Cantr returns - Friday Nov. 19th

[Doug R.]

Greetings all current and former Cantr players!

As you may or may not know, Cantr has been down for over two months
after a hacker cracked the system and stole the game code. I'm
pleased to announce that Cantr will be re-launching on Friday, no
earlier than 7pm GMT (2pm EST/11am PST). A notice will be sent to all
players as soon as the game is placed back online. Also know that the
re-launch will be heavily monitored, and may experience temporary
outages if any severe bus are discovered that affect the time-line or
game play.

This is not just a "we fixed it" re-launch, however. The security of
the code has been completely overhauled, each file checked
individually. In addition, we're going to be taking steps, some of
them very soon, to make the game mechanics more open-ended, thereby
improving the simulation element of the game. We're also making
changes to improve the game's enjoyment and playability. Here is a
partial list, the first being top priority, the rest in no particular
order:

-Increasing consumption by making sure nothing player made is
permanent. This will be done in a manner that doesn't create
irritating busy-work for characters, but makes sure that stuff doesn't
hang around infinitely.

-Rewriting the combat system to make it fit the slow-paced nature of
Cantr, as well as increasing fairness.

-Redoing the skills system to make is less disruptive and intrusive to
role-play and the game in general. Suiciding your weak newspawns will
be a thing of the past. Each newspawn will truly be an blank
slate...at least visibly.

-Making animals finally work without manual staff intervention, in a
manner fitting with the overall style of the game.

We hope to refine and add to these basic changes over time to create a
truly elegant and open-ended system. We would love to see you back in
Cantr!

Thanks for all your patience and support during this time!

Doug R.
Game Administration Board

[jel...@gmail.com]

While Cantr went down again for a while due to some server security
issues, we think we have better security monitoring software installed
on our server and we are back online. Our apologies for the downtime -
we hope to be able to keep the game running for a while now! :)

Jos