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Happy, Happy Birthday... Happy, Happy Day... Happy, Happy Birthday... CAELAN... what else can I say!!!
If you didn't know, March 6th was the day the Lord saw fit to gift us with one so special as our very own Demented Jester.   

We luvs ya, Caelan!!

I thought I would post this now.  With this being the last day of February, the Extreme Top 100 voting site will be resetting later this evening.  Sylvan Heart only made it to 7th in February and that is the lowest we have ever been on that list.   I would like to ask you all to make it a habit to vote every 12 hours at that site.  It doesn't cost anything, and it's relatively painless.   The thing is, the higher we are in the voting list, the more players are likely to take a look at us and decide to give Sylvan a try.   Personally, I think we have a super fantastic server (despite Comcast) and the best Staff and players of any server out there.   So... get out the vote and let's lift Sylvan up to the the top.

I think this site has been posted here before but they keep adding more and more hilarious pictures that it just bears posting it again.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Remember we have the vendor mall in Trinsic were most of your shopping needs can be taken care of.  That being said, I need to remind those having a vendor there need to keep it their vendors stocked with items.  I have noticed some vendors there with very few items on them.  Please get those restocked.   There are more vendor slots in the Trinsic mall if anyone would like to set up a vendor, contact staff.

I know we all get upset when the shard goes down, especially if it's long term.   Marlenus and I are really frustrated with it.   He isn't really sure what is going on, but it has been a very bad winter in our neck of the woods and that has played a part in some of the problems.  We have discussed trying some other things, like a new router and battery back up.  These things do cost, so we'll get them as we can.   

As always, I love all you Sylvan players and your patience with us on this.  Be assured that we don't take these drops lightly and we are trying to sort them all out.  This shard is nearly four years old, all because of you, and the fantastic staff we have here. Thanks for your continued support.

As is tradition here on Sylvan, we will be having Romance Stones available for the cost of 10K.    You can page Staff to purchase, or you can get them from the Gold item stone under the pavillion in Magincia.

I hope you will enjoy the hues of the month we have picked out for this year.  Each staff picked a month, usually their birthday month, and then picked a great hue just for you.  We have some really great colors coming!

The February Sunday auction will be held on Sunday, February 8th.   We pushed it back a week because of Super Bowl  Sunday.  There is plenty of room for you to get your items up  for auction.

I hope everyone is handling this insane winter in good form.  I've had my belly full of snow.  Anyway, some of you intrepid souls submitted suggestions for an evil February spawn.  Staff will be making our decision soon and get to work on making some exciting new evilies... all dressed in pinks and red...  Well, maybe not pink.

Aador has passed his EMT exam!  Yay for him.   Now if you really need healing, he's your man.

Don't forget about the auction this Sunday at 4 PM eastern time.  Page Staff your pretties up for sale.

I hope you are having fun with the new craftable snowmen.  We do have a problem with them, and any currently made needed to be deleted to restart the server.  We are taking out the ability to rename them for the time being until the scirptor has a chance to see if this issue can be fixed.  Sorry for the problem, but not all issues can be seen until a script is in and running in the "real world."

This can be good for relieving frustrations.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/snowglobe

Some changes were made to fix up a couple of things and to add an item or two as craftables in game.

* [point command removed. This was pretty much a worthless command and did cause some problems with crashes.

* Tweaks made to the [grab command so that it will only loot corpses.

* Tweaks with the [sort and [dump commands

* Changes with the apple bobbing basket.

* Addition of all items needed to craft snowmen

If you notice any problems with these changes, please report them.

It's time to elect our next Shard Council.  We'll have elections before the month of December is over.   If you'd like to serve the citizens of Sylvan on the council, please page Staff with your name.

Because of the whackiness that is December with all the holidays and such, we are just going to have 1 auction and it will be on Sunday, December 14th.  There is still room to get items placed for sale.

We had a long Staff meeting today to discuss Sylvan and our future. We made a list of the pros and cons of making a switch to RunUO 2 and, for now, found the Con list outweighed the Pro list. At this time, we aren't planning to make the switch to RunUO 2, but that does not mean we will not continue to evaluate the situation.  We dearly love Sylvan, and all the players here, old and new.  We only want what is best, and for now...

We have considered the options and right now staying works best.  We want those who love the shard to stay and will continue to provide the best we can to everyone."
Your pixel crack remains intact

We want and need a website... we have a domain name... no website.!!

You know Staff always has a lot of fun decorating around the bank areas of various towns in Sylvan for various holidays.   Well, it is time to get decorate for Christmas time.  We are going to do something a little different and we hope fun for all of you.
I'm asking Guilds, or even groups of friends to pick a city, clear it with me, and deco the town (around the Bank area only.)   I really would like to have it done by the end of this weekend.   Yes, you will have to have Staff add and place items, but your idea will be what we try and go with.  Don't get too whacky and wear the staffers out.

