This did indeed start immediately after they fixed the problem for Krans and Yllians. I was on when they announced it cured. I even happened to be in the tavern at the time. And sure enough, I saw a Kran stroll on in soon after.

When I went to leave.... I couldn\'t. Oopsie! But I kept trying... and popped out eventually. You can also enter the tavern... eventually. It just takes a number of tries right now. With the number of enki characters running about, I\'m sure this is a known issue. I\'ll bet they fix it as soon as they can.

Hmmm... I explained this once before in another section of the forums. I kinda rushed it, and it\'s probably better suited here anyhow. Once again, this is just how it looks to me to work... there are quite probably little subtleties I\'ve missed.

First, some basics. As you kill enemies, you gain experience. Once you earn enough experience to reach one hundred percent, you gain progression points. Progression points are what you will need to take to an NPC that can train a skill. I\'m pretty sure you\'ll also need a little bit of tria to purchase training. Or perhaps I have a hole in my pocket.

In the skill window, you see lots of pretty colored bars. The background for these bars is red. The yellow bar is over that, and indicates how much you need to train that skill for the next rank. If you currently have progression points, you\'ll also see a thin blue bar that represents how many progression points you have to spend.

After targeting a trainer NPC and selecting the Train shortcut (or typing /train in your chat window) your skill window should appear. Selecting a skill, and hitting the little \"bag icon\" at the top will spend a progression point on that skill. This will cause the blue bar to decrease, and a some of that yellow bar should turn green.

What you\'ve just bought is what the Player\'s Guide refers to as \"Theoretical Knowledge\". You haven\'t yet ranked up that skill, and you can\'t buy any more training for it at this point.

Now you\'ve got to actually use that skill. As you do, you\'ll see that you\'ve earned practice points. Buying training in your sword skill, and then whacking at a rat will result in something like \"You\'ve earned practice point for sword.\" in your chat window. If you get enough of these, and have turned all the yellow to green, it\'ll tell you that you\'ve ranked up. This corresponds to the \"Practical Knowledge\" part of the skills section of the Player\'s Guide.

If you check your skills window, you\'ll see that this is happily true, and that the green has given way to all yellow once again. You can now take progression points and purchase more training.

Rinse, and repeat.

Once again, I\'m just a fellow player, and could be mistaken here and there. But this is how it seems to work.

Yeah... I was replying to Gentar more than to Hatchnet.  

It\'s always cool when you first see it for yourself. Especially if you found it on your own.    Be sure to keep exploring near those ruins... You never know what you might \"face\" out there.  

The answer, as best I understand it is no. And yes.  

No, you may not run a complete copy of the Planeshift game known as Crystal Blue. This would violate the license.

You can download the source from CVS, which includes the server. So long as you\'re talented enough to compile it, you\'ll have the software at your disposal. What you will not have is any art, textures, music, models, et al. You would have to create all of your own unique artwork and stuff. Essentially create your own MMORPG. Better have Milkshape 3D, Blender, or 3DS Max handy. You\'ll prolly need good knowledge of SQL, and be prepared to tinker with some PHP.

So... you have to be willing to create your own game from scratch, with the exception of the software.

Actually... I just have to point something out.

By downloading the client, you\'re *not* downloading the PlaneShift project. The client download does not include source, the server, admin utils, nor MYSQL stuff.  This is where the distinction of PS the game and PS the project comes in. Nobody who just downloads a client can have the reasonable expectation of being able to develop the game based on that.

Here is also why I had thought my comparison to a Linux distro to be somewhat relevant. A linux distro can and often does contain proprietary components. Ones which are not aggregated, and are clearly considered seperate by the GPL as pointed out by Vengeance. Yet you can obtain the whole thing in one download.

Further, after some googling, projects such as KDE often license their artwork under a separate license. It lives in a different directory (as does the art in the PS client, least for MB) and includes a text file notice concerning this fact (as does the PS art directory.)

Clearly, mightier legal minds have not seen this common practice as a GPL violation.

This is really pretty simple, I think.

If you use a web server that is released under the GPL, does this mean that all of the web pages, graphics, or other files served by this server must be GPL as well? Of course not.  

Now... it\'s true that the Planeshift art is bundled with the client rather than served to you on the fly. But the art is auxiliary, or supplementary to the software rather than integral to it. Documentation bundled with GPL software isn\'t itself GPLed for example.

The art, models, music, sounds, etc. used in Planeshift are separate from the source code. The source for the client, server, admin utilities, et al. are GPL. The art isn\'t, and are covered instead by the Planeshift license. But anyone is free to use the Planeshift software and supply their own art.