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Tales from Wyvern

Welcome to Wyvern

Wyvern is an award-winning massively multiplayer online RPG with a distinctly retro look and feel similar to that of classic PC games.

If you make Wizard, you can create your own mods and game areas for other people to visit. You can use our Map Editor to create new areas, and the game is also fully programmable in Java and Jython. Using the Wizard developer tools, you can create your own weapons, monsters, treasures, quests, guilds, and more.

Wyvern is currently in beta test. We encourage you to playtest the game, and submit bug reports and feature requests. Please read the Official Wyvern Beta Test Rules before you log in.

Wyvern News

Snack Time
04-FEB-10

For all you hungry, monster-eating fiends out there, we have made it so that chunkier monsters now restore more food points. But, don't expect to fill your belly up with cave troll meat. This is still raw food that has not been cleaned, so if you want to be able to eat a whole meal, store bought food is where the real food points are at. Also, knowing that this new food system is especially hard on new players, we made it so that low level players do not get hungry as quickly! Don't expect it to last very long, though. Once a player starts to get into mid-level territory, they will get hungry at the same rate as everyone did before this update.

In related news, we made it so Sokoban lovers now receive a special food item upon solving a level. You can use them while you're solving levels, so that you don't have to leave to buy food or you can save them for later use. However, you will find that you no longer get quest points for solving Sokoban... at all. Due to rampant cheating, there's really no way that such a mini game can fairly reward players with quest points and so, this was a long time coming. But, Sokoban is still a lot of fun for all the puzzle solvers out there and it can serve as a fun distraction from monster bashing for many. So, stop on by some time, solve a level or two, and enjoy its new selection of random music!

Finally, there's been some confusion about what happens to your food points when you logout. In an effort to end this confusion, we'd just like to remind you that you do not lose any food points when you're not logged in... at all. Instead, you will always come back to find that you had the same amount as when you logged out. You just want to make sure that you actually logout when you're ready to leave and you do not let the game boot you for being idle. To do this, type "quit," apply to a reality bed, or go to client's toolbar, click on "Game" and then click on "Disconnect." If you leave by another method, such as walking away from your computer without doing anything or Xing out the window, your character will remain on the server, even if you client is not opened on your computer.

Nightmare
19-JAN-10

The Paladin Council of Elders has finally decided that Dark Elves are too evil to be Paladins. They have evicted all dark elves from the guild and henceforth bar their entry. Some speculate that this is because dark elves have replaced their racial bow ability with a blades bonus. This should encourage some of you to give the Rogues Guild a try, as it did not exist when Dark Elves were originally developed.

Those of you with special speech patterns, i.e. paladins, nagas, cavies, will now notice that your speech pattern applies to all shout channels, not just those previously reserved for in character communication. Race/guild filters are for adding flavor to the game. If you have a problem with talking with them, then there are plenty of non-filtered races and guilds to choose from.

We welcome back the main shout channel as a channel you can unsubscribe from. To unsubscribe from main, type "unsubscribe main". Unlike in previous incarnations, the main channel will not have the "[main]" tag it once had, but will look the same as the regular shout channel did of recent times. In addition, if you have someone on your ignore list, you will no longer see their shouts in any channel!

We received some reports of player summoned monsters that were either not hostile to other monsters or were hostile to players when initially summoned. This has been corrected; so feel free to utilize those legions of chickens and foxes to attack your favorite foes with.

Some cone spells have been updated to do more damage and to be more in line with how much damage ball spells do. In addition, some monsters where not getting enough element skill points for the spells they used. So as you are traveling around, be aware that some monsters may be much stronger than you are accustom to. As always, we may make further adjustments to balance the damage done as we see the effects of this change.

If you cast a ball or cone spell, then logged off before the spell completed, they were sometimes being left on the screen. While they did not continue to cause damage, this was not the intention. Now these spells should disappear when the player disconnects.

Big Bang
11-JAN-10

The first big change of the year is: Changing how racial bonuses/negatives are applied to players. For most, this should be an invisible change. Rakshasas will notice that they now have the negatives in weapon melee skills that they were always supposed to have: -7 in all weapon based melee skills, unarmed is not weapon based. Those players that had a melee skill should notice that it is gone now. Any training over your level should be gone now as well. As with any change to the core to the game, there might be other inadvertent affects, so please continue to test a report any problems.

Frost Wave
01-JAN-10

In the past, the Frost Wave spell would damage you if you moved (while it was active). However, since this was especially hard on certain players, we recently changed it. You'll now find that it doesn't hurt you at all. Enjoy.

