Creating Adventure - June 2025
Words of Wyrom
Hail, adventurers! Wyrom here, gazing out across the ever-unfolding tapestry of Elanthia. Whether you're a fresh face stepping off the docks of Wehnimer's Landing for the first time, or a seasoned veteran seeking new horizons, the vast world of GemStone IV beckons. Okay, that was AI, I asked it to write something cool from Wyrom about GemStone IV. Everyone is trying to introduce AI to their products, and while I think you can use it to help leverage some ideas, the real heart of our game comes from the creative minds of our GameMasters.
One thing I wanted to touch on before diving into everything is my role. I've been the Product Manager since 2016. Before that, I was the Assistant Product Manager all the way back in 2014. I never fully replaced the APM role(s) until 2021 with Estild joining the fray! We later had a larger restructure and had Isten, Thandiwe, and Tivvy join Estild, with each APM over a specific team in 2022. Up until this point, even though my role was Product Manager, I was more the manager of the GameMaster program. That would all change in 2023 when Simutronics underwent a huge change and a new CEO. Since then, I've been able to get more involved as a PM vs GM++. It comes with a lot more work that you don't get to see me as much. I still do things as Wyrom, but I have a lot of work on the Simutronics side these days. And that is to ensure GemStone IV has a long-lasting future! Those 4 APMs have replaced the Wyrom you may have known from 2014 until 2022. These are all good things. They ensure everything stays on track and moving without me holding anything up. And our GameMasters do everything to keep this game alive. From the smallest projects to the largest roles, everyone on staff has a purpose.
Behind the Curtain
Usually, I talk about updates in Creating Adventure, and those updates typically are centered around development, but I do want to jump into some less exciting things for a moment because they have been hot topics for a few years now. We have some great updates on the way, which I'll also touch on, but the elephant in the room does need to get discussed this time around!
POLICY Updates
POLICY has been on a to-do list of mine since 2017. It's been about 50% done for a while now, and it was approaching the finish line at the end of 2022, just as the company would take on new leadership shortly after. With that, some of our more draconian policies started to get looked at and I started to rewrite it all. We're pretty close to the finish line, I know I've mentioned it a few times now that it will be out RSN. It will be out this July. No recent event or situation have caused a shift in the policy, most of it has been done for years, but there are some recent updates that I'd like to share now.
When POLICY undergoes an update, you will be notified at login that you have not read POLICY and should do so. Understanding the in-game POLICY as well as the Terms of Service (ToS) on the website is a must. The notification will go away after you've used the POLICY verb and read up on the changes.
Warnings in GemStone have always been heavy-handed. They stick around forever, they show up in your POLICY REVIEW, and they impact your penalties. POLICY 18 and 19 have changed the most over the years. We've shied away from lockouts for in-game penalties that are per character. We've made little changes on how we address penalty durations for repeat offenses and when they reset. But it's not perfect. Sometimes it feels too severe to you as the player, sometimes it feels like the reset is being used as a get out of jail free card to staff.
Moving forward warnings are only going to be whether you got one in the last year. We are ditching the first offense clause. If you haven't been warned in a year, penalties will be minimal, if you have been warned already in the last year, they will have more of an impact. High Maintenance Customer HMC is also being retired. In its place, we'll have what we just call a Restricted Player. Restricted Player will be POLICY 20 and will last at minimum a year provided you do not get any more warnings or do anything that would cause it to renew. Restricted Player is not something that is automatically given at the time of a warning, it will go under review, similar to how HMC currently works.
F2P accounts will not have any other penalty other than to be sent to the F2P Lockout Room where they will be forced to RETIRE and start over upon their first warning. I understand this may seem drastic, but violation of policy is a choice. Once you RETIRE, you can start over and keep playing on your F2P account.
Multiple accounts are another topic I've seen come up more recently when it comes to POLICY violations. If you're logged into more than one account and get hit with a scripting violation, all accounts performing any actions that are also unresponsive will get hit with the warning and penalties. Penalties for multi-accounting will be clearly written in POLICY 19 when the update hits.
I know there have been several discussions about unfair treatment and some feel targeted. We have updated tools these days that give us a read out of activities. If you hit too many checkboxes, staff is alerted that you might be AFK scripting. If you feel targeted, it's because the system detected patterns of behavior from you that are consistent with AFK scripting. Our plan is to continue to improve these tools and hopefully at some point, we don't need to waste GameMaster time answering these alerts. Right now, it's a human response, and at times, humans make some mistakes. If you ever feel a mistake was made and you were wrongly punished, it must go through our appeals process. This will also be outlined in POLICY with the update, but you need to email gsfeedback(at)simutronics.com. If an SGM was not involved in the process, you can request an SGM referral, but almost every time you will be directed to gsfeedback. Not feedback, gsfeedback. Regular feedback was more aimed for the other games, it still exists, but it is not an inbox that is checked regularly. You will just slow down your appeal.
