Wyvern Rules and Regulations

Contents

We are committed to providing a pleasant gaming experience for the vast majority of our players. Unfortunately, there are always a few immature people who want to ruin the experience for others, and we will take any steps necessary to encourage those people to go play some other game.

There aren't many rules, but we've had to spell them out pretty clearly because there are a few people always looking for loopholes. If a wizard tells you to stop doing something, even if you think it's not spelled out in the rules, stop it anyway. If you violate the spirit of the law, you'll be punished as if you'd violated the letter of the law.

General Rules

If you break a rule, you'll be subject to various forms of administrative penalties.

  1. You are expected to read the latest news before you play each day. The news often contains announcements of changes to the game or the rules.

  2. Don't harass other players, or try to force them to do something they don't want to do. Harrassment includes spamming, blocking exits or access to services like healing fountains, and littering. These actions also tend to lag the server, so will not be viewed favorably by the wizards.

  3. Don't ever impersonate a Wizard. If you pretend you are a Wizard and tell someone else to do something, you will be banished permanently.

  4. No shouting obscenities or other comments not suitable for a family game, or in tells unless the other person is OK with that language. There's a shout filter for the chat channels and guild channels, but it's possible to get around it by putting spaces or other characters in the words, or misspelling them. Don't do this or you'll be silenced (or, if you do it enough, banished).

  5. No player-killing (PK) except in clearly designated PK areas, or you're in the PK guild killing another PK guild member. This includes deliberately killing players via indirect methods.

  6. Don't steal from other players. Stealing includes taking stuff from a monster that someone else has killed, or taking something a monster was guarding that someone else killed. And for the wannabe litigators in the crowd, we'll spell it out: stealing also includes selling items under false pretenses, aka scamming.

  7. Don't create traps, hostile monsters, or other dangerous things in public areas such as the main continent, towns, hospitals, churches, shops, and guilds. This is now a banishable offense.

  8. Do not let other people log in with your character.

  9. You must keep your email address current, so that we can mail you if there is a problem with your character. If we find that your email bounces, we'll banish the character until you use the Change Email form to give your character a valid email address.

  10. Don't complain about reboots, even if the game just rebooted. We frequently have to fix errors in the game, because we're adding so much new stuff for you. Please be mature about it.

  11. Don't use robot clients or other automated tools.

  12. Don't attempt unauthorized access to the Cabochon servers. You may only connect to ports 2000 (using a telnet program) and 2222 (using a Cabochon-approved game client). Don't send lots of data in an attempt to flood the server. Don't try to break into the server or even threaten to. Not only is it against the rules, it's also against the law.

  13. No cheating.

  14. If you do happen to find out privileged information, including, but not limited to: quest information, imminent changes to the economy, wizards' "alts" (their player characters, which they're required to keep anonymous), or anything else not intended to be known to the general population, keep it to yourself, and do not take advantage of the information.

Map Claiming

Some maps are automatically "claimed" when you enter them. Nobody else can enter unless you invite them, or they're grouped with you.

The game only lets you claim the map you're currently in. You can't say "I claim map XYZ" anymore - you actually have to be physically in the map in order to have it claimed.

Sitting outside the entrance to a map no longer claims it. If you leave a map to go heal, someone else can go in it. But if you're outside the map, and someone else gets in, you won't be able to get back in unless they invite you.

You can ask other players if you may hunt in the map, or pass through the map they're in. If Bob is hunting in a map, he can "invite fred" to let Fred into the map.

Important: Once two or more people are in a map, they have equal claim to the map. They can all hunt there and take the treasures. It's first-come, first-served. If you don't like the way the other player is behaving, you should leave the map.

Occasionally there will be bugs where someone manages to get into a map that's supposed to be auto-claimed. Once they're in, they've got equal claim as well. Report the bug and we'll fix it as soon as we can.

Be careful who you invite into your maps. Make sure you uninvite them after they've entered, or they'll be able to follow you into all your maps. If someone says "please let me pass through", and you invite them, then they can kill monsters in the map once they're in. It's a problem, but you don't have to invite them in to begin with.

The biggest problem with auto-claiming is that you may not be able to return the way you came, if someone is claiming the map you need to pass through. You can either ask them politely if you may pass through, or you can quit and restart. We'll eventually add a command to let you teleport to the nearest cathedral if you're stuck.

If you find a map that multiple people can enter, and you think it should be claimable, file a bug report and we'll look into it.

Cheating

Any of the following actions constitute cheating and will not be tolerated:

I'm sure this list will grow. Keep an eye on it — you could be doing something that's considered cheating. If you feel guilty doing something in the game, you're probably cheating.

A corollary to that rule, regarding harrassing players is: If you think what you're doing is annoying to others, it probably is.

Multiple Characters

Most MUDs only let you have one character unless you get special permission. We allow you to have up to five, since we figure you'll want to experiment with different races.

If you have more than one character, it's cheating to have both of them logged in at the same time, no matter how briefly. It's also cheating to have any of your characters help any other of your characters in any way. Don't do it.

Trading Characters

You are not, under any circumstances, allowed to give away your password to anyone else, or trade characters with anyone else or give away or sell your character. This is because we don't currently have any way to know for sure who owns the player, if two people are arguing about it, and both people know the original password.

If you come to us and claim that you traded characters, or that someone hacked your account, or that for any other reason you lost control of your character, we'll just banish the character permanently.

Money Transfers

Money and item transfers are no longer allowed. Too many players were turbo-charging their alts and friends' characters with lots of gold and high-powered equipment. Transfers have been long been discouraged, but now it's official -- no transfers. If you find a loophole that lets you transfer, report it to a wizard immediately. Amongst the things not allowed are the 'buy-low-sell-high' technique. If we catch you doing it, we'll confiscate the items and money, or if you've got a prior record, banish you.

A significant reason for this rule is to prevent the transfer of items to low level accounts (especially those belonging to your alts and/or your friend's alts). So any activity to try and pull that off will be met with severe consequences. This includes the intentional transfer of items that do not yet have your owner tag on them.

Administrative Penalties

If you break the rules, we reserve the right to do any of the following:

Don't cheat, be respectful to others, and behave yourself, and you should have absolutely no problems.