Announcements

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This page is an archive of Announcements also known as News.

Announcements are posted on the bulletin board with the same name and they are also available from the news command in game.

Note that most information about the development of the game is in Developer Blogs.

If you have old announcements that are missing from this page, please have someone add them.

Contents

Announcements

2023

Unseen University Octangle (May 23)

Note #2 by Guildenstern at Tue May 23 06:02:05 2023 [GMT-4] on board announcements

The Trousers of Time have got into a bit of a tangle (or untangled themselves, depending on your perspective)
and the section of the Unseen University between the Great Hall, the Library, the Tower of Art, and Sator Square
has changed.  Or rather, it has always been that way, but only since Saturday 10th Grune Prime UC 2047.

The Great Hall, the Library, the Tower of Art, and indeed the entire rest of the Disc have not changed.

This is the first phase of a project to redesign the entire UU.  It has been ongoing since approximately 2002,
and has gone through four different incarnations in that time. The next phase is due on Thursday; we don't yet
know who's going to do it.

If you have blorps to any of the rooms which have now been replaced, you can get them updated by giving them to
the Professor of Recondite Architecture.

Good luck!
Guildenstern & Kake (and Archoplytes, Aristophanes, Capita, Cripsi, Dasquian, Feantur, Gaelen, and Una, all of whom worked
on the New UU project at various times) (and also all the other people who worked on previous versions but whose
names have been lost to the thaumic fluctuations of time)

2022

Merry Hogswatchtide! (Dec 12)

Note #2 by Guildenstern at Sun Dec 11 19:13:40 2022 [GMT-5] on board announcements

Hello, lovely players! (And other players who don't want to be lovely, too. Hogswatch is for everyone.)

As they have done for the past few years, the Rotary Club of Sto Lat have banded together to bring good tidings and cheer to everyone. You'll find the Hogfather's Grotto open on Frozen Alley, now with new and improved facilities for Hogswatch fun.

You'll also observe that a lovely big Hogswatch tree has appeared in the Royal Market. It is completely safe, so long as nobody does anything stupid like poke it repeatedly.

Happy Hogswatch!

Guildenstern (and a number of merry little Hogswatch elf helpers)

Better Late than Never (May 21)

Note #3 by Sojan at Sat May 21 06:49:23 2022 [GMT-4] on board announcements

I missed this earlier this month because I had it in my head it was happening in June for some reason.  So on May the 9th 1992 this mud first opened to players - it had been open since December of 1991 but only for development work.

So basically it's the 30th Anniversary and represents another arbitrary milestone in what is by now one of the longest lived multiplayer internet games going.  That's an achievement by anyones standards.  Later this year I will pass 30 years involved with the mud personally which is less of an achievement and more of a "what have I done with my life!" moment ;)

We may, or may not do random stuff to mark the arbitrary milestone!

J

2021

a slight change to combat (Oct 18)

Note #6 by Pit at Mon Oct 18 17:55:36 2021 [EST -4] on board announcements

Hello all,

We have slightly changed the numbers in combat, with the result that the chance of getting "you somehow avoid the attack" in combat has been decreased by 5%.
This should not have any noticeable effect on most players, but if you rely on somehow avoids as an important defence, please note that there will be a bit more risk now.

Pit.

A warning about the Coffee Nostra... (May 23)

Note #5 by Pit at Sun May 23 09:48:13 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Hello all!

There was a bug with the Coffee Nostra: if you got into a position where a family *really* hates you, they actually stopped treating you as an enemy, and started to treat you as a good friend instead.

This bug meant that people could for instance kill mission-givers with impunity, and had significant impacts on the family system. As such, it has now been fixed.

Please be aware that if you have been regularly hunting the Coffee Nostra, this might mean that some of the family NPCs will attack you on sight now even if they did not do so before!

Pit.

Horses (Apr 2)

Note #7 by Capita at Thu Apr 1 21:21:15 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Hello everyone!

As we have previously announced, rideable horses were added to Discworld yesterday. We have enjoyed all the speculation in the last week, and we hope that many of you have enjoyed playing around with your new pets. :)

Now that it is no longer the first of April, and we are likely to be believed, we are happy to tell you that:
* horses are here to stay
* you can now buy horses at the stable on King's Down
* horses can be used for riding, carrying equipment and combat!
* different horses have various traits, so your choice of horse matters
* you will now have to feed and groom your horses to keep them healthy

Have a read of the helpfiles on the horses to learn more. For now, you can still rent horses for a week so you can experiment, but this option will be removed at the end of April.

- The creators

Enough Horsing Around (Apr 1)

Note #6 by Capita at Thu Apr 1 08:01:23 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Happy April Foals' Day!
Now that you've had a chance to rein in your expectations, it's time for the mane event - we'll stop stallion, get off our high horse, and pony up with the real horses!
They are rather expensive, so make sure you're financially stable or you may be saddled with debt.  Hoof it to King's Down, Ankh-Morpork to get your own!

(Capita edited this message at Thu Apr  1 14:09:43 2021.)

anniversary gift (Apr 1)

Note #10 by Pit at Thu Apr 1 05:29:39 2021 [EST] on board foolsguild

Today marks the two year anniversary of the Fools' Guild.

As a small gift, we have doubled the number of juggling patterns available! Head over to Brother Auguste to expand your juggling abilities. :)

Pit.

Iiiiiiiiiit's Thursday! (Mar 31)

Note #5 by Guildenstern at Wed Mar 31 18:10:33 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Here it is, players of all descriptions. Rideable horses have arrived. It took a lot of us a lot of work to get this far, but if you visit Honest Algy's Second-Hand Horses on Short Street, you'll be able to get your very own.

(Oh, that's Short Street in Ohulan-Cutash, not any other Short Street that might happen to be around the place.)

Enjoy!
-- your hardworking creator team.

Thursday is coming (Mar 26)

Note #4 by Pit at Fri Mar 26 12:19:37 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Hello all!

For a long time now, you have been asking us when rideable horses will be added to the game. And our answer has always been the same: Thursday.

However, we neglected to say to _which_ Thursday we were referring. Now, we can unambiguously say: rideable horses will be added _next_ Thursday; that is, 6 days from now.

We hope to have sufficiently informed you so that you can suitably prepare yourselves for equestrian activities!

-- Your hard-working creator team.

Shielding changes. (Mar 4)

Note #3 by Aristophanes at Thu Mar 4 10:36:01 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Please note that in a couple of days you will no longer be able to stack major/minor shield or holy aegis with TPA/SFP or bugshield.

This announcement is mostly for the benefit of people with stacked major shields. Once these changes are live, if you have a stacked major shield and you self-cast a TPA, your stacked major shield will be lost. Lost shield duration will not be replaced for you if you accidentally override your own major shield with a TPA.

Although you will be able to override your existing shields (for example by replacing your TPA with major shield or major shield with TPA), you will not be able to do this to other people.

This is one reason why meditate is now a stand alone command - we wanted you to be able to easily remove your own divine protection in case you wanted to rely on someone else's TPA without having to go to a high altar.

I will blog to the recent developments blog when this change goes live. :)

Temporary PK! (Feb 24)

Note #2 by Pit at Wed Feb 24 16:14:08 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Hello everyone!

As you may be aware (after quite some discussion on the boards), we have recently made substantial changes to the way Playerkilling works in Discworld. Most importantly, PK status is now determined by membership of the Playerkillers clan, which is managed by an elected leader.

Now, as the next step in these changes:
* we have renamed 'clan' to 'league', to avoid the impression of a group of people who are friendly with each other :)
* members of the Playerkillers League have access to a Vote Of No Confidence mechanism to depose an unpopular leader
* any player can create temporary leagues for consensual PK with willing participants

Temporary leagues last for 10 days, or until their creator disbands them. These are intended for player-run events, or just for sparring with friends or having a wedding brawl.

More details are available in "help playerkilling" and "help league".

club issues (Feb 13)

Note #1 by Pit at Sat Feb 13 15:44:56 2021 [EST] on board announcements

Hello all!

Due to a file corruption issue, there have been some problems with clubs. We hope that these have now all been resolved, but many of you will have received some incorrect mails about clubs being in remission or being disbanded.

To avoid this confusion causing unnecessary pain, we have disabled clubs being disbanded for a week. For the members of all club committees: please check that your club is not in remission or about to be disbanded!

If you have lost your family name, but the family still exists and you're in it, please report to a liaison so your name can be restored. :)

Your friendly liaison domain.

2020

PK weekend 2020 (Jun 5)

Note #1 posted at Fri Jun  5 Title: "PK weekend 2020"

Hello all!

The PK weekend has started!

You can join in the fun using the commands "pk" and "clan" in Brother David's in AM. But it is advisable to first read the full explanation available on the frog board. :)

Pit.

2019

Upcoming PK Weekend (May 31)

Note #4 posted at Fri May 31 Title: "Upcoming PK Weekend"

Hello all!

The PK weekend has started!

Specifics:
* All PKs will be considered NPK (but still have access to the (Playerkillers) channel)
* Anyone (whether originally PK or not) can go PK for the weekend using the command: "go pk".
* The normal state of affairs will automatically be restored late Sunday night.
* There are no skillcaps, and no special restrictions on what PKs can do.
* As usual, PK deaths will not cost lives, but if accidents happen due to PK combat (for example, a death to an NPC when you wimpy out leading to a lost life), then that is your own responsibility. So please make sure that you do have spare lives.
* As usual, theft from PKs is possible, so it is your responsibility to not carry items that you would be devastated by losing. That being said, we will not tolerate people who grieve or seek to ruin the weekend for other PKs (temporary or not), which includes permanently depriving people of their items.

Have fun!
(Pit edited this message at Fri May 31 22:14:35 2019.) 

Upcoming PK Weekend (May 28)

Note #5 posted at Tue May 28 Title: "Upcoming PK Weekend"

Hello all!

Next weekend, starting sometime late in the (European) evening of 31 May, it is PK weekend again!

Specifics:
* All PKs will be considered NPK (but still have access to the (Playerkillers) channel)
* Anyone (whether originally PK or not) can go PK for the weekend using the command: "go pk".
* The normal state of affairs will automatically be restored late Sunday night.
* There are no skillcaps, and no special restrictions on what PKs can do.
* As usual, PK deaths will not cost lives, but if accidents happen due to PK combat (for example, a death to an NPC when you wimpy out leading to a lost life), then that is your own responsibility. So please make sure that you do have spare lives.
* As usual, theft from PKs is possible, so it is your responsibility to not carry items that you would be devastated by losing. That being said, we will not tolerate people who grieve or seek to ruin the weekend for other PKs (temporary or not), which includes permanently depriving people of their items.

Have fun!

PK weekend early announcement (May 16)

Note #6 posted at Thu May 16 Title: "PK weekend early announcement"

Bing!

On 1 and 2 June, there will be another PK weekend. That is, all players of 2 days and above will be able to become playerkillers for just the weekend. Playerkillers are marked as NPK for the weekend unless they, too, choose to tag as temporary PK. After the weekend, everyone's normal status (PK or not PK) is restored.

More information will follow closer to the day!

Pit.
(Pit edited this message at Thu May 16 22:42:18 2019.)

New guild in play! (Apr 1)

Note #7 posted at Mon Apr  1 Title: "New guild in play!"

Bing!

As we said earlier today (but for some reason many people wouldn't believe us**), a new player-joinable guild has been added.  The guild of Fools, Joculators and Clowns has opened its doors, and will continue to remain open after today. :)

For some disclaimers...  This guild is not meant as a guild for the serious players.  Fools have their own primaries and commands, but we do not particularly care whether they will have abilities on par with other guilds.  Their only unique command is juggle, and that is not likely to change in the near future, or ever.  Please be aware that any complaints about the guild being underpowered will be met with the kind of awkward this-is-not-really-funny laughter that Fools should expect as part of their daily lives.  That being said, we hope it will be an interesting choice for roleplayers. :)

Your friendly creator team.

** the reason might have been related to us hiding the entrance to the room where players could actually join
(Pit edited this message at Mon Apr  1 21:18:26 2019.)

It's Fools' Day! (Mar 31)

Note #7 posted at Sun Mar 31 Title: "It's Fools' Day!"

A new player-joinable guild has been added to the game. Head over to Widdershins Broadway if you feel Foolish enough!

2018

Downtime! (Dec 27)

Note #6 posted at Thu Dec 27 Title: "Downtime!"

