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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-09-28</font>
<p/>
As you might have found out we had another restart yesterday.
<p/>
Most of the changes for this restart are under the hood: this was
a Server Code release. Meaning the server's software was
changed but not the content. Hence user-facing changes are minimal,
but we'll outline below what's relevant.
<p/>
The restart didn't work as smoothly as expected but we
are working hard on fixing all the issues which turned up.
<p/>
Currently known bugs that affect players:
* None
<p/>
Other bugs:
* Update stats from the new CDN.
* GM logs are now full-buffered (faster) instead of line-buffered.
* Admin documentation is wrong.
<p/>
Fixed bugs:
* Problems with startup speed (possibly not new, fixed anyway).
* Guildbot wouldn't start.
* Some accounts and storages with corrupted items were deleted.
* You can turn every direction except right.
* Inability to trade, except when naked.
* Warp bug related to the new Orum/Waric quest.
* Elemental bonus/malus not applied to magic.
<p/>
<font color="#ff0000">If you encounter any more bugs or problems please
report back immediately. Post on the forums
<a href="http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17729">http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17729</a></font>
<p/>
A big behavioural change has been made to the Login Server
From now on the login name is case sensitive, this means
it matters whether you write a capital letter or not.
<font color="#919191">e.g. if you registered an account name Test, and always
logged in as test, this now no longer works. You have to
log in as Test.</font>
If you forgot how you originally registered your account,
and cannot log in, please checkout the forums
<a href="http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17737">http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17737</a>.
<p/>
Please be aware that these code changes were necessary to move
the game forward. The server was formerly very hard to work on or
modify. This update goes a long way to fixing that and will allow the
developers to bring you new and exciting things in the future.
<p/>
We are very sorry for the inconvenience. We have been working
as hard as we can to fix all the issues above.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">TMW Development Team</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-09-14</font>
<p/>
We have a small content release today.
A witch in Tulimshar has found some daunting spells
for mages who are experienced in Astral Magic.
Talk to her about that. Maybe she is willing to teach you.
<p/>
With this update, we have added some minor bugfixes for the
Waric script, Bluepar sprite and Wicked Mushroom sprite.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">TMW Development Team</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-09-03</font>
<p/>
<font color="#919191">First, a technical announcement. During a future
restart, TMW will start requiring your username
to exactly match the case that you signed up with.
<p/>
Previously, this was enforced erratically, and led
to people losing access to their accounts. If, after
the update, you are unsure of the case of the account
<font color="#ff0000">and have already tried lowercase, UPPERCASE, and TitleCase,</font>
please contact o11c or Frost.
<p/>
Now, back to your regularly scheduled content news.</font>
<p/>
Today we have introduced two new pieces.
<p/>
First of all, the Orum extension is finished.
Orum and his master Waric have set a new base
to mess with Sagatha. Seek them out! They
hide somewhere in the Caves north of Sagatha's
Forests.
<p/>
Someone has seen a few new spells being used.
No one is yet sure what exactly it is but a dark aura
has been percieved somewhere north of Hurnscald.
Find it! Maybe you can gain something useful!
<p/>
Last but not least we have to announce bad news
for the project but good news for her:
Jenalya has, after finishing the Orum extension,
resigned from her position as Lead Content
Developer. We dedicate this news to her and
wish her only the very best for her future. She
contributed beyond words and her leaving
will leave a spot we will have to work hard to fill.
Wushin and tux9th took over as Lead Content Developers
and give their best to bring quality content to you,
like Jenalya did.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">TMW Development Team</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-06-29</font>
<p/>
This release brings a few new additions to the game:
<p/>
Wushin overhauled the desert caves with an awesome
new cave tileset. Also the sewers below Tulimshar are
now accessible. Make sure to check them out!
<p/>
Malivox took the occasion to stop camping in the
desert and moved into a small house south of
Tulimshar.
<p/>
Frozenbeard has expanded his ferry service in
Nivalis. You can now go between Nivalis and
the other major docks both ways. Proper docks for
Nivalis are being worked on.
