The Mana World - User contributions [en]

Blossom

2011-10-07T17:46:14Z

Byakushin: We had only one shopkeeper. Now we sort of have two!

Blossom is located on the other side of the Moggun Cave.

She sells various colours of tulips and roses.

Shop NPC

2011-10-07T17:42:37Z

Byakushin:

{{I18n}}

Throughout the game, you will find several merchants which will sell various items. Some items can have a difference price in different shops but some items are only sold in one shop. Shops are used to sink the money in game because the items you can buy are oftenly dropped by some monsters.

* [[Ara]]
* [[Blossom]]

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:53:30Z

Byakushin: /* Overview */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 300-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has apparently occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster cloning capabilities for random kill parties) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have; regular developers have a lower command level than GMs in any case). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp). Another rather inventive money sink was an NPC who collected donation money from players in exchange for producing a major new area. During Christmas, an event quest was set up to raise the "remaining" money he wanted (through item grinding); then he vanished for a bit and shazam, a couple of months later the new area was installed.
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. As an interesting detail, the newbies start up on one continent, but possibly due to the medium-level quests all being on the other they migrate permanently to another continent - both retain a stable population, although the latter place collects the idle chatters and the former mostly shows people busy doing something. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not (while the old continent has many relatively "easier" highish-level kills). In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot. Some wizards say it ruins AA's walking-distance-based balance, I say "wow, suberb victory of the commons".

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs more pebble-form development: real-value progress in small steps rather than binary huge leaps that either successfully land or fall flat on their face. We've demanded a new from-scratch area per wizard to show they can contribute anything for so long, we've lost sight of the value of scratching the small but prolonged itches. Not to mention the mud is packed with both installed and never-quite-finished abandonware.

* Teamwork totally beats working alone. I keep saying we need to stop treating AA projects as a bunch of solo performances, off-limits to everyone else. We have very limited developers, we should be able to prioritize our goals and organize work among them so that everyone can do something productive. Instead of having a reviewer take a checklist and nitpick every missing noun description, let's just deploy a description expert who _adds_ the missing descriptions to the project and be done with it. Describing and understanding each issue takes more time than fixing most of them would; I've repeatedly re-learned this from trying to document 5-line bugfixes so that they can be approved and eventually installed (if I remember to keep nagging).

* While TMW has less stringent QC practices than AA, I think it is a natural part of its development. If you introduce strict QC too early in the lifespan of a game, you kill it before it manages to bloom. Once there is a flower to present, you can colour it brilliant through that finishing touch. Try to find solutions that do not involve so much bottlenecks as AA does, though.

* To each according to their ability. In both TMW and AA, there are some brilliant individual achievers who make wonderful things happen if they are left to their own devices and not hindered too badly. The system must support their efforts as well as take people who can do one thing decently but not the others so much, and get them to do something productive as well. I may be strange, but I think it would be completely acceptable to be assigned as a helper grunt to work for someone else's groundbreaking project. The fewer original gameplay ideas I need to have before I can get to the describing/coding, the happier I am.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through limited-access FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs a real bug tracker. Seriously. If someone leaks wizinformation through getting a mortal past the access control to it, they could just as well leak it manually. The potential gains overwhelm the potential losses. Bundle this tracker with a realistic process of getting fixes installed (preferrably not involving a step of "wait on the busiest admins on the MUD to go through each change with careful deliberation"), and magic may yet happen. (I've spent hours and hours just documenting bugfixes that then never get installed because I forget about them - and therefore do not harass anyone about them anymore - before anyone gets around to studying them. So I stopped that, and wrote notes how to fix bugs instead because the admin can implement the fix a lot faster than understand my implementation. But no one with access has time to do that either.)

* Project documentation in some form is a good idea, but not a value in itself. Wombat is doing it on a planning and work-organizatory level, while developing good backstories might blow even more life into the projects.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server. Also, if we have that IRC-channel-like real-time forum for players, they can still remain a single community even if part of them are busy exploring the alternate server. It works on TMW and the alternate servers' IRC channels at least.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:47:46Z

Byakushin: /* Overview */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 300-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp). Another rather inventive money sink was an NPC who collected donation money from players in exchange for producing a major new area. During Christmas, an event quest was set up to raise the "remaining" money he wanted (through item grinding); then he vanished for a bit and shazam, a couple of months later the new area was installed.
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. As an interesting detail, the newbies start up on one continent, but possibly due to the medium-level quests all being on the other they migrate permanently to another continent - both retain a stable population, although the latter place collects the idle chatters and the former mostly shows people busy doing something. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not (while the old continent has many relatively "easier" highish-level kills). In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot. Some wizards say it ruins AA's walking-distance-based balance, I say "wow, suberb victory of the commons".

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs more pebble-form development: real-value progress in small steps rather than binary huge leaps that either successfully land or fall flat on their face. We've demanded a new from-scratch area per wizard to show they can contribute anything for so long, we've lost sight of the value of scratching the small but prolonged itches. Not to mention the mud is packed with both installed and never-quite-finished abandonware.

* Teamwork totally beats working alone. I keep saying we need to stop treating AA projects as a bunch of solo performances, off-limits to everyone else. We have very limited developers, we should be able to prioritize our goals and organize work among them so that everyone can do something productive. Instead of having a reviewer take a checklist and nitpick every missing noun description, let's just deploy a description expert who _adds_ the missing descriptions to the project and be done with it. Describing and understanding each issue takes more time than fixing most of them would; I've repeatedly re-learned this from trying to document 5-line bugfixes so that they can be approved and eventually installed (if I remember to keep nagging).

* While TMW has less stringent QC practices than AA, I think it is a natural part of its development. If you introduce strict QC too early in the lifespan of a game, you kill it before it manages to bloom. Once there is a flower to present, you can colour it brilliant through that finishing touch. Try to find solutions that do not involve so much bottlenecks as AA does, though.

* To each according to their ability. In both TMW and AA, there are some brilliant individual achievers who make wonderful things happen if they are left to their own devices and not hindered too badly. The system must support their efforts as well as take people who can do one thing decently but not the others so much, and get them to do something productive as well. I may be strange, but I think it would be completely acceptable to be assigned as a helper grunt to work for someone else's groundbreaking project. The fewer original gameplay ideas I need to have before I can get to the describing/coding, the happier I am.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through limited-access FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs a real bug tracker. Seriously. If someone leaks wizinformation through getting a mortal past the access control to it, they could just as well leak it manually. The potential gains overwhelm the potential losses. Bundle this tracker with a realistic process of getting fixes installed (preferrably not involving a step of "wait on the busiest admins on the MUD to go through each change with careful deliberation"), and magic may yet happen. (I've spent hours and hours just documenting bugfixes that then never get installed because I forget about them - and therefore do not harass anyone about them anymore - before anyone gets around to studying them. So I stopped that, and wrote notes how to fix bugs instead because the admin can implement the fix a lot faster than understand my implementation. But no one with access has time to do that either.)

* Project documentation in some form is a good idea, but not a value in itself. Wombat is doing it on a planning and work-organizatory level, while developing good backstories might blow even more life into the projects.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server. Also, if we have that IRC-channel-like real-time forum for players, they can still remain a single community even if part of them are busy exploring the alternate server. It works on TMW and the alternate servers' IRC channels at least.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:47:25Z

Byakushin: /* Game-technical */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 500-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp). Another rather inventive money sink was an NPC who collected donation money from players in exchange for producing a major new area. During Christmas, an event quest was set up to raise the "remaining" money he wanted (through item grinding); then he vanished for a bit and shazam, a couple of months later the new area was installed.
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. As an interesting detail, the newbies start up on one continent, but possibly due to the medium-level quests all being on the other they migrate permanently to another continent - both retain a stable population, although the latter place collects the idle chatters and the former mostly shows people busy doing something. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not (while the old continent has many relatively "easier" highish-level kills). In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot. Some wizards say it ruins AA's walking-distance-based balance, I say "wow, suberb victory of the commons".

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs more pebble-form development: real-value progress in small steps rather than binary huge leaps that either successfully land or fall flat on their face. We've demanded a new from-scratch area per wizard to show they can contribute anything for so long, we've lost sight of the value of scratching the small but prolonged itches. Not to mention the mud is packed with both installed and never-quite-finished abandonware.

* Teamwork totally beats working alone. I keep saying we need to stop treating AA projects as a bunch of solo performances, off-limits to everyone else. We have very limited developers, we should be able to prioritize our goals and organize work among them so that everyone can do something productive. Instead of having a reviewer take a checklist and nitpick every missing noun description, let's just deploy a description expert who _adds_ the missing descriptions to the project and be done with it. Describing and understanding each issue takes more time than fixing most of them would; I've repeatedly re-learned this from trying to document 5-line bugfixes so that they can be approved and eventually installed (if I remember to keep nagging).

* While TMW has less stringent QC practices than AA, I think it is a natural part of its development. If you introduce strict QC too early in the lifespan of a game, you kill it before it manages to bloom. Once there is a flower to present, you can colour it brilliant through that finishing touch. Try to find solutions that do not involve so much bottlenecks as AA does, though.

* To each according to their ability. In both TMW and AA, there are some brilliant individual achievers who make wonderful things happen if they are left to their own devices and not hindered too badly. The system must support their efforts as well as take people who can do one thing decently but not the others so much, and get them to do something productive as well. I may be strange, but I think it would be completely acceptable to be assigned as a helper grunt to work for someone else's groundbreaking project. The fewer original gameplay ideas I need to have before I can get to the describing/coding, the happier I am.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through limited-access FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs a real bug tracker. Seriously. If someone leaks wizinformation through getting a mortal past the access control to it, they could just as well leak it manually. The potential gains overwhelm the potential losses. Bundle this tracker with a realistic process of getting fixes installed (preferrably not involving a step of "wait on the busiest admins on the MUD to go through each change with careful deliberation"), and magic may yet happen. (I've spent hours and hours just documenting bugfixes that then never get installed because I forget about them - and therefore do not harass anyone about them anymore - before anyone gets around to studying them. So I stopped that, and wrote notes how to fix bugs instead because the admin can implement the fix a lot faster than understand my implementation. But no one with access has time to do that either.)

* Project documentation in some form is a good idea, but not a value in itself. Wombat is doing it on a planning and work-organizatory level, while developing good backstories might blow even more life into the projects.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server. Also, if we have that IRC-channel-like real-time forum for players, they can still remain a single community even if part of them are busy exploring the alternate server. It works on TMW and the alternate servers' IRC channels at least.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:43:06Z

Byakushin: /* Game-technical */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 500-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp). Another rather inventive money sink was an NPC who collected donation money from players in exchange for producing a major new area. During Christmas, an event quest was set up to raise the "remaining" money he wanted (through item grinding); then he vanished for a bit and shazam, a couple of months later the new area was installed.
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot.

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs more pebble-form development: real-value progress in small steps rather than binary huge leaps that either successfully land or fall flat on their face. We've demanded a new from-scratch area per wizard to show they can contribute anything for so long, we've lost sight of the value of scratching the small but prolonged itches. Not to mention the mud is packed with both installed and never-quite-finished abandonware.

* Teamwork totally beats working alone. I keep saying we need to stop treating AA projects as a bunch of solo performances, off-limits to everyone else. We have very limited developers, we should be able to prioritize our goals and organize work among them so that everyone can do something productive. Instead of having a reviewer take a checklist and nitpick every missing noun description, let's just deploy a description expert who _adds_ the missing descriptions to the project and be done with it. Describing and understanding each issue takes more time than fixing most of them would; I've repeatedly re-learned this from trying to document 5-line bugfixes so that they can be approved and eventually installed (if I remember to keep nagging).

* While TMW has less stringent QC practices than AA, I think it is a natural part of its development. If you introduce strict QC too early in the lifespan of a game, you kill it before it manages to bloom. Once there is a flower to present, you can colour it brilliant through that finishing touch. Try to find solutions that do not involve so much bottlenecks as AA does, though.

* To each according to their ability. In both TMW and AA, there are some brilliant individual achievers who make wonderful things happen if they are left to their own devices and not hindered too badly. The system must support their efforts as well as take people who can do one thing decently but not the others so much, and get them to do something productive as well. I may be strange, but I think it would be completely acceptable to be assigned as a helper grunt to work for someone else's groundbreaking project. The fewer original gameplay ideas I need to have before I can get to the describing/coding, the happier I am.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through limited-access FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs a real bug tracker. Seriously. If someone leaks wizinformation through getting a mortal past the access control to it, they could just as well leak it manually. The potential gains overwhelm the potential losses. Bundle this tracker with a realistic process of getting fixes installed (preferrably not involving a step of "wait on the busiest admins on the MUD to go through each change with careful deliberation"), and magic may yet happen. (I've spent hours and hours just documenting bugfixes that then never get installed because I forget about them - and therefore do not harass anyone about them anymore - before anyone gets around to studying them. So I stopped that, and wrote notes how to fix bugs instead because the admin can implement the fix a lot faster than understand my implementation. But no one with access has time to do that either.)

* Project documentation in some form is a good idea, but not a value in itself. Wombat is doing it on a planning and work-organizatory level, while developing good backstories might blow even more life into the projects.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server. Also, if we have that IRC-channel-like real-time forum for players, they can still remain a single community even if part of them are busy exploring the alternate server. It works on TMW and the alternate servers' IRC channels at least.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:32:38Z

Byakushin: /* Attitude towards developers */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 500-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp).
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot.

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs more pebble-form development: real-value progress in small steps rather than binary huge leaps that either successfully land or fall flat on their face. We've demanded a new from-scratch area per wizard to show they can contribute anything for so long, we've lost sight of the value of scratching the small but prolonged itches. Not to mention the mud is packed with both installed and never-quite-finished abandonware.

* Teamwork totally beats working alone. I keep saying we need to stop treating AA projects as a bunch of solo performances, off-limits to everyone else. We have very limited developers, we should be able to prioritize our goals and organize work among them so that everyone can do something productive. Instead of having a reviewer take a checklist and nitpick every missing noun description, let's just deploy a description expert who _adds_ the missing descriptions to the project and be done with it. Describing and understanding each issue takes more time than fixing most of them would; I've repeatedly re-learned this from trying to document 5-line bugfixes so that they can be approved and eventually installed (if I remember to keep nagging).

* While TMW has less stringent QC practices than AA, I think it is a natural part of its development. If you introduce strict QC too early in the lifespan of a game, you kill it before it manages to bloom. Once there is a flower to present, you can colour it brilliant through that finishing touch. Try to find solutions that do not involve so much bottlenecks as AA does, though.

* To each according to their ability. In both TMW and AA, there are some brilliant individual achievers who make wonderful things happen if they are left to their own devices and not hindered too badly. The system must support their efforts as well as take people who can do one thing decently but not the others so much, and get them to do something productive as well. I may be strange, but I think it would be completely acceptable to be assigned as a helper grunt to work for someone else's groundbreaking project. The fewer original gameplay ideas I need to have before I can get to the describing/coding, the happier I am.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through limited-access FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs a real bug tracker. Seriously. If someone leaks wizinformation through getting a mortal past the access control to it, they could just as well leak it manually. The potential gains overwhelm the potential losses. Bundle this tracker with a realistic process of getting fixes installed (preferrably not involving a step of "wait on the busiest admins on the MUD to go through each change with careful deliberation"), and magic may yet happen. (I've spent hours and hours just documenting bugfixes that then never get installed because I forget about them - and therefore do not harass anyone about them anymore - before anyone gets around to studying them. So I stopped that, and wrote notes how to fix bugs instead because the admin can implement the fix a lot faster than understand my implementation. But no one with access has time to do that either.)

* Project documentation in some form is a good idea, but not a value in itself. Wombat is doing it on a planning and work-organizatory level, while developing good backstories might blow even more life into the projects.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server. Also, if we have that IRC-channel-like real-time forum for players, they can still remain a single community even if part of them are busy exploring the alternate server. It works on TMW and the alternate servers' IRC channels at least.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:30:50Z

Byakushin: /* Development culture */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 500-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp).
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot.

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs more pebble-form development: real-value progress in small steps rather than binary huge leaps that either successfully land or fall flat on their face. We've demanded a new from-scratch area per wizard to show they can contribute anything for so long, we've lost sight of the value of scratching the small but prolonged itches. Not to mention the mud is packed with both installed and never-quite-finished abandonware.

* Teamwork totally beats working alone. I keep saying we need to stop treating AA projects as a bunch of solo performances, off-limits to everyone else. We have very limited developers, we should be able to prioritize our goals and organize work among them so that everyone can do something productive. Instead of having a reviewer take a checklist and nitpick every missing noun description, let's just deploy a description expert who _adds_ the missing descriptions to the project and be done with it. Describing and understanding each issue takes more time than fixing most of them would; I've repeatedly re-learned this from trying to document 5-line bugfixes so that they can be approved and eventually installed (if I remember to keep nagging).

* While TMW has less stringent QC practices than AA, I think it is a natural part of its development. If you introduce strict QC too early in the lifespan of a game, you kill it before it manages to bloom. Once there is a flower to present, you can colour it brilliant through that finishing touch. Try to find solutions that do not involve so much bottlenecks as AA does, though.