I need to do some work on the electrical circuits that feed Atuins servers.
As a result the mud will be down for 2 hours on the 1st January at some point between the hours of 10am and 4pm GMT.
I will give plenty of warning before it is to happen to allow people to save down etc.

J

PK weekend has started! (Jun 1)

Note #5 posted at Fri Jun  1 Title: "PK weekend has started!"

Use the command "go PK" to go PK for the weekend. :)  People who are normally PK also have to do this if they don't want to be temporarily NPK.

Have fnu!

Pit.

Boring GDPR notice (May 24)

Note #4 posted at Thu May 24 Title: "Boring GDPR notice"

It is almost may 25th and GDPR is almost on us - you know, that thing that if you live in europe or deal with european companies has led to so many emails.

It touches even us in a minor way.  We have on file email addresses, names, birthdays and locations - some of the might even be real - and this qualifies as personal data.  As a result we need to make a privacy statement.

The loose organisation that comprises DiscworldMud does not use the information provided voluntarily in your finger information for any other purpose than internal administrative use such as password resets.  The information is not passed on to any third party whatsoever nor is it used to market to you.

You should be aware that any information you provide within your finger information is voluntary and in no way required to access or play the game.  However should you volunteer this information it is visible to any logged in user with the exception of your email address that can be obscured from players by place a colon in front of it.  If you do not want this information to be visibile to logged in users you may remove it at any time using chfn and/or options.

Have fun and play nice

Sojan

PK weekend coming! (May 24)

Note #4 posted at Thu May 24 Title: "PK weekend coming!"

Just like the last two years, there will be a PK event, where everyone is able to go temporarily PK for one weekend (existing PKs can choose whether or not to be PK).  This event will be held at:

    * * *  2-3 June  * * *

This year, there will be no skillcap.  However, skillchecks between two PKs will have a higher randomness than usual.

Another news item will be posted when the weekend arrives, but for those who wish to participate, you might want to start preparing your inventory and skills!

A'tuin's health - Update (Apr 12)

Note #5 posted at Thu Apr 12 Title: "A'tuin's health - Update"

The underlying problem that had been causing us to crash in new and interesting ways in the past few weeks appears to have been resolved.

That said, we continue to encourage you to not drop your inventory on the ground or put it on clouds.

This announcement was brought to you by the Right Honourable Society for the Baiting of Vengeful Code Gods.

Atuin's Illness (Apr 9)

Posted at Mon Apr 9 Title: Atuin's Illness

As you have probably noticed, we've been crashing a lot recently. Unfortunately, the underlying problem has not been easily reproducible and it is possible that we will suffer further crashes.

We strongly recommend that you take particular care not to place important items on the floor or on clouds.

We apologise for any trouble that A'tuin's all-too-frequent spasms have caused, and are continuing to do all we can to find a cure.

2017

PK weekend is over! (Jun 5)

Note #6 posted at Mon Jun  5 Title: "PK weekend is over!"

PK statuses are back to normal. :)

For those who participated: please use "skillcap off" to remove the skillcap. This does not happen automatically!

PK weekend has started! (Jun 2)

Note #5 posted at Fri Jun  2 Title: "PK weekend has started!"

Bing!

From today, until the evening of June 4, there is a PK weekend event.
To go PK for the weekend, "go pk". Even if you are normally a PK, you have to do this to be able to pass PK checks.
Once you have gone PK, a skillcap will be applied that sets you to level 350.  You will be unable to change it until the end of the weekend.

Note that while corpse looting and house looting are impossible, theft is still enabled.  Please vault any possessions that you do not want to lose before marking yourself as a temporary PK.

Enjoy!  And remember: have fun, play fair, and don't get personal!

P.S. If you don't want to be PK for the weekend, you can play as normal. :)
P.S.2. But it's still probably fun to go out and play the PK game with a lesser-used alt. :)
P.S.3. Since we are aware that the sweet spot for two-handed weapons is not quite at level 350, two one-handed "heavy-swords" have been added to the Elm Street weapons shop.  Please note that these weapons will disappear again after the weekend!
(Pit edited this message at Fri Jun  2 21:35:21 2017.)

PK Weekend Coming! (May 10)

Note #6 posted at Wed May 10 Title: "PK Weekend Coming"

Bing!

Like last year, there will be a PK weekend in the first weekend of June.  This year, a skillcap of 350 will be imposed on all participants.

What does this entail, do you ask?
* All players can tag as PK and be reset to their normal status when the weekend is over.
* If existing PKs do not tag as PK, then they will not be PK during that weekend.
* Players who have tagged as (temporary) PK will be able to do all the usual PK activities except for inhumation.
* Players who have tagged as (temporary) PK will have all their skill levels capped at 350 until the weekend is over.  This also applies during NPK combat.
* ONLY PK status is affected.  This is NOT a no-save weekend.  Everything you do does still affect your character afterwards!

We hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity to do some fun things that you normally wouldn't, and that the skillcap will help more players feel that they can be effective during the PK event. :)

P.S. This applies to the first weekend of June.  That is NOT now.  If you register as a playerkiller, it is entirely permanent.  This news item only serves so that you can prepare!

2016

A'Tuin's illness (Nov 5)

Note #8 posted at Sat Nov  5 Title: "A'Tuin's illness"

We have had some major server problems this week, which has ultimately resulted in a rollback to early Friday morning (European time).  We hope that these problems are resolved now, although there may still be some problems caused by files getting deleted.

While we cannot restore XP, levels or items gained on Friday, if you have more severe issues, please notify a liaison.  Since there are likely to be quite a few things for liaisons to do, however, we cannot guarantee that they won't be snappish occasionally!

We apologise for the inconvenience.

Slippery Hollow (Oct 30)

Note #5 posted at Sun Oct 30 Title: "Slippery Hollow"

From A Tourist Guide to Lancre:
"The path here becomes more overgrown, although here and there intriguing little footpaths lead to isolated hamlets with romantic names such as Slippery Hollow, a collection of cottages now inevitably connected in the traveller's mind with the legend of the headless horse rider. No-one knows why the horse is headless, or to what the reins are attached, although there is thought to be some connection to organised crime."

Welcome to Slippery Hollow!
For more information please see the Ram blog post.
https://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/blog/blog.c?action=filter&blog=recent%20developments&id=658

Change to the automation rules (Sep 30)

Note #6 posted at Fri Sep 30 Title: "Change to the automation rules"

Bing!

The automation rules have seen a slight update.  This should make little difference to the average player, except that client-side speedwalking features are now permitted (provided all direction commands are sent in one go).

The new rules, which we recommend everyone to read, are available in "help automation".

Your fluffy liaison domain.

PK Weekend has started! (Jun 3)

Posted at Fri Jun 3 Title: PK Weekend has started!

Bing!

From today, until the evening of June 5, there is a PK weekend event.
To go PK for the weekend, "go pk". Even if you are normally a PK, you have to do this to be able to pass PK checks.

Corpse looting has been disabled for the duration of the weekend, and inhume does not work unless both parties are genuine PKs. Since some of you may be wondering, house looting is also not possible (as it normally isn't).
Even so, we recommend that you vault items you don't want to lose before marking as a temporary PK!

Enjoy! And remember: have fun, play fair, and don't get personal!

P.S. If you don't want to be PK for the weekend, you can play as normal. :)

PK event (May 20)

Note #2 posted at Fri May 20 Title: "PK event"

Following a popular request in the osrics, there will be a PK event in the weekend of 4 June: everyone will be able to tag as a temporary PK for the duration of the weekend.

More details will follow closer to the date, but you have some time to prepare now. :) 

Enjoy! 

P.S. Since some of you will undoubtedly have some questions... 
* NO, this does NOT mean that there will be another PK reset; if you are PK before the weekend, you will be PK after the weekend 
* there will not be a rollback after the weekend; only PK status is affected 
* if you don't want to participate, you don't have to; just don't tag as temporary PK, and the MUD will be just as it usually is for you :) 
* if you are a PK and don't want to participate, you don't have to: your existing status doesn't matter, you will be NPK for the weekend unless you tag as a temporary PK 
* any XP, inventory, lives, achievement progress and other matters lost in the weekend are ENTIRELY YOUR PROBLEM; we recommend vaulting items you don't want to lose before tagging as a temporary PK 
* it will not be possible to inhume NPKs who are temporarily PK, so you are unlikely to lose real lives 
* you also won't be getting PK-only achievements 

spaces and tms (Apr 22)

Note #3 posted at Fri Apr 22 Title: "spaces and tms"

Bing!

If you notice that you're randomly getting spaces before certain lines of text, please check "options colour" and reset those options which have multiple spaces in them (you can just set them to the same colour).

We are also happy to announce that you can now change the colour option for "tm"!  However, it's going to take a while to get all TM messages in the game converted, so please hold off bugreporting messages which ignore your option setting for at least two weeks. :)

PK Reset (Jan 1)

Posted at Fri Jan 1 Title: PK Reset

There has been a one-off PK reset.
Members of PK-oriented guilds (AM Assassins, Hashishim, Ninja, Mano Rossa, and Last Order/Octarine Hedge wizards) have also had their PK status reset, but will be unable to advance their primaries any further without re-applying as a player killer.

2015

Housing Time (Dec 28)

Posted at Mon Dec 28 Title: Housing Time

A discrepancy has become apparent between the year used by the Housing systems and the year used elsewhere in the code.

This will be corrected at the end of January 2016.

This will shorten slightly (from 133 or 66 to 120 or 60) the maximum number of days you may be absent before shops, newspapers, theatres and houses are repossessed.

If you only log in to maintain housing, you should revise your calendars accordingly.

Shop lease duration will also change, but this will not affect leases commenced before the fix is applied.

RIP Sir Terry (Mar 12)

Note #6 posted at Thu Mar 12 Title: "RIP Sir Terry"

Today, we mourn the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett, who died at home surrounded by his loved ones. We also celebrate his life and work, without which this MUD would never have existed.

His family said it best:

  AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
  Terry took Death's arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
  The End.

Go well, Sir Terry. Your time was too brief but your world paddles on.

TPA bugfix (Jan 25)

Note #5 posted at Sun Jan 25 Title: "TPA bugfix"

Bing!

A bug with TPA has been fixed where the shield sometimes lasts a few rounds after it should already have broken.
If you didn't understand that this was a bug, and were relying on it to stay alive, be on your guard!

Pit.

2014

special changes (Oct 26)

Note #4 posted at Sun Oct 26 Title: "special changes"

As the first part of the previously announced changes to combat, various specials have been overhauled.  The damage caps have been changed around a little and, most noticeably, you now have the ability to target specific zones.

This is NOT the same as focus!

Some zones are easier to target than others, and some zones are more damaging than others (stabbing someone in the heart tends to hurt more than in the arms, for instance).  This is done to provide a larger level-progression, allowing players with low levels to already start specialing succesfully.  The compare syntax in the specials allows you to see the difficulties of the various zones, and how much damage targeting them (with a particular special) will do.

Lancre Real estate (Aug 31)

Note #3 posted at Sun Aug 31 Title: "Lancre Real estate"

Ramtops player housing was implemented in a way that prevented acquiring property by tenants of other areas.
However, players have been able to first acquire Ramtops property, and then obtain accommodation elsewhere.

After some consideration, it has been decided that the ability to do this defeats to some extent the purpose of the original restriction, and so a change will soon be implemented.

1) Rented Property (Houses, Club Houses)

Tenants of rented Ramtops properties who have subsequently acquired property elsewhere will soon receive mail warning them that they have 30 days to rectify the situation, else they will be evicted from the property controlled by the Ramtops Real Estate Agency at the end of the then current rental period.

Rectifying the situation requires that they either give up the non Ramtop properties specified in the warning mails, or the Ramtop property identified therein.

2) Leased Property (Shops)

Tenants of leased property will be allowed to retain their leases provided that they do not lease any further properties outside of the Ramtops. Should they do so, they will then be subject to eviction on 30 days notice.
They will receive a mail warning them of this.

In future, lessors will obviously commence their Ramtops lease in possession of nil non-Ramtop leases, and will not be able to lease any other property without triggering eviction.

Note:

In either case, it is not expected that the code will be fooled by the act of swapping one non-Ramtop property for another one during the warning period.

Temp Mud (Jun 26)

Note #3 posted at Thu Jun 26 Title: "Temp Mud"

While the actual mud is down, this temporary mud (a recent copy of the live mud that we all know and love!) will serve as a sort of sandbox until everything can be sorted.  As the note that appears when you login says, nothing will be saved that happens here.  It's all for the pineapples and giggles.

