The 3rd chapter of the DW history

Chapter 3 of the DW history has been written and posted here.

error --> [oT la]

Over the last few days players have increasingly seen the following error:

error --> [oT la]

If you see this, refresh the page using the F5 key and it it should fix the problem.

You can also click on the skill you was doing (except combat) or click on another town to remedy the problem.

Pirates are invading Mezno island

If you want to join the pirates, now is the time to take your keg of rum to Xanso.

If however you want to fight the pirates, then take a look at the various locations on Mezno island ;-)

Update: The invasions are now finished.

Beta testing is underway

The players chosen to participate in the beta test have been messaged and are now able to login to the beta site.

As well as speed improvements, there is also some new features like drag and drop for items.

Depending on how the testing goes, determines wether these features stay or not and also when it is released to the general Syrnia public.

Dear ,

You are hereby invited to help us test the new Syrnia version we are working on.

This new version is quite a change as it offers drag&drop for your inventory items, and it's a lot faster than the Syrnia as you know it.

We want to test this new version for at least a couple of days. It looks like we will probably be launching it somewhere before the end of february; However it all depends of the testing results.

You can use your normal Syrnia acount

Testing the beta will in no way affect your real accounts items/levels. And you will also notice your beta account hasn't got the same items/levels as your current Syrnia account.

You can play both Syrnia.com and this beta version at the same time, however that could be confusing.

For more details read all stickied forum topics on the test site.If you like to help us out, and have a look around, we'll see you over there!

The secret donator mystery

A few players have noticed that they now have an underlined name in chat which is a sign of having donated one euro, even though they had not donated.

It appears that someone has kindly been donating for other players.

Improved durability of mining and woodcutting tools

A few changes have been made to the durability of certain tools as well as a bug fix for +durability platina tools.

It was mentioned in this thread that platina tools were breaking extremely fast. As a result, the durability of platina tools has been doubled so have a smaller chance of breaking than before.

Tools made from other types of ore have also had their breakability tweaked.

A bug has been fixed where +durability platina tools would dissapear when they broke. Now when a platina tool with +durability breaks, the durability will go down by one like other items do.

Combat Bug

Gieleke sent me a screenshot of a strange bug that occured when he was fighting the lizards that were invading Rose mines.

As well as the screen saying a Python attacked him while fighting a Lizard, the screenshot shows that he had to knock the Lizard down from 11 health instead of 9. Strange bug indeed!

Multiple invasions

A whole range of creatures have invaded different locations.

There is an Dark Widow invasion at Aloria
There is an Gnome invasion at Valera
There is an Wild dog invasion at Franer mines
There is an Bat invasion at Lemo woods
There is an Elder Eagle invasion at Penteza
There is an Lizard invasion at Rose mines.

Some locations have already been reclaimed by players!

Official news regarding the outage

From Syrnia's news page.

There was +/- 1 hour of downtime today during which the website was inaccesible. This was beyond our control: there were problems at the servers datacenter. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Speaking of the hardware behind Syrnia: We are going to move Syrnia to a different datacenter next month. This server will be faster and even more reliable. This move should cause minimal downtime, we're aiming for max. 15-45 min. We need that time to safely transfer all your items, levels etc. to the new server. When there's more information about this move you will be notified beforehand (provisionally on or around 20 feb).

We will also be sending invitations to a group players to join us in testing the new Syrnia code if they like. These players have already been chosen, so please do not apply for a testing job. The new code has already shown a massive improvement on speed, especially at Trading and in the Outlands.

Faster trading and outlands combat updates should be great. While only a small part of Syrnia, faster speed in these areas would be a great benefit as they are used often.

Im wondering if the flash code would be changed to do more of the combat as at present in the outlands it is only used to display what combat has happened via standard http requests (loadVariablesNum("includes2/flash/pvp.php?time=" + timer.getTime(), 0);).

Peer to peer trading instead of going through the server would make trading faster but may be open to abuse.

However the changes have been done, I look forward to seeing these areas work faster ;-)

Syrnia is online again

After almost an hour offline, Syrnia has returned ;)

It appears that this was just a network error where the server was located and that time was still passing on the server as normal.

When I logged in I had 1 health left and a clannie of mine came back to find himself dead. I expect a few people may have had similar problems.

Syrnia is currently down

Yes, Syrnia is currently down.

There is no information as to why it is down or when it will be back up. Hold tight!

Update: Appears to be a server issue. No ping replies and other domains that run on the same box are also down.

Here is some games you can play while you wait.

