I don't really understand why I wasn't put in the starting town like the people in the YouTube videos.  If there is a way to skip this, please let me know and I'll start a new character.

I think the videos are of the legacy, now discontinued game. I think the current, UE Version has this "Dryken Plane" that you described instead. IMO that would have better been used as replacement for the Death Realm. I got thrown off by that, too, when I tried to return to PS last year or so, and since I don't recall the second maze you describe, I likely never got as far as you did!

P.S. Making me read through the lore to find the color of the sun just to post on the forum?

Yeah, there used to be a time when SPAM bots/slaves heavily targeted forums and the Mods could barely keep up with them, so that system has been implemented on several sites. Given the disuse forums see nowadays, these measures may or may not be necessary. XigmaNAS also still uses it, but they're a very reclusive bunch, anyway.

Even Windows has an integrated MD5 (or SHA for the matter) tool, it's just hidden inside a multi-tool binary: certutil.
Usage: certutil -hashfile <file> MD5
Where "MD5" is the algorithm to use (it uses SHA1 by default, so don't forget to append that). "<file>" is the full path name of the file to be checked.

Example:
certutil -hashfile "e:\PSUnreal-Windows-0.7.36.zip" MD5

It doesn't seem to be able to check against a supplied sum, so you have to compare the output manually. For anything other than maliciously modified files, looking at the first and last three bytes suffices and speeds things up a lot. To effectively combat maliciousness you really can't use MD5 in the first place, SHA256 would be minimum (better SHA512) because MD5 is prone to collision attacks.
Also, you would have to provide the checksum via a different method / website than the corresponding file, because if an attacker can modify the webpage to change the provided binary or the link to it, then it's trivial to modify the checksum to match that.

As it should always be, I have read through the thread before even voting. Of course, I've had a sentiment against this ever since it was proposed years ago. The arguments in this thread have led me to go from "it'll be incredibly annoying" to "it'll probably only be another nuisance". However, the benefit to be gained from this is absolutely minimal.

/introduce is a two-way concept. Depending on implementation, one can introduce to a name, the target or everyone in range. Possibly to a guild, but the latter already makes for more or less the same as it's ATM, with guild members offline, etc..

So with this command every player would be forced to not only enter the command with the appropriate targetting first (I already find the /greet command annoying because I have to change the target, then click a shortcut or type a command; I occasionally use it, even though I find /me-ing more appropriate, especially since the (very nice) /greet animation hardly ever fits the situation (it appears to be extremely formal)), but to get everyone else to do the same (highly likely to lead to several lines of OOC chat, which would not have happened without /introduce).
The /introduce command will likely have no visual representation, so it's use will be even less appropriate, meaning less incentive to incorporate it into an RP session.
This leaves us with what it's trying to do: enforce proper RP on everybody. Now, the idea of having no OOC in /say had to be dropped already, because it's simply not possible to get people to only talk IC. /introduce creates the impression that it'd be possible to force people to RP properly. However, it isn't. The only thing it does is to hide information which is, as many of the replies already stated, vital, due to the (currently unsolvable) lack of absolutely unique looks. Even in a game like SL, where customisation is almost excessive, labels are needed, because not everybody will be able / capable / willing to ensure an individual look, nor is the visual resolution in PS (or anywhere else) remotely good enough to distinguish between people unless they're complete freaks.

Still, the problem is that people address characters by name without having being introduced or otherwise come to know the name. I can't help but consider this a ridiculously small issue. This sort of thing has happened to me, yes. However, it has never been a problem. Granted, my character has properties that lend themselves easily to a description and subsequent recognition (so that I could shrug it off IC-ly very well), but still I don't recall more than 4 occasions in my entire time in PS; given that I likely don't remember many of them due to their insignificance, I'd accept a factor of 10, making it fourty times, a number which is both extreme and low at the same time, given the ratio of occurances to playing time.
Then add to this that it's been common practice for non-secret guilds to have IC means of recognising the char's guilded status, be it a badge, a tattoo or something else. Of course, this is in response to the existance of the guild tags. However, given that guilds are popular exactly because of these tags, it's highly likely that people will wish to show off their guild token regardless of introduction. Only a fraction of that desire likely is IC.

