What about a recursive wiping function, wouldn't that be efficient? Just remember to set an exit trigger, otherwise the server will sit there wiping forever...wouldn't want our servers chafing, now would we?

Isn't all the mining already in veins? 

"Need" is a strong word, but i felt it would be good for my psychological health if there were a different thread I could look forward to rather than the redundancifest that the Wipe thread has become. I mean, there are only so many times you can read the same 5 or 6 statements before you just wanna claw your eyes out, am I wrong? I just wanna wipe the whole issue from memory.

@Weltall: Thank you for that sincere and clear response, I had no idea that building the client on OS/X was so difficult. Perhaps this should be a topic for another (stickied) thread, but what type of experience are you looking for in Mac (internal) testers/ developers that might help in remedying this problem? I only ask because I have a little experience with building apps using Apple's SDK and an old iBook G4 that is sorely in need of attention so I might be able to offer some aid in this area. And to be clear, when I say 'a little experience,' I mean VERY little.

I actually think Rigwyn has made an excellent point, although I don't much appreciate the perspective of players not mattering. Wipes should be done regularly, as updates should. If instead of lumping so many massive changes into one update every year or so or whatever, update every couple of months (doesn't the website say to expect this somewhere?) fixing only a couple of issues, big or small, and wipe with each update. If different metrics are put in place making it (possibly too) easy to level stats/skills, it would allow players to test higher levels and lower levels within a couple of months and then they can use that knowledge for the next couple of months when they make a new character. This would make it necessary to inform players of what specific changes have been made and what kinds of things they should be keeping an eye on for the two months of that character's life and, I imagine, would significantly improve development by focusing more on one issue at a time per department. I feel that many of the players who are against a wipe feel so strongly about it because there has been so much time between wipes and this causes them to feel a greater sense of loss when a wipe finally does happen; more frequent updates/wipes would, I hope, cause them to feel a greater sense of gain, in terms of game knowledge. Right now, our knowledge of the game makes us realize that a wipe will mean so many more hours of grind to get back to where we want to be. This is why I think the metrics need to be majorly softened in these testing stages we are going through, so people will not feel apprehensive about starting over again. As for balancing leveling, it seems this should be more of a "final project" before the 1.0 release, since the mechanics of the game clearly need plenty of attention still.

I guess I should try to sum this up before it just becomes a blob of text. There are two main points I feel need reiteration:
1. More frequent and SMALLER updates
2. More frequent wipes accompanied by specific information about the goals of the accompanying update
These two things would make me fully support wiping now and in the future. I really hope that it's possible to implement this kind of change in how things are done, but I don't know enough about game development to know if I'm being shortsighted or not, so please tell me if there is some problem with this model that I don't see.

There seems to have been some discussion about all players being testers, which is simply untrue. If this were true, EZPC would be available to all of us at this time since it is "down for testing," and we would have access to functions that would not be available to normal players that would enable us to test a wider variety of the aspects of the game. If you read the thread about EZPC being shut down, you would see that being a tester is clearly a separate position from being the players that most of us currently are.

To the people who say "Stop complaining, the wipe is coming, deal with it and get over it," this statement is not in any way furthering the discussion of whether or not we should have a wipe and frankly, I don't understand the point of simply laying down and taking it in the...well, you know where. We were asked by the devs if we think a wipe should happen and it's our duty to thoroughly consider how such a change will affect us personally. Only the devs know whether or not the code itself necessitates a reset, but the we, the players, ARE the community and only we can say how it will affect US. I appreciate the devs concern, and I won't hold a wipe against them, but to me, if they perform a wipe that is not required by the code, it just doesn't make sense. There are two servers, and it certainly seems that the non-RP server is for testing, so I can't justify a wipe of the RP server when there is a clearly better-suited server for such action. People may say that things are imbalanced or that the economy is messed up or that Mr. So-and-so has some item that he obtained in some illegitimate way, but I think that those things fit perfectly into an RP-realm: greed, corruption, horribly imbalanced economy. These things have been, are and always will be part of every society that ever has existed, does exist and will exist. As for clearing out those who don't participate in RP on Laanx, there is always the /ignore command or the simple labeling of those people as "crazy" or "strangers." I never really had a problem dealing with those people.

You might be a noob if you still have all the original macros in your shortcuts bar and/or haven't made any of your own
You might be a noob if you complain about how long it takes to earn enough PP to train skills by killing rats
You might be a noob if you "need" a map