AOE Tillers, surely they can be snuck into the next update, no? Tillers aren’t just for tilling, but harvesting too without destroying blocks (i know you can make a wooden aoe tool, but Tillers don’t ‘use and action’ if something isn’t harvestable or tillable).
Come on @rossstephens (if you still work there, sorry for the @ if not), I got big Farming Plans that require AOE tillers! 
Yeah, pretty sure Ross has better things to do than working on Boundless, right now.
He hasn’t posted anything since late January 2021. People around here are asking for stuff and making suggestions in the void.
Gotta remember that Wonderstruck is no longer a thing. We know most developers have moved on and now have other responsibilities, whether it’s at Larian Guildford on Baldur’s Gate 3 or on other games in other companies.
For instance, Leahlemoncakes is now Cinematic Animation Producer, while Ross is Senior Systems Designer, both at Larian Guildford, formerly-known as Wonderstruck.
The only devs who might still “work” on Boundless are likely doing it on their free time, and so far, it seems to only be James and Blake.
Minor nitpick, Wonderstruck still exists, just all of it’s employees just now work for Larian Guildford.
More nitpick: You dont know that. they could be employed by wonderstruck but are “rented” by Larian
That was the case before, but it is not now. I’m sick so I don’t have the energy to pull up the quotes of James saying that Larian and Wonderstruck don’t have anything to do with each other.
Actually we do know that this is not true. James is a Director of Larian Studios UK. You can find this and where some of the others are working through several websites/instagram posts etc. It is true that it started with contract work by Wonderstruck for Larian, but not anymore.
Hm ok.
10 char
Looks like @rossstephens explicitly stated the items wouldn’t be ‘frogeable.’ This leaves room for speculation that there may already indeed be a way in-game to forge said tools. Have you tried placing three cauldrons within a nine block radius?? 
Indeed, no feature allowing to turn tools into frogs just yet. 
Fair enough, but of those who remains, I wonder how many could actually work on Boundless.
For instance, do you think it’s actually possible that once Baldur’s Gate 3 is out, assuming Larian doesn’t put people on expansion-content and/or bug-fixes for another year, that James could manage to put them back on Boundless? If Wonderstruck still exists, can they even release a new Wonderstruck game without Larian having their say in it?
In light on their situation with Square Enix and Larian, do you think James still thinks he owes us anything anymore, beyond some easy-quick fixes?
Maybe he does, since I believe the money from sovereign sales goes to Wonderstruck. But would that money be enough to make them finish Update 249?
And so I do wonder where that money goes. Is James keeping it safe until it pools enough to actually pay employees to do the work to finish-up Update 249?
Or is that money just their share of the intellectual property of Boundless, their share of the deal with Square Enix, and they think they owe nothing else to players, not even finishing-up Update 249 (to clarify, I’m not saying they are happy about the situation of Boundless, but are they concerned enough about it to go back to working on it seriously)? Maybe all that sovereign money is being spent on other stuff…
We’re always quoting that post of James from almost a year ago where he said “work is slow” and such, but it seems pretty obvious that it’s not just slow. It’s completely stopped. Is it on stand-by or completely over, done, page turned?
And while all of this is going on, it fascinates me that people are still like “oh, hey, devs, when you got the time, could you do this pls?”.
It looks to me that whenever they get at least part of the old team together for even limited time, it would be in their interest to push this unfinished update, simply because it introduces private server gameplay.
Even if it’s their last update, it at least gives this game new lease of life on computers of those who love it.
But it also opens door to some possibilities. If that update happens and is coupled with more competitive price, it can bring some new players in, as well as make a lot of older ones come back to try it again.
Even if new players retention wasn’t great in the past, it can be better with private server available.
It doesn’t even matter if most new players and a chunk of veterans as well prefer private server rather than MMO. More players playing Boundless in any mode is simply good for the game at this stage.
In the worst scenario that update coming in gives us all chance to play Boundless from our own hard drives, if the public servers are discontinued.
In more optimistic scenario we have the global universe continued as it is now. No updates, but playable and probably more players involved. Maybe, as their last big move, the devs would manage to introduce features allowing players content, so at least some content can be expanded.
