited number of undead monsters the game provided me with and so I came up with something I thought I could make with my limited microsoft paint skills. However, I ended up really liking the idea as it added great significance to the plot in that it allowed me to show just how devastating the effect of losing the magical life giving Oak tree was to the area.

You see, the tree dying had an extreme negative effect. All the magic it had pumped into the area suddenly turned dark in reaction to the Oak dying a painful death as it slowly burned. As such, all plant life died, the blood that soaked into the soil was preserved, (which lead to the strange looking terrain you see now) and the dead were reanimated. In order to show how really awful this was, I felt that it worked perfectly to have dead Unicorns reanimated into an undead fiend as a Unicorn is a symbol of purity and light and to be defiled by becoming an undead thing for anyone is an extremely vile evil. However, Unicorns are normally protected from this kind of perversion and so it is a big deal (in my mind) for Undead Unicorns to exist anywhere.

Anyway, I originally gave the regular Unicorn graphic Zombie skin and added faded wounds. Why exactly the hooves and the tail/mane also turned green I do not know. Looking at it in the first time in ages, I realize that I should've gotten rid of any hair, blackened the hooves, and turned the body green while adding ridges to show that the fur had fallen off and you were just seeing rotted skin. However, I apparently was not thinking back then and so players got stuck with this oddball.

Later on, Legolas suggested that the Undead Unicorn be drawn as a skeleton and I thought it was a great idea. So I created the 3rd graphic you see at the top of this post. Here I basically copy, pasted, and very slightly tweaked the Dracolich ribcage and placed it over the Zombie Unicorn graphic. Then I used the colors on the Arch Dracolich's claws for the hooves and finally, I drew bones over the pre-exiting template. When I was done with that, I just removed the green bits. If you zoom in you can see how poorly put together the leg bones were, but I am not artist so it's amazing to me that I was able to make it at all.

Later still, a quirky little paper bag (aka Abbess) came along and said she would redraw the Undead Unicorn for me after I was having a discussion with players about the quality of the skeleton version I had created. Being an amazingly talented artist, she came up with the final graphic. The tail bone looks better, the legs aren't odd looking, and the bones in general have a smoother feel to them. All in all, it's great and I am quite pleased that someone that knew what they were doing was able to take my mangled junk and perfect it.

Unfortunately, Undead Unicorns stopped being in the game awhile ago as I began cutting away at Forgotten Oak in an attempt to improve upon the quality of the original maps. As such I ended up deciding to make a multi-map version of the large rectangular map that previously existed for the village. However, I only made one of those replacement maps and the Undead Unicorns would've been in a part of the village that I didn't feel like making at the time. Of course, I'll get around to it one day, but until then Abbess' version shall live on here... for all four of you to enjoy.

The Future of Content in Wyvern

2007-12-21T04:02:00.009-05:00

For a number of years now we've been pushing the boundaries on what came before. The graphics have improved, the design of our maps have gotten better, and our overall standards have skyrocketed. There was a time when an area like Florina was considered good (minus the unbalanced updates that came later). Now you couldn't get promoted with something like that if your life depended on it.

Why is that? Well, we've had some very talented people come in who have pushed the boundaries of what once was and made us see that can do better and therefore we have expected more. People like Binyamin, Legolas, Raeden, Teshuvah, and Zifa. Some were great right out of the gate, others took time to build their craft into something amazing. The point is we have a lot of expectations these days and I thought I'd take some time to share some of the ones that are most important to me with you guys. You may have seen hints of some of these things in the game already, others have yet to be released. But, in the end, the game will move more toward these visions of the future and older areas that do not hold up with be phased out.

Cities

Let's start out by discussing cities. There was a time when, to make a city, you would create this really big box of a map and just fill it in with houses. Then you would fill those houses up with monsters because the idea of making houses with npcs that had interesting things to say was more work and required some originality if you wanted to attract players to it (the aim in creating every map was to find bigger and better ways to get it viewed by people and that meant more xp and more gold). But they looked and felt nothing like real cities and some of these things would get too big, to the point where the solution was to split it up into two maps, like you see with Coran. It's basically just the same thing, only you cut and pasted the bottom half into a new map. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it was just a quick fix to a crumbling system that kept being repeated by every wizard that came around. Including myself.