* To each according to their ability. In both TMW and AA, there are some brilliant individual achievers who make wonderful things happen if they are left to their own devices and not hindered too badly. The system must support their efforts as well as take people who can do one thing decently but not the others so much, and get them to do something productive as well. I may be strange, but I think it would be completely acceptable to be assigned as a helper grunt to work for someone else's groundbreaking project. The fewer original gameplay ideas I need to have before I can get to the describing/coding, the happier I am.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through limited-access FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs a real bug tracker. Seriously. If someone leaks wizinformation through getting a mortal past the access control to it, they could just as well leak it manually. The potential gains overwhelm the potential losses. Bundle this tracker with a realistic process of getting fixes installed (preferrably not involving a step of "wait on the busiest admins on the MUD to go through each change with careful deliberation"), and magic may yet happen. (I've spent hours and hours just documenting bugfixes that then never get installed because I forget about them - and therefore do not harass anyone about them anymore - before anyone gets around to studying them. So I stopped that, and wrote notes how to fix bugs instead because the admin can implement the fix a lot faster than understand my implementation. But no one with access has time to do that either.)

* Project documentation in some form is a good idea, but not a value in itself. Wombat is doing it on a planning and work-organizatory level, while developing good backstories might blow even more life into the projects.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:15:24Z

Byakushin: /* Development tools */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 500-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp).
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot.

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through limited-access FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* AA needs a real bug tracker. Seriously. If someone leaks wizinformation through getting a mortal past the access control to it, they could just as well leak it manually. The potential gains overwhelm the potential losses. Bundle this tracker with a realistic process of getting fixes installed (preferrably not involving a step of "wait on the busiest admins on the MUD to go through each change with careful deliberation"), and magic may yet happen. (I've spent hours and hours just documenting bugfixes that then never get installed because I forget about them - and therefore do not harass anyone about them anymore - before anyone gets around to studying them. So I stopped that, and wrote notes how to fix bugs instead because the admin can implement the fix a lot faster than understand my implementation. But no one with access has time to do that either.)

* Project documentation in some form is a good idea, but not a value in itself. Wombat is doing it on a planning and work-organizatory level, while developing good backstories might blow even more life into the projects.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T22:08:13Z

Byakushin: /* Attitude towards developers */

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 500-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp).
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot.

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work, but people who feel threatened behave exactly like this. And developers are mainly perceived as a threat to AA.

My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out due to forking processes. I'm not sure how a few wizards have managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server sandbox, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Set up the sandbox(es) so that any admin with write access to install a project can run the version control commit commands as well. Clone an "alternate AA" server similarly, and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd who are no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what was lost? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch, with minimal hassle. (The main difference here, anyway, is that they are _playable_ while in the queue, and players can give the feedback before the project development stops as the logical conclusion of the thesis coming out of print.) Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the current testmud, which is utterly and chronically out of sync with the current stable server.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T21:40:08Z

Byakushin: Comparison of TMW and a MUD called Ancient Anguish.

The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.

==Overview==

TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). TMW is open-source; the server code is accessible to everyone, and a spoiler wiki provides easy access to e.g. complete references of items in the game and quest solutions. Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. AA is closed-source and very secretive about game internals, with a multi-phase hoop-jumping process to join the developer team as an acknowledged member. Players maintain spoiler sites on e.g. best weapons for a specific skill level based on personal research, although providing quest spoilers is taboo.

Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.

On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. On TMW, a player's alt characters' interaction is both allowed and supported - they share a 500-slot item storage and bank account. Logging in multiple characters from the same account simultaneously is not technically possible, but creating two accounts is not prohibited either (although the punishability of "multiboxing", forming botted parties of more than one of your characters, has occasionally been considered). On AA, one player's alts are strictly prohibited from benefiting each other. AA alts are not connected to each other, but each is an independent user account.

On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and immortals, who have "finished the game" in some sense and have developer access (although there are different levels: apprentices can only see and modify their own code and are not allowed mortal alts, regular wizards can see public code and have better access to general developer tools and can have one mortal alt, and particularly contributing wizards get global read access and access to more or eventually unlimited alts. Only a handful of admin-level wizards have global write access, and developed code cannot (legally) be made accessible to regular players without their approval.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:

* When the game has basically no secrets, development becomes rather more straightforward: players can be allowed to see the bug database, and development plans made public. Competing servers have popped up, providing parallel lines of development (as well as completely different target groups - there's a Brazillian server for Portuguese-speakers, for example) even though players mostly flock to the main server - as long as development stays alive there. A major benefit for an open-source developer like myself is the knowledge that my work is not wasted: if the administrators of the current server lose interest, a competing alternate server can pick up where the old left off, and the players can migrate to whatever environment they find best.

* When the game internals remain secret, player research provides a somewhat more prolonged form of entertainment than just reading the code. On AA, this has not become a major benefit since the research is mostly done solo by the maintainers of each site, but on e.g. the Kingdom of Loathing, a central community wiki (maintained independently of the game administrators) about the game internals is accessible to the entire playerbase, and being the first one to figure something out about an item or a quest is particularly rewarding for explorer-type players.

==Player's perspective==

TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.

===Social===

* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. There are no races or classes - all players can learn all skills, although they can really be good at only one or two things at a time (there's an NPC service to rearrange your stat points for a cost, though), and guilds are not really supported. "Specializations" that one can optimize stats for include melee fighters, magic users and ranged fighters (with bow and arrows). The actions of a player do not show anywhere.
** On AA, clothing varies each session and does not have a similar social function. The players have multiple other means of building their character's identity, however. They can influence the character description permanently through multiple hairstylist-type services (tattoos, piercings and other details are more variable in text form as well), with donators having a few lines of free descriptive text available. Players can join a guild and a class, which can be deduced by looking at the player (through permanently carried guild and class "amulets"). Players have a handful of races to choose between, and the combination of race and class affects the player's max stats and determines their capabilities. There available classes are fighters (sturdy head-on warriors, weapon mastery), paladins (with some magical capabilities in exchange for requiring "good behaviour"), rogues (backstabbing and hiding abilities), mages, clerics (healing magic, more sturdy fighters), artificers (creators and enchanters of items) and shapeshifters. Whether the player kills good or evil monsters, and does other specific good/evil deeds affects their alignment, which is visible in the player's short description.

* TMW in-game player communication is quite limited. It has no global chatlines (a bot-based guild-like chat service is not really an official feature); conversations are local to line of sight, and players typcically use nonverbal gestures through a number of different emoticons that can be conjured with the press of a button. In graphical games in general, conversing requires a "different mode" from moving - the meaning of e.g. the arrow keys (for movement) changes when the chat line is active, which can lead to mortal communication fails. Whispers can be sent to a player anywhere in the game at no cost, and secure two-way trading (you give x, you get y) is supported by the client. In contrast, the game has reasonably active IRC chat rooms for general game talk, support questions and development and active web forums.
** On AA, the player can be on multiple communication lines (one for guild, and a handful of "hobby society" lines - flag hunt/tag game players, the geographical society of (competitive) explorers. Developer immortals have their own chatlines. In addition, at a spellpoint cost any player (above level 1) can "shout", send a message to all players in the game, although these messages can be also be filtered out by the players based on the level of the shouter. Due to the lack of acute need, AA has no real external chat at the moment; some players have joined a Facebook group for AA players and occasionally communicate through it (a major downside is that Facebook operates on different names as the game, however). AA has a form of in-game forums known as boards (that you have to physically locate to read) and even a primitive mail client; this has also limited the incentive to set up web-based forums. (The boards can be read on the web thanks to an exporting script - when it is working correctly, anyway. They can only be posted on in-game.)

* TMW has a number of features that actively support unplanned collaborative behaviour: healing players who need it provides actual experience to the healer, comparable to how many hit points they healed (though only if the target was below half their hit points), and gains "training" which is necessary for attaining new levels in magic. In addition, fighting in groups increases the defense of all members of the group (a monster only attacks one player at a time in both games, although on AA intelligent monsters can change to attack e.g. the weakest member as well), and if more than one player has hit the monster, the total experience dealt from killing the monster is increased - and dealt to the players based on how much damage they dealt.
** On AA, the ways to help other players are somewhat more varied through the unique class abilities, but for example attacking a monster someone else is fighting is even considered rude, because it only reduces the experience gained by the first player. Both games support parties with experience sharing among players whose levels are sufficiently close.

* TMW and AA share a website setup that is a pain in the back to update, and due to this never is. They also both have a "recent updates to the game" forum - on TMW, it is automatically shown on the client, on AA it requires typing 'help newstuff' or spotting a (more irregular) brief news item on the website - the former is a "compulsory" entry for all projects and part of the process of installing projects, the latter is more dependent on admin activity. TMW has solved the need for more up-to-date news by a community blog and a more technical forum thread about recent updates (posted on weekly by the developers). AA has no blog, but has an in-game newspaper (which has a single absent editor (me) and a new issue requires committee approval to be installed - in other words, it's a major project to make a new issue). An announcement board is somewhat similar in nature to the TMW forum thread, but generally is only updated when a project is installed.

What can we learn from TMW/AA:
* Collaborative behaviour could be encouraged more by technical means - on TMW, this is actually even vital encouragement for "striking a conversation" with other players, as in-game communication is rather limited in contrast.

* More ways to personalize a character could be extracted from the example set by AA, although the everyone-can-learn-everything approach does limit the actual effects of e.g. races and classes.

* Social relationships are the key to retaining players in the long term. For AA, supporting some form of easy-access external communication forums might encourage players to stay in touch even when they find it too arduous to repeatedly log in (inactive players are disconnected automatically after a while, and reboot disconnects all players every two days - as a result, socializing on AA requires more personal effort than e.g. keeping in touch with everyone who tweets). IRC supports long-term idling suberbly, but may be somewhat unfamiliar to many players. Facebook, as noted, is a more closed and commercial service, and operates with real-world names rather than player names; I'm not really familiar with Twitter but suspect it is not much better (haven't found a reason to use it myself, anyway). External forums are probably not worth it (I personally find discussion forums more a channel for venting frustrations, making notices and providing feedback than meaningful person-to-person communication, which is the actual basis of making online friends). Email lists are in nature very similar to forums, just with a different distribution channel.

* AA has an in-game newspaper (two, actually, but the other is mostly generated news), but like all projects there, it's a big effort to make a new issue come out. I've gotten good experiences about writing for a community blog on TMW (even though I'm pretty much the only poster there like I was the main agitator for the newspaper), and would be interested to write for one on AA as well.

===Game-technical===

TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.

* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp).
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.

* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot.

* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.

* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.

===Quests and quest reward balance===

In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).

A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.

In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.

* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.

* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).

* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.

==Developer's perspective==

===Development culture===

I've observed a major difference in culture on TMW and AA. TMW has a set of developers who coordinate their work and collaborate on projects, and thanks to shared version control (Git repository at Gitorius, cloned by everyone who has a major project to try out) it is relatively easy to keep an overview of all development that goes on. On AA, 95% of development is a series of solo efforts, but while coordination is very limited, centralized approval of all projects _once they are done_ is required. To make a comparison: developing for TMW is like making a path by wheelcarted pebbles (where the cart also represents all the existing development tools that are easily accessible for a public project), while developing for AA is like hauling huge rocks to the site using watered tree trunks.

On TMW, development is like band practice. The game is not treated as "finished" and therefore development steps are commonly smaller (pebbles rather than boulders). New maps are opened with a few NPCs occasionally, but just adding an NPC with a small quest (or adding a small quest to an existing NPC who perviously just said "hi", for that matter) is considered valuable progress. There is relatively little quality control - obvious bugs are weeded out, certainly, but an NPC with 12 lines of dialogue may have multiple typoes and grammar errors left on installation, and bug out another connected quest if no one remembered to test for that. On the other hand, it is also quite straightforward to fix said typoes and bugs, and it does not require extensive review by administrators. Ideas are discussed on IRC beforehand and will be criticized as well, but the process is less like formal approval and more conversational. In brief, it appears that in TMW, developers can be trusted to do their thing for the most part.

On AA, development is like thesis writing: it entails monolithic once-in-a-lifetime solo projects that are produced in sanity-threatening isolation, take months to finish, require frustrating and prolonged committee approval, and manifest (or do not at all, as often happens) in one big chunk, after which maintenance effort is close to zero (partially because the developer is burned out by then, partially because any bugfixes require another round of committee approval). The progress of projects is chronically not discussed by wizards, in part because they have so little influence on when the project actually gets installed (due to the approval process), in part because of a general reported dislike of "when is it going to be done?" queries from players. Apparently these are not issues on TMW, however - even though there have been months-long development efforts on TMW as well, the projects are not similarly one developer's personal efforts (and therefore a "when's it done?" is probably not equally personally stressful), but more often joint operations - and approval is more baked into the development process. This is in part due to graphics, sound, narration and scripting skills seldom manifesting in a single person. On AA, we can still maintain the illusion that narrative ideas, coding skills and playability expertise are present in everyone at necessary levels.

* In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).

* AA developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) TMW developers are encouraged to not repeat what has already been done, but inter-NPC connections are more rare and the unifying plot is still under development.

===Development tools===

Development tools form another major difference between TMW and AA. On TMW, the server code is in a distributed version control system (Git repository on Gitorious), and all major development efforts have a branch of their own to hack away at their projects. Sharing code is easy. For brief patch reviews, Pastebin and diffs are used,

Project documentation for the purpose of explaining it to a reviewer is minimal because the reviewers work as a part of the project. As a downside, the history and background stories of e.g. NPCs are not documented (or even thought through) on TMW.

For issue tracking, TMW has a bug tracker (Mantis) that is also available for players to directly report bugs. On AA, dedicated in-game forums and area-specific reporting commands can be used to leave ideas, bug/typo reports and praise, but all these are just stored in a flat file - the tracking component is missing. Attempts at setting up actual bug trackers on AA have been limited to futile reimplementation efforts within the game, mostly because the paranoia oozing from the closed source approach has effectively stopped any extending of development information outside the online game.

As an upside, AA has many in-game developer tools to make life easier: it is easy to "clone" an NPC/room/item privately to test it (and bugs in it will not crash the mud - or require skill to crash the mud, anyway), while on TMW testing your code requires setting up your own server (or having someone else set it up for testing on theirs). Basic balance and quality checks are semi-automated through wizard tools. The project approval queue lets everyone in the approval team know (on their chatline) when projects move in it. Files are uploaded through FTP, and the lack of version control and overview is a serious issue that probably increases the paranoia about developer work needing to be extremely carefully reviewed up to a breaking point.

* AA has an extensive set of libraries to make areas and NPCs more lively, accumulated over the years. Good practices are routinely refactored into base classes where the functionality can be inherited to others as well. On TMW, I am aware of one prevalent library (the daily quest). There could be space for a lot more.

===Attitude towards developers===

On TMW, developers are the guys who don't get stuff done fast enough or make boring things (or outrageously unbalanced things, or both, depending on who you ask). This is common to all games, I expect.

In addition, on AA developers are the guys who threaten to break down the mud, dish out munchkin boosters to their friends and who really should be concentrating on development rather than gallivanting around the game playing it.

On AA, wizard alts are strictly limited. Apprentices (developers who have not yet had partial projects approved) have no access to mortals and cannot play the game. Wizards have access to a single alt and their capability to enjoy the game itself is rather limited. Creators can create an unlimited number of alts, although they must register each one with Law to ensure ... that they do not do something bad with them, I am not sure what exactly. This combined with the monolithic projects and lengthy approval processes that again depend on individual achievements (until a reviewer is sufficiently long gone to be replaced through a developer demand, anyway) strongly pushes away developers.

Due to the strict hierarchical structures of project implementation and approval, there are essentially two kinds of roles available at AA: burnout positions where you have to do everything and everything is waiting on you (say goodbye to personal projects, too), and futile frustration positions where you cannot actually do anything but spend most of your time waiting and getting distracted. AA is a great game, but a dismal work environment - for all involved, as far as I can tell.

It's bad enough that wizards endure technical and bureocratic frustration and their enjoyment of the game itself is limited. The worst part, from my point of view, is the lack of any kind of trust cultivated by the immense vulnerability of the mud (due to old technology, lack of version control, online development and whatnot). I've personally been sermoned multiple times about bugfixes, which are not exactly a crowd attractor to begin with: for not having my modification reviewed officially, for approving a modification that looked strange to another admin and took hours of explicit proof-collection to defend before he'd leave it be, and for touching a wiztool introduced to me as abandonware. Two out of three of these examples were caused by admins not knowing what all other admins are doing at all times, which should really not get in the way of development work. My 8 active developer years were spent waiting for a chance to do something useful that never manifested (I was even a webmaster-in-theory with no no access to the web pages and no one to install my updates, for a while), and I was offered my first (potentially illusory) chance to make a difference when I was already on my way out. I'm not sure how a few wizards managed to shed the troublemaker assumption and get something productive done, but it somehow works out for a few people in a generation.

What can we learn from TMW:
* Limit risks to allow some more trust. Take a virtual server, stuff AA code into a version control system and make targeted commits whenever a project is installed (and sometimes to just get the silent updates out). Clone an "alternate AA" server and set the developers loose there. Use it to allow sort-of-reviewed projects to get audience "at own risk" e.g. in anarchy server style - where player files are overridden regularly, so e.g. dying due to a bug has no permanent effect. See if it attracts a crowd no longer playing due to getting utterly bored with the stable but stagnant main server. If it doesn't, what did we lose? Allow tested projects to "request a merge" to the stable branch. Push any changes to the stable branch to the development branch regularly. This is to differentiate the alternate AA from the testmud, which is utterly out of sync of the current stable server.

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T19:15:52Z

Byakushin:

User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW

2011-05-18T18:37:31Z

Byakushin: mid-save.

User:Byakushin

2011-05-18T18:08:23Z

Byakushin:

Subpages:
* [[User:Byakushin/What we can learn from TMW]]

=Byakushin's Journal=

'''Updates to this journal are now primarily posted on ManaPress.wordpress.org.'''