In the best scenario, there is enough life in post 249 game for the devs to be able to continue development as before. Maybe not fast but steadily.
Long story short, I hope they find a window of opportunity sometime in the future to push 249 through. It wouldn’t matter with any other, typical content-focused update. But this one is just potentially life-saving for Boundless and its community.
I’d call that 
an optimistic scenario, because what actually seems to be going on is that 249 will never be finished, the public servers will be shut down once the contract between Square Enix and Wonderstruck is over, and we’ll have nothing to remember the game by but screenshots and videos.
That is the worst-case scenario, IMHO.
BUT who knows, @philelliott did tell us that Square Enix wouldn’t want to leave us players in the dirt, so they’ll try to find a way to have us keep something (I forgot Phil’s exact wording), but that could be Square Enix contracting Wonderstruck to finish Update 249 so that we’d get your ‘worst scenario’.
What I meant is, if they decide to finish 249, then we have the scenarios I listed.
Obviously there is a chance, probably quite big, that they won’t do any updates.
Yeah I figured that’s what you meant, but the wording “worst scenario” made me go “Oh THAT’s the worst scenario you can think of?” 
Sadly, I consider this the most likely scenario at this point, and not the worst case. 
Worst case is it all goes away, though Phil did promise both warning and trying to save something for us. This would at least keep it playable - though I wouldn’t keep playing on private servers most likely.
A few words in that long-ago post from James jumped out at me - incomplete changes in the update. My guess, or at least what I’d bet on if I had to, is that the update is being changed to prepare for the game to be only on private servers… and that could include changing things so PS players could play it single player, maybe make some universe templates that could be downloaded, figuring a way that both PC and PS players could copy the existing universe to a local copy, rather than generating a new universe?
If nothing else, come June, we’ll probably see a price drop on PS, since at that point if they don’t drop it below $34 they’ll have to implement a two hour trial and have only three months to get that ready - Sony now requires devs to make 2-hour game trials for PlayStation Plus Premium - Polygon Easier to just drop the price. I don’t see them coming back to this now, though I still hold out a glimmer of hope for them getting on the premium service there. Time and money, and this would take one without necessarily providing the other. Where I’ll really worry of course is if they don’t lower the price and just remove it from the PS store after the three month mark, can’t rule that out.
Worst case scenario, unfortunately, is that the 249 release comes out without them adding the ability for private servers to run without calling home for DRM reasons and then home gets shut down.
This was one of my two major complaints about the update. Having absolutely no offline mode for single player is bad.
I don’t know James well, but my mostly blind guess is that he is optimistic that he will be able to get people back on after BG3, but then he’s going to run into the “next project” problem you mentioned and then also not be able to work on it. Since James is in key roles at both Wonderstruck and Larian, I wouldn’t expect him to be able to get anything done on the no-money Wonderstruck side unless he decides to take a bunch of PTO to do it or is able to hire someone to manage it for him. I guess Larian might have a culture where teams are very chill for half the dev process and then crunch the other half? idk.
My company just absorbed another company that belongs to the same owner.
They still “technically” exist but im in the process of deleting them, by the end of next month every except their @domain email addresses will exist and I will technically also be an employee of that company.
Doesn’t mean were going to use them for anything other than moving the contracts over to our main one.
The point is you can still exist and not really be anything other than a tax id and maybe a email alias.
I get that, but the “Larian has nothing to do with Wonderstruck” stuff James said, and Larian specifically telling people to “talk to [their] friends at Wonderstruck” when asked about Boundless tell me that Larian probably did not acquire Wonderstruck itself, just the employees.
This may not be practical because a lot of people have multiple years of gleam club and planet rentals.
to shutdown means those people need to be reimbursed, that also opens them up to litigation due to undelivered rewards for the backers.
as with @Goblinounours similar response - I realize the worst scenario is 249 not going through (or being limited to swords/shields content package)
my 3 outcomes were listed for “IF the 249 is fully released” scenario; I was arguing that devs might find it worth their effort to push that one through, because the worst that happens THEN is this and that, but there is also a chance for better outcomes