The solution and now requirement for all new cities and villages is that you design it with multiple maps to begin with and never limit it to just one or two. Now you should have districts and paths between them that are made up of farmland, woodland, a simple city street, or whatever you think best fits. We see this in areas like Amita, Bura Shaan, and Glacier Point.

While doing that you should create areas around the city where you can place monsters while limiting their exposure within the city. If you're going to put them inside of the city be creative. For example, Alaria is by no means perfect in this department and still needed to be split up into a lot of different maps but, in the final product, one thing will remain and that is the random house near the hospital. Sometimes you will go there and you will meet a nice family, other times it will be infested by Orcs and Ogres who locked the family in the attic.

But don't try to do everything with monsters. Find ways to make these houses interesting. Give all your npcs detailed conversations that include important plot points, have them get angry at you for breaking in, (again, in a creative way) or add mini quests/special items. Someone could be angry that their neighbor stole their good silver and they want you to investigate. For which they will reward you once you have returned their property. Another alternative is to let players find special things in these houses only, like my hydra food, gizmos, and bags that generate random prizes. Bottom line, wizards should do things to encourage players to go into houses and never forget the importance of these places as they are of extreme value for making you feel like you're exploring this massive fantasy city and not just wandering around looking for things to mindlessly kill.

Dungeons

One of the big mistakes that people continue to make involves creating monster maps. Okay good, we got people to move monsters out of cities. But even though it may make more sense, it's often just as easy to kill monsters, minus the easy access to healing fountains. Generally what you see is a single ruins map, off to the side, that has a half a dozen structures or more which you can apply to and each has only one map to their name (which then has a few of the same monsters lined up for you to kill). We've been getting rid of them, but you still see it in Varak and in the Minath Ruins. Make no bones about, this is a dressed up zoo- It allows people to pick and choose which creatures they want to fight and always gives them easy access to treasure.

Instead, each of those structures should be a dungeon with at least 3-5 maps, but hopefully more. Each dungeon should have puzzles and traps. You should have to work to get keys or find levers to get to the next level and there should be mini bosses throughout and a final boss at the end. Make your monsters challenging and be sure not to forget the plot. You can add some monsters that are good against archers here, some that are good against fighters there, etc. You can even make it look like monsters are fighting for control of a level which, btw, will allow you to make sense of using a wider range of monsters and give you a plot to build on. Also, one should make sure that the really good treasure is a reward for completing the whole thing.

If one takes the time to create a really complex dungeon, they can consider making something totally unique. It doesn't have to be something that's hard to code. It could simply be an item given for bragging rights or you could find a key that unlocks another dungeon. Better yet, there's one key in each of those half dozen dungeons and only when you collect all 6 can you unlock the mega dungeon. You don't want people just doing the first level or two and leaving, you want to encourage them to go all the way through and you want to make it hard for them to do so. Take the Gauntlet in Alaria as an example. There are hidden keys in each room (in more complex ones you can actually make the keys move around) and little tricks that you have to learn to get to them. One might be hidden behind a wall that you can walk through, another might be guarded by a thief that steals your items, another yet might be impossible for you to get without locking yourself in and seemingly needing a partner who will let you out. Creativity is your friend when it comes to designing a good dungeon.

Also, group dungeons are very important. Someone making one should do all the things said above, but they need to find ways to make it unsolvable, nearly unsolvable, or more difficult... if done alone. This can be achieved by adding monsters that target certain players. For example, Black Dragons are hard for mages to beat since they have a chance to block their spells and they are hard for fighters to beat since their acid does a lot of damage in close range combat. But archers can easily clean their clocks. Higher level players have no problem with them, but a version can easily be designed that does the same thing to them as mid-level players currently experience with this version.

Further more, a good wizard should utilize tricks that force you into combat with those types of monsters - You might need to kill all monsters in the map to move on or the monster may be holding a key you need. The latter allows you to make a dungeon that isn't just a straight forward level based dungeon. You can have one that branches off to the side where players then have to defeat various different monsters and collect their keys in order to get to the end. An advantage of having a group would therefore not just be that you need them to defeat these different types of monsters, but that you can split up and collect your keys at the same time and then meet up at the end. This is something players can't do if you just have each monster one floor down from each other and you have to get past each one to reach the next. While that's fine for a standard dungeon, the point is that by being creative, you can create more interesting scenarios for players.