Progress

That's the title of this new News page entry:

We've got some exciting news.
We have previously stated we were re-working the entire game, by now we've almost finished it!

The re-working basically means better performance, lots of bug fixes and a few new small game features which bring the game to a new level.

While we have been working hard on the improved version of Syrnia, our ticket support had to suffer. That's mainly the bug tickets, as in this stage it's not very useful to fix bugs in the current version of Syrnia while the new version fixes them already.
However, if you've still got a support ticket running, you will get an answer for sure! All tickets pending a Moderator reply will be answered as soon as we are able to solve your problem. After we've launched the new improvements we will try to solve all open tickets. This especially relates to all the bug tickets!

We will soon start testing, and hope to be able to launch the improvements in February or March

So there is changes being made but you will have to wait for them......possibly posted to change the topic in world chat and stop the arguing! I wouldnt call this news exciting personally ;)

The DW-HQ Outlands Scanner Conspiracy

Having known about a screenshot on the dw-hq website of an alleged Outlands Scanner, I assumed it was a joke. With world chat filled with DW members trying to make a conpspiracy about DW owning Syrnia , the url of the picture was mentioned. Then Gez pointed out that the url in the screenshot actually gave you a login screen!

What happened next was all of the DW members went quiet, then within minutes the login page dissapeared as well as the image. I dont have a screenshot of the login page, but I do have a copy of the removed image ;-)

I'll leave you to make up your own mind about this conspiracy ;-)

Combat videos

Fritsz has made a couple of video's of combat in Syrnia.

I have not embedded the videos as they require you to install a browser object to play the DivX format videos.

Click here for a video showing 5 players fighting a dino.

Click here to see Fritsz and Abu fighting in the Outlands.

Clan greetings announcement

A new post in the announcement forum about clan greetings has been made:

Since this continues to be an issue in chat despite repeated explanations the definition of Clan Greetings will be posted here for all to see.

Clan Greetings

The idea is when someone logs in they says "Hail 'clan name'" or what ever the clan decides is the clan greeting ( within the limits of the rules) and then the clan responds. " Hail 'whoever'" in response.

Then the player sees who of the clan is online and not afk, and it does not fill up chat with random un-responded to "greetings". It's a nice way to say hello, see who of your clan/friends are online and it also shows the clans presence in the world of Syrnia without being overly offensive to others in the process.

The reason this came up was because some non dw players hailed and got muted and then this announcement appeared.

Shortly after I got muted for saying a new clan greeting which was in Japanese. Now support ticket 4303 (which is not one of my tickets) is about foreign language clan greetings:

2008-01-05 13:48 xxxxxxxx
So you are saying that clan greetings are allowed in another
language?

2008-01-05 13:52 Moderator
That is correct. They have been allowed by the senior moderators.

Having pointed this out to the chat mod who muted me, I of course expected to be un-muted as what I said was within the rules. Yeah right! As others know, the mods pretty much have it in for me, so what did they do? Make up a new rule which says part of the clan name needs to be in English. Even though they made the rule up after my muting, they refused to unmute me.

Even though the modding has been a little better lately, I still feel a lot of unrest from players in chat as the bad mod decisions are still happening.

New Syriet Stats

a_f_c caught a screenshot of M2H wearing his shiney Syriet armour. Here is the screenshot:

The legs and plate have not appeared on the dw-hq site yet so the stats for those are new information. 45 armour for the plate and 35 for the legs. So far there has been no information on the stats for a shield. With the armour being at 134 already, a shield on top is going to be even higher.

Its going to be a long time before most of us get to wear this equipment, we will have to drool a bit longer ;-)

Shoutbox added

A reader of the blog suggested a shoutbox would be nice here so one has been added!

Edit: Im trying a few shoutboxes out until I find one that looks ok and has a decent set of features.

Syrnia Corner break

Syrnia corner will not be updated for about a week from today.

Having died at Ogre outpost today and losing my Koban axe, Elven armour and about 6k worth of food, im totally gutted. My sister and husband turned up and I forgot to stop fighting. Its shows how easy it is to lose what you have worked hard to get!

This gives me a good reason to take a little break from playing Syrnia so much. I'll still probably do a little afk fighting (with a shiney silver axe instead of koban) and filling in a few botchecks, but thats about it. For that reason I will probably not notice any news, hence why I wont be updating the site.

See you all soon!!

There are 4682 Bugs left

Bug invasions have hit a few places in syrnia.

4.5k bugs at Eylsian docks, 1.4k bugs at thick jungle, 717 bugs at Eckwal. Also some Bats at McGoogins camp and I believe bugs at Penteza. Also 1.1k bugs at Ogre lake.