Wyvern: Year in Review
31-DEC-09

As a result, Wyvern has gone through a bit of a tremulous period. Significant changes were made to correct long standing issues and push Wyvern forward toward that overall vision we all hear so much about. In the meantime, players have been asked to be patient while these issues are worked out and the time comes where all these threads can be pulled together to bring the game to a point where it is more stable, more fun, and more populace than in the previous couple of years. So, join us for the remainder of this review as we take a glimpse at the significant updates of 2009 and round things off with a hint out where Wyvern is headed in 2010 and beyond.

Note: If you're interested in a topic, below, you can click on a link to read the full news post.

Balance

An important part of the work done in 2009 has involved balance. The game was in a bit of a bad spot. It had gotten to the point where, for some, Wyvern was less about playing a fun, challenging, game and more about going through dull tasks to rack up XP. There's still a lot of work to be done in this area, which will not just add some more of that challenge back into the game, but also promises to make sure players can have fun doing it without things being overwhelming. In the meantime, a lot of progress was made in 2009 and to prove that, here are the top 7 balance updates of the year.

• 7. Scrolls of resurrection were changed to scrolls of minor resurrection with normal resurrection scroll becoming a hard to find artifact.
• 6. Halflings got a logical update their hide ability which made it so they could not remain hidden if they end up in combat. As a result, that strange ability to attack certain monsters, without them being able to find out where you were "hiding," is no more. Instead, they have to use the invisibility spell, like everyone else, if they want to be truly invisible.
• 5. Giants received vulnerabilities to counter their massive resistances and their attack/move speeds became a tad more sluggish to more closely match up with where they should be at in comparison to other races.
• 4. Guilds received various tweaks. In one update, Archers and Mages received negatives in combat related skills while Archers were given find-weakness in place of their forestry bonuses and Paladins were given additional bonuses in life. In another, Monks were given bonuses so they don't get hungry as quickly and they were given additional bonuses to their mind and healing skills.
• 3. For a long time food was a novelty. It was everywhere and it took very little effort to fill up. In an effort to give food an increased role in one's everyday gameplay, changes were made so that it took much more to fill yourself up, different races became hungry at different rates, and sleeping no longer restored your food bar. To help balance these changes, new ways were made to obtain food, corpses were made so that some resorted some more food points, and items were made that allowed players to slow down their hunger.
• 2. One of the biggest impacts on correcting balance involved changes done to spells. As a result, you can no longer cast a spell if you have negative skill points in the element(s) needed to cast that spell, sandstorm was fixed to be more useful for higher levels, summon spells were made to be more useful in various ways, and ball spells received a major overhaul. Now you can only cast one fireball (or one blizzard) at a time, but its power was greatly increased to make up for it. Additionally, they were once again made to damage the caster if he or she gets to close to their explosive power. All of this information (and more) can be found here, here, and here.
• 1. And the number one balance update of 2009 was... without a doubt ... fixing spam healing! For years, players of all races and guild would go out, train healing and then make an alias for it which they would spam while, for example, standing next to whatever monster they came across until either they died as a result of lag (which was very rare) or the monster died. No strategy was involved and practically no risk was involved either. Thus, a delay was added to healing spells so that a certain amount of time needed to pace before a player could cast the spell again (that amount of time decreases, depending on the caster's life skill). In addition, it was made so that players would be unable to complete the spell if they were in combat while trying to cast a healing spell.

Bug Fixes

Another important focus of 2009 had to do with fixing long standing bugs. Some, were happily exploited, while others were a barrel of frustration for the players who encountered them. Like with balance, significant progress has been made to fix the game's bugs. Here are the top 7.

• 7. You set up a certain autobag, walk over a quest item, and that quest item goes into a bag only to twinkle and disappears. That used to be what happened, but now, quest items will go right into your inventory like they're supposed to.
• 6. Portable holes had become almost infamous for their annoying ability to trap you and force you to logout if you wanted to escape. As we worked to promote items, like this, by adding a delay to quit, those portable hole bugs were done away with.
• 5. Berserk hadn't worked in awhile. Now it does.
• 4. Hurled items were everywhere, so it was only natural to be disappointed by finding that they had been useless for years. But, 2009 has allowed players to finally enjoy them and get some use out of those hurling bonuses.
• 3. An extremely nasty bug was a little something called overkill. Dying to certain monsters tended to result in being killed two or more times at once. You'd lose XP each time and for the longest time it seemed like you couldn't go an hour without it happening to someone. So, goodbye overkill, we will not miss you.
• 2. Coming in second, we have the high score lists. Loved by many, the high scores have always been an important part of Wyvern. But they badly lagged the game whenever they were run and, for years, they had stopped working automatically. Several attempts were made to fix them, but it was no good and that's why we were very excited when that all changed this year. Now, not only do they run smoothly, but they once again run every hour!
• 1. And the number one fixed bug of 2009 was... AC! As most of you know, armor has a property on it called AC. It is the main factor in determining how much defense you will receive when wearing a piece of armor. Unfortunately, it hadn't worked, at all, for years. Players managed to make do by using healing, but they shouldn't have had to and healing was too easy to abuse, so it was important that this get fixed if healing was going to be properly balanced. Which is exactly what happened.