Byakushin's journal is an experiment at reporting contemporary events at The Mana World. If I get totally hooked on writing again, maybe there'll be a Tulimshar Times at some point (let me know if you'd be interested in being a reporter and e.g. do interviews / read the forums for social news). For now, it's just the adventures of Byakushin, fighter-mage of level 61ish level whose nemesis is the mountain snake.

Update 4 July 2010: Sweet, MrDudle has set up [http://tmwtimes.com The TMW Times] in blog format.
Update 30 July 2010: Drats, he has fled the scene and left the site unmaintained.

==11 September 2010==

Dear diary,

Long time no write, and much has happened in the meanwhile. How to put this... I talked to a patch of glimmering lights in the graveyard, and it somehow convinced me to give it all my money. Well, not all, just to leave enough for a ferry trip home. And that was just the first peculiar thing that happened to me!

Next, I got a job cleaning shelves for a talking marsupial in his shop of wonders! That was great fun, although I wonder what happened to all the goblins who drank so much ice tea they're sure to have suffered more than a brain freeze.

Then I heard a rumour that miners up in the woodlands had struck gold! I dug out my hardest hat from the storage and was all ready for some serious pickin'... but even while fighting the most grievous scourge of hunchbacked blue and white fluffy muffins with sunglasses I've ever seen, all I could find was black stuff that got my hands all sooty! Speaking of picking, I honestly have no idea how the soot got into my nose too!

Quite dejected, I decided to battle my pastries in the [[Tulimshar]] bakery in the future. However, after spending so much time in the caves I got sunstroked in the desertlands, and in my confusion wandered into the workshop instead. There, I talked to interesting people and in the end was told that I had probably misheard a critical word in the rumour about the mining rush.

Then one of the GMs, sorry, I cannot remember for certain if it was Tiana this time or not, turned their key to the [[Evil Obelisk]] a teeny bit too much to the right, and out poured more monsters than you could dream up in a month-long [[Cherry Cake]] binge. I'm starting to suspect the GM workhour tracking device should NOT be installed as a part of a potentially dangerous obelisk; when they turn their blip keys a little too far, out come rock zombies who make your head feel like it had taken in too much heavy metal. This is not optimal governance, I tell you!

In the end, I was one mysterious ring richer, had an empty bank account, and a need for a million or two more. Then I went to participate in mrgrey's trivia and managed to prove that I'm an egghead. With this nice hat, see?

So, how was your day, dear diary?

==26 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Oooh, after much wooing and cooing, [[Lieutenant Dausen]] hired me for a job! I'm in heaven! He's so handsome, I could just stare at him all day long... what? You needed me to get something urgently? Oh, yeah, right!

He's so cute when he's rolling his eyes too!

After performing many a daring feat to make my beloved happy, I wandered to a nearby building take a break... only to discover many more people who needed to get various things done. And they needed my money, too! Lots of it! Oh dear, I'm going to have to start planting my gold and hope that money-bearing trees emerge soon!

==23 August 2010==

Dear diary,

I can definitely feel the evil that has arrived in our world! It makes me feel all empty inside.

To combat the feeling of emptiness, I had two options: eat lots of chocolate, or go help someone. I was out of chocolate, so I wandered around [[Tulimshar]] looking for someone to help.

Luckily, I found quite a few people in need of assistance, and even some I thought I had already helped out earlier!

I also bumped into the cutest city guard I've ever seen. Only it seems he's not just any guard, but a lieutenant even! I'm in love!

==13 August 2010==

Dear diary,

[[Pinkie hat]], pinkie hat, how I adore you, pinkie hat!

To demonstrate that Fridays the 13th are only effective for coffee-bound lawsuits between giants, I finally managed to acquire a pinkie hat in the authentic and traditional method of asking some 1500 [[pinkie]]s very nicely for one. They rejoice with me, I'm sure!

PS. Ok, I lied a little bit, there were some other minor unfortunate incidents (such as a forgetting of sunglasses on the brightest day of the week) as well, but they are all cancelled out by my fabulous and totally fashionable pinkie hat! Pinkie hat, pinkie hat, how I adore you, pinkie hat!

PPS. Also, [[Ishi]]'s lottery just dealt me 2 [[Grass snake tongues]] and one [[Mountain snake tongue]]. Oh lucky day!

==11 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Today, AlOns negotiated a mass discount with the [[Evil Obelisk]]. Much chaos, hilarity and dying ensued.

He also won the first price in the yearly Hurnscald Gardening Contest with getting all those herbs and [[Pink Flowers]] growing in the obelisk cave.

PS. WildX's ponytail seems to be larger than mine. This calls for immediate and decisive action!

==10 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Last night, I dreamt up [[Outfit Wars]], a collector game not entirely unlike many other collector games. The basic idea is that since our world is filled with ways to dress up in more or less challenging collections of equipment, i.e. [[outfit]]s, we can use those as a basis of soft player-versus-player battles and have some fun in the process. Different outfits defeat different other outfits, for example dressing up as a [[Pinkie]] will defeat an opponent dressed up as old Farmer [[Hinnak]] (or vice versa).

Are you thinking of Pokemon yet? I'm trying very hard not to think of Pokemon.

Outfits come in three different categories of difficulty: basic ones, like the Poor Newbie getup (just wearing the shirt you start with), challenging ones, like the Pinkie and Farmer Hinnak (as they involve rare drops), and rare outfits, like Santa Claus, which involve equipment that is either not acquirable, is only possible to get through periodical quests or buyable for outrageous prices (typically from other players). You can haul around as many outfits as fits in your inventory; this limits the "deck" size naturally, while the quality is limited by the time the players have invested in acquiring e.g. clothing of different colours and the rare and very rare drops.

I also noted down some 30-odd outfits, but it will take forever and a day to get them recorded and the defeating rules set in a reasonably balanced way. Of course, in my opinion any outfit that the wearer can entertainingly justify to defeat the opponent's should work, but I fear not everyone shares my wild tendencies towards crazy theatrical improvisation. It would be interesting to see if there are others theoretically interested in playing this for fun and general amusement.

==9 August 2010==

Dear diary,

I recall I promised to tell you more about [[Candor]].

It starts like this: there is a person with 20 000 gp, a minimum of 4 friends and a great big death wish shared among all. The more the merrier of course. Friends, that is, not death wishes. Although those help too.

The person with the cash goes and starts the game by talking to [[Parua]] and convincing him that the fellowship will not just end up as a messy stain on the floor. Parua, luckily, is easy to convince with just numbers, and off you go: now monsters start crawling from every nook and cranny. Whenever you have cleared most of them or enough time has passed more and ickier monsters appear. With tough enough a party, this will be the most JackOs you see gathered in one place ever.

A mage or few will run around the central circle trying to kill off the worst cases of undead with lightning while the fighters coop up in the middle dealing with the types they can actually hit. Once the last mage dies, the fighter(s) collectively go "uh oh" and try to fight off the growing number of nasties until they have to give up and start running.

I've witnessed multiple cases of 4144, also known as The Meat Tank, fending off the [[Fallen]] until Mistakes (the mage type who has a strange tendency to stay alive until he dies by... mistake ;)) ends up dead on the floor, at which point 4144 enters The Zookeeper mode and starts running in circles, collecting a cavalcade of monsters behind him.

There are levels/rounds to this all, and typically 4144 has been running for some 200 rounds worth before a few dozen [[Jack O]]s finally manage to catch up with him in an odd turn. The highest level I've seen is 1127; Mistakes says he's beaten Candor at level 1600 multiple times, but Kage, the source of all the blood on Candor soil, says the max level is now 3000, which would imply a reset of bragging rights and more challenge to come!

For me, of course, the aim is to survive for a few hundred rounds and then watch from a comfortable lying down position as the rest of the troupe struggle against insurmountable odds. And comment away like a sports reporter, of course.

==8 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Yesternight, I managed to brew [[Monster Oil]]. That was positively crazy! I even had [[Malivox]] perform a little but rather pricey operation on me that made me feel like the greatest scientist of all time for a moment.

Oh [[TradeBot]], how I love you! I do love you too, [[AuctionBot]], for you have brought me much joy in the past, but TradeBot brings with it such instant gratification that one anxiously searching for ways to avoid skinning [[mountain snake]]s is primarily going to prefer dealing with him. 4 skins at 5000 each, and I was ready for some serious brewing! (I even got me 4 extras in case my brewings would blow up in my face. Luckily, they did not!)

As a result, I now have a new weapon! It strikes faster, it strikes truer, it is sharper, and it even cures heartburn! It is called the [[Setzer]], as in Alka Setzer! ;)

At long last, and after an additional 4 points of luck I gained upon level 64, I am able to kill mountain snakes without spending all my time waiting for their poison to wear off! I even got my first snake skin now - of all times.

PS. I also read the instructions of the strangest ritual after following some of the most confusing directions. A soul of an undead? Will I ever be free from this hunting for (read: killing) completely preposterous items (read: opponents)? Woe is me! ... now where did that TradeBot go?

PPS. I jinxed it now; so much for not getting poisoned by every darned snake. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. X-)

==7 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Today I hear a rumour that a new salesman had arrived. I looked all over for him, and stumbled into a bakery I had never been to before. I bought an orange cupcake and wandered around while nibbling on it. It turns out that the bakery storage room opens up to the roofs of Tulimshar. The view was great!

I also eventually found the trader, who I think may be slightly dyslexic. That would also explain the outrageous prices he demands for the items he carries. On the other hand, I hear there are some people here who are very, very wealthy too...

==1 August 2010==

Dear diary,

As I was complaining to the Ferry Master about completely unacceptable pricing policies, he pointed out that my money had in fact been spent for a good cause: a new ferry line had been set up to deliver travellers to the lost island of Candor!

I shall continue my report on the mysteries of the place later, as I hear someone is about to re-enact the Epic Battle of Candor and I must prepare myself!

==31 July 2010==

Dear diary,

More people missing! All of a sudden, Richard's brother William has vanished from the Hurnscald General Store. Richard has taken it upon himself to run both the bank and storage services now. I wonder if someone is going to show up demanding ransom for the missing brother; I imagine the banker family is quite wealthy.

I've heard rumours that a similar disappearance has happened in Tulimshar, but have not gone to confirm this yet: after the ferry noticed it now has a monopoly on travellers, it raised the prices so high I'd rather take my chances with a pair of crazy wizards than suffer the seasickness and 'landlubber special prices'. Hmph!

==30 July 2010==

Dear diary,

I guess I will have to believe it: my job was a hoax! MrDudle ran off before signing a single paycheck! I feel tricked. Also, he took the print house key with him so it appears that we cannot reorganize to run the paper without him either. Oh dear.

==4 July 2010==

Dear diary,

Today I ran into horrible lies and vile gossip in the TMW Times. They blamed my teacher, Sagatha, for protecting a drug addict, when in fact the poor sick mouboo in question is suffering from a bad injury and has to use medication that causes it to feel dizzy. Of course I immediately left a message to the editor, who must clarify this matter.

I see no future for this kind of scandalous "journalism" in our realm. What will they do next, start paying people who send in pictures of celebrities they caught in awkward situations? Disgusting!

(Also, please contact me if you do; I have to fund my studies ''somehow''!)

==25 June 2010==

Dear diary,

Good heavens! Today, I found AuctionBot dead in the garden! This is terrible! What could have killed him? Maybe he caught the Ponderpox? Does the Investigator know anything? Oh, the horror!

==24th June 2010==

Dear diary,

Today, I got my black cowboy hat at last, and celebrated my newfound freedom from snake skin hunting!

This lasted for all of five minutes, after which I found out I need some 12 more for another project. Foiled again.

I have killed at least 20 mountain snakes but am yet to receive a single tongue or skin from them. It seems that my best strategy remains to kill everything else in the world and then go see if Ishi's lottery brings me luck, skins and snake tongues.

==21th June 2010==

Dear diary,

I was just discussing the birds and the bees with Sagatha when the news
came in: the climate change had caused a huge flood that washed away the
land bridge between Tulimshar and Hurnscald. The horror!

Being my aptly delegative supervisor at any complex things related to
nature, Sagatha promptly sent me off to organize rescue parties for the
poor slime population that would surely be badly struck by this event.
As I got to the shores, I was amazed by something else than the extent
of environmental disaster: a building had been revealed by the flood! It
was still quite moist inside, so it's no wonder no one was living in it
despite the splendid view to sea. If the student apartment prices keep going up, I'm definitely going to go squat in there.

In other news, Sagatha keeps complaining that I'm way too distracted
these days. I can just go "oooh, butterflies!" in the middle of her no
doubt important lecture on the sleeping habits of mouboos.

PS. Went to the mines tonight to study whether the red slimes show any
signs of growing tentacles like the sea slimes; Sagatha suspects its a sign of environmental stress. Man, were the spiders
always this creepy?

''By the way, TMW is raising funds for more RAM for the server, see the related forum thread: [http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?p=90273#p90273]''

==20th June 2010==

''Oh TMW, how I love you! Let me count the ways:''

* ''Free-as-in-freedomness. If I had done my contributing years on here rather than my home MUD, the work wouldn't have gone to waste when the single server no longer attracts players. Not to mention upkeep's a lot saner when the code repository is designed for open source.''
* ''Equipment and location saving plus the lack of death penalty on eAthena is the central reason why I can play in the first place, given that I can be interrupted at any given time.''
* ''[[Stacking]] bonus and experience from player healing. The two greatest social playing innovations that got me to interact with people.''
* ''Competing clients. The total awesomeness of being able to choose between stable vanilla and a hackish munchkin version (not to mention others). I haven't even bothered trying the competing servers yet.''
* ''IRC, wiki, bugtracker and forums. This game has a definite presence beyond the one server instance where the actual game is. Not to mention that I hardly see any politics in the gameworld itself; people work them on the forums mostly. And did I already mention there's an actual bugtracker?''
* ''Transparency. You can actually go read the walkthroughs and monster item drops if you want to be spoilered silly - the gameplay cannot be dependent on hiding things when anyone can go read the code.''

Orum Quest

2011-02-09T17:37:24Z

Byakushin:

This quest is in a new map branching off from the cave beneath Hurnscald.

# Get 4 wisp powders, 2 poltergeist powders, 1 spectre powder, and 1 hard spike (all available from monster points) to get past the barrier in the initial area.
# To get 10 red, 10 blue, and 10 yellow powders, give Orum 10 iron powders and 10 piles of ash, and 15 of each non-mauve leaf.
# In the next area, there are four barriers (from north to south: broken, final, middle, and south).
# torch 1 is behind the broken barrier, torch 2 is behind the middle barrier, and torch 3 is behind the south barrier.
# to open the middle (west-south-east from the entrance) barrier, set torch 1 to its color.
# to open the south barrier, set torches 1 and 2 to color+2 and color-2, in either order
# to open the final barrier, set the 2 of the torches to the nearest primary color and the last to the second-nearest

== cycle of colors ==

*red
*dark orange
*orange
*light orange
*yellow
*light green
*green
*dark green
*blue
*dark purple
*purple
*light purple

Newbie Quests

2011-01-16T16:13:42Z

Byakushin: /* Various Movements */ (Don't wait up for them giant maggots.)

'''Note:''' These quests replace one of the old Short Sword quest and they all need to be done in that precise order.

'''Redoable:''' No, only once

'''Recommended For Levels:''' 20+

==Bernard==

[[Image:NPCbernard.png]]

'''Starting Location:''' [[Tulimshar]]

'''Items Needed:'''

* 1 Roasted Maggot
* 3 Maggot Slimes

'''Maggot Slimes are dropped by:'''

* Bats (8%)
* Black Scorpions (8%)
* Cave Maggots (8%)
* Fire Goblins (8%)
* Giant Maggots (7.5%)
* Ice Goblins (8%)
* Maggots (8%)
* Red Scorpions (5%)
* Scorpions (7%)
* Sea Slimes (5%)
* Spiky Mushrooms (0.5%)

'''Roasted Maggots are dropped by:'''

* Bats (1,5%)
* Cave Maggots (1,5%)
* Maggots (1,5%)

'''What To Do:'''

# Go to the center of [[Tulimshar]] near the central road. Talk To Bernard.
# He will ask you 1 Roasted Maggot. After receiving 5 Cherry Cakes by giving what he asked you for, he will need 3 Maggot Slimes for his soup.
# He will then give you 3 Beers taken from his soup as a reward.

'''Hint:'''

* Kill Maggots to get Maggot Slimes and Roasted Maggots because they are the quicker to kill at a low level than Giant Maggots for example.

'''Rewards:'''

* 3 Beers
* 5 Cherry Cakes
* 1,000 EXP

==Mikhail==

[[Image:NPCMirkhail.png]]

'''Starting Location:''' [[Tulimshar]]

'''Items Needed:'''

* 5 Maggot Slimes

'''Maggot Slimes are dropped by:'''

* Bats (8%)
* Black Scorpions (8%)
* Cave Maggots (8%)
* Fire Goblins (8%)
* Giant Maggots (7.5%)
* Ice Goblins (8%)
* Maggots (8%)
* Red Scorpions (5%)
* Scorpions (7%)
* Sea Slimes (5%)
* Spiky Mushrooms (0.5%)

'''What To Do:'''

# Go to the center of [[Tulimshar]] near the central road. Talk To Mikhail standing just on the right of the road.
# He will ask you 5 Maggot Slimes for his grandmother.
# Give these 5 Maggot Slimes to end his quest.

'''Hints:'''

* Kill Maggots to get Maggot Slimes because they are the quicker to kill at a low level than Giant Maggots for example.