Probably a few more locations but these are the only ones I know about.

Syrnia Firefox script by NebuneX

If you use Firefox then you can use the excellent script created by NebuneX.

He describes the script as "Enhances the interface, adds extra features".

Amongst many other features, it tells you how much HP of food you have in your inventory, adds refresh links for the frame that tells you if you have new messages and also your skills frame. It also tells you how much HP a food heals if you move the mouse pointer over it in your combat screen.

If you use Firefox and would like to try the script out, you need to do the following:

1. Install the Greasemonkey addon for Firefox


2. Once Greasemonkey is installed (and not before), install NebuneX's script

You do not have to do anything else and you should notice the changes when you next login to syrnia. Changes to the options of the script can be made by clicking the syrnia 'options' link.

You can turn Greasemonkey on and off by clicking the monkey face in the bottom right corner of firefox, which will also turn off the syrnia script. If you use other greasemonkey scripts for other sites and wish to only disable the syrnia script, right click the monkeys face and select syrnia.

DW-HQ adds pie chart to their clan stats page

This morning I noticed a nice little update to the clan stats on dw-hq.

A pie chart now shows you what percentage of new xp gained within a clan is in which skill. Its a great way of seeing the strengths of a clan at a glance.

Nice update dwhq!

Timer/xp bug update

For those having the problem with the timer/xp/resources bug, im told that it is just a display problem and you are actually getting he xp and resources. So no need to do the workaround suggested before.

DeathWatch Guards - Weapons and Armour

A new creature (or not, read update) is possibly due to enter the syrnian world. The DeathWatch Guard.

As the graphics for the weapons and armour are only on the dw-hq website and not on the syrnia.com, I can not say for sure that these are legitimate new items. Muaat who is a dw clan member normally does the graphics for syrnian items, so it possible these items are genuine. The filenames of the graphics also follow the same naming convention as other recent otem updates, such as capital letters on the filenames and the spaces.

So its looking lile a strong possibility that an update is on the horizon ;-)

Deathwatch Guard Spear

Deathwatch Guard Two handed axe

Deathwatch Guard Shield

Deathwatch Guard Hands

.

Update: It has been suggested that these items could be purchased using medals won in the Battle Arena, once fixed. Hopefully we will know for sure soon.

Update2: According to Abu, these are not new items. Dw-hq.com put the graphics on their item list even though they claim they were just discussing the ideas of them being used as items. They have since removed the items from their list. Maybe one day they will get their wish of having items with an abbreviation of DW into the game ;-)

The graphics look good, lets hope they make their way in to syrnia eventually!

Huge Problems Quest

Having wanted to do this quest for a while, I decided to attempt it today.

In the past I had given the guy in the Huppele Pub his 100 casino chips but he seems to forget about this if you leave the Elven island. So the gambling addict got another 100 chips from me to start the quest.

So I made my way to Exella mountains and this option was waiting for me:

Do you want to fight the Canlo giant..if it's there? Fight it

No one else was at the mountains except Rictor, a clan mate of mine who was ready to catch all my inventory if the Canlo Giant thumped me too hard.

My health stats were at 34 which gives me 40 health points. The Canlo giant had hit a clan member of mine for 39 wearing full silver before , so I was obiouvsly worried.

I was wearing steel armour except for an Elven helm and Elven gloves (+2 Power). My weapon was a Koban axe. This gave me the following stats:

Armour: 51 + 0
Aim: 40 +0
Power: 35 + 2

Attack: 41
Defence: 35
Strength: 34
Health: 34 (40 hitpoints)

The beggining:

You are attacking a Canlo giant (80) at Exella mountain.

The end:

The Canlo giant died. You got 181 attack experience.

The important stuff:

The Canlo giant has 85 hitpoints
24 was the biggest hit the Canlo giant hit me for.
The biggest hit I got on the giant was 11.
I used about 300hp of food
As a reward for completing the quest I got 1000xp in all combat skills

Check comments below for a full combat report, with my food eating excluded.

Guides and help chat

One of the guides, who's name will not be mentioned *cough* Aquadark *cough* accidently pasted a link to some of his mspaint art skills in help chat.

The picture is interesting as it would give an idea as to how come things work behind the scenes. Unfortunately im told its fake.

Here is the link anyway ;-)

2008 starts with invasions!

Well as the clock turned midnight, invasions of rats, young eagles and elder eagles hit across the islands.

3000 rats are in Valera and somewhere on Skull, elder eagles are at Elven gate.

Happy New Year!!