<p/>
With a ferry now serving Nivalis, Dyrin will send you
somehwere else in Kaizei instead, away from Nivalis.
<p/>
As usual there are also a lot of smaller fixes and
changes. Thanks to everyone who reported issues
and helped fix these things!
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">TMW Development Team</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-06-07</font>
<p/>
This weekend we're temporarily doubling both the
experience rate and the drop rates for all monsters,
to give the chance to recover from the rollback
we had due to filesystem corruption.
<p/>
There are also some bug fixes and new content:
<p/>
The craftsmen of Tulimshar have finally moved to the
renovated Forge at the Northern Market, so the
Wizard's Inn is back to offering a calm stay for visitors.
<p/>
In the woodland area the mysterious Evil Obelisk which
summons beings from the astral plane for the mundane
price of gold has drastically reduced its demands.
<p/>
On the technical side, in case of network congestion,
you will no longer be kicked with an invalid packet error.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000"> TMW Development Team</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-06-05</font>
<p/>
We had a server crash, and had to restore everything from offline backup.
<p/>
34 hours were lost, from about 17:30 (UTC) on 4 June to about 03:30 on 6 June. This affects the game, the forums, and the wiki.
<p/>
We're going to set up hourly offsite backups of game, forum, and wiki data so that future outages are less painful.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">Frost</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-04-28</font>
<p/>
We're having a bugfix release today.
<p/>
The main areas that have been fixed are Brodomir's PvP Cave
and Orum's quest, both in the
caves below Hurnscald.
<p/>
Additionally, there were a lot of small fixes
on maps, spelling and grammar, and more.
<p/>
We'd like to thank all the people who reported issues and helped
testing!
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">Jenalya</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-03-21</font>
<p/>
Today we have a content release.
<p/>
As always there are a number of bugfixes,
but also two new quests.
<p/>
One of them is an annual Easter event created by Pjotr Orial.
It lasts from March, 22th to April, 25th, and can be
repeated every year.
Watch out around Hurnscald for some hidden Easter Eggs!
<p/>
The other quest is about the admiration of a little
girl in Hurnscald that sees you growing from an
inexperienced adventurer to an impressive hero.
Backstage, this was also about a great community effort.
veryape conceived of the idea for this quest and was able
to make it happen with the help of many people who were
assisting with the graphics, scripting, spell checking,
testing and giving valuable feedback.
<p/>
Lastly, Brodomir's cave under Hurnscald has been made
easier for attracting fighters from all over the world.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">Jenalya</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-03-17</font>
<p/>
After the initial server move, The Mana World was subjected
to a three day DoS attack.
In response, we have moved a final time to a server that has
better protection against such attacks.
All game related services have been moved and are back to normal.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">the TMWC</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-03-09</font>
<p/>
As of this Saturday, March 9, TMW moved to a new host.
This means there was some downtime, starting at 16:00 UTC.
<p/>
Most work was done in 1.5 hours, with a brief shutdown later.
DNS settings may take a while to propogate.
<p/>
For more information, see <a href="http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17126">http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17126</a>
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">the TMWC</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-02-21</font>
<p/>
Today we'll have a small content release.
<p/>
Among code cleaning and bug fixes, the
Tulimshar quests can be done in any order now.
Their completion isn't necessary anymore
to start the Bandit quest.
<p/>
Also, GMs may have a surprise for you someday.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">V0id</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-02-18</font>
<p/>
This is a really exciting news entry!
<p/>
Congratulations to our sister project Mana (<a href="http://manasource.org">http://manasource.org</a>)
on winning the Liberated Pixel Cup (<a href="http://lpc.opengameart.org/content/code-judging-is-in">http://lpc.opengameart.org/content/code-judging-is-in</a>).
<p/>
The project can be found at <a href="http://www.sourceoftales.org/news.html">http://www.sourceoftales.org/news.html</a>
and the irc channel at <a href="irc://chat.freenode.net#sourceoftales">irc://chat.freenode.net#sourceoftales</a>.
<p/>
We will undoubtedly experience an influx of both
ordinary players and potential developers since we
were linked as a related project.
