Wyvern Beta Test Rules

Wyvern launched into public beta on Feb 4, 2002. Wyvern will remain in beta test indefinitely, or until we have commercial backing. During our beta test, we will be making daily changes and additions to the game.

What is Beta?

The Wyvern Beta Test is a period of active game development during which you are invited to come in and play the game. You can play all you like, or become a Wizard and design new areas if you prefer.

How am I defining Beta Test, and when will we get there?

Lots of people have asked me this, so I've got a special page dedicated to answering this.

Rules

This section outlines the rules and special procedures we've defined for the beta test.

Obey All Rules

All the normal rules are in effect during the beta test. If you break the rules, we may evict you from the game, temporarily or permanently. We expect people to be good citizens and not try to ruin things for everyone else.

Deleting Characters

You should expect your character to be deleted a minimum of one time, and possibly more often than that. At the end of the beta test, we might delete ALL characters and start everyone from scratch.

Additionally, we may occasionally make major changes to the game that invalidate the existing characters. We hope we don't have to do this, and we're going to try to update all existing beta characters whenever we make a change to the game engine. But there are no guarantees - you may lose your character and have to create a new one.

Reporting Bugs

We encourage you to report any bugs and problems you encounter. There is a bug command you can use while you're playing the game to report a bug. For example, you could type:

bug I can't seem to get the door here to open.

When you report a bug this way, the game automatically logs your report, along with your character name, the current time, and your current location (map, x and y coordinates). You don't have to include any of this information in your bug report. Just type your problem and we'll figure it out, or ask you for clarification later.

You can also use the idea command to log ideas for ways to improve the game. Of course, you're welcome to use the bug command to log ideas too, if that's the command you prefer.

If you want to report a bug or feature and you're not currently playing the game, you can simply email contact us and send in your bug or idea.

Reboots

The game server will shut itself down automatically once in a while. While we're in beta, the game may stop responding. We have a watchdog that checks whether the game is responding and automatically restarts the game server if necessary. If you have trouble connecting to the server, you should only have to wait 5-10 minutes and then try again.

In some unusual circumstances, the game may be unavailable for days or even weeks during the Beta test, while we perform maintenance and upgrades to the hardware and software.

If you wait for 10 minutes and the game has not restarted itself, you can send mail to contact us and we'll investigate as soon as possible.