'''Rewards:'''

* 100 EXP

==Sarah==

[[Image:NPCSarah.png]]

'''Starting Location:''' [[Tulimshar]]

'''Items Needed:'''

* 1 Cherry Cake

'''Cherry Cakes are dropped by:'''

* Giant Maggot (1%)
* Santa Slimes (5%)
* Yellow Slimes (1%)

'''What To Do:'''

# Take the southeast road of [[Tulimshar]]. Sarah will be standing at the corner of the end of that road.
# Talk to her. She will tell you she wants a Cherry Cake and will give you a hat for that.
# Talk to her once more and give her the cherry cake. You will now have a Serf Hat.

'''Hint:'''

* Cherry Cakes can also be obtained from gathering [[Aidan And Ishi's Monster Points]].

'''Reward:'''

* Serf Hat (+2 Defense)

==Vincent==

[[Image:NPCVincent.png]]

'''Starting Location:''' [[Tulimshar]]

'''Items Needed:'''

* 10 Bug Legs

'''Bug Legs are dropped by:'''

* Maggots (4%)
* Cave Maggots (4%)
* Scorpions (7%)
* Bats (4%)
* Angry Scorpions (7%)
* Spiky Mushroom (0,5%)
* Fire Goblin (8%)
* Ice Goblin (8%)
* Sea Slimes (5%)
* Red Scorpions (5%)
* Giant Maggots (7,5%)
* Black Scorpion (8%)

'''What To Do:'''

# From the southern exit of [[Tulimshar]], head east along the road to the end. When the road ends going east, head north. You will find Vincent on your left, by the well.
# Talk to Vincent, and he will ask you to collect 10 Bug Legs for his action figure.
# Go and collect 10 Bug Legs.
# Talk to Vincent one last time and give him the 10 Bug Legs you collected to complete the quest.

'''Hint:'''

* Bug Legs can also be obtained from gathering [[Aidan And Ishi's Monster Points]].

'''Reward:'''

* 1,000 GP

==Sandra==

[[Image:NPCSandra.png]]

'''Starting Location:''' [[Tulimshar]]

'''Items Needed:'''

* 5 Scorpion Stingers

'''Scorpion Stingers are dropped by:'''

* Scorpions (7%)

'''What To Do:'''

# Starting from southern exit in town, head east on the first path, past Elanore. Go past the first T junction, and Sandra is on the corner.
# Talk to Sandra, she wants you to bring her 5 Scorpion Stingers to prove that you killed them.
# Go and collect the 5 Scorpion Stingers.
# Talk to Sandra again and give the stingers to receive your reward.

'''Hints:'''

* Scorpion Stingers can also be obtained from gathering [[Aidan And Ishi's Monster Points]]. This makes it possible to complete this quest even at low character levels.
* If you are not at a high enough level yet, or if you sold them already, you can always buy the Bow in Hurnscald at anytime for 1,000 GP, as well as the Arrows for 3 GP each.

'''Rewards:'''

* 100 Arrows
* 1 Bow (+20 Damage)

==Lieutenant Dausen==

[[Image:NPCDausen.png]]

'''Starting Location:''' Sandstorm Desert

'''Items Needed:'''

* 10 Cactus Drinks

'''Cactus Drinks are dropped by:'''

* Maggots (1,5%)
* Cave Maggots (1,5%)
* Bats (1,5%)
* Spiky Mushrooms (1,5%)
* Fire Goblins (1,5%)
* Ice Goblins (1,5%)
* Green Slimes (1%)
* Yellow Slimes (3,5%)
* Giant Maggots (50%)

'''What To Do:'''

# Talk to Lieutenant Dausen. He will ask you to get 10 Cactus Drinks. Kill Giant Maggots for 10 green cactus potions. Lieutenant Dausen rewards you with a pair of Boots (+2 Defense).
# Talk to Lieutenant Dausen again. He will ask you to tell Stewen and Nickos to stay at their posts. First visit Stewen to the southeast, then visit Nickos to the south west near the mine. Talk again to Lieutenant Dausen and get 500 GP. He will mention that Nickos has a quest for you.

'''Hints:'''

* Cactus Drinks can also be obtained from gathering [[Aidan And Ishi's Monster Points]].
* Giant Maggots drop very oftenly some Cactus Drinks.

'''Reward:'''

* Boots (+2 Defense)

==Various Movements==

'''Starting Location:''' Sandstorm Desert

'''What To Do:'''

# Go talk to Stewen. Stewen is at the entrance to the Eastern Desert, which is east of the Sandstorm.
# Next go back to Lieutenant Dausen again. Then go south-west to the mine and talk to Nickos.
# Then go back to Lieutenant Dausen and talk to him once more. He will then give you 500 GP!
# After talking to Lieutenant Dausen, go and see Nickos situated in front of the mine. He will give you permission to enter.
# Go in and talk to Nathan and Naem. Nathan is right near the entrance. Naem is southeast of the entrance.
# When Naem and Nathan will be ssatisfied, go out of the cave and talk to Nickos who will give you 500 GP.
# Once again, you will need to go and talk to Lieutenant Dausen and then to Nickos again.
# Go back in the cave and talk to Nathan, then walk back and forth between him and Naem many times to carry 3 bags of ore that doesn't show up in your inventory so be careful, read what they say at every moment. Don't worry, you will need to do only three back and forth between Nathan and Naem.
# You will receive a Miners Hat while carrying these crap.
# Go outside and talk to Nickos again. Then go back in the cave and kill Angry Scorpions until you get 10 Angry Scorpion Stingers.
# After you are done getting 10 Angry Scorpion Stingers, go talk to Nickos and collect a Leather Shield.
# Now go talk to Naem to get the barrier key. But guess what? He doesn't have the key! You need to go talk to Lieutenant Dausen again to have that key.
# The astute reader will notice buttons along the walls inside the mine. The mines must have the key inserted into them and have the key turned in the right direction and in the correct order in order to continue with the quest. The '''left Button:''' Turn the key right, the '''bottom right Button:''' Turn the key left and the '''top right Button:''' Turn the key left.
# Go down to the southeast of the cave so Nathan can give you a pair of Miner Gloves.
# Talk to Sema. She tells you there is a chest somewhere that needs 3 treasure keys to unlock.
# Kill Archants until you get 3 keys. Archants are the old mine spider sprite renamed.
# Find the chest to the north west and talk to the chest. Your reward is a Short Bow (+50 Damage).
# Go back and talk to Sema. She will tell you there are a couple of Giant Maggots and asks you to kill one and bring back what it drops (an iten -- yes iten, not item). Kill the giant maggot and return to Sema.
# Give the iten to Sema. She will give you a Desert Shirt (+6 Defense).

'''Hints:'''

* Watch out for black scorpions. They will come up to you and kill you while you are busy talking to people.
* Watch out for the monsters. All of the monsters in this cave are aggressive and move extremely fast. They will kill you while you're talking to people.
* Remember, this whole time, the aggressive monsters of the cave will come to you from all sides to attack you, so click and read fast.
* You'll notice after a while all the monsters will disappear but they will still be attacking you. This is because the number of monsters surrounding and trying to attack you lags the client so it can't display all the creatures. To resolve that problem, restart the game.
* You will need a bit of strengh to carry an Iten (8 kg).
* The Giant Cave Maggots are difficult to kill even at level 45, so you will be at this for a while, dying over and over, walking back to the cave, dying, walking back again but have faith!
* Although, there are 2 Giant Cave Maggots. You only have to kill one of them to get the reward, which is a Desert Shirt (+6% defense), which is actually an alright reward. (No giant maggots will show up unless you are actually doing the quest.)

'''Angry Scorpion Stingers are dropped by:'''

* Angry Scorpions (7%)

'''Keys are dropped by:'''

* Archant (3%)
* Spiders (5%)

'''Rewards:'''

* 1 Desert Shirt (+6% defense)
* 1,000 GP
* 1 Iten
* 1 Leather Shield (+7% defense)
* 1 Miner Gloves (+2% defense)
* 1 Miners Hat (+4% defense)

'''Total cost'''

* 10 Angry Scorpion Stingers
* 3 Keys

==Total Quest Cost==

* 10 Angry Scorpion Stingers
* 10 Bug Legs
* 10 Cactus Drinks
* 1 Cherry Cake
* 3 Keys
* 8 Maggot Slimes
* 1 Roasted Maggot
* 5 Scorpion Stingers

==Total Quest Rewards==

* 100 Arrows
* 3 Beers
* 1 Boots (+2 Defense)
* 1 Bow (+20 Damage)
* 5 Cherry Cakes
* 1 Desert Shirt (+6 Defense)
* 1,100 EXP
* 2,000 GP
* 1 Iten
* 1 Leather Shield (+7 Defense)
* 1 Miner Gloves (+2 Defense)
* 1 Miners Hat (+4 Defense)
* 1 Serf Hat (+2 Defense)
* 1 Short Bow (+50 Damage)

[[Category:Quest]]

2010-08-17T17:30:44Z

Byakushin: A Collector Game with some initial rules. But we all want to just collect, right?

User:Byakushin

2010-08-13T19:07:30Z

Byakushin: /* 13 August 2010 */

=Byakushin's Journal=

This journal is an experiment at reporting contemporary events at The Mana World. If I get totally hooked on writing again, maybe there'll be a Tulimshar Times at some point (let me know if you'd be interested in being a reporter and e.g. do interviews / read the forums for social news). For now, it's just the adventures of Byakushin, fighter-mage of level 61ish level whose nemesis is the mountain snake.

Update 4 July 2010: Sweet, MrDudle has set up [http://tmwtimes.com The TMW Times] in blog format.
Update 30 July 2010: Drats, he has fled the scene and left the site unmaintained.

==13 August 2010==

Dear diary,

[[Pinkie hat]], pinkie hat, how I adore you, pinkie hat!

To demonstrate that Fridays the 13th are only effective for coffee-bound lawsuits between giants, I finally managed to acquire a pinkie hat in the authentic and traditional method of asking some 1500 [[pinkie]]s very nicely for one. They rejoice with me, I'm sure!

PS. Ok, I lied a little bit, there were some other minor unfortunate incidents (such as a forgetting of sunglasses on the brightest day of the week) as well, but they are all cancelled out by my fabulous and totally fashionable pinkie hat! Pinkie hat, pinkie hat, how I adore you, pinkie hat!

PPS. Also, [[Ishi]]'s lottery just dealt me 2 [[Grass snake tongues]] and one [[Mountain snake tongue]]. Oh lucky day!

==11 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Today, AlOns negotiated a mass discount with the [[Evil Obelisk]]. Much chaos, hilarity and dying ensued.

He also won the first price in the yearly Hurnscald Gardening Contest with getting all those herbs and [[Pink Flowers]] growing in the obelisk cave.

PS. WildX's ponytail seems to be larger than mine. This calls for immediate and decisive action!

==10 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Last night, I dreamt up [[Outfit Wars]], a collector game not entirely unlike many other collector games. The basic idea is that since our world is filled with ways to dress up in more or less challenging collections of equipment, i.e. [[outfit]]s, we can use those as a basis of soft player-versus-player battles and have some fun in the process. Different outfits defeat different other outfits, for example dressing up as a [[Pinkie]] will defeat an opponent dressed up as old Farmer [[Hinnak]] (or vice versa).

Are you thinking of Pokemon yet? I'm trying very hard not to think of Pokemon.

Outfits come in three different categories of difficulty: basic ones, like the Poor Newbie getup (just wearing the shirt you start with), challenging ones, like the Pinkie and Farmer Hinnak (as they involve rare drops), and rare outfits, like Santa Claus, which involve equipment that is either not acquirable, is only possible to get through periodical quests or buyable for outrageous prices (typically from other players). You can haul around as many outfits as fits in your inventory; this limits the "deck" size naturally, while the quality is limited by the time the players have invested in acquiring e.g. clothing of different colours and the rare and very rare drops.

I also noted down some 30-odd outfits, but it will take forever and a day to get them recorded and the defeating rules set in a reasonably balanced way. Of course, in my opinion any outfit that the wearer can entertainingly justify to defeat the opponent's should work, but I fear not everyone shares my wild tendencies towards crazy theatrical improvisation. It would be interesting to see if there are others theoretically interested in playing this for fun and general amusement.

==9 August 2010==

Dear diary,

I recall I promised to tell you more about [[Candor]].

It starts like this: there is a person with 20 000 gp, a minimum of 4 friends and a great big death wish shared among all. The more the merrier of course. Friends, that is, not death wishes. Although those help too.

The person with the cash goes and starts the game by talking to [[Parua]] and convincing him that the fellowship will not just end up as a messy stain on the floor. Parua, luckily, is easy to convince with just numbers, and off you go: now monsters start crawling from every nook and cranny. Whenever you have cleared most of them or enough time has passed more and ickier monsters appear. With tough enough a party, this will be the most JackOs you see gathered in one place ever.

A mage or few will run around the central circle trying to kill off the worst cases of undead with lightning while the fighters coop up in the middle dealing with the types they can actually hit. Once the last mage dies, the fighter(s) collectively go "uh oh" and try to fight off the growing number of nasties until they have to give up and start running.

I've witnessed multiple cases of 4144, also known as The Meat Tank, fending off the [[Fallen]] until Mistakes (the mage type who has a strange tendency to stay alive until he dies by... mistake ;)) ends up dead on the floor, at which point 4144 enters The Zookeeper mode and starts running in circles, collecting a cavalcade of monsters behind him.

There are levels/rounds to this all, and typically 4144 has been running for some 200 rounds worth before a few dozen [[Jack O]]s finally manage to catch up with him in an odd turn. The highest level I've seen is 1127; Mistakes says he's beaten Candor at level 1600 multiple times, but Kage, the source of all the blood on Candor soil, says the max level is now 3000, which would imply a reset of bragging rights and more challenge to come!

For me, of course, the aim is to survive for a few hundred rounds and then watch from a comfortable lying down position as the rest of the troupe struggle against insurmountable odds. And comment away like a sports reporter, of course.

==8 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Yesternight, I managed to brew [[Monster Oil]]. That was positively crazy! I even had [[Malivox]] perform a little but rather pricey operation on me that made me feel like the greatest scientist of all time for a moment.

Oh [[TradeBot]], how I love you! I do love you too, [[AuctionBot]], for you have brought me much joy in the past, but TradeBot brings with it such instant gratification that one anxiously searching for ways to avoid skinning [[mountain snake]]s is primarily going to prefer dealing with him. 4 skins at 5000 each, and I was ready for some serious brewing! (I even got me 4 extras in case my brewings would blow up in my face. Luckily, they did not!)

As a result, I now have a new weapon! It strikes faster, it strikes truer, it is sharper, and it even cures heartburn! It is called the [[Setzer]], as in Alka Setzer! ;)

At long last, and after an additional 4 points of luck I gained upon level 64, I am able to kill mountain snakes without spending all my time waiting for their poison to wear off! I even got my first snake skin now - of all times.

PS. I also read the instructions of the strangest ritual after following some of the most confusing directions. A soul of an undead? Will I ever be free from this hunting for (read: killing) completely preposterous items (read: opponents)? Woe is me! ... now where did that TradeBot go?

PPS. I jinxed it now; so much for not getting poisoned by every darned snake. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. X-)

==7 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Today I hear a rumour that a new salesman had arrived. I looked all over for him, and stumbled into a bakery I had never been to before. I bought an orange cupcake and wandered around while nibbling on it. It turns out that the bakery storage room opens up to the roofs of Tulimshar. The view was great!

I also eventually found the trader, who I think may be slightly dyslexic. That would also explain the outrageous prices he demands for the items he carries. On the other hand, I hear there are some people here who are very, very wealthy too...

==1 August 2010==

Dear diary,

As I was complaining to the Ferry Master about completely unacceptable pricing policies, he pointed out that my money had in fact been spent for a good cause: a new ferry line had been set up to deliver travellers to the lost island of Candor!

I shall continue my report on the mysteries of the place later, as I hear someone is about to re-enact the Epic Battle of Candor and I must prepare myself!

==31 July 2010==

Dear diary,

More people missing! All of a sudden, Richard's brother William has vanished from the Hurnscald General Store. Richard has taken it upon himself to run both the bank and storage services now. I wonder if someone is going to show up demanding ransom for the missing brother; I imagine the banker family is quite wealthy.

I've heard rumours that a similar disappearance has happened in Tulimshar, but have not gone to confirm this yet: after the ferry noticed it now has a monopoly on travellers, it raised the prices so high I'd rather take my chances with a pair of crazy wizards than suffer the seasickness and 'landlubber special prices'. Hmph!

==30 July 2010==

Dear diary,

I guess I will have to believe it: my job was a hoax! MrDudle ran off before signing a single paycheck! I feel tricked. Also, he took the print house key with him so it appears that we cannot reorganize to run the paper without him either. Oh dear.

==4 July 2010==

Dear diary,

Today I ran into horrible lies and vile gossip in the TMW Times. They blamed my teacher, Sagatha, for protecting a drug addict, when in fact the poor sick mouboo in question is suffering from a bad injury and has to use medication that causes it to feel dizzy. Of course I immediately left a message to the editor, who must clarify this matter.

I see no future for this kind of scandalous "journalism" in our realm. What will they do next, start paying people who send in pictures of celebrities they caught in awkward situations? Disgusting!

(Also, please contact me if you do; I have to fund my studies ''somehow''!)

==25 June 2010==

Dear diary,

Good heavens! Today, I found AuctionBot dead in the garden! This is terrible! What could have killed him? Maybe he caught the Ponderpox? Does the Investigator know anything? Oh, the horror!