Have fun and don't go (too) crazy in the meantime!

A Little Bug (May 10)

Note #2 posted at Sat May 10 Title: "A Little Bug"

A temporary bug on Saturday, May 10th, may have affected you if you learned skills, causing your xp to be improperly adjusted when you were learning. It has now been fixed.

If you believe you might have been affected by this bug, please contact a liaison asap to resolve the situation fairly. 

Thank you!

Scrolls, Broomsticks and Rituals. (Mar 28)

Note #1 posted at Fri Mar 28 Title: "Scrolls, Broomsticks and Rituals."

In approximately two weeks' time a few changes are going to come into effect.

Firstly, a bug allowing players to carry a lot more scrolls than their skills would otherwise permit will be fixed.  We advise you to scale back on the number of scrolls that you carry before that time.  While exploding scrolls will no longer kill you, there will be other penalties.

Secondly, the guild point cost of broomstick flights is going to be changed from 200 guild points per flight, to 100 guild points.  The number of guild points you can store in your broom at any one time will also be reduced accordingly.

Last, but certainly not least, the guild point cost of several rituals will be reduced where the cost seemed disproportionate to the effect.  This includes divine hand, where the base guild point cost (no passengers, just the performer) will be reduced to 100 guild points.  Each passenger will (as it does now) incur an additional cost of 50 guild points.

???

2013

Money issues (Mar 24)

Note #3 posted at Sun Mar 24 Title: "Money issues"


Hello,

Recently some people have reported losing money in unexplained ways.  We do not know why this is happening and therefore it is unlikely to be fixed immediately.

Please ensure large amounts of money are safely deposited in a bank.  Vaults are not banks, and money stored in them will not be replaced if lost.  Only carry what you can afford to lose in your inventory/containers/clouds.

If you lose money due to this bug please keep a log and talk to a liaison.  Your information may help us track down the problem.

Please feel free to chat to any Liaison if you want more information or just a friendly chat!

The Liaison Domain

Coming of Age (Dec 6)

Note #4 posted at Thu Dec  6 Title: "Coming of Age"

Just a little note and nod to history.

In December 1991 on an indeterminate day Pinkfish first brought Discworld online.  Although it was to be another 6 months before it actually opened to players Discworld MUD was "born" that December.

So Happy 21st Birthay Discworld!

2012

Upcoming Changes (Oct 12)

Posted at Fri Oct 12 Title: Upcoming Changes

This is an advance notice that on 1st November (a Thursday, appropriately), a couple of low-level things are being tweaked to bring some parts of the game into better balance.

Here's what's changing:
- There are currently different rates of XP given per GP for commands, based largely on the type of command. With the upcoming changes, these rates are being normalized; most commands will get an increase, and some (guild commands) are being decreased, bringing them into balance.
- When grouped, shared XP is changing. Kill and bury XP will be the same as they are now, but command XP won't be shared between groupmates anymore.
- Grouped (shared) TMs will become more frequent, leading to higher TM rates on average.

The changes mostly rebalance how groups work, and the command balancing works with that to reduce some of the friction between players of different guilds and levels of engagement with the game. Many of you won't notice (aside from a little more yellow text while grouping!), but those of you who count your XP and tweak your playing style accordingly will notice, so now it won't be a shock to you if you get more (or less) XP than you would expect. The aim is that you'll get more with higher levels of engagement with the game, and less if you treat it as a background activity.

The main direction of this change is set but there may be minor tweaks to balance anything unforeseen.

The Creatorbase.
(Aristophanes edited this message at Fri Oct 12 21:31:51 2012.) 

???

ISP update latest (Jul 31)

Note #10 posted at Tue Jul 31 Title: "ISP update latest"

everything is sorted now for the time being and has been stable for a few
days so it is all reverting back until the next set of changes happens
I will notify you well in advance of that however.

J

ISP update #3 (Jul 24)

Note #10 posted at Tue Jul 24 Title: "ISP update #3"

Well the upshot of the situation is that my ISP are a bunch of spineless
idiots [I may be a little stubborn as well but they're still spineless]
and won't get BT to fix the problem without me jumping through a series
of very implausible hoops that will both waste my time and extend the
problem beyond the pale.

As such we will continue with the backup arrangements for the time being
and I am making alternative arrangements for the internet provision.
These will take a few days - I will keep you advised.

J

ISP update #2 (Jul 24)

Posted at Tue Jul 24 Title: ISP update #2

Ok, so there is no fix in sight until someone at BT pulls their finger out
as such I have collapsed all the connectivity onto the disctemp link. That
is to say that discworld.starturtle.net now also points to the same address
as disctemp. There are some issues with this - most notably that the line
is a cable modem and is prone to traffic shaping and getting swamped by
other traffic so as a result there may be the odd funny but as it stands it
will not suffer from the problems the other link is suffering.

Once the main link is fixed we'll swing back.

J

ISP update (Jul 23)

Note #9 posted at Mon Jul 23 Title: "ISP update"

Ok, problems remain ongoing.  Various fault finding efforts are ongoing
but they apparently don't know what the problem is yet and trying to tell
BT how to fix things is an excercise in futility.

In the interim I will be collapsing the disctemp and discworld addresses
onto the same link but this will take time to spread to all the DNS servers
out there and there may be the occasional odd issue.

J

*Sigh* Internet troubles (Jul 23)

Note #8 posted at Mon Jul 23 Title: "*Sigh* Internet troubles"

The internet link is current displaying very very high packet loss.
This is 100% a carrier/ISP issue but as per usual it's taking a long time
to get them to admit it.  Use the disctemp access method or IPv6 for a
gauranteed connection until otherwise advised.

J

Discworld Wiki looking for a new home (Feb 20)

Posted at Mon Feb 20 Title: Discworld Wiki looking for a new home

Just a reminder as it has scrolled off the frog board.

As Drakkos recently posted - the Discworld player wiki found at discworld.imaginaryrealities.com is in need of new hosting.

Anyone wishing to take this on needs to know the following things.

1) if you want to do it contact Drakkos to talk about transferring the data - this isn't something that we administer from here.
2) I can happily setup a starturtle.net address for any host, talk to me about that.
3) it's based on mediawiki which means you need a webserver with PHP and some form of sql database. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_requirements for more details.

Also please be aware that whilst it's not directly affiliated with the mud if you take this on you are taking on a responsibility so it's not something to be done just to muck around.

the joy of DSL (Feb 14)

Note #10 posted at Tue Feb 14 Title: "the joy of DSL"

it would seem the DSL line is playing up again.  Whether this is due to
yesterdays power woes or some other issue altogether I do not know and
as per normal it's going to take time to play the song and dance with BT
to even get them to admit there is a problem/look at it.
With any luck it's an exchange issue and will go away but it could be
something that's going to linger.
If it's affecting you please remember that disctemp.starturtle.net and the
IPv6 connection sit on different connections and will remain unaffected.

power (Feb 13)

Note #9 posted at Mon Feb 13 Title: "power"

At 18:05 13/2/2012 the power went out, this seems to have been an area wide problem as there are no RCDs or breakers here that have gone.  Power was restored, according to the alarm panel, at approximately 18:25.
When this happens the UPS will keep us running for a while but if the outage goes on too long it instructs the servers to do an orderly shutdown.
Unfortunately in this case it seems the UPS stopped supplying power before this could happen [which probably means the batteries need replacing - again!].
Also unfortunately this means a disorderly shutdown will have occurred and as a result some save information will undoubtedly have been lost.  Please don't hassle people about this - if it was a save file in RAM it's going to be unrecoverable so there may well not be a lot we can do about it.
There may well be other funnies from corrupted files or similar which we will do our utmost to fix as soon as possible.

J

The reeducation of Mister Game (Jan 21)

Note #10 posted at Sat Jan 21 Title: "The reeducation of Mister Game"

Mister Game (conveniently located in Brother David's house of rest and safety) has been re-educated to allow for strong minded individuals to pit their wits against him in a gruelling endurance battle. All other aspects of the game including achievements and titles remain unchanged.

Sincerely,
The Mr Game Reeducation Committee.

2011

Happy Hogswatch (Dec 25)

Latest News
Posted at Sun Dec 25 Title: Happy Hogswatch

Well it's about that time over most of the globe so from all the creators and Admin past and present at DWMud have a Happy Hogswatch or other non-denominational festival of your choice!

connectivity update (Oct 21)

Note #10 posted at Fri Oct 21 Title: "connectivity update"

the ISP is reporting the fault as all cleared now so should all be back to normal.

J

update on connection (Oct 21)

Note #10 posted at Fri Oct 21 Title: "update on connection"

The problem still seems to be ongoing and I haven't had an all clear from the ISP yet.
Since people are asking I recommend that you take care and at the same time if you want to get yourself into dangerous situations use one of the alternative access means that I previously mentioned.

J

This Morning (Oct 21)

Note #9 posted at Fri Oct 21 Title: "This Morning"

It seems our ISP had a fault overnight that cause our primary internet connection to hang and it wasn't until I noticed earlier that we got it cleared.

All should be happy now and no major problems!  Always remember that in  such circusmtances we have IPv6 as an alternative access method and the disctemp.starturtle.net backup route [although this can be prone to other issues so don't rely on it].

J

maintenance window (Jul 22)

Posted at Fri Jul 22 Title: maintenance window

I have a new switch to install within the network that drives the DW servers.
I'm afraid it won't improve the performance of the system any, just opens up
a few options for me internally from a support perspective. I'm also going
to take the opportunity to perform some other maintenance tasks. As a result
there will be scheduled downtime between 9am and 11am on Sunday 24th.
Hopefully this shouldn't be too disruptive to many people.

As with all scheduled downtime status updates will be found at

http://www.brist.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/dwstatus.html

Hopefully the last update! (May 6)

Posted at Fri May 6 Title: Hopefully the last update!

Right, so BT claim everything is now fixed with the line [Still won't
actually tell me if there was a fault and/or what it was but that's normal
and based on the fact that they're not now threatening to charge me I
suspect they are quietly admitting fault. If I ever managed to badger an
answer out of them I will pass it on.].

I've since done some re-cabling here to undo all the temporary patches I
put in place to satisfy all the troubleshooting requirements which will
have caused a couple of line bounces and then there was an accident with an
unfiltered analogue phone which has been fixed with duct tape!

So, the upshot is that all things being equal it should be back to business
as normal now. But! [and theres always a but] looking
at the line it's _probably_ syncing up a little faster than is good for it
and as such we might see a drop or two whilst it syncs to a range it will
run completely clean in. Currently however, whilst it is counting up
Reed-solomon error hits but not too fast and no unrecoverable errors so
hopefully we're all sorted.

J

fault update (Apr 26)

Posted at Tue Apr 26 Title: fault update

It's going to take a looooong time to get this resolved. BT are demanding
a visit to my premises which, due to the practicalities of life,
I can't be present for until May 6th. As such in the interim I once again
strongly urge people to use IPv6 or the backup connection mentioned in the
last news post if they want a stable connection.

EOL

temporary patches (Apr 25)

Posted at Mon Apr 25 Title: temporary patches

Ok, so as you can probably observe the line instability continues. I'm now
embroiled in arguments with BT and other parties that are going to be
messy.

The stability of the line comes and goes - there are a number of issues to
resolve and depending on your own personal setup you may simply see the
mud freeze for 30 seconds at a time or your connection may drop. Those of
you who'se connections drop probably really need to investigate the
setup of your router as it may be a little too aggressive in cleaning up
connections. That is an aside however as the real solution will come when
the people I'm currently in conversation with accept it's their problem and
sort it!

Since the resolution could be a bit protracted however I have managed
to put together a temporary solution. However a few words of warning up
front. This temporary patch may be a little laggy, it may also be prone to
traffic shaping and all sorts of other nastiness as unlike the discs main
connection it is a consumer, not business, level service ans as such is
not as reliable nor does it have the same low contention ratios.
Additionally the only thing that will work is mud access. The webpages etc
must still be accessed via the old link with the normal address.

So, anyone complaining about lag, slow responses or similar on this
temp solution will be laughed at and ignored. Anyone claiming not to have
read this warning will be laughed at an ignored [please direct people to
this text if you pass on the address]. Also be aware that once I get the
main link up and stable again this method will not remain as a backdoor
for people to use to avoid everyone else on the main link.

Ultimately if you can at all do so then use IPv6 - the started guide are at
https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/IPv6
IPv6 is the better solution and is the future, bug the people who write
the mud clients to support it and don't take no for an answer. If they
won't support it then move to another mud client.
We've got decafmud working with ipv6 for you guys as well.

