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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.
Snack Time
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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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