==24th June 2010==

Dear diary,

Today, I got my black cowboy hat at last, and celebrated my newfound freedom from snake skin hunting!

This lasted for all of five minutes, after which I found out I need some 12 more for another project. Foiled again.

I have killed at least 20 mountain snakes but am yet to receive a single tongue or skin from them. It seems that my best strategy remains to kill everything else in the world and then go see if Ishi's lottery brings me luck, skins and snake tongues.

==21th June 2010==

Dear diary,

I was just discussing the birds and the bees with Sagatha when the news
came in: the climate change had caused a huge flood that washed away the
land bridge between Tulimshar and Hurnscald. The horror!

Being my aptly delegative supervisor at any complex things related to
nature, Sagatha promptly sent me off to organize rescue parties for the
poor slime population that would surely be badly struck by this event.
As I got to the shores, I was amazed by something else than the extent
of environmental disaster: a building had been revealed by the flood! It
was still quite moist inside, so it's no wonder no one was living in it
despite the splendid view to sea. If the student apartment prices keep going up, I'm definitely going to go squat in there.

In other news, Sagatha keeps complaining that I'm way too distracted
these days. I can just go "oooh, butterflies!" in the middle of her no
doubt important lecture on the sleeping habits of mouboos.

PS. Went to the mines tonight to study whether the red slimes show any
signs of growing tentacles like the sea slimes; Sagatha suspects its a sign of environmental stress. Man, were the spiders
always this creepy?

''By the way, TMW is raising funds for more RAM for the server, see the related forum thread: [http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?p=90273#p90273]''

==20th June 2010==

''Oh TMW, how I love you! Let me count the ways:''

* ''Free-as-in-freedomness. If I had done my contributing years on here rather than my home MUD, the work wouldn't have gone to waste when the single server no longer attracts players. Not to mention upkeep's a lot saner when the code repository is designed for open source.''
* ''Equipment and location saving plus the lack of death penalty on eAthena is the central reason why I can play in the first place, given that I can be interrupted at any given time.''
* ''[[Stacking]] bonus and experience from player healing. The two greatest social playing innovations that got me to interact with people.''
* ''Competing clients. The total awesomeness of being able to choose between stable vanilla and a hackish munchkin version (not to mention others). I haven't even bothered trying the competing servers yet.''
* ''IRC, wiki, bugtracker and forums. This game has a definite presence beyond the one server instance where the actual game is. Not to mention that I hardly see any politics in the gameworld itself; people work them on the forums mostly. And did I already mention there's an actual bugtracker?''
* ''Transparency. You can actually go read the walkthroughs and monster item drops if you want to be spoilered silly - the gameplay cannot be dependent on hiding things when anyone can go read the code.''

User:Byakushin

2010-08-13T18:55:49Z

Byakushin: /* 13 August 2010 */

=Byakushin's Journal=

This journal is an experiment at reporting contemporary events at The Mana World. If I get totally hooked on writing again, maybe there'll be a Tulimshar Times at some point (let me know if you'd be interested in being a reporter and e.g. do interviews / read the forums for social news). For now, it's just the adventures of Byakushin, fighter-mage of level 61ish level whose nemesis is the mountain snake.

Update 4 July 2010: Sweet, MrDudle has set up [http://tmwtimes.com The TMW Times] in blog format.
Update 30 July 2010: Drats, he has fled the scene and left the site unmaintained.

==13 August 2010==

Dear diary,

[[Pinkie hat]], pinkie hat, how I adore you, pinkie hat!

To demonstrate that Fridays the 13th are only effective for coffee-bound lawsuits between giants, I finally managed to acquire a pinkie hat in the authentic and traditional method of asking some 1500 [[pinkie]]s very nicely for one. They rejoice with me, I'm sure!

PS. Ok, I lied a little bit, there were some other minor unfortunate incidents (such as a forgetting of sunglasses on the brightest day of the week) as well, but they are all cancelled out by my fabulous and totally fashionable pinkie hat! Pinkie hat, pinkie hat, how I adore you, pinkie hat!

==11 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Today, AlOns negotiated a mass discount with the [[Evil Obelisk]]. Much chaos, hilarity and dying ensued.

He also won the first price in the yearly Hurnscald Gardening Contest with getting all those herbs and [[Pink Flowers]] growing in the obelisk cave.

PS. WildX's ponytail seems to be larger than mine. This calls for immediate and decisive action!

==10 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Last night, I dreamt up [[Outfit Wars]], a collector game not entirely unlike many other collector games. The basic idea is that since our world is filled with ways to dress up in more or less challenging collections of equipment, i.e. [[outfit]]s, we can use those as a basis of soft player-versus-player battles and have some fun in the process. Different outfits defeat different other outfits, for example dressing up as a [[Pinkie]] will defeat an opponent dressed up as old Farmer [[Hinnak]] (or vice versa).

Are you thinking of Pokemon yet? I'm trying very hard not to think of Pokemon.

Outfits come in three different categories of difficulty: basic ones, like the Poor Newbie getup (just wearing the shirt you start with), challenging ones, like the Pinkie and Farmer Hinnak (as they involve rare drops), and rare outfits, like Santa Claus, which involve equipment that is either not acquirable, is only possible to get through periodical quests or buyable for outrageous prices (typically from other players). You can haul around as many outfits as fits in your inventory; this limits the "deck" size naturally, while the quality is limited by the time the players have invested in acquiring e.g. clothing of different colours and the rare and very rare drops.

I also noted down some 30-odd outfits, but it will take forever and a day to get them recorded and the defeating rules set in a reasonably balanced way. Of course, in my opinion any outfit that the wearer can entertainingly justify to defeat the opponent's should work, but I fear not everyone shares my wild tendencies towards crazy theatrical improvisation. It would be interesting to see if there are others theoretically interested in playing this for fun and general amusement.

==9 August 2010==

Dear diary,

I recall I promised to tell you more about [[Candor]].

It starts like this: there is a person with 20 000 gp, a minimum of 4 friends and a great big death wish shared among all. The more the merrier of course. Friends, that is, not death wishes. Although those help too.

The person with the cash goes and starts the game by talking to [[Parua]] and convincing him that the fellowship will not just end up as a messy stain on the floor. Parua, luckily, is easy to convince with just numbers, and off you go: now monsters start crawling from every nook and cranny. Whenever you have cleared most of them or enough time has passed more and ickier monsters appear. With tough enough a party, this will be the most JackOs you see gathered in one place ever.

A mage or few will run around the central circle trying to kill off the worst cases of undead with lightning while the fighters coop up in the middle dealing with the types they can actually hit. Once the last mage dies, the fighter(s) collectively go "uh oh" and try to fight off the growing number of nasties until they have to give up and start running.

I've witnessed multiple cases of 4144, also known as The Meat Tank, fending off the [[Fallen]] until Mistakes (the mage type who has a strange tendency to stay alive until he dies by... mistake ;)) ends up dead on the floor, at which point 4144 enters The Zookeeper mode and starts running in circles, collecting a cavalcade of monsters behind him.

There are levels/rounds to this all, and typically 4144 has been running for some 200 rounds worth before a few dozen [[Jack O]]s finally manage to catch up with him in an odd turn. The highest level I've seen is 1127; Mistakes says he's beaten Candor at level 1600 multiple times, but Kage, the source of all the blood on Candor soil, says the max level is now 3000, which would imply a reset of bragging rights and more challenge to come!

For me, of course, the aim is to survive for a few hundred rounds and then watch from a comfortable lying down position as the rest of the troupe struggle against insurmountable odds. And comment away like a sports reporter, of course.

==8 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Yesternight, I managed to brew [[Monster Oil]]. That was positively crazy! I even had [[Malivox]] perform a little but rather pricey operation on me that made me feel like the greatest scientist of all time for a moment.

Oh [[TradeBot]], how I love you! I do love you too, [[AuctionBot]], for you have brought me much joy in the past, but TradeBot brings with it such instant gratification that one anxiously searching for ways to avoid skinning [[mountain snake]]s is primarily going to prefer dealing with him. 4 skins at 5000 each, and I was ready for some serious brewing! (I even got me 4 extras in case my brewings would blow up in my face. Luckily, they did not!)

As a result, I now have a new weapon! It strikes faster, it strikes truer, it is sharper, and it even cures heartburn! It is called the [[Setzer]], as in Alka Setzer! ;)

At long last, and after an additional 4 points of luck I gained upon level 64, I am able to kill mountain snakes without spending all my time waiting for their poison to wear off! I even got my first snake skin now - of all times.

PS. I also read the instructions of the strangest ritual after following some of the most confusing directions. A soul of an undead? Will I ever be free from this hunting for (read: killing) completely preposterous items (read: opponents)? Woe is me! ... now where did that TradeBot go?

PPS. I jinxed it now; so much for not getting poisoned by every darned snake. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. X-)

==7 August 2010==

Dear diary,

Today I hear a rumour that a new salesman had arrived. I looked all over for him, and stumbled into a bakery I had never been to before. I bought an orange cupcake and wandered around while nibbling on it. It turns out that the bakery storage room opens up to the roofs of Tulimshar. The view was great!

I also eventually found the trader, who I think may be slightly dyslexic. That would also explain the outrageous prices he demands for the items he carries. On the other hand, I hear there are some people here who are very, very wealthy too...

==1 August 2010==

Dear diary,

As I was complaining to the Ferry Master about completely unacceptable pricing policies, he pointed out that my money had in fact been spent for a good cause: a new ferry line had been set up to deliver travellers to the lost island of Candor!

I shall continue my report on the mysteries of the place later, as I hear someone is about to re-enact the Epic Battle of Candor and I must prepare myself!

==31 July 2010==

Dear diary,

More people missing! All of a sudden, Richard's brother William has vanished from the Hurnscald General Store. Richard has taken it upon himself to run both the bank and storage services now. I wonder if someone is going to show up demanding ransom for the missing brother; I imagine the banker family is quite wealthy.

I've heard rumours that a similar disappearance has happened in Tulimshar, but have not gone to confirm this yet: after the ferry noticed it now has a monopoly on travellers, it raised the prices so high I'd rather take my chances with a pair of crazy wizards than suffer the seasickness and 'landlubber special prices'. Hmph!

==30 July 2010==

Dear diary,

I guess I will have to believe it: my job was a hoax! MrDudle ran off before signing a single paycheck! I feel tricked. Also, he took the print house key with him so it appears that we cannot reorganize to run the paper without him either. Oh dear.

==4 July 2010==

Dear diary,

Today I ran into horrible lies and vile gossip in the TMW Times. They blamed my teacher, Sagatha, for protecting a drug addict, when in fact the poor sick mouboo in question is suffering from a bad injury and has to use medication that causes it to feel dizzy. Of course I immediately left a message to the editor, who must clarify this matter.

I see no future for this kind of scandalous "journalism" in our realm. What will they do next, start paying people who send in pictures of celebrities they caught in awkward situations? Disgusting!

(Also, please contact me if you do; I have to fund my studies ''somehow''!)

==25 June 2010==

Dear diary,

Good heavens! Today, I found AuctionBot dead in the garden! This is terrible! What could have killed him? Maybe he caught the Ponderpox? Does the Investigator know anything? Oh, the horror!

==24th June 2010==

Dear diary,

Today, I got my black cowboy hat at last, and celebrated my newfound freedom from snake skin hunting!

This lasted for all of five minutes, after which I found out I need some 12 more for another project. Foiled again.

I have killed at least 20 mountain snakes but am yet to receive a single tongue or skin from them. It seems that my best strategy remains to kill everything else in the world and then go see if Ishi's lottery brings me luck, skins and snake tongues.

==21th June 2010==

Dear diary,

I was just discussing the birds and the bees with Sagatha when the news
came in: the climate change had caused a huge flood that washed away the
land bridge between Tulimshar and Hurnscald. The horror!

Being my aptly delegative supervisor at any complex things related to
nature, Sagatha promptly sent me off to organize rescue parties for the
poor slime population that would surely be badly struck by this event.
As I got to the shores, I was amazed by something else than the extent
of environmental disaster: a building had been revealed by the flood! It
was still quite moist inside, so it's no wonder no one was living in it
despite the splendid view to sea. If the student apartment prices keep going up, I'm definitely going to go squat in there.

In other news, Sagatha keeps complaining that I'm way too distracted
these days. I can just go "oooh, butterflies!" in the middle of her no
doubt important lecture on the sleeping habits of mouboos.

PS. Went to the mines tonight to study whether the red slimes show any
signs of growing tentacles like the sea slimes; Sagatha suspects its a sign of environmental stress. Man, were the spiders
always this creepy?

''By the way, TMW is raising funds for more RAM for the server, see the related forum thread: [http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?p=90273#p90273]''

==20th June 2010==

''Oh TMW, how I love you! Let me count the ways:''

* ''Free-as-in-freedomness. If I had done my contributing years on here rather than my home MUD, the work wouldn't have gone to waste when the single server no longer attracts players. Not to mention upkeep's a lot saner when the code repository is designed for open source.''
* ''Equipment and location saving plus the lack of death penalty on eAthena is the central reason why I can play in the first place, given that I can be interrupted at any given time.''
* ''[[Stacking]] bonus and experience from player healing. The two greatest social playing innovations that got me to interact with people.''
* ''Competing clients. The total awesomeness of being able to choose between stable vanilla and a hackish munchkin version (not to mention others). I haven't even bothered trying the competing servers yet.''
* ''IRC, wiki, bugtracker and forums. This game has a definite presence beyond the one server instance where the actual game is. Not to mention that I hardly see any politics in the gameworld itself; people work them on the forums mostly. And did I already mention there's an actual bugtracker?''
* ''Transparency. You can actually go read the walkthroughs and monster item drops if you want to be spoilered silly - the gameplay cannot be dependent on hiding things when anyone can go read the code.''

User:Byakushin

2010-08-13T18:55:32Z

2010-08-08T12:07:32Z

Byakushin: /* Demon Mask */ Readjusted some of the route descriptions to be more obvious.

==Note: Experience Reward Limits==

Experience point rewards will grant the total amount. There used to be a limit on experience awarded via quests, which would limit the total experience reward to raise you just one level. This is no longer true. Total experience is awarded even if you raise more than a single level while completing a quest.

==Aiden And Ishiâ€™s Monster Points==

[[Image:Aiden-And-Ishi-Monster-Points.png|Aiden And Ishi In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' Yes, forever

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 1+

'''Starting Location:''' Tulimshar

'''What To Do:'''

# From the southern exit of Tulimshar, head north up to the next section of town. Aiden and Ishi are on the right.
# Talk to Aiden, heâ€™s standing at the gate on the other side of the wall from Elanore the Healer, heâ€™ll register you for this quest.
# Collect monster points that are then received by killing monsters.
# Talk with Ishi to exchange these points for a random item.

'''Hints:'''

* The earlier you sign up the more monster points youâ€™ll be able to exchange for items.
* Not all monsters give monster points.
* The rewards will always be the same, regardless of the number of monster points you have saved up or which level your character has.
* The number of monster points required is raised by one with each exchange.
* Some of the items you get are useful in later quests, but most of the items have no use other than being sold for GP or keeping for nostalgic reasons.
* Currently, of all the possible items to receive, the one you can sell to shops for the most GP are the Fancy Hats (800 GP).

'''Points Per Kill:''' (as of 29 March 2010)

* Below is a list of the Monsters and the points you earn per kill, sorted by amount of points:
** Alizarin Plant +0
** Clover Patch +0
** Cobalt Plant +0
** Fire Lizard +0
** Gamboge Plant +0
** Mauve Plant +0
** Silkworm +0
** Snail +0
** Snake Lord +0
** Maggot +1
** Bat +2
** Scorpion +2
** Squirrel +2
** Fire Goblin +4
** Green Slime +10
** Fluffy +14
** Easter Fluffy +15
** Rudolph Slime +15
** Yellow Slime +15
** Pinkie +16
** Mushroom +17
** Red Scorpion +20
** Sea Slime +20
** Stumpy +20
** Evil Mushroom + 23
** Cave Snake +25
** Red Slime +25
** Giant Maggot +30
** Flower +35
** Mouboo +40
** Santa Slime +40
** Black Scorpion +45
** Snake +50
** Spider +55
** Mountain Snake +70
** Grass Snake +75
** Fire Skull +80
** Poison Skull +80
** Poltergeist +80
** Spectre +80
** Wisp +80
** Jack-O +100
** Lady Skeleton +100
** Skeleton +100
** Fallen +120
** Zombie +120

'''Rewards:''' (as of 29 March 2010)

* Apple Cake
* Arrow
* Bat Teeth
* Bat Wing
* Beer
* Blue Present Box
* Boots
* Bug Leg
* Cactus Drink
* Cactus Potion
* Cake
* Candy
* Candy Cane
* Casino Coins
* Cave Snake Lamp
* Cave Snake Tongue
* Cherry Cake
* Chicken Leg
* Chocolate Bar
* Chocolate Cake
* Cotton Boots
* Cotton Cloth
* Cotton Shirt
* Cotton Shorts
* Decor Candy Cane
* Easter Egg
* Fancy Hat
* Ginger Bread Man
* Grass Snake Egg
* Grass Snake Tongue
* Green Apple
* Hard Spike
* Iron Ore
* Lifestone
* Light Blue Dye
* Maggot Slime
* Milk
* Mountain Snake Egg
* Mountain Snake Tongue
* Orange
* Orange Cake
* Orange Cupcake
* Petal
* Pile of Ash
* Pink Antenna
* Poltergeist Powder
* Purple Present Box
* Raw Log
* Red Apple
* Red Dye
* Red Scorpion Stinger
* Scorpion Stinger
* Serf Hat
* Small Healing Potion
* Small Mushroom
* Snake Egg
* Snake Skin
* Snake Tongue
* Spectre Powder
* Steak
* Tiny Healing Potion
* Treasure Key
* White Cake
* White Fur
* Wisp Powder
* Xmas Cake
* Xmas Candy Cane
* Yellow Dye

==Selim The Dyer==

[[Image:Selim-The-Dyer.png | Selim The Dyer In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' Yes, forever

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 1+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# Starting from the south entrance, head south from the tree, and enter the first building on the right of the street.
# Engage Selim in conversation and ask about how to make dyes and where to find them. He will tell you that some alchemists can make them from ingredients.
# Go to Rauk (Central Woodlands) and ask him about dyes. After conversing with him he will tell you that he can make them with the the right ingredients. See the section on Rauk for more information.
# Return to Selim with the dyes to dye the clothes.