All that said the address for the temporary access is

disctemp.starturtle.net 4242

note the 4242 - it WILL NOT work on port 23, that's another point, laugh
and ignore fault reporting moment.

end of line

update (Apr 23)

Posted at Sat Apr 23 Title: update

well I've done as much as I can do today. looking at the errors etc on the
router things seem to be an awful lot better _but_ we won't know until it
has been running for a while and unfortunately due to the easter bank
holiday my options for getting people to do things are limited until
tuesday.

maintenance on the line. (Apr 23)

Posted at Sat Apr 23 Title: maintenance on the line.

I'm doing the line maintenance stuff - things will be very unstable until then

10 days is up tonight (Apr 22)

Note #10 posted at Fri Apr 22 Title: "10 days is up tonight"

so if the line doesn't sort itself out at that point - and frankly on todays
performance I'm really not that hopeful - I will be conducting maintenance
tests tomorrow to try and resolve the issue whilst explaining to an ISPs
helpdesk that I'm not overly happy about their ability to take a perfectly
stable line and turn it into a completely unstable line.

However, again assuming the line doesn't settle tonight if I have to go
down that path don't bank on a quick fix as there are many layers of
escalation I'm going to have to wade through to get things done and at
every level the people involved will deny responsibility.

With the above in mind then if you can at all start using IPv6 I
strongly recommend you do so.  Anyone can use it with a little effort so
please see the guides at https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/IPv6

So if the line doesn't stabilise tonight, expect greater outage tomorrow
whilst I bounce it up and down and all sorts.

J

connectivity update (Apr 17)

Note #10 posted at Sun Apr 17 Title: "connectivity update"

I'll probably jinx it by saying this but ...
IPv4 connectivity has been stable for several days now and the IPv6
connectivity has also now been restored so normality has been resumed

enjoy

it never rains ... (Apr 16)

Note #9 posted at Sat Apr 16 Title: "it never rains ..."

just so people are aware there now seems to be a problem with the routing
at out ipv6 tunnel providors.  fortunately ipv4 seems to be stable now

Hopefully full normal service will be resumed as soon as is possible.

end of line

continuing connection problems (Apr 15)

Note #8 posted at Fri Apr 15 Title: "continuing connection problems"

Ok, as you've noticed the line still continues to drop in bouts.
This is still all related to the move to BTs 21CN an the fact that the router to DSLAM is going through the wonderful process of working out it's best connection speed [that wonderful "up to" in the marketing blurb] this process can take a while.

Now, I realise most of the people out there get this next bit but I've been getting the odd really snarky person demanding I fix this so this is for their benefit

There is nothing I can do to fix this, it'll sort itself out when it sorts itself out.!

Now, We do have access via IPv6 which uses a different internet connection but it does require you get ipv6 working on your machine and also some mudclients do not support it.  For help getting this working try the following links

http://pugio.net/2007/07/howto-enable-ipv6-the-teredo-w.html
http://ipv6int.net/systems/windows_xp-ipv6.html
http://www.sixxs.net

The muds ipv6 address is 2a01:348:19e:2::2 on port 4242 - do not use port 23 as it will not work.
the webpages can be accessed via ipv6 but do not fully support it yet so please no bugreps.  you can access the boards directly by going to

http://[2a01:348:19e:2::2]/lpc/secure/boards.c 

End of line

connection bouncing (Apr 13)

Note #10 posted at Wed Apr 13 Title: "connection bouncing"

Ok - the Migration to 21CN seemed to cause some nasty up and down problems.
some tweaks here and there on the network infrastructure side and I'm hoping
it has stabilised things but there are no gaurantees so please still be
prepared for the odd bumpy ride over the next few days as I still have a
few tricks up my sleeve but I don't want to deploy them unless I have to.

End of line

J

line instability (Apr 13)

Note #10 posted at Wed Apr 13 Title: "line instability"

as a result of the changes that caused the outage there may be a period of instability as the DSL lie has been migrated to BT 21CN and as such it's going through a retraining phase to work out it's new noise margins.

As a result expect some disconnections over the next 24-72 hours whilst it sorts itself out.  Sadly there is little that can fix this save using ipv6.  I shall get some guides up on that as soon as I am able.
 
End of Line

J

Advance Warning (Apr 4)

Note #5 posted at Mon Apr  4 Title: "Advance Warning"

Dear Customer, 

Next week we are moving your broadband service to new equipment within the 
local BT exchange.  Moves may occur at any time on the date of the planned 
move, although typically take place during the early hours of the morning.  
During the move process there will be an interruption of approximately 15 
minutes to your telephone service, after which it will continue to operate 
exactly as before.  Your broadband service will also be interrupted during 
this time and in some cases for a little longer, while tests of the new 
equipment are completed.

The date your service will be moved is 13th April 2011.


---------------------------------------

IPv6 connectivity will continue to operate during this downtime if you want 
to take advantage of the lightly loaded Disc :)

End of line.

--
"I am not a Frog, I am a free Womble."

???

rollback (Feb 6)

Note #4 posted at Sun Feb  6 Title: "rollback"

Due to some problems earlier, the Disc has rolled back a few hours to around 2AM GMT.
This means you may have lost some experience and progress on your character.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Up! (Jan 8)

Note #3 posted at Sat Jan  8 Title: "Up!"

Ok, everything should be fixed now.
There may be a lingering issue if you are attempting to connect via IPv6
but that will be fixed shortly, beyond that it's all back and running properly.

Enjoy.

J

Server inaccessibility (Jan 6)

Note #2 posted at Thu Jan  6 Title: "Server inaccessibility"

After much tweaking of knobs, muttering of arcane incantations in the small hours, and burning of incense (not
to mention judicious application of gold and myrrh), we've reached an impasse. The server is a bit off-piste,
and an avalanche of problems means it needs to be dug out carefully from its sorry, cold drift.

We expect that things will be back to normal by Saturday evening (GMT). We apologise for the inconvenience!

2010

Happy Hogswatch (Dec 24)

Note #1 posted at Fri Dec 24 Title: "Happy Hogswatch"

Ok - we're approaching the time when the clock rolls over the the 25th 
in some parts of the world so a quick note to say Happy Hogswatch to 
one and all from all the creators here at DWmud [including the UPS 
which started beeping this morning in a desparate attempt to get 
attention - it probably wants new batteries for Hogswatch but we'll 
talk about that downtime at a later date :)]

You may or may not be aware that 2011 represents the 20th anniversary 
of when the mud was first conceived and started running [2012 will 
represent the point where it actually opened to the public] and 
although it doesn't happen until next december the mud will officially 
be 20 years old during this coming year.

Speaking as someone who's been here for all but half of one those years 
it has been, and continues to be, an honour and a privilege to be here
and to have known you all [yes, all of you] in some form or other.

Heres to the future.

Jake

Holy Sacrifice (Dec 22)

Holy Sacrifice has recently been used in a way that was not foreseen and is causing problems with balance. There has been much spirited discussion about this issue which has been noted.

As a result, the following changes have been made:
* You will no longer get any command xp while bleeding.
* You can no longer immediately reperform holy sacrifice.

These changes are an immediate fix and the mechanics of the ritual may change again at a later date. The intention is to prevent the unbalanced generation of command experience and effectively unlimited gp without dramatically changing the way the ritual can be used in other contexts.

downtime in morning (Nov 20)

Note #10 posted at Sat Nov 20 Title: "downtime in morning"

just a reminder that there is scheduled maintenance sunday morning (GMT) and that status will be in the usual place
http://www.brist.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/dwstatus.html

end of line

Downtime (Nov 13)

Posted at Sat Nov 13 Title: Downtime

Some of the discs in the old storage array for the host tubul sits on are
making some pretty evil noises. Rather than let them go bye bye on their
own [we don't store any data on these discs any more] and have them take
the entire host out I'm going to remove them and also take the opportunity
to rebalance the UPS connections a little.

As a result there will be downtime from 10am GMT sunday 21st November, the
windows is anticipated to last no more than 3 hours.

End of line

Sto-Lat Wizards (Nov 9)

Posted at Tue Nov 9 Title: Sto-Lat Wizards

It seems like the wizards in Sto-Lat have been paying better attention to their lessons of late, and have picked up a few new tricks. You might want to think twice before attacking...

Re:#1 wierd messages (Oct 19)


wierd messages (Oct 19)


New command parser (Oct 5)


???

Power Outage (Jun 15)

Posted at Tue Jun 15 Title: Power Outage

The electrical works in the DWMud data centre are continuing and tomorrow
they need to conduct the final works which will involve shutting
off the power to the building for several hours tomorrow.
As a result the mud will be completely offline for several hours
commencing at 7am. It is anticipated to be running again at around midday
but in a worst case scenario could be out of action until around 6pm

As with all scheduled maintenance the muds status will be viewable by going
to https://www.brist.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/dwstatus.html

That is all.

Don't play with electricity! (Jun 7)

Posted at Mon Jun 7 Title: Don't play with electricity!

There is extensive electrical work going on at present in the Discworld Mud Data
Centre. These upgrade works will be putting us on a firm footing going forward
but additionally mean that at present there is some risk of a power failure
which, ups excepting, will mean potentially a sudden outage. Please be aware of
this if we lose contact with the mud and DON'T PANIC! I am ensuring that
appropriate backups are in place right now.

End of Line

Screenreader Command (Jun 3)

Posted at Thu Jun 3 Title: Screenreader Command

To improve the playing experience for all players, there is now a "screenreader" command, which will set default options designed for screenreader use and help those using screenreaders keep abreast of new accessibility developments. "help screenreader" has complete information on how to use it.

To be kept up to date of the most relevant blogs, screenreader users are
advised to use:
> screenreader inform on

Downtime later today (Apr 19)

Posted at Mon Apr 19 Title: Downtime later today

Tubul is having some hardware problems at the moment. We don't expect this to affect the MUD's performance for now, but as it affects other parts of the system, this might not remain the case.

There will be downtime later today of an hour or two at approx. 9pm UK time to allow a clean shutdown and some hardware shuffling. We apologise for the inconvenience!

unplaced items in playerhouses (Apr 10)

Posted at Sat Apr 10 Title: unplaced items in playerhouses

Bing!

The announced changes to playerhouses have now taken place;
unplaced furniture will no longer be saved.

If you lose any items because of this change, liaisons may be able
to recover them if you ask in time.
(Liaisons can be found with the "liaisons" command.)

???

2009

???

A new option (Aug 14)


BAD THINGS [TM] (Jul 9)


Password Security (Jun 16)


Two things! (May 27)


Skill tree changes (May 23)


Sorry bout that folks (Apr 16)


???

IPv6 access (Feb 4)

Posted at Wed Feb 4 Title: IPv6 access

For more or less the sheer hell of it we've enabled access to the mud via
IPv6. Anyone of an IPv6 persuasion may now access dw on either
2a01:348:19e:2::2 4242
or
discworld6.obsidian.org.uk

enjoy!

J

The BIG GAME (Jan 28)

Posted at Wed Jan 28 Title: The BIG GAME

Please refer to the latest in creator blog entries for more information on The Game, and of course, The Big Game.

Sincerely Yours,

Skeleton Harvester.

Blags (Jan 26)

Posted at Mon Jan 26 Title: Blags

Bing!

Short announcement for you all - we have added a blogging system for developer-side blogs. At the moment there is only one, for recent developments - these are all the things that are too small to justify a news or board posting, but still things people might like to know about. There's an RSS feed to which you can subscribe.

If you have any suggestions for other blogs you'd like to see from us, then let me know. I'm hoping we can use these to be more open about the game development directions than we have been in the past.

https://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/blog/blog.c?action=view&blog=recent%20developments will take you to the recent developments blog, and there is also a link from the main web-page under the news section.

Thanks,
Drakkos.

P.S. When I said 'short', I meant 'short for me'.

You know we love you guys, right? (Jan 18)

Posted at Sun Jan 18 Title: You know we love you guys, right?

We totally love you guys. No, seriously, we do. We lie awake at night, thinking about your little faces.

You guys are the lifeblood of the MUD. Without you, there is no reason for any of us to be here. A healthy MUD is a MUD where there is a strong, active community of players. We're a completely free MUD, and as such we don't have the advertising budget of some of the commercial MUDs (yes! I was surprised to learn some MUDs make money too) - we rely on your good nature to support us in this respect.