Anyway, another method one can utilize are signs and random paths. For example, if you're a dwarf, you can read a sign that tells you which of 5 paths to take to move on where as if you're not a dwarf and don't have one with you, you have to randomly go through them all and risk extreme danger. This also adds a huge amount of flavor to the game. Finally, the reward at the end should either be something players can split or something that is worth it for players to go back time and time again to help their friends get after they've done it. If done properly these group dungeons could be large events that clans and players in general plan for weeks.

In the end, things like the elf houses and these one map monster areas should be non-existent. If you want to fight elves, you should have to go through a forest dungeon filled with traps, elves waiting to ambush you, and various other dangers before reaching something good at the end or you should have to fight your way through something like an armed elven Keep. Right now, people can almost fall asleep while training in certain places. They just click, run right through the monsters that they are willing to handle, and then they run right out. Dungeons that keep people on their toes with hidden dangers and puzzles will make a huge difference in keeping people "awake." Especially once monsters are able to travel between maps. Right now you can run out of a map to heal or make quick use of the apply key and your spell aliases to "fight" monsters from the safety of the previous map. However, once monsters can follow you throughout an entire dungeon, the game will be much more like a war.

Randomization

This is a great concept. It makes it possible to create interesting mini-games and more exciting areas, (as I mentioned a bit in discussing dungeons) but it really does wonders in quests. All quests are now required to be randomized. Secret words will now change, paths that you thought were safe can now be dangerous, key items will move around, objectives will change, traps will appear in places you didn't before see them. It really sucks for cheaters. You may have been told to look in that general store on that exact spot for the Orb of Goxii and then hop on one leg, but suddenly it's not there. Where did it go? It may be in another part of the general store, another building entirely, or you may not even need the orb this time around and need to talk to that npc all over again to find out what to look for.

It's great, but best of all it makes quests interesting again for people doing them on multiple accounts. With it, you can no longer run around and mindlessly do what you did last time to solve it in a few minutes flat. If you try without taking the time to check, you'll probably end up having to wait a half hour so you can start the quest all over again. As time goes on, we're going to find more ways to use this which, in turn, will make a more challenging and interesting game for the players - If you ever can metaphorically fall asleep at your computer because you're going through simplistic motions over and over again, you should quit because you're no longer playing a game, you're doing a choir... something Wyern will be anything but in the future.

Good vs Evil

This is a big thing for me. The idea is to make two different games. One you can experience if you make a character that follows the path of good, the other you experience if you follow the path of evil. As a result, whole new worlds open up to you. There would be different quests that can only by solved by either type of character, different advantages when doing dungeons, different monster training areas, unique items, and different risks.

Of course, the game is very limited in the way of that right now, but imagine if certain cities would arrest you just for being so evil that tales of your villainy as reach them or if you're a certain race which they consider to be naturally bad and, in traditional simple thinking, they aren't willing to give you a chance. If you want in, you'd have to sneak in, wear disguises, etc., and always risk being caught. Same with good players. You think those drow are just going to let you, a Human Paladin, walk through their city without a fight? No chance. What about the cities belonging to a dark empire that threatens the cities of reason and light?

But it's so much more than this. I could go on, but a lot of this involves ideas that I have which aren't things we've started pushing for yet, so I'm just giving you a glimpse. However, one thing that will absolutely be important are good and evil items that you wield/wear depending on your alignment. Unfortunately the code doesn't work right now, but once it does you will have to decide... be evil and wield this new powerful sword you found in a dungeon or continue to be good and miss out. Sure townspeople won't flee from you on sight (another idea that you may one day see) but training will be harder. It's things like this that extend gameplay in a way that is fun for the player. We already have it to a certain extent with players making new characters just to experience new characters, but we can do a lot better.