'''Hints:'''

Clothes already dyed need to be bleached (See the Bleacher Quest) before they can be dyed again.

* The following clothes are dye-able at the moment:
** Cotton Boots
** Cotton Gloves
** Cotton Headband
** Cotton Shirt
** Cotton Short
** Cotton Skirt
** Desert Hat
** Miniskirt
** Rabbit Ears
** Short Tank Top
** Silk Robe
** Tank Top
** Turtleneck Sweater
** V-Necked Sweater

* Here are the color choices that you can use, pending you actually have the dye in that color:
** Black
** Dark Blue
** Dark Green
** Green
** Light Blue
** Orange
** Pink
** Purple
** Red
** Yellow

'''Reward:'''

* Dyed Garment

'''Total Cost:'''

* 1 Dye (of the chosen color)

==Rauk The Alchemist (20,000 EXP Dark Green Dye)==

[[Image:Rauk-The-Alchemist.png | Rauk The Alchemist In The Mana World.]]

<div style="float:right; font-size:80%">
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
!style="background:#efdead;"| Potions
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
|-
| Concentration Potion
| 20 Petals
| 0 GP
|-
| Iron Potion
| 20 Small Mushrooms
| 0 GP
|-
!style="background:#efdead;"| Dyes
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
|-
| Black Dye
| 40 Alizarin Herbs 40 Cobalt Herbs 40 Gamboge Herbs 40 Mauve Herbs
| 20,000 GP
|-
| Dark Blue Dye
| 100 Cobalt Herbs 50 Mauve Herbs 1 Pearl
| 10,000 GP
|-
| Dark Green Dye
| 10 Cobalt Herbs 10 Gamboge Herbs 1 Maggot Slime 10 Mauve Herbs
| 1,000 GP (There is a bonus for doing this color)
|-
| Green Dye
| 20 Cobalt Herbs 20 Gamboge Herbs
| 1,000 GP
|-
| Light Blue Dye
| 10 Cobalt Herbs
| 0 GP
|-
| Orange Dye
| 10 Alizarin Herbs 10 Gamboge Herbs 2 Iron Ores
| 1,000 GP
|-
| Pink Dye
| 10 Alizarin Herbs 6 Petals
| 1,000 GP
|-
| Purple Dye
| 100 Alizarin Herbs 100 Cobalt Herbs 20 Mauve Herbs 1 Pearl
| 40,000 GP
|-
| Red Dye
| 10 Alizarin Herbs
| 0 GP
|-
| Yellow Dye
| 10 Gamboge Herbs
| 0 GP
|}
</div>

'''Redoable:''' Yes, forever (Dark Green Dye only gives EXP one time)

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 1+

'''Starting Location:''' Central Woodlands

===Potion Making===

'''Prerequisites:''' None, these crafting options are available from the beginning.

'''Hints:'''
* To get there, head west from Hurnscald until you go underneath the first bridge. Head south, and go under the next bridge. Turn east, then north, and Rauk is there.
* If you want gold, you are better off selling the Small Mushrooms and Petals than the ready potions; you will get 500 GP for the needed ingredients while only 250 GP each potion.
* These potions are also found as drops.

'''Concentration Potions Dropped By:'''

* Sea Slimes (1%)

'''Iron Potions Dropped By:'''

* Spiky Mushrooms (8%)

'''Petals Dropped By:'''

* Flowers (5%)

'''Small Mushrooms Dropped By:'''

* Evil Mushrooms (5%)

===Dye Making===

'''Prerequisites:''' These crafting options are only available once the player is initiated in the Dyer Quest.

'''Hints:'''

* If Rauk doesn't offer the option of making a dye, you need to go back to Selim the Dyer, and ask him to dye you an item. You will need to have an undyed item with you. When he offers to dye it, choose a color that you don't have. Selim will tell you that you need to bring him some dye first. Ask him where you get dye from, and he will tell you to find an alchemist. Now go back to Rauk.
* Most Woodland maps have the plants, but the Southernmost Woodlands (Cobalt and Mauve Plants) and the South-West Woodlands (Alizarin and Gamboge Plants) contain the most.
* Target the nearest enemy (the a-key by default) while walking around to easier find the plants.
* To gather these plants, attack them like you would any other monster.
* Pearls can be found at the Beach west of Tulimshar.
* If you do magic and have level 2 nature and general magic, try using the shearing spell on herb plants, they usually drop a herb.
* To receive a bonus, request the Dark Green Dye. Take with you about 15-20 green slimes, and talk to Rauk.
* Select that you only want to dye clothes, and he will give you the correct options. Choose to figure it out. The reward when you have worked it out is 20,000 EXP, whether or not you buy the dye. EXP is rewarded only once.

'''Alizarin Herbs Dropped By:'''

* Alizarin Plants (3 Ã— 30%), Squirrels (10%)

'''Cobalt Herbs Dropped By:'''

* Cobalt Plants (3 Ã— 30%), Squirrels (10%)

'''Gamboge Herbs Dropped By:'''

* Gamboge Plants (3 Ã— 30%), Squirrels (10%)

'''Iron Ores Dropped By:'''

* Yellow Slimes (1.5%)

'''Maggot Slimes Dropped By:'''

* Maggots (8%), Fire Goblins (8%), Bats (8%)

'''Mauve Herbs Dropped By:'''

* Mauve Plants (3 Ã— 30%), Squirrels (10%)

'''Pearls Dropped By:'''

* Sea Slimes (1%)

'''Petals Dropped By:'''

* Flowers (5%)

==Vincent's Action Figure==

[[Image:Vincents-Action-Figure.png | Vincent In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 1+

'''Starting Location:''' Tulimshar

'''What To Do:'''

# From the southern exit of Tulimshar, head east along the road to the end. When the road ends going east, head north. You will find Vincent on your left, by the well.
# Talk to Vincent, and he will ask you to collect 10 Bug Legs for his action figure.
# Go and collect 10 Bug Legs
# Talk to Vincent again, and give him the 10 Bug Legs to complete the quest.

'''Hint:'''

* Bug Legs can also be obtained from gathering Monster Points.

'''Where To Find Bug Legs:'''

* Maggots (4%), Scorpions (7%), Bats (4%), Spiky Mushrooms (0.5%), Fire Goblins (8%), Sea Slimes (5%), Giant Maggots (7.5%), Red Scorpions (5%) and Black Scorpions (8%)

'''Reward:'''

* 1,000 GP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 10 Bug Legs

==Candide The Bleacher==

[[Image:Candide-The-Bleacher.png | Candide The Bleacher In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' Yes, forever

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 5+

'''Starting Location:''' Tulimshar

'''What To Do:'''

# From the southern exit of Tulimshar, head north to the next section of town. When you see Neko in the marketplace on your left, head west to find Candide.
# Talk to Candide and he will tell you about his discovery where he found out how to bleach clothes using the volcanoâ€™s ash.
# He will bleach a garment for a cost of 5,000 GP and 3 Piles of Ash.

'''Hint:'''

* You can only bleach the dyeable clothes (See the complete list in the Dyer Quest).

'''Piles Of Ash Are Dropped By:'''

* Fire Goblins (5%), Fire Skulls (50%)

'''Reward:'''

* Bleached Garment

'''Total Cost:'''

* 3 Piles of Ash
* 5,000 GP

==Farmerâ€™s Scythe==

[[Image:Farmers-Scythe.png | Hinnak In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 15+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# From the central part of town, head north from the tree and the Soul Menhir and follow it into the next screen. Turn right at the first dirt track on the right. You will find Hinnak there.
# Talk to Hinnak, to find out that the Pinkies are eating his crops. He wants you to get rid of some Pinkies and promises you a reward, a Scythe.
# Go and collect 10 Pink Antennas
# Bring him the 10 Pink Antennas as proof of your kills and the reward is yours.

'''Hints:'''

* There are a large amount of Pinkies in the Ice Cave above the Snow Town than on the map where you find the Farmer. (See the Snowman Quest for directions there).
* If you want to know if youâ€™ll be able to kill the Pinkies, consider that they have more HP than Fire Goblins, but deal less damage.

'''Pink Antennas Are Dropped By:'''

* Pinkies (8%)

'''Reward:'''

* Scythe (+75 Damage)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 10 Pink Antennas

==Sandraâ€™s Scorpion Stingers==

[[Image:Sandras-Scorpion-Stingers.png | Sandra In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 20+

'''Starting Location:''' Tulimshar

'''What To Do:'''

# Starting from southern exit in town, head east on the first path, past Elanore. Go past the first T junction, and Sandra is on the corner.
# Talk to Sandra, she wants you to bring her 5 Scorpion Stingers and 1 Red Scorpion Stinger to prove that you killed them.
# Go and collect the 5 Scorpion Stingers and 1 Red Scorpion Stinger.
# Talk to Sandra again and give the stingers to receive your reward.

'''Hints:'''

* Red Scorpions require some Dexterity in order for you to be able to hit them, so depending on your characterâ€™s stats, it might take a while before you can do this quest.
* Red Scorpion Stingers can also be obtained from Monster Points. This makes it possible to complete this quest even at low character levels.
* If you are not at a high enough level yet, or if you sold them already, you can always buy the Bow in Hurnscald at anytime for 1,000 GP, as well as the Arrows for 3 GP each.

'''Scorpion Stingers Are Dropped By:'''

* Scorpions (7%)

'''Red Scorpion Stingers Are Dropped By:'''

* Red Scorpions (20%)

'''Rewards:'''

* 1 Bow (+15 Damage)
* 100 Arrows (+25 Damage)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 1 Red Scorpion Stinger
* 5 Scorpion Stingers

==Bow Masterâ€™s Forest Bow==

[[Image:Bow-Masters-Forest-Bow.png | Alan The Bow Master In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 20+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# Go to the bow shop, which is the first shop north of the Soul Menhir and tree.
# Talk with the Bow Master, Alan to see if he can make you a Forest Bow.
# Go talk with Jack the Lumberjack (he is just across the road from the tree at the front of the house there), after running back and forth a while between them youâ€™ll find out that you have to supply the wood, and pay a fee of 10,000 GP.
# The tricky part is finding a Raw Log that is good enough. Before you pay, the Bow Master will test out your log to see if itâ€™s strong enough. Whether or not a log breaks is random.

'''Hints:'''

* You can find Log Heads in the South-West Woodlands.
* The chance of a Raw Log not breaking is 1 in 20.
* Do not sell remaining logs, as they can be useful for you for Wooden Shield quest

'''Raw Logs Dropped By:'''

* Log Heads (20%)

'''Reward:'''

* 1 Forest Bow (+65 Damage, can also be bought for 20,000 GP in shops)

'''Total Cost:'''

* About 20 Raw Logs
* 10,000 GP

==Obtaining A Wooden Shield (2,500 EXP)==

[[Image:Wooden-Shield-Quest.png | Jack The Lumberjack In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' Forest Bow Quest

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 20+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# Find Jack (he is located opposite the tree in Hurnscald in the southwest corner).
# Talk with Jack, and he will ask you about your bow. He will then offer to make a shield for you.
# He will want you to collect 40 Raw Logs for this.

'''Hints:'''

* You can find Log Heads in the South-West Woodlands.

'''Raw Logs Dropped By:'''

* Log Heads (20%)

'''Rewards:'''

* 1 Wooden Shield (+14 Defense)
* 2,500 EXP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 40 Raw Logs
* 5,000 GP

==Agostine The Tailor==

[[Image:Agostine-The-Tailor-Quest.png | Agostine The Tailor In Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 25+

'''Starting Location:''' Nivalis, at the inn.

'''What To Do:'''

# Talk to Agostine, bring him 1 Iron Potion and heâ€™ll give you 500 GP as a reward.
# The Tailor will now offer to make some fashionable Winter Gloves, and for that he will need some White Fur.
# Collect furs until he accepts the quality (he may go through a lot of them, sometimes over 30) and you are given your gloves for a fee of 15,000 GP.
# He will now offer to make a pair of matching Fur Boots, in the same manner as above. You'll need a regular pair of Boots in addition to extra furs, and 15,000 GP more.

'''Hints:'''

* You can buy Iron potions in the house just south of the inn.
* There is a 1 in 30 chance that Agostine will accept the White Fur for both the Winter Gloves and the Fur Boots.

'''White Fur Dropped By:'''

* Fluffies (8%)

'''Boots Dropped By:'''

* Red Slimes (2.5%)

'''Rewards:'''

* 500 GP
* 1 Winter Gloves (+3 Defense, can only be obtained from this quest)
* 1 Fur Boots (+3 Defense, can only be obtained from this quest)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 1 Boots
* 1 Iron Potion
* About 60 White Furs (sometimes more, sometimes less)
* 30,000 GP

==Lora Tay The Legendary Seamstress (50,000 EXP)==

[[Image:Lora-Tay-The-Legendary-Seamstress.png | Lora Tay In The Mana World.]]

<div style="float:right; font-size:80%">
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
!style="background:#efdead;"| New Clothes
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
|-
| Short Tank Top (+2 Defense)
| 5 Cotton Cloths
| 1,000 GP
|-
| Tank Top (+2 Defense)
| 6 Cotton Cloths
| 1,000 GP
|-
| Silk Robe (+5 Defense)
| 150 Silk Cocoons
| 10,000 GP
|-
| Desert Hat (+3 Defense)
| Cotton Headband 3 Cotton Cloths
| 300 GP
|-
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cropped Clothes
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
|-
| Short Tank Top (+2 Defense)
| 1 Tank Top
| 100 GP
|-
| Tank Top (+2 Defense)
| 1 Cotton Shirt
| 100 GP
|-
| Mini Skirt (+4 Defense)
| 1 Skirt
| 100 GP
|-
!style="background:#efdead;"| Lengthened Clothes
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
|-
| Cotton Shirt (+2 Defense)
| 1 Cotton Cloth 1 Tank Top
| 500 GP
|-
| Tank Top (+2 Defense)
| 1 Cotton Cloth 1 Short Tank Top
| 500 GP
|-
| Skirt (+4 Defense)
| 1 Cotton Cloth 1 Mini Skirt
| 500 GP
|}
</div>

'''Prerequisites:''' Agostine Quest

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 25+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''
# Head to Dimond's Cove. To get there, head south of Hurnscald. Head west at the end, at the T intersection, then follow the road all the way past the bends, until you come across a large building on the left. Go up to the third floor to find Lora Tay (on the right).
# Talk to Lora Tay a bit until you get to the part where she starts coughing.
# Stop her coughing by bringing her a Bottle of Water.
# Engage her in conversation again and repeat what you said before. Now give her the water and she will thank you.

'''Hint:'''

* If she tells you to get out, just talk to her again and pick different conversation topics.

'''Bottle Of Water Dropped By:'''

* Mouboos (7.5%), Sea Slimes (0.5%)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 1 Bottle of Water

'''Rewards:'''

* Lora Tay will now craft or adjust some clothes, see below.
* 50,000 EXP

===Clothes Sewing===

If you have completed the above quest, Lora will be able to craft new clothes or adjust the size of them. Note that cropping and lengthening works on both undyed and dyed clothes. She only crafts undyed clothes.

'''Cotton Cloths Dropped By:'''

* Mouboos (2% + 1% + 0.1%)

==Dougâ€™s Cave Snake Lamps (5,000 EXP)==

[[Image:Dougs-Cave-Snake-Lamps.png | Doug In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 30+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''
# Head to Dimond's Cove. To get there, head south of Hurnscald. Head west at the end, at the T intersection, then follow the road all the way past the bends, until you come across a large building on the left. Go up to the third floor to find Doug (on the left).
# Talk to Doug, who tells you that he needs 20 Cave Snake Lamps to light up the rooms at the inn.
# Go and gather the cave snake lamps
# Return to Doug and give him the cave snake lamps for your reward

'''Hints:'''

* Cave Snakes have a low probability (0.4%) of dropping Jeans Shorts (+4 Defense)
* One place that you can find cave snakes by heading out of Dimond's Cove, and heading north, the same way you came. Instead of turning at all of the bends, follow it straight up north, up the track. It leads to a small area, where you will see a cave on the right. Enter the closest cave (this is one of the bat caves). When in the cave, head north, and go through the passageway.

'''Snake Lamps Dropped By:'''

* Cave Snakes (8%)

'''Rewards:'''

* 5,000 GP
* 5,000 EXP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 20 Cave Snake Lamps

==Robberies In Hurnscald (4,000 EXP)==

[[Image:Robberies-In-Hurnscald.png | The Inspector In Hurnscald.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 30+ (30 Required)

'''Starting Location:''' [[Hurnscald]]

'''What To Do:'''

1. '''Talk To The Inspector'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 Agree to help solve robberies.