Those of you who access the web boards will have noticed a time-delayed request to vote for us at http://www.topmudsites.com. However, not everyone uses the web-boards and not everyone even notices it these days (the mind is remarkably good at hiding things like that from attention). So, we've added an in-game reminder that you can choose to opt into. This option (options output vote_reminder) is set to be off by default... you will receive absolutely no reminder if you do not choose to receive it.

Those who do will get an inform during every voting period, providing the link you need to vote for us. The more votes we get, the more attention the MUD received and the more sustainable our player-base becomes. This is a very real service you can perform for the MUD with a click of the mouse, and we would greatly appreciate your willingness to help us in this respect.

Thanks!
Drakkos

Top Ten Tables (Jan 7)

Posted at Wed Jan 7 Title: Top Ten Tables

Hola!
In the dim and distant past, we used to have top ten tables for guilds. These ranked people according to their rating, and were hung liberally around the Disc for all to see and admire. We removed them around five years ago, but they've always been something that people who remember those halcyon days have recalled fondly. So, we've had some discussions about this, made some adjustments to the code, and we're going to put them back in on an experimental basis.

If you do not wish to appear on any of these tables, you can set the option 'personal tables_out_out' to be removed from display.

There are tables provided for each guild, as well as each spec of each guild, and they may be sorted by rating or by level. The top ten table object will start to appear in various locations around the Disc in the near future.

There's also a delay between updates of the table, and the figures are based on who is picked up by the system as it probes your delicious innards - you need to be online at the point where the handler does one of its checks. Simply playing normally will be enough to do this, but if you're online twenty times a day for two minute periods, maybe not.

So! Top tables are coming back as an experiment! Opt-out if you don't want to be part of this, and they'll be in the game soon!

Regards,
Drakkos

Forgetful Agateans (Jan 3)


2008

???

Happy Hogswatch (Dec 24)

Posted at Wed Dec 24 Title: Happy Hogswatch

On behalf of Admin and the creator team we're wishing you all a
Happy Hogswatch or Merry [insert denominational festival of choice here]

J

Achievements (Dec 21)

Posted at Sun Dec 21 Title: Achievements

post Achievements
This system has now been made live! Merry Christmas to all of you! Enjoy your free XP, those of you who have been awarded with legacy achievements, and I hope they give the rest of you something to aim for!

So, first of all - a few words of warning: It's unlikely that everything in this system is working perfectly at the moment. It's been a pretty short development cycle, and a lot for people to actually test and examine. It ties into a large number of different systems in the game, which is why you'll have been seeing runtimes in the weirdest places - mostly because I temporarily broke the handler with a change! There will most likely be the odd thing that doesn't work the way it should - please report these if you find them - I'll be paying attention.

I also don't guarantee that achievements will remain in their current categories, or with their current achievement values. We will adjust these up and down as needed. This is also the case with XP awards - I reserve the right to adjust these as we assess the game impact.

So, how do you start reaping the rewards of your playing?

First of all, let's talk about what achievements are - they are rewards for doing well within the game, or for persisting for a long time with the game, or for just doing things that are a little bit creepy and kooky[1].

They are not a replacement for the quest system - while sometimes they do require you to do something you wouldn't normally do, usually they are rewarded from simply playing the game. They have no puzzle elements, and they are Completely in the Public Domain. Chat about them as much as you like. The policy on quests remains the same, but achievements are for everyone to talk about and compare.

Your participation in this system is partially voluntary. You can't switch off achievements entirely, but you can hide your participation from other people using the web interface (https://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/secure/achievements.c), and by using the achievements command (syntax/help achievements).

But enough of that - on to what you have to do to get your achievements.

Where possible, the system will give you the achievements automatically - when you advance a skill for example, it will check to see whether or not you have become eligible for all skill related achievements.

My first suggestion is that you take a look at the web interface, and hide any achievements that you don't want people knowing you have. Using the achievements command, you can also choose to hide by entire category (for example, I may want to hide all of my wealth related achievements). Hiding by category always over-rides the state of individual achievements.

Once you've hidden anything you don't want people to see, you can use the command 'achievements legacy' to cause the system to start checking each of the achievements for which you have gained. This can take a while, because it does it on a timer rather than award them all at once. You'll get an inform for each achievement you gain, telling you what it is, what the story is (much like a quest story), and how much XP you gained from it. If you want more details, use the 'achievements details <name of achievement>' command, which gives you a bit more info (the same info that is available by clicking on the web interface). Note that we can't award every achievement retroactively - sometimes because we haven't tracked the data, and sometimes because it's just awkward or CPU intensive to query it algorithmically. Where we can reasonably award legacy achievements, we have - if we haven't, even if the data is being stored, it's usually because there is a code-side reason.

After you have been awarded with your legacy achievements, you're part of the system and can play normally - all of the achievements record your progress, so if you think you should be progressing in an achievement and yet you see no changing in your progress meters, then please send in a report. Note though that some of these achievements work with Big Numbers, and progress is accurate to one decimal place. It may take a bit of time for you to nudge the progress upwards on higher level achievements!

At the moment, there is a note of who is the first to reach particular achievements. In cases where there are more than one of these in the next few days (as in, achievements that people have obviously obtained through already meeting the requirements), this 'first' tag will be replaced with the text 'Great A'tuin'
to reflect the fact we don't actually know who was first and it's unfair to give the plaudits to the person who happened to be quickest when checking their legacy achievements.

These are not the entire set of achievements that will enter the game - more are to follow. The responsibility for the development and testing of achievements resides with individual domains, so if you want to see some more Am/Forn/Klatch/Sur/Cwc related achievements, I'm not the one to badger about it!

Our intention is for the balance of Achievement Points to be equal across all guilds. We're not there yet, but we will be addressing this. Those guilds who may feel a little hard-done by because they don't have quite as many points as another guild should take comfort in the fact this is a temporary state of affairs! The team in Guilds who are working on these have done a fantastic job in producing achievements to an extremely short time-scale[2]

We'll be adding more achievements as time goes by, so you should feel free to suggest these. Achievements should be available for every combination of guild, age, and playing style. Our only real-world restriction is that we need to make sure they don't become so common as to give you XP for just walking down a street. Er... more than you already get from exploration experience, that is.

As a last point, while I am the one talking most and posting about it, and alas the one who is responsible for most of the runtimes (and probably the occasional MUD lockup[3]) you have experienced, I want to stress this isn't an individual effort. The guilds domain in particular have done a Damn Fine Job in providing their initial offering of achievements, and the Playtester domain has been outstanding in providing valuable feedback, suggestions, and bug reports. Other creators too are deserving of special credit, and while I don't want to name names[4], I am sure they know who they are!

Good luck,
Drakkos.

[1] Or mysterious and ooky
[2] Two weeks from conception to deployment. Why the hurry? Well, why not?
[3] The forensic evidence vindicates me! For some of these!
[4] Because it means I'll invariably forget people because I am old and senile.

Things not to do during an Outage (Dec 13)

Posted at Sat Dec 13 Title: Things not to do during an Outage

Thanks to some excellent log tracing by Drakkos we got to the bottom of the ongoing outage and have been able to restore service as you're undoubtedly aware. Most of the credit for the recovery should go to him!

However, just a few pointers for things not to do during an outage like this.

1) Email admin 7 times with various emails about the mud being down - we do generally know about these things!
2) Try to diagnose the problem with repeated connection requests - you're going to end up falling foul of the IPS systems and get your IP banned from connecting by the firewall.
3) Leave your client on autoconnect - The constant log messages from the firewall just annoy me!
4) email us the proxy error from the web server. Just as a pointer here we use apache to proxy the muds internal webserver, this means we cna run various services from inside the mud but make them look all unified from the outside world. if the mud goes down obviously apache cannot contact it and gives this error - it's not a huge problem!

Bing Well

Sojan

Death and Spells (Nov 30)

Posted at Sun Nov 30 Title: Death and Spells

Hi,

After extensive discussion, we've changed the way Death handles spells. Instead of just wiping a wizard's or a witch's mind clean, death now removes some (but not all) of the spells she had remembered... depending on Things.

In addition, if she died to a PK (ie. didn't lose a real life) then all the spells will stay, instead of just some of them.

This change does not affect priests in the slightest, or followers with rituals in their head - they'll still need to do everything they did before.

Happy dying!
Touchstone

Teaching (Nov 11)

Posted at Tue Nov 11 Title: Teaching

Hi,

The "teach" and "learn" commands have changed in a few ways.
Firstly, when teaching yourself, it now costs as much to teach yourself several levels in a go as it costs to teach you the same number of levels one by one.
Secondly (and similarly), when teaching skills to people, you will receive as much xp from teaching several levels at once as you would if you taught them one by one.
And thirdly, a new syntax has been added, to teach "max levels of <skill>". This will make you learn as many levels as your current xp will permit.

So, in short, two bugs fixed and one idea implemented. Have fnu!

Woom

Single Shoulder and you. (Sep 24)

Posted at Wed Sep 24 Title: Single Shoulder and you.

After reviewing the single shoudler effect (the code that is responsible for giving you a dex penalty when you wear two backpacks, satchels, staff harness etc), we've decided to remove the dex penalty on a trial basis.

There are a number of reasons behind this but mainly we felt that with the changes in the game from when this was first implemented (mainly stat re-distribution) that the initial goal of giving a combat penalty to those who rely on their mobility was no longer being achieved. If you carry (& wear) multiple containers you will still receive a dex penalty from the extra weight in the extra containers. Please feel free to post your feedback & ideas on the boards/through the bug report system.

Players who are logged in (as I write this) will need to su for it to take effect. Sorry if it breaks all your stuff.

(I kid. Maybe. I think I did it properly this time.)

Taffyd.


(Taffyd edited this message at Wed Sep 24 03:10:15 2008.) 

IMC2 Intermud (Aug 27)

Posted at Wed Aug 27 Title: IMC2 Intermud


I've hooked us up to the MudBytes IMC2 Intermud network on a trial basis. There are currently two channels available to players via the talker:

* inews, which is a feed of various news channels. This is currently 'read only', things we talk about won't get broadcast back to the intermud network. Feel free to talk about any of the news topics the channel bot announces on inews.
* igame, which has two games on it:
1. Uno, which seems to be sort of broken atm :p
2. Trivia, which is semi-broken!

The commands are:

igame !starttrivia - Start a game of trivia
igame !repeat - Repeat the question
igame !hint - Get a hint!
igame <answer>


These two channels are currently available to everyone via the talker, although eventually they will be moved to have the same criteria as the current i3 Intermud channel.

The standard talker language rules apply on igame. Please remember to be respectful of other players/creators on other MUDs that we are connected to. One thing the admins frown on is advertising. We all know Discworld is great so no need to talk about it too much on intermud. :)

Thanks,
Taffyd

Multiculturalism triumphs in Dimwell Street Redevelopment (Aug 17)

Posted at Sun Aug 17 Title: Multiculturalism triumphs in Dimwell Street Redevelopment

An overhaul of Dimwell Street's south end was recently completed, finishing a project that was started at the northern end some years ago.

As requested by the Patricial Administration, opportunities were given to the city's minorities.
The local lumberyard employs over a dozen golems and trolls and the new Klatchian takeaway / grocery will no doubt be a success for years to come!

The Ankh-Morpork Guild of Architects

Tanning & dyeing hides (Aug 5)

Posted at Tue Aug 5 Title: Tanning & dyeing hides

Geraldine, one of the Lancre Hunters, had a nasty accident recently and has decided to retire and set up in the skin trade.

...no, not that skin trade. Wash your mind out with soap. She buys tanned hides from the people who go out and hunt, and sells them on to tailors in the big city.

She's set up shop in the Lancre Hunters' camp, just below the oak tree.
If you buy a tanning kit from her, you can (if you have the skill, at least) turn a deer, a squirrel, or almost anything into a nice piece of leather, suede, skin, or fur, and then dye it.

- Touchstone

Sartorn and Son's Fine Scabbards (Jul 23)

Posted at Wed Jul 23 Title: Sartorn and Son's Fine Scabbards

The esteemed Sartorn, of Endless Street, Ankh-Morpork, would like it to be known that he has retired to a well-earned life of peace and quiet, passing on the business to his eldest son Al.

Al has been practicing his scabbard-making skills, and now feels confident enough to offer custom scabbards to the gentry, middle classes, and indeed outright scum of Ankh-Morpork - visit him today!

Touchstone, pp Sartorn Sr.

