Etherdrifter

How many of those wide circles enjoyed wurm when you introduced them; enough to stick around past the 6 month mark?

@Ekcin A quick duckduckgo search of "sandbox crafting mmorpg" shows wurm as the first entry on the second page, and I do agree that if it were higher there may be a slightly higher rate of player influx, as people tend to only read the first page of results. However, your other assumption that wurm is "virtually invisible" is a very hard one to swallow, as WU indirectly advertises WO (huge steam audience, mostly positive review, on sale for <£6 at the moment). So wurm as a game is likely better known than most fringe mmorpgs, which only have a small site and next to no advertising.

I'm actually really curious, because every time someone mentions "wurm is in trouble" the words "lack of advertising" quickly pop up. They're generally followed by people 100% certain that all wurm needs is a good advertising campaign, and everything will be absolutely great. So, to put a direct question to it, why do people think this? Is there a peer reviewed paper indicating that this is the case? If so, could I get a link?

+0 Alright, this may end up a bit long... Permium subscriptions are a good idea for game revenue; they work. The problem is, that "premium subsciprtions" covers a much wider field than the one usually discussed here. The nature of the subscription itself is generally considered to be important. Are you paying for convenience, to unlock features, or to gain a solid advantage? Even this categorisation is not entirely rigid, and there is a lot of overlap. Wurm's current subscription model works on the premise of allowing free player movement regardless of subscription status (to a degree, there are mechanic limitations that do prevent free players from reaching certain locations without an unreasonable amount of work). When a player buys premium. it allows players access to the post-20 skills content (which is continually growing), gives them a solid advantage over those who do not pay in this way, and adds in a degree of convenience once some time has been invested. Players who pay more (for silver) are also given a heavy advantage in the form of usable shop items, and deed size. The amount of ingame playtime required to "earn" premium is beyond what the majority of gamers can manage, and it has grown much much harder in the past few years with wurm's dying population. In short, wurm is pay to win by the very virtue of it's premium system design. *Someone* has to buy the silver, and it is very rarely established players in a "trickle down" kind of economy. A returning player finds themselves in a slightly elevated position to a completely new free player, ASSUMING that they put in the time to raise their stats. Though, this is often offset by the fact that any time sensitive goods (i.e. deeds, and all they hold) will be gone if the absence is a long one. Their options are to re-preme, earn preme, or leave; unless they are able to adapt to the massive inconvenience a 20 skillcap brings. Population trends indicate that the majority are choosing the latter. Modifying premium play in the way the OP has suggested would alleviate matters as returning players are more likely to stick around if they can enjoy the game without having to drop a premium subscrpition, but then you find yourself in a position of wondering where to draw the line, assuming you wish to keep the same "incentive" to preme up. However, a lot of older players may login, find their contact list has been dead as long as they have, find no-one around, find their home gone, find their items/animal gone, and would be more likely to hop onto WU to scratch their itch, so to speak. WU is a strong competitor to WO, especially given that some WU servers have a larger playerbase than some WO servers, which was the main draw of WO over WU. With the elevation reset incoming, WO cannot even argue persistence as a selling point over WU. Unless you see a change that allows WO to directly compete with WU, you're not going to see a player base increase. Overall, I don't think the suggestions made by the OP would bring the change they hope, and a more radical solution would be needed.

Wow... There are WU servers with higher populations than some WO servers XD TiL

It's an odd idea, but it does carry something really solid hidden inside it; you'd need a complete code split between PvE and PvP, which I think EVERYONE (except for your coders) is going to love. You may also end up with content disparity, which means you'd need to lose chaos and move to a freedom/epic model. This will have an impact on game silver flow, but at this point I very much doubt it would be a negative one.

A few went with that option actually, especially when they did the mental math on cost. Edit: Also @Flubb, pretty much.

Wurmian: "Hey would you like to try out WO?" Potential Wurmian: "How much is it?" Wurmian: "It's free to try!" Potential Wurmian: "How good is the free game?" Wurmian: "Ehh... It's playable, but you hit the skill cap pretty quickly? Potential Wurmian: "Is it expensive to pay?" Wurmian: "It's only 16 euros for 2 months" Potential Wurmian: "Nah, way too much, thanks." That's pretty much how my attempts to recruit my friends into wurm went.

+1

Hang on a mo... So... Existing kingdoms are making over 1000 silver for 6 days work and some item selling? SURELY that isn't balanced!

To move things back on topic.... Thinking on it, the extra load on clients may well form a technical barrier. A good compromise would be something similar to what @fatysuggested, except maybe give each server their own unique emblem (voted for/designed by the community) as well. The banner each player can craft is based on the server they have spent the longest time on in the past year. Folks like to represent their home server after all! This way, the PvP-ites get to keep their 100% custom gear; and PvE players still have a good degree of creative freedom, as well as a few banners they can exchange among themselves.

The cycle has been renewed.

It could also be based on land controlled by an alliance over the past month? If total land deeded by an alliance is over a certain threshold, and holds for a month, they can pay an extra 2 gold to unlock their flair permanently. If the amount drops below a (slightly lower) threshold for over a month, those special flair items can no longer be crafted until that threshold is exceeded again (no extra fee to re-instate) If an alliance is dissolved, the ability to craft said items vanishes and they're treated like legacy kingdom items.

A bump, because we need nice things too!

Hello pot, this is kettle. This entire suggestion thread is all about profit! It needs solid +1ing because then, when folks can't game the system on chaos, they'll start +1ing freedom alliance gear