This leads to the question of the improvement of the player's RP by lack of information. I am convinced that a player will have the exact same issues separating IC from OOC, or comprehending the concept of such separation at all, completely regardless of the knowledge of someone's name. In fact, since /introduce happens to be an OOC thing itself (being a command), and the subsequent display of the names being also an OOC thing, the idea of /introduce itself more likely serves to blur the distinction between IC and OOC, rather than to emphasize it.
Players not caring about RP will simply /introduce in order to get the names on the BL or whatnot, just like almost everybody has to adjust gamma to navigate the DR.

Point in case is, actually, the very incident ThomPhoenix cited: if the incident really happened like that, and if it was really justified to assume that the information from the boards was not likely to be known by that other player, it would mean that that player was completely unable to differentiate between IC and OOC. Let me just state that that player did, from ThomPhoenix's presentation, respond very well and completely appropriately to the clarification, and in addition that the place the information came from, be it this forum or any other, likely was classified as "IC area" on that forum; this means that it could just as well be concluded that not knowing that information would be OOC (especially if you consider the "IC area" of guild boards to be an actual visit of your character, with everything occuring while your character is there, which seems to be the very intention of these areas; forum-RP works in exactly that way, so it's only natural to assume that forum RP and ingame-RP are interchangeable.).

OK, assuming all of this was not the case, and the player really was unable to decide between IC and OOC... what RP, good or average, could ever come from this player? Is it not certain that that player will commit many other, much more severe, blunders in the ongoing RP, to which the name / guild issue compares as totally insignificant? I am convinced that this is exactly the case. The point is that a player who cannot RP will not RP. Even in the unlikely case you would manage to withhold all OOC information from that player, forever, the player would still not RP. Inappropriate acting, OOC remarks, all the true annoyances would remain.

Just yesterday, I happened to meet someone like this. The player was obviously familiar with the concept of brackets, since he began to use them after I had used parenthesis to respond to his undesignated OOC question. However, his usage was completely random, with things that could go for IC in brackets, while internet-related references in plain chat. He had used /greet, but he had not ever, in the entire conversation, addressed me by name. Therefore, even with the most restrictive and intelligent implementation of /introduce, the conversation would have happened exactly like it did.

IOW, the only way to force people to RP is to have the client do it for you. This would mean to either make it an interactive movie or to limit player interaction to choices from a list, just like it's done in SP RPG NPC interaction.

Thus, the gain is essentially zero, while the overhead is, while not necessarily large, but existing. Therefore, I can only say that it's not worth the effort, neither in code (which obviously has already been expended), nor on the side of the user who has to use the (already clumsy) interface.

My (much more effective) solution to this issue has been to simply not hang out in the notorious areas like Harnquists, the arena and the spawn points.

As a sidenote, I fail to see the reason for this sudden push for enforced RP, while, as stated, the char creation, by default, puts into the descriptions nothing but things that do not belong there. How is a player supposed to know that what the system does is against the rules? Are you seriously considering to punish players who take the time to write up something in their description, inspired by, or in many times coherent with what the system put there?
I'm baffled that on one hand you are willing to spend time coding enforcements, complete with all the forseeable (and subsequently all unforseeable) side-effects and inevitable corrections, while glaring issues like that remain unchanged for literally years.
/sidenote

I also considered the options to have a different label for unintroduced persons, and initially was drawn to one of them, but then I realised that the benefit of this is even smaller than with invisibility: the only people using it would be those who already are RPing properly, while the hassle would be the same (or even more, considering they'd not only need to get others to RP, but to use an obscure command in addition.).

@ Bilbous: I can't see the reasoning behind your explanation. The name tags are OOC. So unless your character tells it's name, it's perfectly anonymous (not unrecognisable, though), IC. OOC-ly, you want to be unrecognisable? Why? And if so, why do you state that your description has "his name and guild are tattooed on his forehead", meaning that it is, even for perfect RPers, impossible to not know your name? I'm sorry, but this makes little to no sense to me.

Consider me conservative, but if something is not going to bring significant benefit, while imposing recurring cost, then it's best not to do it.
Thus, I voted for "no change at all".