Originality

You know how everything is basically a take off of the medieval village concept? There's a dragon to fight, an angry dwarf in a tavern, and a Keep just up the road? Well this is all well and good, but we also want new things. We have a few in the game right now and Binyamin is a great originator of them. His flying pig area, the blue moon, the under the bed nightmare, toys in the attic, or my dinosaur area. Imagine if you could walk down a New York City street and be attacked by a tank because the city is under martial law after monsters from the past begun entering the city through a crack in space time or you can use the well of time to reach the future of Wyvern which is similar to Shadow Run. Only instead of orcs and elves appearing after humans have established themselves, you find a world where orcs, elves, and humans have developed into a technological world. Although this world has modern cities, it is a very dark, warlike place... with guns.

In short, the sky is the limit. If you can dream it up we want it. A lot of people think of Wyvern in very limited terms, but it has always been the goal of this game to be a little quirky and expand into extremely creative content. The only thing that has been stopping us is that areas like that need entirely new graphics and most map makers cannot make them so they make do with the medieval style ones that already exist. But, we want wizards to wow us and you're going to see a lot more wow as time passes.

Anyway, I really could go on and I would like to expand on each one of the things I mentioned, but I don't feel like it would flow together if I did. Something like that is better for a manual (which it already sounds too much like one as I often seem to be addressing the reader with things they should do and not things that would be done) and so it doesn't work in a friendly attempt to introduce people to semi-new concepts that they will be seeing more of.

Regardless, there are also a lot of things I'd like to see on a personal level which may or may not ever happen. Some examples;

-New races that are unlocked within the game. After doing a very special high level quest you are bitten by a vampire or werewolf and your character wakes up to find it is level one with nothing it had before, but you get to run around as this new race which is a step up from the characters you can pick from when you start the game (inspired by something just like this which Zifa once suggested). In addition to expanding the game in a fun way, it's also a status symbol.

-Quests working like alignment. If you do Shrouded in Darkness you get -20 quest points. If you do Demon Hordes you get +20. Both give you the same bonus where the high scores are concerned so if you have the same exact xp and gold, but you have -122 quest points and the other person has +120, the one who has negative points will be higher. This also serves to punish you for doing every quest even though they may go against the ideals your character holds and will factor into the game in more ways then just the high scores - Npcs will treat you differently, areas will be locked/opened to you, etc. Some quests could even serve to offer two paths so you can do something like steal the item for someone rather than give it to the monk to get negative quest points rather than positive.

-Npcs that talk to you differently based on race and alignment. If you're a drow, you could get screams from simple villagers, but if you're a human they could talk to you about what a fine day it is.

-Holidays within Wyvern. Not real ones, but made up ones that are always automated. For example, right now when you go into Stensele you are told about a holiday that is going on. Instead, once a year you could enter it to find a party has overtaken the streets. Everybody is happy, everybody is drinking, and there are games/prizes that you can take part in during that day only. It gives people something to look forward to without offending anyone in this very international setting Wyvern is apart of and it just adds a great bit of flavor to the game. All the holiday maps would be made in advance and code would be written that takes you to those maps instead of the regular ones during a certain 24 hour period. There's a game called Dark Castle which did something like this. If the clock on your computer was ever set to Friday the 13th, you were in for a special treat. Minus being able to change your clock, it's an amazing thing to look forward to once you hear about it and even more amazing if you stumble on it by accident.

-Overhaul of Dragons. New graphics are drawn for young dragons and ancient ones. All the 2x2 dragons are turned into medium sized dragons which are about the strength of the current Red dragon. 3x3 Dragons are created to be major bosses akin to Riagors and are meant to be standalone monsters. Meanwhile the 2x2 Dragons of today are replaced with new 1x2 young dragons that aren't old enough to pose much of a threat. Most of the maps with dragons in lairs would suddenly make a lot more sense as the dragons we currently have piled together are too old to be living together, but they aren't dangerous enough to make it worth it to players if we split them up.

Well that's enough for now. In a future blog post I'll probably write an equally long post that goes more into this, but I've been writing too long so I'll end it with this. Plus I don't want to give away all my blogging material all at once. Anyway, thanks for listening boys, girls, and circus freaks. I hope some of this generated some excitement and if not, I mock your pathetic attempts to cling to the past.

Btw, as you clearly see I changed the template on the blog. I think this one fits better with Wyvern's old look, but feel free to let me know what you think. If enough of you disagree I'll change it back.