Platinum Migration
Our last scheduled migration is wrapping up in June. Platinum players have until July 20th to get their crate and geared up for their time in Prime. We will have another migration at some point, but it won't be until after August. It will be announced when we have a firm timeline for it.
After carefully reviewing the activity in Platinum from those who were logging in and playing still, we have decided to end support of the Platinum instance this year. There was just too much botting and unresponsive scripting happening. We already have an instance for that. Platinum will continue to be a higher subscription tier with an assortment of offerings that are going to be aimed at quality of life perks all available in Prime from now on. Those who haven't migrated will be given a last chance to migrate to Shattered after our final migration session to Prime. If you're a Platinum player who already migrated to Prime and rather go to Shattered, that option will be extended to you as well. This will likely be in 2026.
We are still working on the next phases of the migration; the character portion has just been running a lot longer than initially planned. We should be touching base with property owners toward the end of July to start the process of getting your property back to you. Once we get through this, we will regroup and figure out the next step on adding more to the Platinum players that migrated over and then the subscription tier as a whole.
Platinum Perks
We have released some of the Platinum perks and given information on some soon to come. Here is a more concise list of them.
- Double Premium Points: 200 points per billed cycle. This has already been out, I'm just listing it here.
- More locker space: +50 capacity per town.
- NAMECHECK updates: Ability to check for names that can be purged. (COMING SOON)
- With this, you can purchase a name potion to change your name to a name that can be purged.
- Premium Halls Transport Discount: Cheaper costs for a transport ticket between towns per day. (COMING SOON)
- Extra worn items slots: Like the Premium one, Platinum doubles what Premium gets. (COMING SOON)
Feeder Updates
We had announced feeder updates that got stalled out. We needed to go through some more design changes for them to make sure these updates were serving a purpose that made sense. Right now, the majority of loot that is found is sold off. This includes a lot of the GameMaster-created feeder items. The goal with the feeder updates was to add more excitement to what you can find and expand it beyond just the Legendary feeder at upper levels. The way we originally announced it, there would still be a lot of bulk that probably wasn't desired, requiring GM time to make it all and not really getting us to a place where I wanted us to be.
The rare and epic feeders will operate similar to the legendary feeder where they're firing off about once or twice a month. This will allow us to build higher quality items that are hopefully a little more exciting to find. With this, the alter fodder feeder will go live as well. That feeder has things that you can bring to a merchant to include in an alteration or maybe be able to use in the large number of player service items out there these days.
This update will be live this July.
EVENT Updates
Event entries to Duskruin, Rumor Woods, and Ebon Gate will be updated to a new system. Your old booklets, markers, keys, and cubes will all continue to work (or be converted), but a new entry mechanic will hopefully be debuting for Duskruin in August. If it doesn't make it in August, it will for sure be here for October. Each event will still have a specific entry item keyed to that event, so you'll still need keys for EG and markers for RW.
You will be able to redeem your entries to your character and have them as data going forward, similar to BOOST. At any time, you can produce the entries from your character back to a physical item if you wish to trade them to other players or use them with the False King Arthur (the gladiator, jouster, and adventurer NPC). And with that, no more needing 25-count entries to use the NPC. Because all event entries will be on a single system, it will be easier than ever to confirm the entries. Want to just use 3 entries with the NPC? No problem! Just want to drop 100 entries all at once, sure! If the NPC is what you want for a quick fix of exp and scrip, then you can have that. Just remember, you hold that exp at your own risk. Elanthia is a dangerous place! More on this (real) soon (now).
SimuCon
We have plenty of panels that will also talk about releases coming soon. The GameMasters working on those updates are excited to share those details, so I won't be going into them here, but stay tuned for them! If you can't make it to SimuCon, we have our Twitch stream that you can watch and chat along with. There is always Discord that Con goers will share tidbits as well on!
There is still time to sign up if you think you can make it out to Saint Louis, Missouri. If you haven't been to a SimuCon since 2005, it's a lot cheaper to attend these days, you can simply just get a badge if you want, but there are add-ons you can get as well that go directly to supported SimuCon and the costs associated with it. Those funds are tied directly to that because a convention is kind of expensive.
I won't be there this year. Maybe one day I can return to SimuCon, but unfortunately, I have to be extra careful these days (autoimmune issues and getting old is a bummer).
Year in Review
We noticed we had been slacking on the relay of a lot of announcements to the changelog, so this section will get updated soon once we get it spruced up. Most our announcements hit Discord these days but check out (most of) our updates in 2024 and 2025!