<p/>
As a developer, it is my goal and expectation that
new players can figure things out on their own.
After all, I once did - though there wasn't as
much content back then (I feel old ...).
<p/>
As for new contributors, they will necessarily need
to coordinary with us, the developers. We're always
in need of pixel artists, have great capacity for
quest writers, and currently have need for a bit of
web development and people crazy enough to touch
insides of the server code.
<p/>
Be aware that people have different time zones and
busy schedules, so it may be a while before anyone
responds.
<p/>
Now, the links:
<p/>
Server coding: <a href="irc://chat.freenode.net#tmwa">irc://chat.freenode.net#tmwa</a>
<p/>
Everything else: <a href="irc://chat.freenode.net#themanaworld-dev">irc://chat.freenode.net#themanaworld-dev</a>
<p/>
Forums: <a href="http://forums.themanaworld.org/">http://forums.themanaworld.org/</a>
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">o11c and Jenalya</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-01-31</font>
<p/>
ManaPlus Support
<p/>
We have decided to support ManaPlus as an
official client alongside Mana. In fact, since
there will likely be no more releases of the
Mana client that supports TMWA (this server),
there will inevitably be a time when ManaPlus
becomes the only supported client.
<p/>
Mana 0.6.1 will continue to receive some
support until October 2013. We have no plans
to specifically break compatibility with Mana,
but new features may not be available.
<p/>
For older clients (whether Mana or ManaPlus),
there will be different levels of attempted
support, depending on exactly how old it is:
<p/>
* Less than 6 months old: will not crash or
behave erratically.
* Less than 2 months old: will behave
expectedly, but might not support all features.
* Last 2 releases: will do everything,
correctly, on the main server.
* Last release, or even git, may be required
on the test server.
<p/>
Of course, if a particular client release is
buggy, we may not be able to support it at all.
<p/>
For more details, see <a href="http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16867">http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16867</a>.
<p/>
ManaPlus is available at <a href="http://manaplus.evolonline.org/">http://manaplus.evolonline.org/</a>
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">o11c</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-01-26</font>
<p/>
Content Release January 2013
<p/>
This release brings a huge amount of small fixes
and changes, including fixes of several spelling
and map errors, which were reported by players.
Thanks for that!
<p/>
There are a few new things nevertheless:
New characters won't have to start their
adventure in underpants anymore,
and Doug in Dimond's Cove discovered that the
lamps in his room wear off after a while.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">Jenalya</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">2013-01-23</font>
<p/>
News feed is finally generated from the same
source for both the game and the website.
<p/>
-<font color="#009000">o11c</font>
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<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">December 2012 again</font>
<p/>
A new peninsula has magically raised from the depths,
south of Hurnscald. A witch seems to be the source of
this strange phenomenon.
Why is she here, and what does she want?
<p/>
Further on the west, Lora Tay is willing to accept
new challenges to prove once more her skills.
<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">December 2012</font>
<p/>
Santa and his helpers have returned to Santa's residence
near Nivalis to prepare for Christmas.
Among the helpers, the preparations are moving smoothly
as they should.
The reinboos are excited this year since there will be a change
within their team!
But not everything is working out as planned.
<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">November 2012</font>
<p/>
Halloween has passed and several cities celebrated this event.
It seems the farmer Oscar just came back from a long journey
in one of these cities.
Probably he will have exciting things to tell.
<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">October 2012</font>
<p/>
The roadblock to the north east in Argaes was finally lifted
and parts of the road were reconstructed.
But there is still some work left until the connection to Port City is done.
In the Woods you can find a guy who lives alone, seeking seclusion.
Be careful not to disturb him. He is very vicious.
<p/>
The smith's apprentice Peter does good progress in mastering his
handcraft and learned some new techniques.
<p/>
<font color="#0000ff">September 2012</font>
<p/>
Agostine is well known for his magnificent winter clothes,
but he always dreamed of creating something truly exquisite,
something noble...
<p/>
An old veteran has set up camp in the caves below Hurnscald
after a life full of hardship and battle.
He may be old now, but he surely didn't lose his interest
in the art of combat!
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