A First Glimpse Down The Rabbit Hole

2007-12-19T16:23:00.002-05:00

Greetings and salutations Earthling vermin. You have stumbled upon the wizard Arilou's first blog post. Aren't you a lucky fella? I'm sure you're thinking I'm out of my mind for making a blog and you would be right, but I talked it over with the voices in my head and we thought a blog dedicated to some of my work in Wyvern might be of interest to two or three of you out there.

Now, I of course have a policy against sharing details about future projects of mine as I have found that doing so only gets people overly excited and then they are really let down when I don't finish it for three or four years and instead jump to one of a dozen other projects I have going at any given time. So, there won't be much of that here (but from time to time I may post a screenshot or two of something interesting that doesn't give away much of anything..."yay;" is what I'm sure you're all saying right now in not at all sarcastic tones).

What this blog will instead focus on is existing content. Specifically I was thinking that whenever I release a new area I could then hop on here within the next few days and discuss some of my thoughts and ruminations on what I had just completed while also responding to some of your questions and general comments. Of course, given that I'm a generally lazy fellow, I don't release an area that often so if, as a member of the Arilou fan club, you were hoping to read my brilliance on a regular basis I am ever so sorry to disappoint. But please, try not to shed tears over this news. I'd like to say I'm not worth it, but we all know that just isn't true, so actually, yeah, go ahead and cry your little hearts out as I am sure each and every one of you are doing at this very moment.

That said, we'll see where this goes. It might evolve into something entirely different or, more likely, I'll get bored and forget this stupid thing exists. In the meantime, I was thinking that every month I would pick one site from my list ( not yet compiled ) that promotes Wyvern and post it here while asking you to review/vote for Wyvern on that particular site above all else. This way instead of trying to get people to go through every one of a dozen sites, you guys can promote Wyvern on a new one each month and in the process attract different types of people who frequent that particular site. This way Wyvern's name is out there more and the type of people who are coming to the game become more diverse. Especially now, in light of the hit the playerbase took after such a long downtime, I hope you people try and take a few seconds out of your day to support this. Well actually I couldn't care less, I just thought it would be a nice thing to do for you people since none of you would be able to promote this as well as I could and most of you want a thriving community again. But that's neither here nor there, just like it's neither here nor there that I enjoy to eating a nice, plump human for dinner every now and then.

Review Wyvern

Wyvern is a massively multiplayer online RPG written in 100% java. It runs on...

Review Wyvern

Moving right along... for this month, I thought I'd start out by giving a special mention to Arcadepod since it was what introduced me to Wyvern. I was just browsing through it one day and saw this game called, well you know, that advertised being able to make areas for the game without needing to be a coder and, intrigued, I came right over and long story short, about a week and a half later I was a wizard. So anyway, think about clicking on the link and giving Wyvern a good 5 star review. If enough of you do it, it will shoot up in the ranks and become more visible to the people over there. But also, if you take the time to make a well written review that makes the game sound interesting, people checking the comments will come to the game just based on that where as they may avoid it if it's filled with a bunch of brief aol speech reviews that say absolutely nothing of value. Anyway, as always, do not spam the site in your zeal over wanting Wyvern to do well. One good review per person is quite enough.

Review Wyvern

Wyvern is a massively multiplayer online RPG written in 100% java. It runs on...

Review Wyvern

And with that I bid you all farewell. Later on; "Inside the disturbed mind of Arilou," I think I'll post some old screenshots of the awfulness that were Forgotten Oak's first maps since I will have been a wizard for 5 years as of mid Janurary and I figured what better way to mark the passing time than to berate myself. I just have to dig through my old email archives to determine the exact date that I became a wizard back in Janurary of '03 and then you get to be blessed with another blog post from yours truly. I know, I can barely suppress my joy as well. But, for the sake of the children, we absolutely must try.

Of course, I'd much rather sacrifice the little brats in hopes of getting a decent harvest next year, but the pesky government tells me I can't do that. Something about laws and angry parents. Oh how I miss the days when parents would let you sacrifice their first born in exchange for a pig and some stale bread. Meanwhile, the law could care less so long as the brat wasn't of noble blood. Now those were the days. Unfortunately people today make a big stink for nothing about trying to cut the beating heart out of some peasant child and it's truly a damn sham... what's that? Too far? *walks off grumbling about mortal swine... in a nice sort of way*