In fact if you read the descriptions both in the game guide and related notes in the books you can find in Yilakum... the idea that the Diaboli are some sort of demon-like humanoids is not so far fetched (and probably was the original idea of Luca): their original world was very harsh and full of lava flows (a volcano is suggested... but the comparison with the Western concepts of Hell immediately come to mind naturally) up to the point that they are the only ones that consider Yilakum a paradise of sorts; they brought giant snakes as pets, like the ones that are frozen in Levrus' shop; they played with death early on, entering and leaving the DR just for fun (till they realized that damaged them somehow); they are promiscuous; they enjoy the good life in all forms; they are he most handsome/beautiful of all humanoids; they have horns and pointed tails...

Diaboli are demons of sorts, even if that's not explicitly stated

These are indeed similarities that betray the OOC concept that they were influenced by, but there's still a major difference between "demon-like humaniods" (which are simply people with an appearance similar to a subsection of the RL "demonic" concept), and "demons of sorts", which means true demons. It is obvious that the Diaboli concept is inspired by a particular type of "demon" (which is by no means the only possible type). However, "demons" are still significantly different from "people" (like having supernatural abilities that are not accounted for by magic (otherwise everyone else would be demons as well) or to come from some other place individually and (have to) return there often, instead of living in and being bound to a place just like anyone else). Additionally, I have trouble imagining that a true demon would prefer Yliakum over hell. They may be inclined to turn it into hell, but that simply means they do not like it as-is. As for "playing with death" (being decidedly neutral on the DR in general), this is just as possible for anyone as for them, emphasized by the remainder of that paragraph in the book which, in fact, only cites this as an example for just this general possibility. Also, the same arguments can be applied to declare that Kran are in fact rock golems, except that their name isn't "Golemi". In fact, they'd be even closer to the "original" because they were, in fact, artificially created, even though this creation is perfectly in line with any other creation story for races (and therefore "being artificially created" only refers to non-divine creators; otherwise creationists would have to accept that RL humans are golems as well).

Also, the particular concept of "demon" that the Diaboli are OOC-ly influenced by does not exist in Yliakum, therefore declaring them "demons" would drag into PS the RL hell, which lives in conjunction with RL heaven, which again drags in Christianity and subsequently the religions which spawned Christianity, etc., which are changes so major that they would also have had to be part of the original concept, and as such at least be mentioned somewhere on the mainsite. That they aren't (which has been explicitely stated by PS staff), means that the Diaboli simply are not demons, and really just a sort of OOC lookalike to an RL (not PS) concept.

IOW, your argument is precisely why "Diaboli" is not a good choice of a name: "similar-to" does not mean "is-a".

because PS is a parallel reality and the manichean good-evil axis is treated with relativism.

PS is not intended to be a "parallel reality" to anything, at least not AFAIK. It is supposed to be an all-encompassing, stand-alone universe just like the RL universe (and therefore may have intrinsic parallel universes, but that's still different from bein a supposed RL parallel universe, as this would have to actually exist based on "our" reality; being a fictional creation doesn't suffice.).

Be it as it may, I agree that the Diaboli are in some parts unnecessarily similar to the "demon" comcept. In fact, possibly too close for the good of the settings: there is no explanation for why Diaboli would be excessively vulnerable to blessed things just because they're blessed (as opposed to ADD-style "special damage vs. <race>" items). This should also be considered as a possibly inconsistency.

Similarly, the idea of an entire race that is "malicious" (regardless of the actual definition of that word) is a bit off IMO. These are exactly the reasons why I have stated in other threads that the concept of the Diaboli race doesn't sit well with me, BTW, but I didn't put it here because it's not necessarily an inconsistency; it's more a conscient decision that possibly should be reevaluated.

IIRC, it is nothing other than legal issues. You have to sign stuff and therefore be legally able to sign stuff. Programmers have a significantly easier time though since they can just start meddling with the code and submit patches to team members for revision and possibly inclusion, IOW they don't need to actually become members.

After dueling was made far less interesting, I lost some interest in the game. After a couple GMs thought that since Drahlian the "Dwarfslayer" was a racist and therefore the player behind her must also be a racist, I've been threatened by GMs (Hadfael, DaveG, Syilph) with banishment for RP

Recalling our ingame OOC discussion it seems much more likely that you kept failing to differentiate between accusing someone of IC realism and saying it's against the settings, and accusing someone for OOC racism. I did the first, and you constantly tried to convince me that the second was not the case, therefore I assume that it was the exact same with the GMs.

that caused many, many people to thank me (anyone around during the Dwarvesbane/Dwarven Star war will know what I'm talking about). Long story short, almost all of the dwarves that Drahlian "harassed" were secretly good friends with me, the player. Yet "Game Masters" (what an oxymoron that is) failed to see this. This sort of control over RP by those that don't understand RP makes me lose interest.