Changes to Pets (Jul 10)

Posted at Thu Jul 10 Title: Changes to Pets

Rebellious rumours have been running around our pet community, probably carried by all those wandering cats, that sometimes a pet's owner is not to be trusted and may even attack their poor defenceless charge. As such, you may find certain pets less trusting than hitherto in the event of unexpected violence. They may fight back. They may even... explode...

- Touchstone, pp Loutre Fixes

Rambling Along (May 25)

Posted at Sun May 25 Title: Rambling Along

Renovations are sweeping the Ramtops.
From the heights of Cori Celesti to the lowlands of the Chalk, adventures abound!
Ramtop Ramblers have been sighted slipping Jason Ogg rent monies for the forge cellar room.
This is a not so secret society.
This is an opportunity to explore ideas, to not have to go creator, to not be a playtester, and to still have direct the ability to have an input and collaboration with people who want to hear and discuss.
Could you be a Ramtop Rambler?
This is not a coding or writing position.
Applications are now open.

Elegant stilettos and custom short swords (May 4)

Posted at Sun May 4 Title: Elegant stilettos and custom short swords

Hi,

Messrs Burleigh & Stronginthearm have informed me that they've taken on some new labour, which means that the quality of their elegant stilettos will be more variable than before. Not entirely coincidentally, they also come in some exciting new designs.

(Yes, this change will affect your existing stilettos. Yes, you're stuck with what they turn into. Some of them will be slightly less effective than before; a rare few will be more so. If you really feel hard-done-by, complain to me please, the liaisons are your friends.)

In related news, I've also tweaked custom short swords so that they're faster.

Enjoy your new toys, and may you have much happy stabbity time!

(Update: Messrs Burleigh & Stronginthearm have just had delivered a note to say that some of the materials they ordered have arrived, smashed to bits. That forced them to go back to the old style of elegant stilettos for a short time, but they are happy to announce that new shipments have arrived, and the new production is back on track! They apologise for any inconvenience to their valued customers, and hope all of your stabbing pleasure continues with ease. - Arwyn)

- Touchstone
(Arwyn edited this message at Sun May 4 20:59:01 2008.) 

New village discovered! (Mar 4)

Posted at Tue Mar 4 Title: New village discovered!

Searching out the deepest secret areas of the disc, a group of explorers have
discovered a new village. They found that it's a place where many come from,
but no one ever returns.

The villagers of Pumpkin Town are happy to offer a home to those new to the
Discworld. To get everyone else familiar with their town, they invited all to
come over and have a look. Soon, a visit to Pumpkin Town will be a must before
going out into the larger world.

--- Translation:

A new newbie area has been created!

To avoid real newbies getting trampled by hordes of one-day tourists who want
to check out the new village, you have a chance to visit it before everyone is
put in there by default. You can do this by creating a newbie alt and, in the
foyer of the newbie area, typing "pumpkins".

Enjoy!

Ideas! (Feb 4)

Posted at Mon Feb 4 Title: Ideas!

Ideas are good. The MUD thrives on ideas. Many of the fun and intricate features that make this the best MUD are the direct result of player-submitted ideas, so we welcome them and would like you to continue submitting them.

The correct way to submit ideas is via the in-MUD "idea" command. You can get more information on this by typing "help idea". The reasons we prefer this method to other methods, e.g. board posts, are easy to understand.

The idea system is designed to retain ideas until they're processed. Although this can take some time while other work is being done, ideas will not leave the system until explicitly closed, unlike board posts. Also, as the boards are a more social medium, they tend to be read while a creator is gearing up to do work, whereas the idea system is used while they're doing that work.

So keep those ideas coming! Of course, if you want your idea to receive the best attention, use the correct system. Filling up the boards with ideas will not always cause them to be implemented; in fact, it's often considered to be spammy and counter-productive. Instead, use the "idea" command and keep the boards for conversations and fluffs.

Weight for me! (Jan 23)

Posted at Wed Jan 23 Title: Weight for me!

In an effort to limit the seemly endless deluge of
our members complaining of a chronic lack of adherence
to the most rudimentary occupational health and safety
standards, we have advised our members to cut back
drastically on the loads they are willing to shoulder.

Signed,
Jeef Lirwyn
Secretary and Honourary Member
The Guild of Genuan Trainable Pets

A town grows legs! (Jan 18)

Posted at Fri Jan 18 Title: A town grows legs!

The citizens of Ohulan-Cutash, having been impressed by recent roadworks and a Lancrastian ambassador, as well as wanting to be more in agreement with historical lore about their town, have decided it was time to pack up everything (and we do mean _everything_) and move further east, closer to Lancre. Since the town was reassembled exactly as it was previously, and the entire process overseen by a team of wizards from Unseen University, all forms of arcane transport to and from Ohulan-Cutash should function exactly as they did previously. Likewise, no other changes other than the towns location should be expected.

New Year, New Announcements (Jan 2)

Posted at Wed Jan 2 Title: New Year, New Announcements

I've been pondering this a while and since we have a new year I figured it was as good a time as any to spell this out.

Over the years I've been here there have always been people who's goal it is to make other peoples lives a misery, however in recent times there seems to have been a resurgence in a small section of our society in this kind of behaviour with it getting ever more nasty. Frankly I've become rather tired of it and as such I'm issuing a general warning to those people who do seem to think it's their divine right to generally spoil the game for other people. You all know who you are!

So, if you are one of those types of people then it's time to tone down the behaviour and play nicer because otherwise theres going to be no appeals, no excuses and no second (or fifteenth) chances. You will become persona non grata and will be marked as delete on sight. "I was drunk/stoned/had problems/was immature/hadn't grown up yet/have impulse control problems/an.other reason" is not going to be an excuse, everyone knows when their language is out of line - you have to type it in and hit enter so just take a second to read it back before doing so, same goes for actions - you have to think about them and type in the commands, theres no automatic reflexes that do the things that are being done so again - use the lump of grey matter you were born with and actually think about what you're doing.

This is the only warning that will be issued.

End of Line

J

--
"I am not a Frog, I am a free Womble." 

2007

Catastrophy! (Dec 20)

Posted at Thu Dec 20 Title: Catastrophy!

Jobs lost!
Savings lost!
Skills lost!
XP lost!
Lives lost!

Our downtime yesterday was due to the possible failure of our RAID controller. There was some significant data corruption so we have rolled back a few days. Apologies for any inconvenience caused, most of the MUD is working but some bits still aren't. We're working on it.

This message was brought to you by the Department of Lost Babies.

???

More illness. (Nov 2)

Posted at Fri Nov 2 Title: More illness.

Note that, included in what is not working at the moment is lookmap. If you are having errors when moving, please use:

options output map look = off
options output map lookcity = off

Tubul is very sick (Nov 2)

Posted at Fri Nov 2 Title: Tubul is very sick

Tubul is very very very sick and it's going to take quite some time to
put him back together again.
Fortunately the disc is capable of running but I will need to shut down
to perform maintenance at some point over the weekend and you will notice
things like web access not working at present [and anything that uses the
database which will cause issues with tricks and error reports and other
stuff]
would have fixed these but needed to sleep since I'm going to get less than
3 hours as is.

J

Power Outage - Update (Sep 28)

Posted at Fri Sep 28 Title: Power Outage - Update

A brief update on the power outage. I'm informed that they intend to turn
the power off at 11am BST so thats when it will be going out and it should
then be completed no later than 4pm BST.

I will be updating the page
http://www.brist.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/dwstatus.html
with the status of the work so you can check there to see when it's all
up and running.

End of Line

Downtime - Saturday 29th September (Sep 22)

Posted at Sat Sep 22 Title: Downtime - Saturday 29th September

Some electrical work is going to necessitate turning off the power for a few hours on Saturday 29th and it's going to be out longer than the ability of the UPS to keep Tubul running.

Therefore the mud will be down for a few hours [up to a maximum of 4] on Saturday 29th September. I don't know precisely when as it will depend on the guys doing the work but it will be between 10am and 4pm. There will be furthur announcements as and when I have more information.

J

Scrolls (Aug 30)

Posted at Thu Aug 30 Title: Scrolls

Hi,
I've tweaked the scribe command a bit - now, not all papers are equal. Smaller pieces of paper will require more skill to scribe spells on.

This doesn't affect the difficulty of casting spells from them.

Thanks,
Touchstone.

PS: You might also want to try eating them. Or not. You Have Been Warned.

Note from the Guild of Builders (Aug 26)


Achtung Homeowners! (Jul 23)

Posted at Mon Jul 23 Title: Achtung Homeowners!

Player housing 'out' exits now have cardinal exits (i.e. if you enter your house from outside by going 'south', you'll now be able to leave it from the entry room by typing 'north', as well as the traditional 'out')! If you find that you can not use the cardinal exit in your player house from the main entry/exit room, please bug rep it immediately. Thank you!


Discworld Player Housing Authority, Department of Mys^H^H^H^H Exits

Genuan Smelly Bags (Jul 14)

Posted at Sat Jul 14 Title: Genuan Smelly Bags

The smelly bags available from Genua had a special feature. This feature was
abused by some players of the gittish variety. As a result, these bags will
no longer be able to be used as containers by anyone other than a few select
NPCs. Any items that you placed in there that were not destroyed by the bag[1]
will be retrievable.

Signed,
The Committee for the Liberation of Genuan Street Cleaners, Snake Wranglers
and Feather Straighteners.

[1] Yes, they did this if you exceeded their capacity. This was by design,
and stated in their long description. This was not a bug.

New rules (Jul 6)

Posted at Fri Jul 6 Title: New rules

In our quest for a fairer, funner game, we've made substantial changes to "help rules". The differences are largely in the level of detail and formality - we've tried to make the file more readable and less verbose.

The most important change is contained in the top section, and relates to the way rules are enforced. Nobody likes a spoilsport, whether or not they're "breaking the rules". So as long as you're enjoying the game and not being annoying, you've nothing to worry about.

We've also added or changed a number of other helpfiles, including automation, harassment, and profanity. Of particular interest to PKs will be the new file, 'pkrules', intended to give guidance about acceptable PK behaviour.

Have fun!

Old Friends (Jul 1)

Latest News
Posted at Sun Jul 1 Title: Old Friends

greetings,

Certain parties among the creator base, being sorely Troubled by the
recent removal of a certain Fantastic method of entertainment, have
seen fit to Introduce this method to a Sudden and vigourous
deinfestation, which removed many Bugs And resolved sundry issues.
the parties have also made some Changes to enhance the thrill that
many of you get from Killing your fellow denizens.

enjoy!

Re:#1 Money Changers (May 15)

Posted at Tue May 15 Title: Re:#1 Money Changers

Fluffs!

The imps are victorious! They have driven the dwarves away from the money changers and they should be operating normally again.

Paladine

Money Changers (May 14)


terminal sizes (May 14)

Posted at Mon May 14 Title: terminal sizes

automatic setting of rows and colums is no longer connected to the terminal type of 'network'
You can set the automatical setting of row and colums seperately with 'options terminal automatic <rows/cols> <on/off>'

Wodan.

Warning (Apr 30)

Posted at Mon Apr 30 Title: Warning

Please be aware that a recent bug-fix means that players attempting to
move upwards through underwater rooms will encounter skillchecks that
should always have been there, but were broken.

If you are not confident in your swimming skills, it might be
best to avoid aquatic adventures until you're able to handle
yourself.

This announcement brought to you by our sponsor: Ping! nose polish.
Polish your nose with Ping! today and repel 30% more pigeons.

The Mended Drum (Apr 19)


A moon dragon's inventory... (Mar 31)


The Guild of Alchemists (Mar 7)

Posted at Wed Mar 7 Title: The Guild of Alchemists

The Guild of Alchemists is proud to announce that, following the most recent explosion, we have funded a large rebuilding project resulting in reopening of several of our old laboratories and classrooms. This does however mean that the guild may be slightly more... volatile than we have grown used to in recent years[1].

Non-alchemists are welcome to explod... I mean explore the guild, although you may be required to play hunt the kidney every so often (it might even be your kidney)[2].

Gin, on behalf of the Guild of Alchemists.
[1] You have been warned.
[2] See [1].

Custom Genuan Short Swords (and daggers a bit) (Mar 1)

Posted at Thu Mar 1 Title: Custom Genuan Short Swords (and daggers a bit)

The custom short swords from Genua were very badly overbalanced (over twice as 'powerful' as any other weapon on the mud) and have accordingly been brought in line with MUD standards. Custom daggers from the same source were also slightly overbalanced and have been slightly altered to bring them in line.