2. '''Talk To The Old Woman (*)'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], go west and over in the grassy area.
 Ask about robberies. She will tell you that she saw something, but would only tell Inspector herself.

3. '''Talk To The Inspector''' (*)
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 He will tell you that he doesn't belive her eyesight.

4. '''Talk To The Old Woman WITH Dyed Clothes'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], go west and over in the grassy area.
 Dye some torso-worn and legs-worn clothes ''Dark Blue''. Put them on and then talk to the old woman. Keep the clothes after that. (HINT: Even if you use silk robe to dye for the top, you will STILL need a legs worn dark blue as well)

5. '''Talk To The Inspector'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 He will tell you to talk to the Troupe Leader.

6. '''Talk To The Troupe Leader'''
 Position: [[Tulimshar]], inside of the Inn.
 Talk to her, she will tell you that a mask was stolen in Hurnscald. Ask if she has any idea who might it been. She will tell you that a old man hang near theater after the show.

7. '''Talk To The Inspector'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 He will ask you if you can interrogate the old man for him.

8. '''Talk To The Old Man'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], head east towards the blacksmith's shop and look down in the trees.
 Ask him about hanging near the theater after the show. Hi will tell you that he was an actor when he was younger, but he wasn't there that night.

9. '''Talk To The Inspector''' (*)
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 He will ask you to verify his alibi with his wife (The Old Woman).

10. '''Talk To The Old Woman'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], go west and over in the grassy area.
 She will confirm that.

11. '''Talk To The Inspector'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 He will tell you that he doesn't know where to look, and ask you to talk to everybody again.

12. '''Talk To The Old Woman'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], go west and over in the grassy area.
 Talk with her in dyed clothes. She will remember that she saw someone took large satchel and headed north.

13. '''Talk To The Miner'''
 Position: North of [[Hurnscald]], mining camp, top level.
 He will confirm that he heard the commotion and somebody got down to the basement, but nobody was there.

14. '''Search The Bookcase'''
 Position: North of [[Hurnscald]], mining camp, basement, north west corner (needs to be step on).
 You will find a upside down book, hollowed out with mask and note which you can't read.

15. '''Talk To The Inspector'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 He will take care of that note and send you to the troupe leader again.

16. '''Talk To The Troupe Leader'''
 Position: [[Tulimshar]], inside of the Inn.
 She will thank you for a good job, and let you keep the mask.
 Reward: 1,500 EXP, Noh Mask.

17. '''Talk To The Inspector'''
 Position: [[Hurnscald]], southeast of menhir.
 He will tell you that they found all of the stolen items in the mining camp.
 Reward: 2,500 EXP

'''Hints:'''

* The inspector is in the building directly south of the tree and Soul Menhir in Hurnscald
* Mauve and Cobalt plants can be found in the South Woodlands.
* Pearls are dropped by Sea Slimes west of Tulimshar.
* All steps with a (*) are optional and can be skipped.

'''Rewards:'''

* Noh Mask (+3 Defense)
* 4,000 EXP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 1 Cotton Body-Worn Clothes
* 1 Cotton Leg-Worn Clothes
* 2 Pearls
* 100 Mauve Herbs
* 200 Cobalt Herbs
* 20,000 GP

==Treasure Chest - Desert Mine==

[[Image:Treasure-Chest-Desert-Mines.png | A Treasure Chest In The Desert Mine.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 30+

'''Starting Location:''' Desert Mines

'''What To Do:'''
# To get to the Desert Mines, head south of Tulimshar as far as you can go, through the sandstorm desert. Head west, and you will see Ishyar outside a cave, in front of a well. That cave is the desert mines.
# Enter the mine and follow the eastern path (there are lots of black scorpions, red slimes and spiders there) until you come to the bottom of the mine, and there is an entrance above you.
# Head into the entrance (you should see Sema there), and head north. Follow the winding path all the way until you are at the north east corner of the mine.
# Talk to the Treasure Chest, and open it with the 3 Treasure Keys.

'''Keys Dropped By:'''

* Spiders (5%)

'''Reward:'''

* 1 Short Sword (+100 Damage)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 3 Treasure Keys

==Nicholas The Blacksmith (20,000 EXP Steel Shield)==

[[Image:Nicholas-The-Blacksmith.png | Nicholas The Blacksmith In The Mana World.]]

<div style="float:right; font-size:80%">
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
!style="background:#efdead;"| Nicholas's Products -
!style="background:#efdead;"|
!style="background:#efdead;"|
!style="background:#efdead;"|
|-
!style="background:#efdead;"| Helmets
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
!style="background:#efdead;"| Reward
|-
| Crusader Helmet (+18 Defense)
| 10 Iron Ores
| 10,000 GP
|
|-
| Knightâ€™s Helmet (+15 Defense)
| 5 Iron Ores
| 10,000 GP
|
|-
| Warlord Helmet (+18 Defense)
| 15 Iron Ores
| 10,000 GP
|
|-
!style="background:#efdead;"| Shields
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
!style="background:#efdead;"| Reward
|-
| Steel Shield (+20 Defense)
| 2 Infantry Helmets 10 Iron Ores 1 Leather Patch
| 20,000 GP
| 20,000 XP
|-
!style="background:#efdead;"| Weapons
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
!style="background:#efdead;"| Reward
|-
| Setzer (+110 Damage, 1 Range)
| Monster Oil (See [[#Setzer Quest]]) 5 Iron Ores 1 Short Sword
| 50,000 GP
|
|-
|}
</div>

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' Yes, forever

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 35+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''Hints:'''
* To get to the blacksmith, head south of the tree in the center of Hurnscald, then head east. It is the third shop nearest the corner.
* Yellow Slimes are found north of Hurnscald. Head north from the town, all the way, directly into the mine. Beware of fire-skulls and poison-skulls.
* Spiders can be found in the same mine. You need to turn right when in the mine, and head along the path. You will see a way to walk into the next section, so you can head south. Spiders are down there on the western side. Be careful of all the red slimes on the way.

'''Infantry Helmets Dropped By:'''

* Spiders (0.2%)

'''Iron Ores Dropped By:'''

* Yellow Slimes (1.5%)

==Bone Knife Quest (50,000 EXP)==

[[Image:Kfahr.png | Kfahr In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 40+ (40 Required)

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# To get to the bar, go west from the tree in Hurnscald, and enter the first building there. Head to the east, and you will see Kfahr there.
# Give Kfahr a beer, and listen to his first story.
# Ask him to show you evidence of these bones.
# Click off him, and click back on.
# Give him the black scorpion stingers and mushrooms

'''Rewards:'''

* 1 Bone Knife (+115 Damage)
* 50,000 EXP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 2 Beers
* 10 Black Scorpion Stingers
* 10 Small Mushrooms

==Cat's Ears (5,000 EXP)==

[[Image:Katze.png | The Inside Of Katze's Cave.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 40+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# Head to Dimond's Cove. To get there, head south of Hurnscald. Head west at the end, at the T intersection, then follow the road all the way past to the bends.
# At the top of the bends, follow the path north, but take the first path on the left, where you will see a big X made out of rocks.
# Go over the bridge just south of this, to the west.
# As soon as you cross the bridge, literally one square past it, head slightly south, just enough to find a path to the west through the trees. You will see Alice there. Click on her if you like.
# Head north of her to find the cave. There is a skull and crossbones on a sign there. This is the correct cave.
# Go into the cave without anything equipped. Yes, naked!
# Once you are in, here are some precise steps:
* Click the pot and pour in some milk.
* Exit the cave, and then go back inside.
* Click the pot and put in some food (steak or chickenleg).
* Exit the cave, and then go back inside.
* Talk to Katze (the npc) and move a patch of fur around.
* Exit the cave, and then go back inside.
* Click on the pot and put a raw log next to it.
* Exit the cave, and then go back inside.
* Katze will now ask to collect her: 2 snake skins, 2 snake tongues, 2 maggot slimes, 2 white furs, 2 hard spikes and 2 tiny healing potions.
* Exit the cave after you've given the items, then go back inside and talk to Katze once more for your reward.

'''Hint:'''

* You will be pushed out of the cat's cave unless you remove (unequip) all equipment and clothing.

'''Milk Dropped By:'''

* Fluffy (1,5%), Santa Slime (4%)

'''Steaks Dropped By:'''

* Grass Snakes (5%)

'''Steaks Sold By:'''

* Dimond Inn Waitress (200 GP)

'''Chicken Legs Sold By:'''

* Dimond Inn Waitress (500 GP)

'''White Fur Dropped By:'''

* Fluffy (8%)

'''Raw Log Dropped By:'''

* Log Head (20%)

'''Snake Skin Dropped By:'''

* Mountain Snake (1,5%)

'''Snake Tongue Dropped By:'''

* Snakes (5%)

'''Maggot Slime Dropped By:'''

* Maggot (8%), Bat (8%), Fire Goblin (8%)

'''Hard Spike Dropped By:'''

* Spiky Mushroom (1.5%)

'''Tiny Potions Made By:'''

* Caul (See Potion Making)
* To find Caul, head north of Hurnscald, and the mining camp is on the left before reaching the mine. Enter the mining camp, and head left, past the receptionist.

'''Rewards:'''

* Cat Ears (+1 Defense, +3 Agility)
* 5,000 EXP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 1 Milk
* 1 Steak Or Chicken Leg
* 1 Raw Log
* 2 Snake Skins
* 2 Snake Tongues
* 2 Maggot Slimes
* 3 White Furs
* 2 Hard Spikes
* 2 Tiny Healing Potions

==Snowmanâ€™s Sweet Tooth==

[[Image:Snowmans-Sweet-Tooth.png | Snowman In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 40+

'''Starting Location:''' Snow Fields Below Nivalis

'''What To Do:'''

# Go to the snowfields. Start by heading west of Hurnscald. Follow the stone path all the way until it starts heading south. Instead of heading south, head north west at a 45 degree angle, through the grass. You will see a sign with a skull on it. Just north of the sign is a girl, Taro, in front of a cave. Click on her and agree to help her, and she will warp you to the Snow Fields (Click on her in the snowfields again to return to the same spot).
# Talk to the Snowman, who in turn would like you to get him 10 Chocolate Bars, 5 Cactus Potions and 15 Candies.
# Go and gather the sweet stuff!
# Talk to the Snowman again and give him the items to receive your reward.

'''Hint:'''

* Chocolate Bars, Cactus Potions and Candies can also be obtained from Monster Points.

'''Chocolate Bars Dropped By:'''

* Scorpions (0.5%), Rudolph Slimes (3%), Red Slimes (1.1%), Red Scorpions (1%) and Black Scorpions (1%)

'''Candies Dropped By:'''

* Scorpions (1%), Rudolph Slimes (6%) and Sea Slimes (10%)

'''Cactus Potions Dropped By:'''

* Maggots (1.5%), Bats (1.5%), Spiky Mushrooms (1.5%), Fire Goblins (1.5%), Green Slimes (1%), Yellow Slimes (3.5%) and Giant Maggots (50%)
* They can be bought in Nivalis (Christmas land, north of the snowfields) in the shop next to the stone for 70 GP

'''Reward:'''

* 1 Santa Hat (+2 Defense)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 5 Cactus Potions
* 10 Chocolate Bars
* 15 Candies

==Santa's Stolen Presents==

[[Image:Santas-Stolen-Presents.png | Santa's Helper In The Mana World.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 50+

'''Starting Location:''' Snow Fields Below Nivalis

'''What To Do:'''

# Go to the snowfields. Start by heading west of Hurnscald. Follow the stone path all the way until it starts heading south. Instead of heading south, head north west at a 45 degree angle, through the grass. You will see a sign with a skull on it. Just north of the sign is a girl, Taro, in front of a cave. Click on her and agree to help her, and she will warp you to the Snow Fields (Click on her in the snowfields again to return to the same spot).
# Talk to Santa, who will ask you to help him with his stolen presents
# Collect the required amount of present boxes
# Go and talk to Santa's Helper to receive your reward.

'''Hints:'''

* If you attack a Santa Slime, his "reindeer" will join him in attacking you. Even though they die when you kill the Santa Slime, you neither get experience nor items from the Reindeer Slimes unless you kill them directly.

'''Purple Present Box Dropped By:'''

* Rudolph Slimes (8%)

'''Blue Present Box Dropped By:'''

* Rudolph Slimes (5%)

'''Green Present Box Dropped By:'''

* Santa Slimes (5%)

'''Reward:'''

* Turtleneck Sweater (+6 Defense)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 5 Green Present Boxes
* 20 Blue Present Boxes
* 25 Purple Present Boxes

==Treasure Chest - Hurnscald Mines==

[[Image:Treasure-Chest-Hurnscald-Mines.png | A Treasure Chest In The Hurnscald Mine.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 50+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# To get there, head directly north from Hurnscald.
# Enter the mine, and take the first right
# Follow this path all the way until you can see the way to head south.
# Follow the path south until you see the section on the western side. Head west.
# When you reach the dead tree, head north. Continue north through the entrance at the top of the section.
# Head north through that section, and at the top, on your right, you will see the chest.
# Talk to the Treasure Chest, and open it with the 10 Treasure Keys .

'''Better Way: (Actually mentioned path is too long!)'''

# To get there, head directly north from Hurnscald.
# Enter the mine and continue North where there are two skulls guarding two entrances.
# Get inside the left one (carefully is full of mobs) and just go up to the chest.
# Talk to the Treasure Chest, and open it with the 10 Treasure Keys.

'''Keys Dropped By:'''

* Spiders (5%)

'''Reward:'''

* 1 Short Sword (+100 Damage)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 10 Treasure Keys

==Letter Quest (2,000 EXP*)==

[[Image:Letter-Quest.png | Helping By Delivering A Letter For The Caretaker.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 50+

'''Redoable:''' Yes, forever

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# To find the graveyard, head south out of Hurnscald, from the tree.
# Continue south and head west at the elbow.
# Follow the path all the way, past Dimond's Cove.
# When you cross the bridge, follow the thin track until it reaches the first branch. Take the western track and head west through the first clearing in the trees.
# Follow it north west, and then south west, where the cleared trees are. Continue heading south west until you come to a bridge to the west.
# Cross the bridge and follow the track in the southern direction. You will find a clearing in the track. Continue heading west into the next screen.
# Follow the path until you reach the first bridge. Don't cross the bridge, but instead head north through the trees. Stay to the left of the first small pond as you head north, and keep your eye out for a tall tree.
# Duck around the large pond to the left of the tree, and head south west. At the foot of the next pond, start heading north west, until you reach the path.
# Head north up the path past the two signs. This is the graveyard.
# The caretaker's hut is on your right, heading down the first track. Go inside.
# Click on the caretaker, and after he talks to you the first time, and the text box is closed, click on him again. He will have a letter for you to deliver to Airlia.
# To find Airlia, head south of the tree in Hurnscald, and head east on the first street. Enter the second building. Airlia is inside on the right.
# Talk to Airlia and deliver the letter to receive your reward.

'''Rewards:'''

* 1,000 GP and 2,000 EXP the first time
* 42 GP and 500 EXP every time after

==Bone Quest (50,000 EXP)==

[[Image:Airlie-Diseased-Heart.png | Airlia Is Inside This House, On The Right Hand Side.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' Letter Quest

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 50+

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# After delivering the letter to Airlia, click on her a second time. Tell her that you believe what she says is true. Choose one of the options, either the three dots, or that you have heard of the group. Agree to the quest. She will give you a quest to collect 50 bones.
# Go and collect the 50 bones.
# After collecting the 50 bones, return to Airlia. Tell her you have collected the 50 bones to receive your reward.

'''Rewards:'''

* 5,000 GP
* 50,000 EXP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 50 Bones

==Diseased Heart Quest (40,000 EXP)==

[[Image:Airlie-Diseased-Heart.png | Airlia Is Inside This House, On The Right Hand Side.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' Bone Quest

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 50+

'''Redoable:''' Yes

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# After you gave the 50 bones to Airlia, she said something to you about draining the mana from the undead.
# Collect 10 diseased hearts
# After you have collected them, return to Airlia and give her the diseased hearts to receive your reward.

'''Rewards:'''

* 6,000 GP
* 40,000 EXP

'''Total Cost:'''

* 10 Diseased Hearts

==Pachua The Hermit Indian==

[[Image:Pachua-The-Hermit-Indian.png | Pachua The Hermit Indian In Mana World.]]

<div style="float:right; font-size:80%">
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
!style="background:#efdead;"| Leather Works
!style="background:#efdead;"| Resources
!style="background:#efdead;"| Cost
|-
| Cowboy Hat (+6 Defense)
| 1 Fancy Hat 2 Snake Skins
| 1,000 GP
|-
| Jeans Chaps (+6 Defense)
| 1 Jeans Shorts 10 Snake Skins
| 10,000 GP
|-
| Leather Patch
| 1 Snake Skin
| 300 GP
|}
</div>

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' Yes, forever

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 55+

'''Starting Location:''' Desert Mountains

'''Hints:'''

* To find Pachua: The road of the map forks in only three places. Take the eastern route at the first fork, which is in the second cave. The next fork is in the fourth cave, you want to go south. Then the third fork is in the fifth cave, west is the way towards the Hermit. In short: east, south, west.
* There is also a magic note flying around in the Old Wizard's house in the North-East Woodlands that will bring you directly to Pachua. It is the second note from the top, on the right hand side.

===Leather Working===

These crafting options are available from the beginning. Note that it is random whether you get a White Cowboy Hat or a Black Cowboy Hat.