As I pointed out so many times already, not everything that creates interaction in a medieval style is RP. Everything that goes against the setting is not RP, regardless of it's other properties. Racism in PS is one of these things. Also, it doesn't mean a thing that people went along with it. Hordes of people have gone along with quite stupid things, so, as usual, quantity doesn't mean quality.

How long, I wonder, before it is complete? I'm betting the answer is "never."

Straight on the point. A program that's opensource will never be finished.

happy Planeshifting (standing around waiting for monsters to not be impervious after the latest crash).

And I bet you call that "RP", too, huh? Focus less on fighting and these issues won't touch you.

BTW, just for the info: the numbers do not increase linearly. Between major releases (like V0.2 -> V0.3) there have been some minor releases, but not nearly the 999 it'd take. A new major number is given to the release that marks a significant milestone. The transition from MB to CB was one of them, as was the transition from AB to MB.
Going at the pace PS has, a new major number is, on average, due every ~2.5 years, so V1.0 will in theory be reached around 2025. However, that will mean that everything is done. I expect that PS will be perfectly playable around V0.6, IOW around 2015.

i think mining should be restricted to certain classes.

To which races, and why? We don't have pixies in PS, which is about the only race I'd see a reason for prohibiting mining to.

I click a lot but I got Server isnt available. Is there any way to test if server port is reachable via UDP? By using netcat or something?

I haven't actually checked the networking code, but to me it seems that the "ping" the client uses actually goes through the server on UDP 7777. IOW, it is not the ICMP "ping" everyone uses. It can't be, because even if the server is "failed", the machine itself stays up, so an ICMP ping goes through regardless (as do http requests, since laanx hosts the status page and the updater system (and BT tracker?), none of which go down when the game server crashes). Also, the "ping" response time reported by the client is always slightly higher than that of an ICMP ping, implying extra delay in the server. You could use a sniffer like tcpdump to see if the client pings as ICMP or UDP (contrary to what the name implies, tcpdump can dump all sorts of traffic).

Therefore, I think that when the client's ping comes back, the UDP part essentially is set up OK. If it doesn't, then the UDP connection does not work properly.

The issue about the server responding to pings but upon login reporting "not reachable" I also get occasionally. I believe, however, that this is an entirely different issue, and in fact in conjunction with lag (the server drops requests for logins if it's lagging already, which makes perfect sense, so the client doesn't receive it's reply and therefore times out (notice the delay) and then pops up that message).

What might be the problem is that the router must also allow incoming UDP packets. Specifically forwarding UDP 7777 to the client PC may be necessary as well.

You can also try the IPCop dedicated firewall, at least for testing, because that works fine with PS without any modification. If you use IPCop and PS still doesn't work, then the problem either is with your client PC (it may be blocking UDP traffic) or your ISP.

Edit:
I just did a tcpdump and indeed the client uses UDP for it's "ping". The dump of a working connection looks like this:
# tcpdump udp -n
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 96 bytes
19:51:04.129296 IP 10.0.126.17.32842 > 210.193.49.103.7777: UDP, length 23 (client to laanx "ping")
19:51:04.473411 IP 210.193.49.103.7777 > 10.0.126.17.32842: UDP, length 23 (laanx to client "pong")
19:51:05.523297 IP 10.0.126.17.32842 > 210.193.49.103.7777: UDP, length 23
19:51:05.866223 IP 210.193.49.103.7777 > 10.0.126.17.32842: UDP, length 23
19:51:06.916298 IP 10.0.126.17.32842 > 210.193.49.103.7777: UDP, length 23
19:51:07.250911 IP 210.193.49.103.7777 > 10.0.126.17.32842: UDP, length 23
19:51:08.300298 IP 10.0.126.17.32842 > 210.193.49.103.7777: UDP, length 23
19:51:08.635830 IP 210.193.49.103.7777 > 10.0.126.17.32842: UDP, length 23
19:51:09.735296 IP 10.0.126.17.32842 > 210.193.49.103.7777: UDP, length 23
19:51:10.076448 IP 210.193.49.103.7777 > 10.0.126.17.32842: UDP, length 23
...