Rules for Wizards

All the normal player rules apply to Wizards. Wizards also have some special rules because of their extra powers.

Wizards must abide by all rules or be subject to disciplinary action.

General Rules

Wizards are given special powers at certain levels. In general, you're not allowed to use any powers that haven't been granted to you yet. If you find a bug that allows you to get around the security checks, you're still not allowed to use the power. You should log any bugs you find immediately.

In other words, just because you don't get "permission denied" doesn't mean you are allowed to perform a particular action - you should read up on the dos and donts for your level and be familiar with them.

Behavior Guidelines

Players should trust Wizards. MUDs quickly lose their player bases if Wizards are perceived as abusing their powers. Here are some guidelines to help keep the interactions positive:

Don't intervene unless it's absolutely necessary.
Players should learn how to settle disputes on their own, and they shouldn't consider wiz intervention an entitlement. Generally speaking, the less wiz intervention there is, the better.
Maintain your professionalism.
Never resort to name-calling or insults. You'll gain more respect this way in the long run.
Don't punish players who are following the rules.
Know what's against the rules and what isn't. The rules change periodically, so make sure you stay up to date. Don't try to punish people for being immature, or not knowing all the game commands, or for having an attitude problem. These things are not against the rules. If a player is creating a terrible environment for everyone by harassing people, report the incident(s) to a senior wizard or higher.
Keep your Wiz persona separate from your other chars.
Nobody should know your second character is a "wiz-alt". Your special character isn't (and shouldn't be) special, and you should take precautions to ensure people don't find out your character is a wiz character. Bragging about it is grounds for having that character banished.

Abide by these guidelines and the game will be better for everyone.

Cheating

Some Wizards have the ability to look at some of the game source code. As a result, there are some special rules to prevent Wizards from helping themselves or other players.

Wizards may have access to information about quests, item functionality, map layout, guild details or other information that players are supposed to discover for themselves. Wizards are absolutely not allowed to divulge any information that could be construed as allowing a player to cheat. When in doubt, ask an Elder or Arch Wizard for clarification.

And don't share access with anyone to your wizard login, to the wizard boards, or any other information that only wizards have access to. If in doubt, ask an Elder or Arch Wizard for clarification.

Player Interaction

Wizards are not allowed to help players. This means Wizards cannot do any of the following things:

Command players or other wizards to do something against their will. "command" may only be used on a player to help fix a problem, and at their request.
Set properties on a player, unless it's to repair something that's broken on the player.
Attack or kill players or monsters.
Edit or overwrite player files.
Give items to players, or clone objects and leave them somewhere for a player to pick up.
Tell players any specific information that would be helpful for solving quests.
Teleport a player into or out of harm's way.
Teleport a player into an area the player's not allowed to be in.
Modify any item in the player's inventory or saved inventory locations (e.g. banks, lockers).
Make a live modification to an existing map

The list above is not intended to be complete or comprehensive. Don't do anything to other Players or Wizards that they could even remotely construe as bad manners.

When in doubt, ask an Elder or Arch Wizard for clarification of the rules.

There may be situations where a Wizard needs to do one of the things above during the testing of the Wizard's own area. These situations should be approved by an Elder or Arch Wizard before attempting them.

The Wyvern server logs many events and activities as the game progresses, including many Wizard actions. Cabochon reserves the right to monitor all Wizard activity to ensure compliance with the rules.

Reimbursements

Wizards can, in certain circumstances, reimburse players for inventory or money lost because of a bug in the game.

Don't reimburse players for lost items unless you have proof that the player lost the item(s), and that the loss was the result of a bug. In particular, never reimburse a player just because they tell you that so-and-so didn't give them goods in exchange for money.

It is not a bug if a player puts all their stuff on the ground and then something "happens" to it - i.e. it gets stolen, or the server does a normal reboot, or the player accidentally leaves the map and it unloads. That's user error, and we don't reimburse people for it.

Player Account Security

Player accounts get "hacked" all the time. This is almost never just password-guessing. It's usually a "friend" hacking someone's account by getting physical access to the client where the person last played.

We have no absolute proofs of player identity. Anyone can pretend to be anyone else; it's even possible (and not difficult) to spoof IP and email addresses.

Compounding the problem is that many of our players know each other and go to school together. And they play on shared school machines. Or we have siblings and friends playing on the same home computer.

You simply wouldn't believe how complicated the stories get, and how little internal logical sense they often make, as players try to make something up without sounding like they've broken the rules. It can take lots and lots of time to try to figure out what happened.

Because of the incredible murkiness of these issues, the difficulty of researching them, and the general unreliability of reports from 11-year-olds (or people pretending to be 11-year-olds), we have a simple set of rules for dealing with account security problems:

Never change a player's email address or password for them.
Never tell a player their own email address or IP address.
Never give a player help with their alt, if the alts have different email addresses.
If you ever discover a situation where two real-life people have been playing the same character, banish the character or have someone with banishing privileges do it. Keep in mind that you can never really be sure; however, if someone says "I was letting my brother play this char", then it's banishable.
If a player thinks they've been hacked, tell them to change their password immediately in the game using the password command, and have them log out and back in again. If they've forgotten their password, they can use the forgot-password link on the web page. Don't give them any other information.

The upshot of these rules is that if a player loses access to their own email address (or forgets what it is), and they forget their password, then they have officially lost the character forever. They can never get it back, and we do not make exceptions to this rule for any reason.

Violation of Area and Item Guidelines

There are rules and guidelines governing the creation of Wyvern game content, including:

guidelines to keep areas "fair" and fun
rules to keep the game balanced
rules to make sure the content doesn't crash the game, introduce bugs, or use too much CPU time
rules to prevent the use of copyrighted or objectionable material
others as well, in the Area Guidelines

When a Wizard applies to have his or her area linked into the game, the area and its contents must pass a thorough code review by an approved reviewer from Cabochon.

After the area is approved and linked into the game, the Wizard who created the area is free to make enhancements and improvements to the area. Cabochon reserves the right to review Wizard areas frequently to ensure compliance with the rules.

Cabochon maintains complete creative control over the material in Wizard areas. If we decide the content needs to change for any reason, we will modify it or remove it from the game completely.

Needless to say, we will try to be reasonable and fair. We want people to create areas; it's lots of fun for both players and Wizards. MUD content can go in surprising directions, and we encourage Wizards to use their imagination in creating new areas and items. Make sure you comply with the rules and your area shouldn't have any problems.