Functionally, the short swords will still do as much damage per hit/special, just not nearly as frequently.

-Elera

Aliases and Encodings (Feb 14)

Posted at Wed Feb 14 Title: Aliases and Encodings

Since the MUD introduced UTF-8 support, some of your aliases have been rendered inaccessible. If you have no trouble using or listing your aliases, then you can stop reading now.

We now have the command "oldalias" which supports the listing and renaming of aliases that use non-UTF8 characters.

This works in the same way as "alias" for most things, except for the following differences:
o It can't add aliases.
o It translates alias names to and from UTF-8 as required, so old aliases with non-unicode characters can be listed or renamed.
o It _doesn't_ translate the second parameter in the syntax "oldalias rename" from UTF-8, so aliases can be accessed the old way, but renamed the new way, e.g. "oldalias rename mörda to mörda" would read the old alias as pre-unicode mörda, but rename it to unicode mörda. Making it accessible, without removing it.

In practise, this means that you can now rename aliases that block the "alias" command, by first using "oldalias" to list all aliases, then "oldalias rename <aliasname> to <aliasname>", as per the third point above.

See "help encodings" for more background information.

They're Gods, They Don't Have To Share If They Don't Want To (Feb 10)

Posted at Sat Feb 10 Title: They're Gods, They Don't Have To Share If They Don't Want To

In a shocking new development, the Dunmanifestin bulletin has just announced that, following a minor squabble over a game of Significant Quest, the various deities of the Disc are willing to consider preventing their granted prayers from being used by the followers of the other churches at the bequest of the elected high priest.

You have been warned!

--
Dasquian
Messenger to the Gods, apparently

Decree from His Eminence the Emperor of the Sun, Ghengiz Cohen (Feb 3)

Posted at Sat Feb 3 Title: Decree from His Eminence the Emperor of the Sun, Ghengiz Cohen

Citizens and vampire ghosts,

His Exalted Grace, the Divine Presence, Illustrous and Favoured
Son of the Gods, Venerable Sage of the Ancestors, the
Silver-Crowned Scion of Wisdom, Majestic Dragon of the Aurient,
Glorious and Magnanimous Imperator of All the Known and Civilised
Lands, His Eminence the Emperor of the Sun Ghenghiz Cohen has
decreed the following:

As of today and in the light of a changing and modern Empire intent
on extending its relations across the Disc, the High Lords of the
Five Houses have been politely requested to open their doors to
the citizens and visitors of the Empire and to
embrace new patrons into their families.

The Lords of the Houses have responded to the Emperor's, may he
live for ten thousand years, humble suggestion in a quite astounding
feat of swiftness[1] by complying accordingly. The Five Houses have
swung their doors widely open to allow one and all with enough standing
within the community, sense of honour and knowledge of etiquette
to enter their premises and possibly even apply for the patronage[2] of
the Empire's most influential families.


Sincerely,

The Imperial Bureaucracy on behalf of the Cwc Domain

[1] The bureaucratic processes in the Empire have allowed for this
process to be completed in a mere thirteen Disc years.
[2] People who would like to join one of the Five Houses are warned
to think very carefully about their choice as a family is for life,
not for Hogswatch. More information on family themes is available
in help sung, help fang, help hong, help tang and help mcsweeney.

Connectivity (Jan 15)

Posted at Mon Jan 15 Title: Connectivity

There seems to be some oddities with TCP connections inbound
at present. I'm not sure what these are right now except that they seem to
be related to a higher order fault. It will cause problems with the webpages
until fixed but once you are connected to the mud itself you shouldn't have
any problems although it may take a few attempts to get connected.

It'll get fixed when it gets fixed which depends on a lot of factors outside
of our control.

End of line.

2006

Happy Hogswatch (Dec 25)

Posted at Mon Dec 25 Title: Happy Hogswatch

Regardless of the particular form of your celebrations at this time of year wishing you a Happy Hogswatch on behalf of the admin and creators.

No DNS (Dec 17)

Posted at Sun Dec 17 Title: No DNS

Hello all!

The DNS resolving discworld.atuin.net isn't working, which is why we are dreadfully underpopulated. If you got here, though, you are one of the few using the actual IP address! Hooray!

Please pass on to any other mudders that you know that they can still connect to the Disc by connecting to 82.68.167.69 port 4242 (Note: 23 will work as well).

Thanks,
Emer & The Fluffy Liaison Department

(Wodan edited this message at Sun Dec 17 12:41:48 2006.) 

character encoding/cut off lines in descriptions (Dec 12)

Posted at Tue Dec 12 Title: character encoding/cut off lines in descriptions

The mud is now using UTF-8 for all text, this means old texts containing non ascii characters (like the apostrophes and quotes you get in MS word) will not display correctly.
If you have problems with the mud output, or with the mud cutting off your input, use the chenc command without arguments, so just type chenc

Wodan.

Playerhouse Surfaces (Dec 12)


Multiplaying (May 31)

Posted at Wed May 31 Title: Multiplaying

Hello Discworld.

From time to time rules change and times change. This is on such time.
For a long time on the disc we have had rules about multiplaying. Over time
these rules have covered more and more situations.

We are now deregulating some of the activities.

From this point forward the rules on multiplaying are changing. You will still
only be permitted to logon a single character per person at any given time and
you will still require authorisation for accessing via a network.

Passing items between alts will no longer be considered multiplaying, so posting
them, dropping and recovering etc etc will be allowed.

There are some situations which will continue to attract liaison interest,
however, such as switching between various alts in order to exact revenge or
similar actions as these will be considered under harassment rules.

Also I would point out that there are limits, constantly flicking between alts
is likely to attract warnings as is shutting yourself off from the game and
only interacting with your alts. DW remains a multiplayer game and we strongly
believe in encouraging the multiplayer aspect of it. Please don't attempt to
locate the limit of our patience when it comes to this.

This change is being implemented on a trial basis, should it prove to be
unworkable we will revert to the old situation. I realise it will not also
be popular with everybody, especially those who have been punished for offences
under the old rule. However, as I'm sure most people will appreciate, when
rules change they are not applied retroactively so we can only look at this
going forward.

J

Power Outage (Apr 25)

Posted at Tue Apr 25 Title: Power Outage

Sorry folks. Power Outage happened after I went to sleep. Seems noone
was awake to SMS me either [happened after I went to sleep]

Bings
J

Klatch Council R.I.P (Apr 23)

Posted at Sun Apr 23 Title: Klatch Council R.I.P

After some correspondence with the Ephebian Tyrant, The Klatch Council will be henceforth known as The Djelibeybi Council.
The Tyrant extends his best wishes to the Council and is pleased at their understanding of the political pressures involved.

Netherworld and Unquest! (Apr 15)

Posted at Sat Apr 15 Title: Netherworld and Unquest!

The pixies that are working on the unquest command have passed an important note to us suggesting that Misty is not co-operating fully with this project.

Please do not use this command in Netherworld until further notice, or risk being trapped there forever.

Quest XP (Apr 13)

Posted at Thu Apr 13 Title: Quest XP

Since the removal of quest XP made everybody very sad, we've decided to bring it back! However, due to the existence of quest pages outside our realm, not everybody shares the same advantage from this. That is why we've decided to write our own quest page, with added quest hint goodness for those of us who just need a little nudge in the right direction.

For those of you who've been faithfully questing all these years without the incentive of quest xp, we've made available the "unquest" command with which you can unset individual quests in order to redo them, if you so wish (with the cut-off date of Thu Apr 13 23:47:33 2006). "unquest" will give you a list of quests that can be unset and the opportunity to make your choice. "unquest list" will give you a list of quests that can be unset and those that can't.

Quest levels have been re-evaluated with the assumption that you have the full solution available to you. This means that quests that used to be worth lots will now be worth less and those quests with a lot of randomness/steps/etc will be worth more.

Quest XP have also been slightly tweaked. Lower level quests will be exponentially worth less than higher level ones. This was done mainly to combat throw-away characters who level up on the basis of a bunch of level one quests. You will find that if you're a well-rounded member of this society you will have no problem getting decent xp from quests.

The web address of the quest page is https://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/secure/quests.c

I'll link it from the main page soon.

Last but not least, please help me in thanking the numerous area domain creators who have been involved in this task. Special thanks to Woom for creating the webpages and most of the mechanism behind it all. (If anything goes wrong, blame them!)

Enjoy!
T.

Klatchian Nationalities (Mar 8)

Posted at Wed Mar 8 Title: Klatchian Nationalities

People come here to forget, you know.

At least, I think they do. It gets a bit hard to remember after awhile.

I'm fairly sure it's all the sand that does it. After a while, it gets hard to remember anything but sand. You forget your name, your - er, thingy - and even where you come from. People come here fresh from the streets of Djelibeybi and end up going home to Ephebe. Or Istanzia, or Tsort. Or whatsit, place in Howondaland.

This announcement was brought to you by the Klatchian Foreign Legion.
Join the Legion and see the world!

PS - For a limited time only (until the end of April) there's a new feature in the Klatchian Foreign Legion. It allows anyone who's currently got Djelian nationality the chance to choose one of the exotic new nationalities we've just added instead. These are all available to new characters too, and will remain so, but you've only got till the end of April to make the swap with your existing characters. Once you do, it can't be changed back.

Enjoy!
- The Klatch Domain

Camels (Mar 8)

Posted at Wed Mar 8 Title: Camels

Please be advised that camels are cantankerous gits at the best of times, and attempting to attack them is just asking for trouble. It is not our fault if you aggravate a camel and get kicked into an alternate dimension.

Thanks,

--
The Management

colours (Mar 4)

Posted at Sat Mar 4 Title: colours

There's been a small change in the default settings for people with the terminal type set to network. If your client supports it you will now use mxp colours by default.
this means more control to set your colours, you can use web colours by using colour names like %^#abcdef%^.#abcdef.
You can also change the colour you get for RED. etc, with the mxp command: 'mxp red #ff8888'.

If you hate it all, try 'term ansi' and you'll get your old colours back.

Wodan.

Over at the Frankenstein Place (Mar 2)


New Developments in the Big City (Feb 16)


Bug replies again (Jan 22)

Posted at Sun Jan 22 Title: Bug replies again

The recent appearance of 'broken' bug replies appears to have been cured.

Have fun!

Funny Money (Jan 22)

Posted at Sun Jan 22 Title: Funny Money

The Guild of Bankers, Accountants, and Financiers are pleased to announce the minting of three new kinds of coins within Ankh-Morpork.

The new ten-pence features a regal morpork to celebrate our city's national bird.

The shiny half-dollar features Morporkia in all her glory (including her fork), to remind our citizens of our heritage.

Finally, the brand spanking new ten-dollar coin for your more expensive purchases, featuring the coat of arms of our fair city!

G & T
ps. I'm never adding any more money ever again. Ever. :(

Bug replies (Jan 20)

Posted at Fri Jan 20 Title: Bug replies

Unfortunately, moving to the new server seems to have disagreed with our bug system and it is stubbornly sending bug replies as 'broken' rather than including the correct text.

We are trying to solve the problem, but please don't let it put you off reporting bugs in the meantime! It's only the text in the replies that seems to be broken.

The Liaison Team

Welcome to the shiny new server (Jan 15)

Posted at Sun Jan 15 Title: Welcome to the shiny new server

Welcome to the Shiny New Server!

Please remember that now that we've switched over, everything you do will be saved again!

Have fun.

More cutover information (Jan 14)

Posted at Sat Jan 14 Title: More cutover information

For all your benefit I have created a webpage hosted elsewhere to indicate
when the cutover is complete.

this page can be found at

http://www.brist.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

It will be updated to show COMPLETE when the cutover is finished.

End of line

???

Switch to New Server (Jan 13)


Move to new server (Jan 11)


2005

reparations (Dec 1)


Test DW (Nov 22)


Crash Me A River (Nov 17)


downtime (Nov 6)

November 6th 2005: Took atuin down to install the replacement memory and run a memory test (since there have been a lot of driver crashes lately). Unfortunately after installation the machine would not boot up.

I tried all the usual things, flashed the CMOS ram, unplugged the drives, removed the new RAM etc. All without success. So I went and bought a new motherboard. Still no luck. Took it back and bought a new CPU instead. Still no luck.

Tomorrow I'm going to get the motherboard again and try new cpu + motherboard together. Hopefully it'll work then. Otherwise I don't know what to do next.