'''Snake Skins Dropped By:'''

* Mountain Snakes (1.5%)

'''Jeans Shorts Dropped By:'''

* Cave Snakes (0.4%)

'''Fancy Hats Dropped By:'''

* Snakes (3%)

==Demon Mask==

[[Image:Demon-Mask-Quest.png | The Entrance To The Demon Mask Cave.]]

'''Prerequisites:''' None

'''Redoable:''' No, only one time

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 60+

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# Go to the mine, which can be found by going north of Hurnscald as far as you can go until you find the cave entrance.
# From there, head straight up through the mine, and at the end, past the skull, take the entrance on the right.
# Once on the other side of the entrance, go left, and take the entrance directly on your left.
# Head west, and take the first path to the north. Follow the path as it turns to the left, and turn south after the candle stand that stands on the west side of the small pond. (I.e., take the second entrance in the southwest.)
# Head south through the open entrance, then head west. You will see an entrance at the north. Take this.
# You will enter an area with two candle-stands and three shields, and a pond with what appears to be a face. As you enter the small alcove-like southern section here the three shields are, go to the other side of the small barrier on your north side, and you will find an entrance there. Behind it you will find the bookcases. Enter there.
# There are two bookshelves: one is in this room, surrounded by black scorpions, and another in a peaceful room south of the scorpion room. It is the second one of these shelves you need to click on to read the ritual.
# After reading about the ritual, head north of the face in the pond, and there is an entrance there.
# If you have all the items (see list below), you will be able to get past the barrier. If not, check your item list, and collect what you are missing.
# Open the chest to retrieve your demon mask.

[[Image:Demon-Mask-Chest.png | The Chest Where The Demon Mask Is.]]

'''Hints:'''

* You need to open the barrier that blocks access to the chest. Kill a Jack O and you will receive the Jack O Soul. This will let you pass the barrier and you will find the chest in the next room.
* The Jack O usually appears on one of the cliffs in this region. It's full of dead trees. The entrance is in the Woodland Mines. Otherwise, there are Jack O's in the graveyard.
* It's a long quest, maybe you'd prefer to trade for some of the objects with other players.

'''Reward:'''

* Demon Mask (+3 Defense)

'''Total Cost:'''

* 1 Maggot Slime
* 1 Petal (From Flower)
* 1 Small Mushroom (From Evil Mushrooms)
* 1 Pearl (From Sea Slime)
* 1 Hard Spike (From Spiky Mushroom)
* 1 Raw Log (From Log Head)
* 1 Pink Antenna (From Pinkie)
* 1 Snake Tongue (From Snake)
* 1 Snake Tongue (From Mountain Snake)
* 1 Snake Tongue (From Cave Snake)
* 1 Snake Tongue (From Grass Snake)
* 1 Key (From Spider)
* 1 Pile Of Ash (From Fire Goblin)
* 1 Gamboge Herb
* 1 Mauve Herb
* 1 Cobalt Herb
* 1 Alizarin Herb
* 1 Bug Leg
* 1 Cave Snake Lamp (From Cave Snake)
* 1 Iron Ore (From Yellow Slime)
* 1 Scorpion Stinger (From Scorpion)
* 1 Red Scorpion Stinger (From Red Scorpion)
* 1 Black Scorpion Stinger (From Black Scorpion)
* 1 Cotton Cloth (From Mouboo)
* 1 White Fur (From Fluffy)
* 1 Silkworm's Cocoon (From Silkworm)
* 1 Dark Crystal (From Skulls)
* 1 Bottle Of Water (From Mouboo Or Sea Slime)
* 1 Jack O soul

==Setzer Quest (280,000 EXP)==

'''Prerequisites:''' Bone Knife Quest

'''Recommended From Levels:''' 60+ (60 Required)

'''Redoable:''' No

'''What To Do - Overview:'''

# Talk To Nicholas
# Talk To Rauk
# Talk To Caul
# Talk To Kfahr
# Make The Monster Oil
# Talk To Nicholas Again

<hr width="75%" />

===Talk To Nicholas===

[[Image:Nicholas-The-Blacksmith.png | Nicholas The Blacksmith In The Mana World.]]

'''Items Needed:'''

* 1 Short Sword
* 5 Iron Ores

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# Go to the blacksmith's shop. Head south of the tree, and take the street to the right. Enter the last house. Nicholas is in there.
# With at least 5 iron ores and a short sword in your inventory, talk to Nicholas the blacksmith in the Hurnscald blacksmith's shop
# Say "I have some Iron Ore!" and then "Can you make my short sword better?"
# Nicholas will tell you that you need items, including monster oil. Ask him what monster oil is.

<hr width="75%" />

===Talk To Rauk===

[[Image:Rauk-The-Alchemist.png | Rauk The Alchemist In The Mana World.]]

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald

'''What To Do:'''

# Walk west from the tree, until you pass underneath the first bridge. Head south through the field, under the bridge, and around to the north east is Rauk.
# Ask him to make monster oil. He will refuse to make it. He will, however, give you the recipe.

The recipe is:
* 1 Golden Scorpion Stinger
* 1 Pearl
* 2 Snake Skins
* 2 Piles Of Ash
* 3 Black Scorpion Stingers
* Plenty Of Herbs (About 20 Of Each)

<hr width="75%" />

===Talk To Caul===

[[Image:Caul.png | Caul Will Help You Make The Monster Potion.]]

'''Starting Location:''' Hurnscald Mining Camp

'''What To Do:'''

# Head north from the tree, and before reaching the cave, head left. The house there is the mining camp. Caul is in there.
# Ask Caul about monster oil. He will tell you that he does not remember the recipe for monster oil, but you will tell him that Rauk gave it to you.
# Ask him about a golden scorpion stinger.

<hr width="75%" />

===Talk To Kfahr===

[[Image:Kfahr.png | Kfahr In The Mana World.]]

'''Starting Location:''' Bar at Hurnscald. Head west from the tree, and enter the first building. Head right in the building, and you will find Kfahr.

'''Sub-Quest Items Needed:'''

* 5 Beers
* 10 Snake Skins

'''What To Do:'''

# Buy 5 beers from the bar tender (If you don't already have them)
# Give a beer to Kfahr, and listen to his first story.
# Complete the Bone Knife Quest if you haven't already, and give him the items he needs.
# Listen to each story, giving him a beer before each one.
# Ask Kfahr about golden scorpions.
# Arm wrestle with him and choose "Slam!"
# Close the speech box, then reopen it again.
# Give Kfahr 10 snake skins for the golden scorpion stinger.

'''Sub-Quest Rewards:'''

* Golden Scorpion Stinger
* 80,000 EXP

<hr width="75%" />

===Make The Monster Oil===

[[Image:Caul.png | Caul Will Help You Make The Monster Potion.]]

'''Sub-Quest Items Needed (Per Attempt):'''

Note - The golden scorpion stinger will not be consumed on a bad batch.
* 1 Golden Scorpion Stinger
* 1 Pearl
* 2 Snake Skins
* 2 Piles Of Ash
* 3 Black Scorpion Stingers
* Plenty Of Herbs (About 20 Of Each)

'''What To Do:'''

Tips:
* Here are the basics: Gamboge adds yellow, Cobalt adds blue, Alizarin adds red, and Mauve makes darker.
* The color you want is dark gray, and then you want to add one mauve leaf. Remember that the mixture also has a randomization of adding and removing colors.

Brewing the monster oil is difficult if you do not understand the mechanics behind it. This part of the quest requires some logic and even then, it can blow up purely by chance. You need to understand the colours, and what to add when making the oil. A high Intelligence level helps to reduce the probability of an explosion.

Once you start brewing your oil, you will be able to add one leaf at a time. When you do so, the following events happen in order:

#If this is an add (odd) turn, the oil has a 2 in 3 chance to add one of the three primary colors at random, and a 1 in 3 chance of becoming lighter
#If this is a remove (even) turn, the oil will remove one color at random
#Your leaf will take effect (If, at this point, the oil is a Dark Gray, and you added a mauve leaf, you will have completed brewing your monster oil)

The following table lists the effects of each leaf:

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
!style="background:#efdead;"| Leaf
!style="background:#efdead;"| Effect
|-
| Alizarin
| Adds Red
|-
| Gamboge
| Adds Yellow
|-
| Cobalt
| Adds Blue
|-
| Mauve
| Darkens the oil, or completes it if added to dark gray (the monster oil adds or removes its color first!)
|}

Also note the secondary colors and gray:

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
!style="background:#efdead;"| Composite Color
!style="background:#efdead;"| Primary Components
|-
| Orange
| Red + Yellow
|-
| Green
| Yellow + Blue
|-
| Purple
| Red + Blue
|-
| Gray
| Red + Yellow + Blue
|}

At any point in this process any of the following events can trigger an increase in bubble level in your oil:
* A color that doesn't exist is removed
* A color that already exists is added
* The oil becomes lighter than "light"
* The oil becomes darker than "dark" (unless the current color is gray, in which case you will be done)

The levels of bubbling are, in order:
* Calm
* Bubbling
* Bubbling Violently
If the boiling level increases to more than "bubbling violently" then the oil will explode, you will die, and you will need to gather new ingredients (although you will still keep your golden scorpion stinger)

The percent chance of the oil bubble level increasing is 6100/(int+100) for the effect of leaves you add and 7100/(int+100) for colors added randomly. (replace int with your intelligence level and paste those forumlas into Google to get your percent)

The table below lists percantage probabilities of the oil being raised a level or more from either one (or both) events

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
!style="background:#efdead;"| Intelligence
!style="background:#efdead;"| Adding a Leaf
!style="background:#efdead;"| Random Color
|-
| 1
| 60.40%
| 70.30%
|-
| 10
| 55.45%
| 64.55%
|-
| 20
| 50.83%
| 59.17%
|-
| 30
| 46.92%
| 54.62%
|-
| 40
| 43.57%
| 50.71%
|-
| 50
| 40.67%
| 47.33%
|-
| 60
| 38.13%
| 44.38%
|-
| 70
| 35.88%
| 41.76%
|-
| 80
| 33.89%
| 39.44%
|-
| 90
| 32.11%
| 37.37%
|-
| 99
| 30.65%
| 35.68%
|}

As you can see from the table above, there is a much better chance of success if you have a high intelligence level. It is recommended, if you can afford it, that you reset your stats by talking to Malivox in the North West corner of the desert south of Tulimshar.

Throughout the brewing processes, you should use this information to calculate what leaves will most likely get your monster oil(or at least use it to make an educated guess). The most difficult task is preventing the bubble level from rising, and sometimes, the only way to survive is to take a chance and hope that the color you need added or subtracted is the one chosen randomly by your monster oil.

When you first start, your oil will be a medium, calm, primary color (red, yellow, or blue) from here you can add a color leaf or mauve to darken it. Remember that before your leaf takes effect, the oil will add its own random color. On the second turn, it will remove one random color, and it will continue in this alternating pattern. It is very important that you keep track of wether the next random color will be added or removed.

First, add a mauve leaf to the oil to make it a dark color (if the oil lightnens, you need to add another). Once you have it dark, follow the instructions based on the color and round you are on untill you have your oil or it explodes:

* Light or Medium Color:
** Add mauve

* Dark Primary Color:
** Add one of the colors you are missing. (Note: If you are on an add round, there will be a 2/3 chance of having one chance for the bubbling to increase, and 1/3 chance of getting gray. On a subtract round, there will be 1/3 chance of one chance for bubbling to increase, and a 2/3 chance of getting a secondary color.)

* Dark Secondary Color:
** On an "add" round:
**: Add a mauve herb and hope that the oil adds the third color you need. (Note: This gives you 2/9 chance of getting your oil now, a 1/3 chance of nothing happenening because the oil lightens, and a 4/9 chance to have two chances to increase bubbling. (see the "from both" columns in the probability table above))
** On a "remove" round:
**: Add the color you are missing (Note: there is a 2/3 chance that you will get a secondary color, but a 1/3 chance to get dark gray and a chance to increase the bubble level.)

* Dark Gray:
** On an "add" round:
**: Add a mauve leaf (Note: 2/3 chance of getting your oil and a 1/3 chance of the oil getting lighter and negating the mauve leaf)
** On a "remove" round:
**: Add whatever color you think it will remove. (this is completely random, so good luck) (Note: There is a 1/3 chance to keep the oil dark gray for the next round. If that fails, however, there will be two chances (see the "from both" columns in the probability table above) for the bubble level increasing, and you sill be stuck with a secondary color next round.)

'''Sub-Quest Rewards:'''

* Monster Oil
* 100,000 EXP

<hr width="75%" />

===Talk Again To Nicholas===

[[Image:Nicholas-The-Blacksmith.png | Nicholas The Blacksmith In The Mana World.]]

'''Sub-Quest Items Needed:'''

* 1 Monster Oil
* 1 Short Sword
* 5 Iron Ores
* 50,000 GP

'''What To Do:'''

# With at least 5 iron ores and a short sword in your inventory, talk to Nicholas the blacksmith in the Hurnscald blacksmith's shop
# Say "I have some Iron Ore!" and then "Can you make my short sword better?"
# Give him the items and GP

'''Sub-Quest Rewards:'''

* Setzer (+110 Damage)
* 100,000 EXP

'''Total Quest Rewards:'''

* Setzer (+110 Damage)
* 280,000 EXP

'''Total Quest Cost:'''

* 1 Pearl (+1 more for each time you fail to make monster oil)
* 1 Short Sword
* 2 Piles Of Ash (+2 more for each time you fail to make monster oil)
* 3 Black Scorpion Stingers (+3 more for each time you fail to make monster oil)
* 5 Beers
* 5 Iron Ore
* 12 Snake Skin (+2 more for each time you fail to make monster oil)
* Lots Of Herbs (recommended to have at least 20 of each whenever you start making monster oil)
* 50,000 GP

==Magic Quests==
''See [[Magic Quests]]''

--[[User:Developer|Developer]] 16:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

User:Byakushin

2010-08-08T11:57:22Z

Byakushin: /* Byakushin's Journal */

User:Byakushin

2010-08-07T08:53:41Z

Byakushin: /* Byakushin's Journal */

User:Byakushin

2010-08-05T09:30:09Z

Byakushin: /* Byakushin's Journal */

2010-07-18T20:14:33Z

Byakushin: /* The Mana World Br */ Added notice about Portuguese NPCs.

{{Category_playerinfo}}
{{Status_green}}

When you set up your own TMW server and want it to be open for public playing feel free to add it here. To create your own server read [[Setting up a server]]. All servers/projects on this page work with the official client. Servers/Projects listed on [[forks]] are incompatible with the official TMW client, though they are based on it.

== eAthena servers for 0.0.x clients ==
These servers run on eAthena. You can connect to them with the official client from the [http://themanaworld.org/downloads download page].

'''''Security Warning:'' Do not use the same username and password on two different servers. The server admins can read all of them in clear text and nothing stops them from trying them on other servers. It happened a lot in the past that users of the official server got â€œhackedâ€ because they ignored this important precaution.'''

=== Official server ===

The official public server of The Mana World project.

* Hostname: server.themanaworld.org
* Port: 6901 TCP
* Administration: [[User:ElvenProgrammer|Eugenio Favalli]], [[User:BjÃ¸rn|BjÃ¸rn Lindeijer]]

===The Alternate World===

A server with different rules. Stable.
Non-English speakers welcome.
(Although English is helpful for communications, it is not required to be the only language spoken.)

* Hostname: server.thealternateworld.org
* Port: 6901 TCP
* Administration: DarkWind
* [[http://www.thealternateworld.org Website]]

===The Mana World TMW-UFB (French)===

A server with new content(maps,npc,..).
Multilingual Server(hosted in France).
We have a "french wiki" with a lot of quests and information translated.

* Hostname: tmw.ufbteam.com
* Port: 6901 TCP
* Administration: hackziner/staff@ufbteam.com/Arikel
* [[http://tmw.ufbteam.com Website (French wiki, Forum,...)]]
* irc : #tmw-ufb @ irc.freenode.org

===The Mana World Br (in Portuguese mostly) ===
A server with new content and independent of official. The NPCs speak Portuguese only; the chosen languages to speak in public are Portuguese or English.

* Hostname: server.themanaworld.com.br
* Port: 6901 TCP
* Administration: Gui.
* Size: 29 online at the time of checking (18 Jul 2010)

===The Mana World (German)===

German is the only allowed language on this server!
* Hostname: [http://germantmw.ath.cx germantmw.ath.cx]
* Port: 6901 TCP
* Administration: [[User:jak1|jak1]], [[User:GoNzO|GoNzO]]





== ManaServ servers for 0.1 client ==

You can connect to these servers with a client compiled from source when using the ManaServ build target. Note that ManaServ is still in development and doesn't offer real gameplay yet. As a player you will have much more fun on an eAthena server.

=== Official test server ===

The semi-official test server for the new server <code>manaserv</code>. The server runs in debug mode and backtraces are automatically sent by email when it crashes, after which the server is restarted.

* Hostname: testing.themanaworld.org
* Port: 9601 UDP
* Administration: [[User:BjÃ¸rn|BjÃ¸rn Lindeijer]]

=== Invertika server ===

A German fork of TMW based on Manaserv with a completely new game world. The server is in beta status. Downtimes are possible but rare.

* Hostname: server.invertika.org
* Port: 9601 UDP
* Website: http://invertika.org
* Administration: [[User:Seeseekey|seeseekey]]

=== Whispers of Avalon test server (WOA) ===

Test server for WOA featuring completely new content

* Hostname: 69.80.239.122
* Port: 9601 UDP
* Website: http://whispersofavalon.com/
* Administration: [[User:Jaxad0127|Jaxad0127]]