I am doing Magincia, the Shard Council is doing Britain.  I believe this are the only towns taken, until other Staffers speak up with a town they'd like.   We hope that we have some of you guilds step up and have fun with this.   Post here, or let me know in PM.

You know, it don't take much to keep some of us entertained.


http://majman.net/fly_loader.html

I'm sure all of you who travel the shores of Sylvan will notice a tremendous drop in our world's population in the last few weeks.  I'm sure it concerns you, and it greatly concerns me and the rest of the staff.

I have spent hours and hours and hours on Sylvan over the last nearly four years.  I love this place.  We have worked and worked to get new players, and keep existing ones.  We create new events, new dungeons, new quests, new monsters, new fun things for players to do.   It begins to seem to me that the more we do, the less players we have. I don't know where the players are, I sure wish I did.

I have heard some rumors over the last few weeks so I thought I'd try to address some of them:


Where are the staffers?
Staff is like everyone else.  We also have real lives.  The economy has not been kind to player and Staffer alike.  Yes, I'd love to have more staff, but honestly, the staff I have hired in the recent past have been such disappointments as to make me rather do without than hire more like that.  Also, 4 players in game, how many staffers do we need?

What has happened to the events?
Time after time, we have had events.  Staff announces the events often days a head of time in the forums or on shard. Sometimes they are spur of the moment events, like paintball or a champ spawn.  Many times we practically beg to get enough players to show up so the event can be run.  Staff would love nothing better than to run events, every day, and have players turn up to participate.

Players are bored... if they just had something more to do...
We have added and added new items, new content, new dungeon, new quest, all of Felucca,  new things for crafters.  It seems with each new thing we add, the fewer players we have. As if the more we give you, the more you decide to find somewhere else to play.  We can't win.  The players want more, but it's never enough.   We can't make players have fun, they have to take an active role in making their fun.

It's just too hard for players to log in here.  Can't you make it easier to log in?
We have some players, especially the Vista people, have a bit of trouble logging in.  IF the people follow what we tell them, they get in, 99% of the time.  If they don't do what we say, then I don't know what more we can do for them.  I have one new player who has been trying for a week or two to log in.  I have asked him at least 3 times where did he get his UO, did he download if from FilePlanet? Yeah, yeah.   Today he messages Marlenus and tells him he has UO 9th anniversary edition.   Marlenus tells him to go to FilePlanet and download.

Now, could we easier for people to log in?  Sure we can, all we have to do is get rid of all the custom graphics that we have.  That means custom craftables, custom clothing, custom deco items.  Get rid of that, we'll be good to go.  I've mentioned this in the past, and most have felt they'd rather have a bit of a weird log in than to lose the custom items that make Sylvan more special.  On a side note, over Sylvan's 3 1/2 years of action, we have had no less that 4 people who were going to switch our custom graphic slots so we could make it easier to log in.  Like so many of the staffers we have had, they vanish without a word, the job unfinished.


Other players are recruiting for their shards from Sylvan.
As much as this frustrates me, and is against the shard rules,  I am not sure how to handle it.   If these players with their new shards, tell others, and the others take off... then I guess Sylvan has no hold for them.  The grass is always greener, you know.   IF anyone hears of another player recruiting on Sylvan for their own or another shard, if there is a PM from them, a screen shot of them recruiting in game, Staff, especially me needs the proof and then those accounts will be banned. 

If we only had our website up, that would fix it.
Yes, we have been without a website for awhile after necessary information was lost so we could not renew the domain name.  The other website a player created for us was also taken down.  We do have a new domain name and someone who says they are working on a website for us.  This like everything else hinges on real life demands.   As it stands, we have our forums up and continually running. They have TONS of information on them. The Extreme 100 voting site brings potential players right to our forums. 

Remember, UOGateway is gone, so no one sees us on their site.  ConnectUO has been broken for ages, so we can't really depend on them for correct information on us.  I'm told ConnectUO is being fixed, but it seems to be taking forever.

How about we switch to RunUO 2? We will have more content.
This is very much an option open to us.  Again, this will mean we lose all our custom pretties we love, graphics, clothing, deco items.  It also will mean all accounts will need to be remade, characters remade all things redone, because, from all my understanding, you can not put RunUO 2 into a RunUO 1 shard, you must start over.   If this is what everyone wants, we can start the process as our scriptor and server host have the time.  Most likely the augment system will go along with the custom items.


Where do we go from here?
I love Sylvan.  I have fought for a long time to keep Sylvan alive and going.  I have gone through countless Staff and even more countless players. I'm not ready to give up on Sylvan.  I want to see Sylvan continue and flourish and grow.  I don't know what more I or other Staff can do.  All that I have written here was not intended to be a bitch or a downer. It was intended to just answer some issues.   As to where do we go, how do we make it better, you give me the magic answer, I'll do it.

This is an area where we can discuss our options.  All comments welcome, flames, and rudeness are to be left out.