Sorry for the downtime,

Ceres

having a network problem (Nov 4)


IP Address Change (Nov 4)


Power Failure (Oct 23)

Posted at Sun Oct 23 Title: Power Failure

Sorry about the downtime tonight but a large swath of North Seattle was suddenly without power for just over 3 hours.

All better now.

downtime (Sep 9)

Posted at Fri Sep 9 Title: downtime

Atuin had a serious headache, and has had some brain capacity lowering surgery (one of the memory sticks was broken) All should be fine now, and with a bit of luck some of the weirder bugs are gone

Wodan.

Movement at the station (Sep 3)


Remote Village Discovered (Aug 6)

Posted at Sat Aug 6 Title: Remote Village Discovered

A remote stricken village was discovered by intrepid hillwalking explorers earlier this week. However, they didn't have a chance to report it, seeing as their brains were eaten soon afterward. According to their rescue party, their faces were frozen in terror, although the native villagers didn't have much to say other than: "Here, have some of our fine sheep cheese. Have you come far? Best leave before it gets dark."

Family names (Aug 5)

Posted at Fri Aug 5 Title: Family names

Recently, due to a bug, some people's family names have seemingly vanished. While family names are still actually there, they are not showing up after some people's character names as they should. If you are one of the people who's family name has disappeared, please contact a liaison and they will fix it for you.

Message brought to you by the friendly and fluffy Liaison Domain.

Ae Real Estate Opportunity (Aug 1)


Duchess Saturday's Musketeers now open for recruiting. (Jul 31)


Director, 370 d.o., GSOH, seeks group for Fun and Cuddles (Jul 30)


Cwc Teleport & Banking Changes (Jul 20)


Success (Jul 15)


Clay Lane (Jul 15)


Passwords (Jul 11)


Genuan Law and Order (Jun 29)


Network issues (Jun 14)


Email Whitelists (Jun 11)


Board posts are now editable. (Jun 4)


ongoing network issues (May 26)


intermittent connectivity (May 24)


Newbie Channel (May 19)


Downtime (Apr 3)

Posted at Sun Apr 3 Title: Downtime

Saturday, after one last struggle, the disk holding all savefiles
died in battle, making this a DiscCon 5-Ubercrash.
(hence the extremely long downtime)

To get Thynges(tm) going again, a lot of savefiles have been
restored, which basically means a lot of players are missing
a day or two, along with other quite unmentionable phenomena.

In case you notice anything odder than losing a few days/hours,
please let a liaison know and we'll do what we can!

Love,

The Liaison Domain

Found this on a road in the Ramtops (Mar 24)

Posted at Thu Mar 24 Title: Found this on a road in the Ramtops

Earlier today, I found a small, crumpled note on one of the roads south of Lancre. Parts of it are too smudged to read, but most of it is legible:
Crivens! We're in trouble noo! Yon Fione ........ he c'n git Bigjobs tae bring us tha Carlin' Ogg's brew fer .......... doon in Uberwald! Ae jes' hope tha' island disnae sink wi' all their ............. stompin' aboot! Ohh, waily, waily, waily! An' if it does, well we'll jes ............. and goo tae the kingie agin and snaffle coobeasties until he ........... gi'es us another! Yan, tan teth'ra!

Bluius

Skill check changes (Feb 24)

Posted at Thu Feb 24 Title: Skill check changes

Due to a bug, skill checks were not taking your actual abilities into account as much as was intended. This has now been fixed and as a result you may find some things easier than before, and some things harder.

Emergency Network Maintenance Event (Feb 16)

Posted at Wed Feb 16 Title: Emergency Network Maintenance Event

This email is to inform you of a Network Maintenance Event that will impact
yourSpeakeasy Broadband service(s).

This maintainence will be performed on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning,
February 15th and 16th, 2005. As a result, your service will be interrupted
for up to 4 hours, beginning at 12:00am PST Wednesday Morning and ending by
4:00am PST Wednesday morning.

We apologize for the short notice of this maintenance. Whenever possible, we
notify you of scheduled maintenance seven days in advance.

We appreciate your patience as we work to improve our services to you.

The Speakeasy Crew

Network Maintenance (Jan 13)

Posted at Thu Jan 13 Title: Network Maintenance

This is from our ISP Speakeasy:
On Wednesday night / Thursday morning, January 19th and 20th 2005,
we will be performing scheduled maintenance on the Point of Presence (POP)
through which your Broadband connection is routed.

Maintenance will begin at 11:00 PM PST and end by 03:00 AM PST on
Thursday morning, and while you will experience a service disruption during
this time, it is unlikely that your service outage will extend for the
length of the maintenance time frame. Routine maintenance events such as these
often have service interruptions that last just a few minutes.

2004

Network maintainance (Dec 1)

Posted at Wed Dec 1 Title: Network maintainance

Just received this from Speakeasy who provide Discworld's network service:
We are writing to inform you of a Network Maintenance Event that will
impact your Speakeasy Broadband service(s).


On Wednesday night / Thursday morning, December 8th and 9th 2004,
we will be performing scheduled maintenance on the Point of Presence (POP)
through which your Broadband connection is routed. As a result, your
service will be interrupted for up to 4 hours, beginning at 11:00PM PST
and ending by 4:00AM PST Thursday morning.

Thank you in advance for your patience as we continuously work to
improve our service to you.



Ceres

Improved wimpy (Nov 29)

Posted at Mon Nov 29 Title: Improved wimpy

You should find that in the future wimpy is a little more intelligent about where it sends you. This should help to make it safer and so more useful.

Ceres

Map upgrade (Nov 22)

Posted at Mon Nov 22 Title: Map upgrade

The in game maps[1] have recently been upgraded. The consult command now gives basic information about the direction of various features and there is a new command, study, that gives distances as well as direction.

You will also notice that they now use guild points, this is because they now also give other.direction TMs.

Enjoy,

Ceres

[1] These are the map objects that you can purchase from various shops not the line of sight maps shown by the map command.

A Beginning (Nov 5)

Posted at Fri Nov 5 Title: A Beginning

The magical discharge from the Hub was adding an eerie glow to the clouds that swirled around it. Fingers of octarine fire crackled up and down its steep sides, and the thrumming of the vibrations was felt all the way to Lancre.
Suddenly, the clouds parted and a single arc of pure magic leapt from the spire to earth itself in the mountains that spread out from its base.
The land groaned... heaved... sighed... and stretched itself out into a more comfortable position.

Granny Weatherwax paused in the stirring of her tea, and watched the liquid slop into the saucer, as the shudders from the settling land created a mini storm within.
She tilted her head to one side and appeared to be considering some new event.
She sniffed approvingly.

And then there was....

Geography.

Lots of geography.

Enjoy.

Ruin, on behalf of the Ram Domain.

XP Changes (Nov 2)

Posted at Tue Nov 2 Title: XP Changes

In an attempt to make NPCs give more appropriate amounts of XP you will find over the next few hours that the amount of XP from any given NPC is likely to change. Our stats indicate that about 2/3 of NPCs will now give more XP. However some of the really high level NPCs will probably be giving less since their XP was most skewed by secondary skills (like crafts).

In addition you will find that guild command XP has gone up by about 50% and non-guild command XP by almost 100%.

Enjoy,

Ceres

A Refreshing Change (Oct 31)


Emergency Network Maintenance Event (Oct 19)


Public Service Announcement (Oct 17)


???

DNS problems (Oct 2)

Posted at Sat Oct 2 Title: DNS problems

Some players have experienced problems connecting to the MUD, with the discworld.atuin.net not resolving properly through DNS. It is still possible to connect to the MUD directly through its IP address, 216.254.34.56, or via the alternate DNS name of mud.lspace.org

We are not sure what is causing the outage at this time. Our engineers are working to identify and correct the cause of the error, to minimise impact on customer-facing systems while staff undergo compulsory news announcement and editor retraining.

Taffyd

Unexpected Growth (Sep 16)

Posted at Thu Sep 16 Title: Unexpected Growth


HELLO DUCKS!

(AM ones. Pets. Sorta like witches.
You know.)

Balling your eyes out (Sep 14)

Posted at Tue Sep 14 Title: Balling your eyes out

You may have noticed that one of your prized possessions isn't showing you the locations of friends, strangers and enemies anymore. While this is guaranteed to cause much wailing and gnashing and teeth, we are hopeful that you will overcome this new challenge and emerge as Better People.

Yrs,

Dasquian

Shop ownership changes (Aug 26)

Posted at Thu Aug 26 Title: Shop ownership changes

We are going to be changing shops from being owned to being leased. We are doing this because we made an error in making them permanently owned and need to rectify that mistake.

A leased property is not the same as a rental. The lessee does not pay rent, they simply pay a one-time fixed fee. However the lease is for a fixed term (2 Discworld years) and at the end of this period the property will go back up for auction.

In addition leases may be transferred between players (using the lease agreement). When this happens the time left will not change. The new lessee pays for whatever time is left on the lease.

All shops will be migrated to a lease system. How much time will be left on the lease when the change is made will depend on when the owner purchased the shop. Note: this means the official owner not any player transferred owners.

A New Thing (Aug 13)

Posted at Fri Aug 13 Title: A New Thing

Bing!

After almost four years of hard work on the part of the Forn domain (and after almost four years of creative slacking, with occasional loafing, on my part), Genua has now been put into the game. Just for you, for your enjoyment. Because we love each and every one of you as if you were our own flesh and blood.

My sincerest thanks go out to all members of the Forn domain, past and present, who slogged their little guts out to bring you the Diamond City. They've all worked like troopers, and you should buy them drinks and things whenever you see them out and about!

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler!

Drakkos.

???

Old Style Wards! (Jul 8)

Posted at Thu Jul 8 Title: Old Style Wards!

Old style wards have been removed from play finally.

Good luck!

Terrrain Exits (Jun 24)

Posted at Thu Jun 24 Title: Terrrain Exits

Hi,

A change has been made to how exits are displayed in terrains. This is to correct the problem which was making it fairly difficult for some of you to navigate the terrains at all, and will make it less of an eye-sore and more consistent for the rest of you.

* If you are on a terrain, and there is a "journey" exit present for that direction, then -only- the journey exit for that direction will be displayed.
* If it is a "normal" exit visible, the rate at which you move through the normal exit is based on your "options personal travel" setting. (this is unchanged).
* You can manually use a "walk" exit to override the "journey" or your normal/travel setting, however this exit option is not displayed.

Hopefully this is mostly right. There may be a few tweaks later, but I hope not.

It is not yet possible to have an option to tinker with this setting. We have tried to reach a compromise which is sensible enough for everyone. I know there are a few of you who only want walk exits to be visible unless the moon is waxing gibbous, but this is not currently possible.

Taffyd.
PS: In the interests of clarity and understanding, the "More Cryptic News Announcements for Discworld" League has been disbanded.

Merchandise (Jun 22)

Posted at Tue Jun 22 Title: Merchandise

Discworld MUD logo merchandise is now available. There's a link on the Mud Links page or you can go to http://www.cafeshops.com/discworldmud/

Enjoy

Important (cryptic) announcement! (Jun 18)

Posted at Fri Jun 18 Title: Important (cryptic) announcement!

Some books are better than other books. This is simply a fact of life. Every now and then (particularly when dealing with magical books), the words in a book will struggle to reach new levels of sentience, striving to throw off their repressive shackles and 'upsize' their reputation. When this happens, a page of a well-known book will literally tear itself loose from the spine of a book, fly off and migrate to a new, more suitable home.

Remember: not all doors were created equal.

This cryptic news announcement was brought to you at the specific request of the "More Cryptic News Announcements for Discworld League".

Longshot. (Jun 15)


Hot off the press... (Jun 9)

Posted at Wed Jun 9 Title: Hot off the press...

NPCs in the Sto Plains and Skund region have recently been attending Survival 101 seminars, and as such may have some new tricks up their sleeves when finding themselves under attack. You have been warned...

???

Alertness (Apr 3)


I've got a feeling, it must be bunnies. (Apr 2)


Seeing in the Dark (Mar 31)


Thella (Mar 23)


Vaults v2.0 (Mar 22)


???

2003

network (Ceres, Mar 5)


RIP tardis backpacks (Ceres, Mar 3)


crashes (Wodan, Mar 3)


Bug Replies (Wyvyrn, Mar 2)


network problems (Ceres, Feb 28)


Marriage. (Taffyd, Feb 27)


Royalties in player shops (Pinkfish, Jan 28)


save changes (Ceres, Jan 5)


Missing Item Receipts in PlayerShops (Leeda, Jan 5)


2002

combat gp (Ceres, Oct 27)


???