Wyvern Frequently Asked Questions

This is a collection of frequently-asked questions that do not fit anywhere else. For questions about playing the game, such as "what do I do with a treasure pile", please visit the Player FAQ.

Contents

Q: Is this game free?

A: Yes, you can play all you want for free.

My goal is to keep Wyvern online for free. I'm paying for it out of my own pocket. Unless the server and/or bandwidth costs become prohibitively expensive, I expect the game to remain free.

Keep in mind that you get what you pay for. See the disclaimers for more info.

Q: I never got email with my password when I created a character.

A: Double-check the email address.

The #1 most common reason for this problem is:  you typed in the wrong email address when you created your character. This is the reason in 90% or more of the cases we have seen. Unfortunately, there's no fix for it. You have to create a new character.

If you're sure you typed in your email correctly, then your email can still be delayed or even dropped completely – for example, your junk-mail filter could think that the Wyvern email is spam.

In some situations, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) might be at fault. Email from our domain (cabochon.com) has sometimes been flagged as spam by over-aggressive ISPs, so the mail never gets through. If you suspect this is the problem, contact your ISP (whether it's AOL, Comcast, Earthlink, whoever) and ask them to help you trace email coming from cabochon.com or opal.cabochon.com. They should be able to add our domain to their whitelist, and then you can request the email to be resent.

To request the character-creation email to be resent, go to the Forgot Password page and type in your character name and email address. This will generate a new password for you and send it to the email address. If it doesn't show up, then try creating another character.

Unfortunately, if you can't receive the email, then you can't play Wyvern.

Q: Can I be a Wizard?

A: If you meet the qualifications.

We do accept some players to become Wizards. In order to qualify, you have to download the Map Editor and use it to create a new, interesting area for the game. If your area has at least 40 maps, and meets our review requirements, then we will take a look at your area. If we like it, we'll turn your character into a Wizard and let you start getting your maps ready to add to the game.

Q: Are you going to fix the animation so it's smooth?

A: Nope. That's not a bug, it's a feature!

Wyvern is Retro with an Attitude. We love the simple graphics, and our players love them too. As one player put it:

For some reason, I am drawn to the 2D graphics of Wyvern... I don't know why but they are just amazing... they show you things but let your imagination flow, too.

Fact: Over 90% of the artwork in the game was created by players, not professional artists. Players can even create their own custom images. It's easy because of the format we've chosen.

Wyvern is designed to run on handheld devices, and in fact we won an award for it in November 2002 at Comdex. There's no way it could run on handheld devices and phones with complex graphics. So we like it the way it is!

Q: Can I help with the game development?

A: Yes, by becoming a Wizard.

If you meet the wizard requirements you can become a wizard and start programming. It's not too late for you to have a dramatic impact on the game by getting involved now. We're looking for a few good Senior Wizards to help set up the game structure, especially people with text-MUD backgrounds.

Q: Can I download and run my own copy of the server?

A: Not at this time.

Someday in the future we might offer this capability, possibly even open-sourcing the game. However, there are still many open issues – technology, business, and game-balance issues – that prevent us from considering that option at this time.

For now, we're keeping the game running on a single server so we can monitor it closely.

Q: I heard that Wyvern has music, but I don't hear anything. Why is this?

A: There's menu option that allows you to turn it on or off.

In your client window move your mouse over "Edit," click on "Settings," and check the box that says "Play sound and music." It is turned off by default because a few players have reported experiencing problems with it, such as their client freezing or it simply closing on them in the middle of playing. We hope to fix these bugs in the future, but if you experience any problems with your client while playing, think about unchecking that box as that may be your problem.

Q: Help! Everything in my inventory just vanished! How can I get it back?

A: Calm down. Your inventory probably didn't go anywhere.

If one second you had lots of items in your inventory and the next second all you see is an empty, gray box, you're probably the victim of a common, but harmless client bug. We hope to fix it down the road, but in the meantime, you can check to make sure your inventory is still there by typing "inv" - This will display a text list of all the items you have. Once you are assured it's there and just not visible, you need to do something to refresh your inventory and you'll be able to see it again. You can do this any number of ways. Examples: Logout and then back in, pick up an item, or drop an item by typing out "drop {item}.

If you have no items in your inventory when you type "inv" and you are positive a monster didn't come and steal it, perhaps while you were idle, then contact a wizard. But, at the moment, there is no known bug that would do anything like that, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Q: I see a lot of white sparkles that don't go away. It's very distracting and it's making it hard for me to play. What do I do?

A: For most people, this is a case of not installing your client in the default directory when it asked you where you wanted it.

In the future, we hope to get this fixed, but in the meantime, uninstall your client, reinstall it, and let it save itself where it wants to.

The problem is that your client comes with a bunch of artwork and so no matter where you install it, you will see whatever you have already. But, there is a mountain of artwork that doesn't come with it as we are adding new things every day and wizard artwork is not included in the files you download. So when you see something you do not have, it has to download it to your computer. This happens automatically and very quickly. However, it currently tries to save things to the default directory rather than looking for where you save it and so these images never load for you and since there a lot of new artwork to be found while playing Wyvern, you will find the game almost unplayable unless you follow the above directions.