Areas

As the wizards focused much of their efforts on balance issues and bug fixes, maps became less of a priority in 2009. So areas weren't developed to the full extent that they had been, in previous years. But, there were some updates of note. To start out the new year, Arch Wizard Contrare introduced everyone to the inventive New Verden University. Following that, a blast from last year's summer event reappeared in the form of the mountain village, known as Hawthorne. Then Elder Wizard Binyamin gave New Verden its third major makeover and Minath Elion received some made over indoor maps of its own. Finally a new pk arena, for low levels, was opened up in Amita and came complete with a little something, made by the game's newest wizard, Khalon, called the Applewood Farm.

Art

2009 was an especially exciting year for game art. Granted, new art is introduced to the game all the time, but we were really able to improve upon some of the game's older art this year. Monsters got redone, various items got redone, blacksmithing items received unique images, amulets received unique images, monsters received fresh corpses, and new guild images were introduced for Humans. Much of this was thanks to the hard work of Wizard Arisu with special contributions by Wizard Valkon. You can read more about some of these updates here, here, and here.

Misc

Truly, a lot of work got done in 2009, but not all of the year's highlights can neatly fit in a particular category, so here are the top 7 miscellaneous updates of 2009.

• 7. Tired of people taking pictures of you without asking? A new command called nopictures was added just for you.
• 6. Armorcrafting (and Weaponcrafting) was updated so that all items can be sold for a reasonable amount of gold.
• 5. Stacked items were made to act like individual items when uncursing. So, if your 250 stacked arrows become cursed, it will no longer just cost you 50 gp to uncurse them.
• 4. Everyone loves a good game event, but what do you do if you have the misfortune of rarely running into one randomly? In the past... not much. But, now you can view the game's new Game Event's Calendar and see if there are any scheduled events that you'd be able to attend.
• 3. As part of an effort to allow players to heal themselves in new and interesting ways, hp and mana stones were introduced to the game. Explorers can enjoy hunting down their corresponding shards in an effort to collect enough to trade for a stone that will allow them to store hp or sp for later use.
• 2. Random dungeons were getting stale and so a massive number of new monsters, submitted by various wizards, were added to the random dungeon lists. Now you can run into anything from giant vegetable to spooky, green aliens.
• 1. And the number one miscellaneous update of 2009 was... Mini Quest Information! Making it against the rules for people to receive or spread Quest Information is a very important part of the game, but doing so for Mini Quests got to be a bit silly. So, the rules have changed and now players are free to talk about any challenge that does not result in them being rewarded with quest points.

Statistics

How much work exactly got done in 2009? It's hard to put into numbers, but to give you an idea, a whopping 69 news posts were made this year with only two having been made before the month of April. June was the busiest month, seeing a total of 13 news posts, with May and April falling only slighty behind. By September, things slowed down a bit as the wizards had gotten much of the major balance/bugs over with and began focusing on loose ends. As for the hardest working wizards of 2009? That has to go to Contrare and Teshuvah with Arilou, Arisu, Binyamin, Khalon, and Valkon adding their own special touches to the game.

Overall, it's a been a great year that has set up a lot for 2010. As we move into, not only a new year, but a new decade, we will continue to work to shore up the game's balance and continue to fix Wyvern's never ending list of bugs. Our goal is to get the game balanced enough to where we can once again work on the fun updates that players enjoy so much... and when we get there, we will be able to do it at a level which players have not seen since 2004. There's still a hard road ahead, but not an impossible one, and while 2009 saw a lot of updates that might be considered nerfs, 2010 will see more tweak type updates that are aimed at nudging things toward a game that properly mixes a game's need to be challenging and fun at the same time.

What's near the top of our list, you ask? Food and healing, we reply. The game needs more updates to make it easier for players under the new food system and the game needs more updates that make it easier under the new healing system. When we set up the new healing system, our goal was so that players could develop classes that are able to survive perfectly fine without healing while others developed classes that existed to not only be healers for themselves, but to support others in a group setting. This has yet to be realized, in part, because it involves a lot more changes to various aspects of the game. But, moving forward, you will see us lay more of the foundation, that will not only help you get there, but will help you in your travels.

In conclusion, we have high hopes for 2010 and we look forward to seeing your familiar 'faces' as we try to realize those hopes. Goodbye 2009, hello 2010... Happy New Years.

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